happy children’s day! :D

i left korea this morning, leaving behind a gift for my niece:
my korean mobile phone with a new case (with things that bling and pictures of cats).
she badly wanted a mobile phone for a while now. her argument is that it’s very dangerous to walk around (whether day or night) alone these days and therefore it’s ‘unavoidable’ for her to get a phone, which will connect her ‘whenever, wherever.’ she’s in 4th grade. she’s been online searching for ’seemingly’ free phones - i wonder if she’s looked around for advice on how to persuade parents to buy mobiles for them.

i got curious and did a search on naver’s jishikin (knowledge search - where people can ask/answer questions) the other day, and emphasising the danger (esp. for girls) was definitely one of the top suggestions. on the very top, surprisingly (or not), was ‘well, everyone else has got one and i’m the only one without it. i’ll be the wangtta (loner) of the class now.’ a lot of answers were written by children - quote obviously.

anyway, yahoo korea reports that mobiles have topped the list of gifts sought by South Korean children for their day this year:

The poll, conducted by the Korean-language Yahoo web site on 16,661 youngsters nationwide, said 37 percent picked cell phones as the best gift. Nintendo video game consoles ranked second on the list with 30 percent approval, followed by MP3 players with nine percent support.
full - though very short - story here

… 그 가운데서도 압권은 진도의 다시래기 놀이가 아닐까 한다. 이 놀이는 장례식 때 발인 전날 하는 빈 상여 놀이의 일종인데, 놀이 전체가 파격적인 익살로 가득 차 있는 것으로 유명하다. 이 놀이는 상가에서 벌어지니 매우 경건하고 근엄해야 할 터인데 그 시작부터가 영 ‘삐딱’ 하다. 놀이 패거리들이 상가를 휘젓고 다니면서 제상에 차려 놓은 음식을 마구 집어 먹는가 하면, 상주에게 “방안에서 밥만 축내고 있던 당신 아버지가 죽었으니 얼마나 얼씨구 절씨구 할일이요”라고 하는 따위의, 그야말로 블랙 코미디를 연출한다. 그런가 하면 다른 패거리들은 승려와 장님 거사와 거사의 부인 등으로 분하여 남녀의 삼각 관계를 연출하고 부정하게 임신한 아이를 낳는 모습을 재연한다. 그리고 그 아이를 자기 것이라고 서로 우기면서 매우 원색적인 사설을 주고받는데, 사정이 이쯤 되면 부모의 상을 당해 침울했던 상주도 웃음을 터뜨리게 된다. 여흥 때가 되면 잡가나 민요를 부르고 병신춤 같은 것을 추어 비탄에 잠긴 상가 분위기를 즐거운 놀이판으로 바꾸어 버린다.
— 최준식, 한국인은 왜 틀을 거부하는가? 난장과 파격의 미학을 찾아서

… of those the best one is probably Jindo’s Dashiregi. This is an ‘empty bier’ play that takes place a night before the coffin gets carried out from the house, known for its extreme shock humour. Naturally one would expect it to be holy and serious - it’s part of the funeral - but right from the beginning it brings some really holyshitness rather than holyness into the scene. The crew (of Jindo Dshiregi) roam around the house like gate crashers, randomly picking up food from jesang (sacrificial table) and even go further to say to sangju (usually the first son or the father of the dead - chief mourner) things like “you must be la la elated now that your useless father who’s just been eating away all holed up in your house’s finally gone” bringing in spices of black humour. It doesn’t stop there - another group casually put on a performance about a love triangle involving a Buddhist monk, a blind devotee, and his wife who later gives birth to an illegitimate child. Then these three start having a loud and lewd fight over the child, instantly replacing sangju’s sadness with laughter. Another moment of entertainment brings in vulga and folk songs as well as Byungshinchoom (dance of the handicapped), turning the funeral into a fun-filled playground.

