Dr Sanku Jo has an enviable job title, 'Web 2.0 Evangelist'. To be honest, it could have been invented solely for him, his enthusiasm for web 2.0 was authentic and boundless.

Dr Jo works on the KT Window Project, which is one of KT's web2.0 initiatives. An evangelical role is required in a traditional telecoms company as it represents a huge shift in terms of company philosophy, administration and business management. Now they have to turn their attention to open standards and international business and even have to rethink the very fundamentals that their business is based on – carrying data.

Dr Jo kindly allowed me a sneaky peak of one of their internal projects, SOIP, meaning Services-Over-IP. Functionality wise it was like the evolution of the landline and looked a bit like a desktop iPhone designed with the entire family in mind. You could imagine it sitting on the kitchen table. Running a standards based web apps service you could read the news, write memos or check the traffic conditions. KT also have plans for it to be in ATMs and customers having the ability to login from any public terminal.

Posted by jc1000000

Demoing the incredible lifelike movements of Avatars on this virtual world platform developed by Nurien Software.


The youtube playlist for all 4 of the Nurien demonstration videos is here:

http://www.youtube.com/view_play_list?p=850B9E6A7183C8D0

Posted by jc1000000

I met Andy & TK who introduced me to their company Nurien Software.
Seeing a demo of their product was pretty exciting for a variety of
reasons. For a start they were combining Korea's two great loves ?
social networking and massive multiplayer gaming. Furthermore they
recently won Nvidia's NVISION 08 award for Most Promising Emerging
company so I knew that the graphics were going to be pretty special ?
the best I had hoped for was a non-blocky second life. My videos don't
actually do justice to the phenomenal graphics. Clothes had texture,
for instance PVC trousers had that kind of matt sheen, and faces
looked amazing with amazing. In all honesty, some of the female
avatars were unnervingly attractive.

However it was the movement of the avatars that was really impressive.
The characters have 180 'bones' in their structure and their movements
were incredibly natural and lifelike. Characters could embrace, kiss
and even just had a natural sway and fidget when they were stationary.

Andy and TK took explained the concept of their platform. Combining
social networking with massive multiplayer gaming opened up a new
dimension of communication and social interaction. For example,
traditional text based chat has it's limits. Tone can't be conveyed
despite having a profound effect on meaning in most languages and the
absence of behavioural signals provided by body language meant that
online meetings were essentially raw, which anyone who's been involved
in a long distance relationship can attest to.

Their platform was inspiring ? for one, you could see the potential of
long distance 'calling' in a virtual world like this. Rather than
hanging on the end of a telephone or simply plugged into video chat
you could essentially hang out with your friends, family and loved
ones in a digital room. Sharing files became a different thing too?
those in your room would have access to whatever you'd given
permissions for so sharing could become an asynchronous experience.
For example, one could walk around and checkout pictures on their
friend's wall, whilst the other could chat in the background over
VOIP.

Unlike Second Life, Nurien's virtual world was built with widgets from
the real world in mind. Users could pull in their Youtube channels and
FlickR accounts into the 3D digital objects in their rooms. And there
was certainly room for inventiveness ? one might connect their twitter
feed to their virtual phone or pull cinema listings into a virtual pin
board.

For me, a true geek at heart, the prospect of Live Role Playing Games
was inspiring. It struck me that whereas Second Life might be about
coding fantastic digital worlds and eco-systems, the virtuality of
Nurien's platform meant that this was the place to enact fantastical
storylines and action adventures. The natural movement and physical
vocabulary of characters brought alive the potential of 'live'
Non-Player Characters. Rather than relying on pattern orientated
'artificial intelligence', now you could have 'acting' digital
characters played by other people who could bring a level of reality
and realness to totally fantastical scenarios. It reminded me of the
Holodeck in Star Trek or the 'Ractive' games in Neal Stephenson's,
cyberpunk novel, The Diamond Age. The collapse of the gaming and
movies into one huge multiplayer experience seemed possible within a
generation.

Posted by jc1000000

One goal of my trip was to learn more about the legendary massive
multiplayer gaming business in Korea. On Thursday I was glad to be
invited to meet Jin and Peter (the youngest business people I had met
so far) who seemed happy to enlighten me. They were part of the online
business team of T3, the company behind the hugely successful niche
market multiplayer game, Audition. Starting out with 20 strong team,
T3 have been building massive multiplayer games for 6 years. Following
the massive success of Audition, which danced to the tune of revenues
exceeding $40M, T3 was acquired by Hanbitsoft in May of this year
(2008 btw) to become a company of over 700 people.

