Korea and Digital Culture
Korea is launching a cultural invasion in a global scale, right into your door, with the help of information technology. What does it feel to live in the most wired country in the world?
Indonesian youths are crazy about all things Korean. Korean TV soaps, the K-Pop, Korean fashion, even Korean culinary. But, one thing that astonishes me is Korea’s achievement in information and communication technology. In the last few years, Korea has been consistently ranked among the global top leaders in Internet connectivity. According to a report from Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), Korea’s broadband penetration has climbed above the 100% threshold (as of December 2013). It boasts data access connectivity up to 100 Mbps for every household in the peninsula country. With that achievement, Korea is hailed as the “most wired country in the world.”
I guess this is one of the reasons why International Telecommunication Union (ITU), as the leading world telecommunication organisation, held a workshop called “ICT Convergence: Technology and Services” in Korea, in the city of Busan. I was fortunate to be able to attend the workshop with some colleagues from Ministry of Communication and Information Technology of Indonesia. ITU Center of Excellence and Pusan National University arranged this workshop for representatives of ITU members in Asia-Pacific region to share knowledge on technology convergence, cloud computing, Internet of Things, green ICT, etc.
After the Incheon transit, I continued a 2.5 hour flight to Busan. I was picked up by two friendly Pusan National University students and guided to the hotel I’ve booked before in tourist area, Haeun-dae. Busan (the second biggest city in Korea) is an interesting city. It is the culture city, festival city, and always full of tourists from many countries spending their summer holiday. Every year, this city hosts Busan Film Festival and many other international events. In 2014, Busan will host ITU Plenipotentiary Conference, which will accomodate 200 ITU member countries and more than 2,500 stakeholders from around the world.
My colleagues and I had planned to go around and get to know Busan between the classes of the workshop. We started from Gukje Market (traditional market that sells many kinds of souvenirs — at least key rings for friends at home), Busan Museum of Modern Art, PIFF Plaza, Nampo-Dong, Jagalchi Market (seafood market), Gwangali Beach, Busan Tower to Shinsegae Centum City, the biggest shopping mall in the world. All tourism destinations are connected to the comfortable and timely subway route. Most of Busan citizens we asked for addresses responded enthusiastically, even though our questions in English were always answered in Korean (language is still the biggest barrier here). But we never got lost because there’s a map app with excellent GPS signals around.
To communicate, I didn’t have to buy a new SIM card, because wi-fi networks were literally everywhere, even inside the subway trains. Big cities like Seoul and Busan have planted thousands of hotspots, so that anyone with a smartphone can access data free-of-charge in almost every corner of the city through Long Term Evolution (LTE) services provided by the three telecommunication companies in Korea: Korea Telecom, SK Telecom, and LGU Plus.
It is true that Korea has invested nationwide telecommunication infrastructures for fast Internet access. But, what makes the Internet adoption rate is high is the cheap cost. Internet subscription fee in Korea is less than $17 per month and fixed broadband access costs less than $30. Although free wi-fi connection is everywhere, I didn’t want to bother myself with time-out limitation or access quota from the free connection. To get unlimited connection, I just had to buy an Internet voucher for ₩3,300 sold in many convenience stores — no subscription required. Beside the cheap cost, the quality of the service was also great. Early this year, telecommunication operators in Korea has even tested 5G network with speed up to 1Gbps. This condition can only happen in a thriving and competitive industry. High demand for high speed information encourages the telecommunication operator to provide better connectivity.
No wonder that everyone seems to have 5-inch big screen smartphones in their hands. In the subway, it’s a common view that people are busy with their gadgets. Millions of electronic transactions, entertainments, and social media consumptions were carried out between Yeonsan and Seomyeon stations. Some say that the advance of information technology “brings us closer and, at the same time, keeps us apart.” But that kind of argument ignores the fact that our socio-economic life has become much more effective and efficient with information technology.
At night, after attending the last session of workshop at the Westin Chosun hotel, we walked through the Haeun-dae beach, which was full of the millennials hanging out with friends and families. I enjoyed my spicy Dakkochi while watching street singers (to me, they looked like a K-Pop band) performing on the beach lane. They’re all well-dressed and had good voice even though I didn’t understand the lyrics. Then, one of the “concert” attendants pulled out a Samsung smartphone, recorded their performance and broadcast it to the world.
In Korea, the advance of ICT is parallel to the growth of popular culture, which now has gained more popularity than its Japanese counterpart, at least in term of quantity.
In Korea, the advance of ICT is parallel to the growth of popular culture, which now has gained more popularity than its Japanese counterpart, at least in quantity. The music video “Gangnam Style”, at the time of this writing, has been watched by more than two billion people in YouTube — the highest in the history of the Internet. Korea is making a cultural invasion in a global scale, right into your door, with the help of information technology. Today, the world is in the hands of those who have access to information and technology.
Of course, my 5-day stay in Busan will not enough to describe the whole picture of Korean digital culture. But, one thing stuck with me when I was waiting for the bus to the Gimhae airport: the fact that how fast Korea grows as a developed nation. Just fifty years ago, Korea was suffering from the civil war, but the people quickly stood and learned together. With extraordinary resilience, they put their difference aside and built their country. Today, Korea is the front runner in welcoming the world defined by the advance of ICT.
For a while, time and space diffused, as I was face-to-face with my wife, who was thousands of kilometers away, through a video-call on my cellphone.
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An Indonesian version of this article has been published in Koreana: A Quarterly on Korean Culture & Arts.