– Junshik Choi, Why Koreans Deny Teul (mold/frame/formality): In Search of the Aesthetics of Chaos and Irregularity

korea’s no.1 national treasure, namdaemun (south gate) has burnt down completely. 600 years of history once embodied in the gate, gone.

the gate survived the japanese and chinese invasion, the korean war, and numerous attacks  and threats big and small. yes, we did have a 600 year old gate in its original form (early chosun architecture). and no, we didn’t know, at least most of us didn’t, that its insurance plan was one that was cheaper than a little cornershop in seoul suburbia.

and yes, lots to regret, but nothing can be brought back.

sad. VERY sad.

read more about this in this nytimes article

SK Telecom announced today that the company has signed an agreement with Sony Pictures Television International(SPTI), one of the world’s leading media companies, to establish a strategic alliance for content service

Under the agreement, SK Telecom will provide rich video content, including the latest films from Columbia and Tristar and popular TV series from Sony, to customers through the company’s mobile multimedia service platforms, NATE and June.

While a number of popular TV series aired on HBO, such as “Sex and the City” and “Rome,”are already available, this new service will further expand SK Telecom’s library of video content, offering Hollywood blockbusters such as “Spider-Man 3,” the “Da Vinci Code” and other TV series such as “The Tudors”.
– orginal article from this digital daily article

the cost, according to the article, will range between US$1-2 per film/episode. that’s not much at all. but will the low cost factor be enough to entice the korean crowd who have successfully forced the paramount, universal, and fox out of its dvd market - along with making countless companies and jobs suddenly disappear locally - by ‘(perhaps not so) friendly’ file sharing.

street vendors selling pirated dvds are a common feature of everyday street life in seoul. i was out in daehakno with a friend the other day and we saw a guy selling four dvds for 10000 won.

• jaz: ‘hey, it’s a tad higher than other places.’
• friend: huh?
• jaz: in shinchon you get 5 for that price. gwanghwamun’s the cheapest - six.
• friend: oh, ok. you’re pretty with it.
• jaz: my friends know all this stuff - actually i know quite a few who buy these. mostly foreigners though.
• friend: yeah. i don’t think too many koreans would buy or be interested to buy these anyway. why bother when you can just download? waste of money and space. download, watch, and delete once you’re finished with the film.

this pattern of film consumption is also quite apparent in pc-bangs, where you can usually find a network folder(s) with illegally dowloaded media content including films, music, and scanned manga. they’re there for you to enjoy while you’re there, and for you to take away - and perhaps delete eventually - if you wish.

this kind of ‘instant’ access to media then allows for ‘constant’ access via portable devices - it’s intersting to think about the notion of instant/constant connection in the korean urban context, the connection provided via bangs (instant) and mobile phones (constant) - both distributed and deeply embedded in contemporary korea culturally and figurally (cf. my paper @ interactive entertainment 2007 conference & forthcoming chapter with fantastic adam greenfield in Urban Informatics: Community Integration and Implementation).

almost all of the korean participants in my past (on cyworld) and current (on mobile play culture of seoul trans-youths) research expressed their ‘zilch or bye’ approach to the cost of mobile media use: they ask, ‘why use it when there’s fast and almost free connection for not-so-portable devices (PCs) oh-so-everywhere?’

i say, i’m not sure.

why take up the new hollywood VOD on mobile? i’m not sure.

perhaps a flat-rate plan would work. if you’re into (hollywood) films, then VOD subscription does definitely sound like the smarter option than S-DMB (T-DMB’s free though the handsets are very expensive). and no one can deny that moblie media on demand will be ‘it’ for the future - VERY near future. however, it’s such a shame that the korean telcos see not much future in the film theatres, the power house backing up the korean cinema industry itself (despite the fact that the screen quotas system is decreasing and constantly under threat from US).