Audition is a bit like those dance mat games you see nowadays on most
consoles, but without the mat. Instead of a maximum of 2-4 players,
thousands are able to play online simultaneously. In my opinion, it
closely resembled a very fun but relatively unknown Playstation 1
title, called Bust-A-Groove
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bust_A_Groove). Players log on and join
a room, which is effectively a dance stage controlled by a leader, who
is the player that initiates the room and selects the track that
everyone dances to. Instead of using a mat, it just uses the arrow
keys ? players basically tap out the keys according to the sequence
presented and characters step in and out for solos and dance battles.

Simple stuff. So how does Audition attract 60-70K users a day and
bill so much money? Powerups and items. The more you play and the
better you dance, the more items you can buy to improve you characters
and play for special song licenses.

You'd expect a game like this to appeal to the Cyworld pre-teen girls
audience, but actually their main demographic is players aged between
18-24 with a 40/60 male/female split. So was it the same case as
Cyworld, namely, where the girls go, guys will follow? Yep, replied
Jin and Peter, but Audition wasn't just a game, it was a way for
people to meet each other.

If an equivalent game was as popular in the UK, it would most likely
be linked to Simon Cowell and some kind of reality TV format and a
host of derivative content products. However, despite the Korean
massive multiplayer gaming market being worth $2240M, more than the
rest of the world combined, TV tie-ins were surprisingly not a feature
of the industry. To Peter and Jin's knowledge, the only game that has
had a TV tie-in was Maple Street, a 'casual' MMORPG, popular with
pre-teen girls in the US. In fact, Maple Street is so popular that it
enjoys a plethora of revenue streams from derivative content, such as
guide books, game cards, pens & pencil cases. Derivative content
mobile products, such as ringtones and music, was not a general
feature either despite T3 sharing the same distribution partner for
the game as DirectMedia did for their mobile content, the popular
download portal Yedang.

Mobile social networking also was not on their radar although they had
seen many successes promoting the game via online social networks and
portals. I suggested the prospect of being able to play online, earn
experience points and then power up the character via mobile on the
train home and my hosts just laughed. Basically in Korea there's no
need. If I wanted to powerup my character that badly, I need only spit
ahead of me and I'd probably be at the door of a PC hall (PC bangs).
Fair enough ? I'd seen PC bangs on every block of Seoul.

So presumably this lack of PC gaming halls was a reason massive
multiplayer gaming had not reached the peaks of Korea in the rest of
the world? Well, yes and no, explained Jin. The US gaming market is
poised to overtake Korea within the next few years despite the fact
that most US and EU gamers prefer joypads and consoles over the
traditional mouse and keyboard PC gaming. Besides, it's not like the
west is not well connected; most families have a PC in their home.
However, in particular case with the EU, population density is low
meaning there is little incentive for ISPs to upgrade their
infrastructure to provide the kind of bandwidth needed to have a great
online gaming experience. Never have so few been able to support the
costs of so many.

Apparently growth of games tended to explode when players realised
that playing co-operatively boosted their success. Social clients,
such as VOIP and IM, were a feature of most games but part of the
success in Korea was also down to the fact that PC bangs allowed
people to form teams and participate on mass physically together,
rather than simply virtually. The growth of games and PC bangs sort of
coincided in that respect, as games got more popular, so more PC bangs
opened.

Jin and Peter told me how the massive multiplayer online gaming market
was incredibly competitive and the most popular games were produced
equally in the US as in Korea. The most popular games in Korea were
Role-playing games (RPG), Lineage, by Korean company NCsoft and World
of Warcraft by US company, Blizzard. First person shooters (FPS) were
the second most popular format with games such Sudden Attack produced
by Gamehigh (Korean) and Counterstrike (US). Real time strategy (RTS)
games were third most popular format with games such as Starcraft and
Warcraft being incredibly successful. A contact had actually suggested
that part of the appeal of these games in Korea might well be down to
the fact that you could play and smoke cigarettes at the same time.
Therefore in order to enter these crowded market of loyal players,
companies needed to discover niche segments and audiences ? for
example more casual, non violent games initially aimed at pre-teens
and light gamers, such as Audition or Kart Rider.

