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.”
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.
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.
Half of my life - just about - was spent in Australia.
The other half - earlier part - was in Korea.
Half of that was in Seoul.
And the other in Busan.
PIFF (Pusan International Film Festival) is held annualy in Busan.
Pusan = Busan.
Yes, the name change took place a few years ago, and what a pointless move that was.
I finally managed to experience PIFF in real life this year.
Up until then, it had been reports from friends and family working and enjoying the festival, and other gloriously positive press building up my expectations for this supposedly one of the most important film festivals in Asia.
I like film festivals. I like the exhausted ghostly faces walking around but with passion, and I love the diversity of films one can see as compared to the rest of the year when the palette feels rather mono-tone, especiallly so in Korea. PIFF07 was my first film festival where I didn’t see a single film. I did get a memorably good banana on the beach for free (sweet, ripe, and smells fine) and more importantly, I met some great individuals there. But no film.
PIFF is well known for its young enthusiastic fans, who of course came along to the opening despite the horrible weather this year. They sort of ‘hang around’ the festival area/s, making the site look more lively while screaming madly when someone famous drops by. Some of them do watch films of course, and it is indeed quite hard to get tickets unless you’ve booked well in advance. I went to Haeundae, where the festival was held (mainly anyway); it’s an interesting area, yes. It’s got a beach. (<- and yes, that's a full stop)
There are a lot of hotels. It's a holiday destination (but not so much of a glamorous one - people go overseas for a nice beachy holiday). There's nothing much there. I had a hard time trying to figure out where I could take people around that area. I called my friends who live around there, and I did location-based mobile search etc, but there just wasn't much around. Many restaurants were seafood or korean bbq-oriented, so I know for a fact that one guest who happened to be vegetarian opted for staying in their room, hungry, rather than going anywhere - there was no point.
According to the Ministry of Culture and Tourism, there are 712 annual local festivals around Korea. Including 'not-so-offical ones' the number's somewhere between 900-1200. Korea didn't have such a festive environment - in an officially realised form anyway - until mid 90s when the local self government system was introduced. And let's face it, Korea was having a hard time making a living till then - and it was not until min 90s that media and culture industries were seen as proper 'industries' that could generate serious money.
PIFF's based both in Haeundae and Nampodong. Nampodong used to be the main area, but it seems that the locative shift is happening gradually towards Haeundae.
As the above map shows, Haeundae is a pretty long way out from the centre of Busan. From Seomyeon (another central shopping/business area), for example, it takes about an hour to get to Haeundae. Nampodong, on the other hand, is central itself (it’s a big shopping district with big and small markets/shops inc. fashion, seafood, and more + a lot of restaurants and small hotels/motels. There will also be another Lotte hotel and department store in a few years). It’s always busy with both locals and foreigners, shopping, eating, and walking around.
I understand that Haeundae may have some potential, and perhaps PIFF was seen as a great opportunity to boost the slowing economy of the area. But I wonder, where are the considerations to the visitors of the festival? What are they supposed to do there? What is the festival doing in terms of the city marketing? Wasn’t it one of the main reasons why the festival started in Busan? What are we seeing marketed here? Yes. Busan is a harbour town, and the beach is always a nice feature to show. However, I’m really doubtful that Haeundae has what it takes to host PIFF at this stage. Yes it may have some potential if the infrastructure improves, but why invest more when the same if not better could be done with less? I don’t see the passionate, loud, friendly, and genuine Busan (which is quite similar to Osaka, culturally) in Haeundae - at least I see less of it there than Nampodong. I’m disappointed, and I’m concerned. I love Busan, and I’d love to see it flourish culturally without seeing the demise of its most important festival.
I think I can stop right here re: PIFF.
So, Goong Nyeo.
At the moment it’s on at cinemas across the country in both the digital and analogue format (no difference in price), and it’s also available in the KTX (express train) cinema compartment. With additional 7000 won, you can watch it (high-def) while travelling from Seoul to Busan (which takes a bit less than 3 hours). On your way back, it’s the Resident Evil 3 at the moment, I think.