obviously k-telcos recognise the significance of ‘lifestyle-adhesive mobile plans‘ that offer (mostly financial) benefits for the needs of their chosen lifestyle - e.g. dicounts for tickets, texting, shopping, and petrol. korea’s HUGE on discount cards, well, discount in general (one of the phrases visitors learn seems to be “kkakka jooseyo (cheaper please)”), but yes, discount cards are the ones that fill koreans’ wallets rather than cash, as noted by this new york times article.
also, there’s no doubt that telcos are aware of the significant decrease in the number of cinema patrons (2006: 26,601,710 | 2007: 18,843,934 | 29.1% decrease, according to the korean film council) some of which can be attributed to the telco’s abrupt pull out from the discount deal with cinema complexes (pre-april 2007, subscribers were able to get about 20-30% discount on tickets) - actually, it was the cinema complexes who pulled out, claiming that telcos were putting too much financial demand on them. cetizen.com’s survey conducted in 2006 shows that this was actually the main reason (51.6%)for the decrease, and that 48.5% would be going to see more films regardless of the film’s quality.

(original image from here)

so i’m quite skeptic about this upcoming mobile hollywoodness, and i’m not very happy with HOW mobile video is being developed: mobile media and “old” media industries must be conceptualised as inherently inter-related, not separate, and their development must be mutually beneficial for both and beyond to remain sustainable in any country, but especially korea with its once exciting but now subsiding “wave.”

Web users in one of the world’s most-wired countries seldom “Google” anything. They “Naver” it

… When NHN, an online gaming company, set up the search portal in 1999, the site looked like a grocery store where most of the shelves were empty. Like Google, Naver found there simply was not enough Korean text in cyberspace to make a Korean search engine a viable business.

“So we began creating Korean-language text,” said Lee Kyung Ryul, an NHN spokesman. “At Google, users basically look for data that already exists on the Internet. In South Korea, if you want to be a search engine, you have to create your own database.”

– NY Times, July 2007(original post here)

this beloved nei-buh (we don’t have anything close to the v or r-sound in korean)’s moving out, it seems.

joins.com reports naver lovers are becoming increasingly not so fond of the idea ‘love thy naver’ and now migrating to other portal sites (notably daum) - and they have good reasons for it, too. naver has been implementing strange restrictions on user partipation, especially political ones: to start with, mid this year, users found that they were no longer able to leave comments on individual political news items. instead, they were able to participate in the general politics discussion boards. excuse me? yes, precisely.

there is a major reason behind this change, apprently: the upcoming presidential election. naver feared its possible involvement in fierce political debates and how they could maintain ‘fairness’ in discussions and promotions. excuse me? yes, precisely… for the second time.

the following is a monthly comparison of news hits between naver (grey) and daum (black) and changes occurred on naver:

May 19: redesign of new site
Jun 22: national eleciton commision announced banning on supporting/criticising specific parties/candidates online (wha-?)
Sep 10: no comments on individual politics news item
Oct 28: introduction of the ‘comments hiding’ function

what’s really shocking is the national election commission’s (nec) approach. read this global voices article (Korea: Role of the National Election Commission for the Coming Presidential Election) for more info. basically if you wanted to post anything like what’s happening on youtube (most obviously example’s hilary vs. obama videos), you’d have to be prepared to face one year sentence or a fine up to 200 million korean won. how is this even possible? do they even understand the basic concept of democracy? do they understand what this thing called internet is all about? since they’re also from Korea, the most connected nation in the world, i thought they would have at least a little bit of idea. and how wrong was i? am i the only wrong one here?

naver’s still the top visitor-magnet in korea. it’s closely followed by daum, and cyworld and nate are 3rd and 4th respectively, which means, if you combine these two (cyworld is a sub-division of nate), they would actually be the no.1. i’ve been talking about cyworld and nate (especially jishik-in service: can be translated as knowledge-in or person with knowledge) with my research participants, and it seems nate talk is gaining popularity. this is where you could talk about practically anything - e.g. problems with their current romantic situations, suggestions for good restaurants in a particular suburbs, etc. anything. it promotes comments, and my research participants were enthusiastic about reading the comments. they can be very humorous, and users can vote for the best comments, too.