Most importantly, Jin and Peter stressed that the day to day running
off a massive multiplayer gaming company was to be understood as
critically different to the outputs of your average console publisher.
Success was really a matter of maintaining service levels rather than
purely gameplay innovation. Online gamers preferred responsive servers
and glitch free computing over amazing functionality. So perhaps,
gaming is not only for nerds and other outcasts who cant get
girlfriends. In fact, you only have to think of think of the national
frustration in the UK when Hasbro banned Scrabulous on Facebook, to
get a sense of how fundamentally social the experience gamers are
having is. Whether you are gunning down radioactive foes, relaying
space battle tactics or stepping in for your dance-off, no one wants
to be cut off from their friends. And as Korea has proved people will
pay good money just to make sure they can keep sharing the experience.

Posted by jc1000000

I also had the great privelege of going to the T.um exhibition
(pronounced Tume) in the SK Tower. Designed primarily for investors
the public does not have general access to the exhibits and as a
result I was not able to take pictures. However there is a T.um exhibit video which gives
you a flavour of what is on offer. I was actually late so was only
make 30 mins of the presentation, so it's possible I missed some
stuff.

Much like Microsoft's vision of an active home, the T.um exhibit is an
hour long snapshot tour into the world of the future. To be more
specific, the world of the future of a married man with a wife and two
kids and a very hectic schedule of emergency board meetings (they
always are aren't they?) and international holiday arrangements. With
a slightly fire and forget attitude to shopping or a highly disposable
income.

I was escorted around the exhibit by, I have to say, a very pretty and
bubbly tour guide who had this digital vision sewn up. She explained
how the current communications network metaphor could be extended into
futurist type thinking; Home as base station, cars as hubs and
personal avatars as nodes.

The home was run by a glowing green flower sprite that was essentially
your digital assistant. 'She' could retrieve documents requested by
others' emails, diagnose your health and stress levels and prescribe
the ideal therapy in the form of music and idyllic wall projections,
which were incredibly life like. Every wall was 'intelligent' and able
to react and respond to types of participation. The sprite could also
contact a central mainframe and find out my flight details, check
traffic conditions and calculate how much time was left until I had to
leave for the airport to catch my plane. Having a few hours to kill
the digital assistant suggested I watch a movie in the meantime. Any
products featured in the movie could then be bought immediately at the
click of a button to be on my doormat awaiting my return from holiday.
Whether the digital assistant let the post man in was inconclusive.

I then got in my car, which resembled something out of the iRobot
film. I am a big fan of the movie so I was looking forward to
re-enacting this futuristic world. The sense of speed in the
simulation was impressive - I think this was to emphasize the fact
that in world where both the car and the road were 'intelligent' you
could presumably drive as fast as you like, Drive, though was the
wrong word as the entire process from home to airport was automated
and the car sans steering wheel.

This gave me more time to communicate and shop! Coz, that's what
everyone does in the future right? And being a forgetful man that I
am, I was able to make a last minute purchase of a present for my
beautiful wife and receive, "daddy, daddy, daddy!" type updates from
my kids. For a moment, I lamented the loss of my brooding, sarcastic
and stubborn self, until I stepped out of the vehicle and realised
nothing had changed there.

The next transition was curiously to step into my wardrobe, to
demonstrate the avatar concept and actually I found this part the most
interesting. Through radio frequencies my wardrobe was able to
determine my actual body shape under my clothes, which then got
transcribed to a digital format, namely my avatar. My assistant
explained that now, in theory, I could download the entire shop
catalogue and style myself on a digital catwalk with my avatar
strutting the runway. Presumably they intended me to download only the
mens section but I secretly thought to myself, "hey, this is the
internet, I can be whoever I want!" Shame your average department
store doesn't have a wigs section.

With avatar's as nodes in the network, the overarching concept of both
the drive and shopping mall experience was that my avatar could
communicate with other avatars in my network. Thus my bubbly assistant
provided the perennial practical use case of ubiquitous connectivity;
say I want to buy some clothes for my girlfriend, I will finally be
able to know what size she is and what clothes might suit her! Finally
technology could compensate for my missing chromosome. At this point,
I was sold. Just the day before I had a similar problem in Dongdaemun,
the fashion 'zone' of Seoul. Having come across a pretty cool top for
my missus I was totally stumped on the choice of colour (white, pink
or blue) and the undeniable fact that as a man, trying to assess
women's sizes for something as simple as a t-shirt is like Gulliver
looking through his laundry after it's shrunk in the wash. In the end,
I had to take a punt on the size and call my sister ? blue was
neutral, therefore I couldn't go wrong. However, had I really been in
the future, I'd have been able to download my girlfriends avatar,
match the size and then send a copy to my sister's avatar of the
entire set of colour choices and defer to her style pre-emninence.