I watched the analogue version at CGV in Mokdong, Seoul. It’s a debut film by Mi-jung Kim, a female director, and apparently she tried to involve as much input from females rather than males for this film. After all, it is a film about the court ladies in Choseon dynasty - more specifically, it’s about a mystery surrounding the murder of a Goongnyeo. The plot itself - well, obviously it’s the process of solving the mystery - gets a little weak as it progresses, especially with the sudden addition of supernatural powers through Japanese-horror-CG-like effects. However, in general it’s visually impressive - aestethically pleasing and detailed. The portrayal of depressing gender issues under the Confucian philosophy/politics is nicely done, and I found it particularly amusing how all the male characters were portrayed weak and/or ugly in one way or another, including the little baby prince. The audience started laughing out loud when the prince first appeared on the screen. I thought he was cute, but people were laughing at the fact that he was an ugly baby, not a typical pretty little performer like in most films.
I think it’s also very interesting to see the rise of hoonnam (literally warm man - gentle and nice to women, a lot more feminine than the traditional ideal of men) and other dramas such as jogang jicheo club (first wives’ club) in which women take revenge on their weak and selfish cheating husbands, and also wang gwa na (king and me), a story about the King’s eunuchs in Choseon dynasty. Both are currently broadcast on SBS - very popular.
one of my supervisors, michael keane, has published a new book recently.
it’s called created in china: the great new leap forward.
i must admit that i haven’t read the book yet. however, as a student, colleague, and respectful fan of michael and his work, i have no doubt this book will masterfully guide us through the mysterious and massive land of contemporary chinese culture and industries relative to the idea of creativity, something many of us are still finding hard to even draw a rough sketch of in our heads.
re-adjusting to my ‘home culture’ has been quite fun.
it’s strange to be socially, racially, and immediately accepted.
using my australian mobile phone’s proving to be exorbitant, and i’m going to be here for a while, so i’ve decided to get a korean mobile phone… yes! very excited. currently it’s very cheap to get a phone if one’s prepared to subscribe to KTF or LGT. SKT, once the most popular, has been losing popularity for a while, especially since the launch of KTF’s new 3G+ service, Show (but largely because of the concurrent ‘free phone offers’ for those who’s bringing their numbers over to KTF; LGT offer the same kind of deals, but people don’t seem to have much respect for this company that started with PCS phone services). i’ve previously talked - briefly - about how video call was painted to be the next big thing in Korea, and yes, Show’s mainly about that. however, as i’ve found out by talking to my friends here, it’s still considered to be ‘too expensive’ and thus ‘not worth it’ - as a video phone user (of a few years), i’m not surprised. i never really liked and rarely used the feature. let us be private multitaskers as we are and desire to be, perhaps ;)
anyway, STK’s keen to claim the emperor(ess)’s seat again in the over-saturated Korean mobile world, and they’re ambitiously going to release 7 new samsung phones in a few weeks. not sure if it’s worth waiting. i know that i would like SKT - my roaming phone’s with KTF and the connection’s been very unsatisfactory. besides, i would really like to try the RFID ordering system at the Shinchon McDonald’s. i don’t go to mcdonald’s pretty much ever (except when my niece wants an oreo mcflurry), but i would really like to try this service. if unable, i think i’ll just grab anyone there and ask if i could use their phone :)
SKT has also done some very interesting tv ads about video calls - ‘mastering video calling’ (but interestingly, it’s really about how to look beautiful for it); there have been four lessons so far:
more interestingness when considered in relation to:
some of Larissa Hjorth’s work on gendered use of the mobile phone in Korea
Hjorth, Larissa. “Snapshots of Almost Contact: Gendered Camera Phone Practices and a Case Study in Seoul, Korea.” Cultural Space and Public Sphere in Asia. Ed. Shin Dong Kim. Seoul, Korea, 2006: 211-32.
Hjorth, Larissa, and Heewon Kim. “Being There and Being Here: Gendered Customising of Mobile 3g Practices through a Case Study in Seoul.” Convergence 11.2 (2005): 49-55.