naver’s knowledge-in service was absolutely brilliant. yahoo and daum made replicas, not only within korea but also on other yahoo! international sites. it seems pretty obvious that naver’s making a big mistake. yes, there’s political pressure, but portals also have the responsibility to provide a safe venue for people to communicate their ideas, considering portals mean nothing without voluntarily participating individuals. yes, for pragmatic reasons, portals need their own databases to survive here in korea where people speak korean, not english. this may present better opportunities for the portals to actually control what’s stored in those databases. but who stocked the empty shelves? who changed the storage space into interactive knowledge space?

naver has recently announced that they would work with and in support for the association of korean independent film and video. great. well done to you there. but i’m confused now. and this move makes me question your motives. i am not forgetting that postmodern society does not exist without capitalism. if users sense foolish tyranny (whether secretely or consipicuously) by the portal that they used to ‘live in’ without proper justification that is understandable within the current techno-social context, they will abandon the place. they may return sometime as long as their user information does not expire, but the domain of portal is diverse, competitive, and unpredictable.

naver relied heavily on people. right from the beginning, it not only saw what they could do, but it was basically built upon them. abandoning them like this is simply wrong. no excuse will do. let us love our neighbours. talking together would be a good first step, don’t you think?

there have been two ‘mega-fast’ mobiles phones released in korea in the past couple of months: LG’s storm phone (LG-SH150) and samsung’s ufo phone (SCH-W300). equipped with an amazing 7.2 Mbps hsdpa data transfer speed, these new 3g phones only takes about 4.5 seconds to download a full audio track (assuming it’s about 4MB in size). nifty.

original image from here

i’ve been using the storm phone, and been a happy user. listening to ringtone and coloring samples has never been frustrating – only takes one second – and there’s always a decent selection of news on the nate page (mobile portal for SK) that it actually reduces my daily online news reading time on a pc.

considering the solid reputation of samsung compared to that of lg in the domain of mobile phone production, i would’ve definitely gone for the ufo phone had it not been so expensive: the phone itself cost me only about 100 australian dollars when i got it one and a half months ago (with gov. subsidies). ufo wanted to take a bit, well, a lot, more from my financial planet – costing four to five times as much.

storm, released on august 23, has not taken the koreans by its name: only 70000 sold so far.

ufo, released on september 3, not even close: 14000.

according to a yahoo!korea article (where the figures came from), the disappointing figures are mainly because of the network infrastructure that is still in need of upgrading to better support.

i assume that’s partly true, although i have never disappointed with my phone’s performance in terms of the content and the speed that both the phone and the network provides – this includes those times when i upload large photos (storm takes 2MP images, 1600×1200) and switching on a S-DMB channel, which takes about 5-10 seconds.

another reason, i think, concerns not the technological layer of infrastructure but the socio-cultural and financial ones. my research data so far show that young people (aged 18-24, whom i call trans-youths) here are not so crazy about going online with the phone. most of my participants only make voice calls, sms, play games (sometimes with friends via bluetooth), and nothing much else. they are not interested because it costs money, and they don’t really see the point. they can go online quick and easy (… and very high in bandwidth of course) pretty much any time and anywhere for free and/or very cheaply. i had the same findings in my last research about cyworld in which users were found unwilling to use mobile cyworld.

furthermore, ringtones and coloring services are a great online-music business platform and the codec’s improving quite a lot to ensure good quality audio. however, again to my surprise, the participants are not so interested. cyworld background music is a different story though, for various reasons.

younger people (teenagers), however, present a different story. they are a lot more interested in these things, and could probably afford to buy the storm phone at least (their parents would probably be ok with paying $100). but look at the design of it. would it appeal to teenagers? hardly.

along with technological improvements (better network infrastructure to support high bandwidth content transfer) there really needs to be more considerations to the design of mobile experience (which should also take great account of socio-cultural contexts in which the experience occurs). i’m hoping to find out more about this in my research, and share more solid ideas pretty soon – yes, the end of my candidature is looming … very quickly like the beautiful foliage falling all round here.