The most convincing technology was mobile 'swipe zones' where you
could join a multiplayer game of football, scrabble or connect four by
swiping your phone at the hot spot. Another pretty cool thing was the
ability of these ubiquitous digital zones was they were able to detect
'edges' and digitally introject a 3D world. What this meant was that
games could be played with other virtual avatars. Fantastical and
funny creatures like Doraemon could dance around next to you and 'on'
objects in your vicinity. This hit the sweet spot. No futurism about
it ? simply unbounded imagination meets the constraints of technology.

Whilst I have a tendency to believe that futuristic visions are
inherently condemned to be anachronistic, what was telling about the
exhibit was where SK Telecoms corporate strategy really lay. Rather
than seeing the network as trucks or a series of tubes that carried
data, they were far more focussed on the idea of ubiquitous
connectivity, and consequently were more interested in being present
at every possible transaction point that made life easier and simpler.
There was a brief history of the company at the exhibit, which showed
all the different payment platforms and technology they had supported.
Calling (audio & video), mobile phone swipe payment systems, and pay
TV were some typical examples.

It was a genuine privilege to be able to view the T.um exhibit at SK
Telecom and I'd like to extend my thanks to them. It's a great
presentation for investors that does practically translate the
grandness of their vision and transcribes the depth of their thinking
and understanding of technology. T.um is closed to the public but if
you are in Seoul and in the mobile & telecoms industry go and knock on
SK Telecom's door and I;m sure they would be happy to show you
around. In the long run, I hope they take it on as a work in progress,
develop the ideas and seek to open it to the public to enjoy for what
it is ? a giant thought experiment and adventure into possibilities.

Posted by jc1000000

This afternoon I had lunch with Seunghoon Lee, VP of mobile internet
at SK Telecom (SKT). He demo'd a slightly differnet version of Mobile
TV which is actually picking up broadcaster channels via DMB and also gave me a pass to the T.um exhibit.

We met previously at the the Koreacomm conference where, to some
degree, he put the rest of us to shame with a more practical
understanding of the impact of 10 years of innovation in the mobile
internet looked like on a business. Whilst the rest of us discussed
the possibility of a concept such as 'Web 3.0', Seunghoon trumped us
all on what 'Mobile 3.0' actually meant to SK Telecom.

What did it mean to them? Well clearly it meant a lot more money. In
2007 their mobile internet business models had generated around 10% of
SK Telecoms entire turnover. A snip at $770M.

Seunghoon put mobile social networking, or 'Mososo', at the heart of
their growth with 150K daily users of the mobile extension of Cyworld.
All billed via flat rate data plan of $25.

Mobile Cyworld's success was largely down to the success of Cyworld's
hugely popular web portal that Seunghoon had previously worked on.
With this in mind SKT realised there was plenty of incentive to open
it's doors to the international development community, work with
international operators and drop their proprietary codebase (WIPI) in
favour of a international standards based approach. Further incentive
was provided by the impact if the iPhone on users' expectations of
high end phone GUIs (incidentally the iPhone actually has not made it
out here and yet is still causing quite a stir) and the imminent
arrival of the Android platform. Google's recent acquisition of Chang
Kim's company Tatter, added some immediacy, as it suggests that Google
has it's eye on the South Korean market.

Seunghoon's vision for SKT was to walk this road to openness. What
this means for developers and businesses is a new less restricted
access to the Korean mobile market. The transition is underway with a
roadmap in place to allow developers to build widgets and apps for SKT
users via the Windows mobile platform. If you want to jump the queue,
you'd still need to develop in WIPI, which he suspected only Chinese
companies might consider adopting. Nonetheless, SKT are encouraging
developers to build non-native apps which could up for purchase via
their native NATE portal app. So to generate success in the Korean
market may no longer be about being acquired by the umbrella Telcos
anymore. Dare I say, the door to the garden could now be ever so
slightly ajar?

Posted by jc1000000

Today I met with Sean Lee & Kang-Min Ahn who are respectively (on
photo aswell), CEO & CFO of DirectMedia, based in Seoul. We discussed
their business of mobile content distribution and their accelerating
transition to become the biggest mobile content producer in South
Korea.

DirectMedia are a joint venture combining KTF (Korea Telecom Freetel).
Samsung & Yedang (the latter of which is 3rd largest music publisher
in Korea). Their mandate was to explore the opportunities in mobile
from a content perspective, whether that could be achieved via a
platform, application or a service. In 2002 they successfully
commercialised their first mobile TV broadcast and subsequently became
the exclusive mobile content 'operator' for KTF. By 2006 they were the
3G content provider. Since then they have experimented with WiMax,
with mixed results, and now they are branching out into web
distribution with the recent acquisition of the content provider for
the hugely popular Daum portal. So, one could fairly say that they are
in the pretty unusual position of being a mobile content buying up
traditional web/online properties. They just turned over $15M and now
they see themselves as an' Entertainment Content Company' and ready to
take on broadcasters and video producers.

So naturally I had to ask Sean and Kang, how did they start and what
factors led to their success? What insights can we learn from them and
how has their service evolved over the past few years?

Firstly, it is worth noting that 60% of all music downloads are
conducted via mobile in South Korea whereas mobile downloads are only
responsible for 15% of music downloads in the rest of the world.

Secondly, they were able to benefit from the Korean Telco's 'open
umbrella' approach where they create big opportunities for startups in
the mobile space by acting primarily as investors who also offer the
enormous power of their payment systems. In particular, distribution
channels was where all investments were focused at the turn of the
millennium, so DirectMedia was well positioned to take a large chunk
of the money.

Thirdly, and this is where things get spicy, Korea is an interesting
case in terms of how content is released and distributed. Traditional
channels, like TV & cinema, are very important here but there is a
faster turnaround where that content gets distributed onto other
formats like DVD, VOD and now mobile. Whereas Hollywood and western
content companies tend to release content serially into these other
product lines, in South Korea, content releases are almost parallel.
Essentially they are still staggered but within much shorter
timeframes. So whereas in the UK, you might postpone a cinema visit in
favour of typically waiting 3-6 months for the DVD release and a year
for VOD/cable release, in South Korea audiences are able to expect it
much sooner than that.

These factors allowed DirectMedia to capitalise on a hugely under
estimated source of revenue; simultaneous and prior releases of
derivative content. By working directly with the content rights
owners, their distribution power initiated their transition into
producing both online and offline derivative content offerings.

In general, the type of content produced is on a case-by-case basis
depending on the show format, be it blockbuster, TV drama, Talk show
or Sports. Typically you might be able to download the movie
soundtrack via your mobile, get a ringtone or ringback tone. (My
understanding of Ringback tones are when music gets played when you
call someone instead of the normal dialing/beeping sound which has
happened a few times whilst calling people over here - Blondie eat
your heart out - means you end up dancing whilst 'hang-ing on-the
tel-ephone').

By way of an unusual and innovative example, a blockbuster movie is
released and DirectMedia will produce a printed comic & mobile comic
version (either hand drawn or movie screenshots with speech bubbles).
Storylines within the mobile comic format tend to mimic blockbusters,
whereas TV dramas, such as the hugely successful 'Coffee Prince' can
experiment with parallel storylines.

This led me to ask Sean and Kang if this meant that strategies of the
content producers were changing to include provisions for parallel and
derivative content. Their reply was 'interesting you say that!' as
this is one of the key factors for their evolution into a content
production company rather than a pure distribution company. With their
massive distribution power, now DirectMedia is in a position to sign
deals with hugely popular writers and recently signed an exclusive
deal with Park Ing Kwang (need to clarify this name).

Given this is mobile content channel company buying up traditional
Korean web channels in order to distribute their own produced content
online, might you give an insight into the directions Google is
taking. And actually Direct Media like the comparison. Google monetise
via text and display ads that is relatively agnostic, whether it's
search queries or contextual ad matching on content sites. In the same
way, content is the business driver for DirectMedia and what they do
is provide ubiquitous access to it along with unique, rich and
unbelievably fast consumer experiences.

So how do they make money out of this content? Currently through user
subscriptions and pay per use. Advertising is the next model they are
looking to crack. The internet has almost killed off these models in
the UK, has it survived here because they own the digital rights? No,
actually they produce mostly DRM free content and they don't see DRM
free products as a threat.

They believe there is a misperception at work in the realm of content
purchase behaviour. Most consumers would rather be honest, which
corroborates iTunes' story of success, and as long as the price is
right, consumers will buy it. Besides, Sean sees users as not
specifically buying content. He says that users are really buying
functionality. Ringtones, Ringbacktones, music for your blog, videos
on your mobile are all seen as simply applications; Content is Apps.

And this is where perhaps the UK Telco's hand mobile startups are
missing opportunities. Their focus is generally on how to generate
revenue directly from the user, rather than exploring the range of
experiences users want for themselves. Perhaps the west should drop
the content is king mantra, be looking at creating apps and
functionality with content in mind. DirectMedia generate revenue in
three ways. Revenue share on content (b2c), operator fees for
supplying the platform (b2b) and shared data charges on sporadic
special events, such as a Korea Vs Japan Baseball game. Incidentally the only time
their servers have gone down.

So in a world of openness and agnostic distribution the consumer power
of the fanboy still holds true. If people love content and it works
how they want it and when they want it, people will buy it.

Posted by jc1000000

Following mondays meeting with korean bloggers Chang & Danny, I spent
the rest of the day at with Dai-Kyu Kim, a Korean entrepreneur, who
has been involved with startups for over 10 years with one claim to
fame as securing for the Asia licensing for API based personal finance
tool Quicken.

Although Dai-Kyu is involved in an interesting startup as we speak, we
didn't actually discuss business but instead the online industry and
culture in general in Korea, how businesses and politics work in Korea
and also he shared some insights into the divide between North and
South.

Some insights Dai-Kyu and others I have met with over here, shared
with me is that Korea does not see itself inherently as a divided
country. The enforced divide between north and south is within living
memory of at least one third of the population and, like Dai-Kyu many
families, have been almost permanently divided between brothers,
sisters, fathers, mothers, sons and daughters. It is really sad to be
honest. Only once a year, are some families allowed to re-unite and
even then it is only for an hour. Mothers are 'hanging on' just to see
their children for the last time. And even when they have not been in
touch for many, many years, they still always recognize their
children. From the beginning, idealism drove brothers apart to pursue
their visions and then the wall came down. Dai-Kyu told me how North
Korea stands in stark contrast to the South. People don't have mobile
phones, travel is restricted and just to make a phone call you have to
go to the post office. Financial wealth is too difficult to hide there
so North Korean families with supporters in the South, Japan and
Canada send laptops instead. And those that manage to find an escape
route are lucky only in one sense. The journey to escape can take
years. Firstly one needs to be able to get to border, which is
difficult as travel is completely restricted. Then somehow bribe the
border guard without getting caught. Make it past that and escapees
have to swim across the dividing river, naked, and in the winter most
people freeze to death before they make it to their families and
contacts through the other side. Some people travel through Thailand
without any money that is worth anything and then even when they get
to South Korea, the rural lives they knew are met with sprawling
metropolis' that after 50 years speak a modern, anglicized Korean and
an almost impenetrable techno culture. That said, some of the younger
people who make the journey have adapted and even found fame in the
South.

South Korean businesses are under an unusual tax system that makes it
extremely difficult to stay on the right side of the law. The
'official tax' is so astronomical that there is very little incentive
to be honest. On top of that, there is a poor and sporadic system of
enforcing it, almost to the extent that the government would just
rather you avoided it. This ultimately acts as system of control, so
they will always have something over you should they ever need it.
Even the big 4 accountancy firms offer choices to businesses, which is
to pay the official tax, or the unofficial official tax, which is a
lower bracket, but shows that you are at least attempting to act in
good faith with the government.

This same indirect control exists in the law of marriage. Seoul, like
Tokyo is littered with 'love hotels', which are not as seedy as they
might sound. In a culture of extremely traditional and ancient values,
these hotels provide a place for young couples to escape the family
nest and be with their prospective partners. Young Korean couples are
on the whole forbidden by both sets of parents to see each other, so
they tend to elope on a sporadic basis to the love hotels. The thing
is that for the average westerner who is allowed to see his girlfriend
or boyfriend whenever they like, this kind of defiance for a young
Korean couple is almost unimaginable. What the parents say the younger
must do. To the book. And among threats of punishment for the young's
defiance I've heard of parents threatening to divorce each other if
their child does not obey. South Korea is also one of the few places
that it is categorically illegal to cheat. If you are caught, and the
dalliance is proven against you, you can go to jail. Broadly speaking,
the cultural impact of this law is incidental and next to zero. Some
suspected spouses get tracking devices unknowingly downloaded to their
phones and in worst cases there is a sort of low level detective
activity to catch cheating partners. However, on the whole, no one
ever actually goes to prison for it. Best case, they found someone too
and worst case, you'll go down if you are a despised government figure
with rival political ambitions.

So the truth is, you'd never notice any of this unless someone told
you. On the whole the Korean attitude is equal for love and business ?
if it doesn't directly involve you, then how others lives their lives
is none of your business. People here just get along, adapt and, as is
the case of the love hotels, even make thriving businesses out of it.

Posted by jc1000000