Korean Netizens Flock to YouTube, Making it Number One

As reported by the Korea Times, YouTube recently became the number one video-sharing website in Korea for the first time since it entered this market in 2008. KoreanClick, a local online consultancy, said Sunday that Youtube carved out a 42.79-percent market share last month, up from 36.29 percent in May, in overall usage time.
It outdistanced business bellwether Pandora TV, which saw its market share dwindle from 40.75 percent in May to 34.19 percent last month.
Youtube's footing was expected to slip further in April, when the site was at odds with the Korean government due to the Internet real-name system.
In April, the government urged Youtube to embrace the real-name system ― the Web site was obliged to ask users to present their names and identification details before uploading any video files or write-ups. In defiance of the instruction, Youtube stopped Web users from posting video clips or comments on its Korean Internet site, prompting concerns that users would leave Youtube.
As the Planet Size Brain blog put it, YouTube basically told the Korean government to bug off when it announced that it would reject a local law that requires users to prove their identity when they upload videos and post comments.  By voluntarily disabling comments and video uploads from the Google Korean language site, Google actually generated a favorable reaction from many netizens in Korea, who could easily go to one of Google's many other YouTube portals to upload their comments and content.  Some even said they would seek "online political asylum."   Whatever the reason, use of YouTube in Korea and Korean-language contributions have increased markedly since April.

Prosecutors Indict KT Officials for Receiving Kickbacks

There is so much money circulating in the telecommunications sector around the world that some call telecommunications "the modern-day license to mine gold."  Therefore, it was not a huge surprise to read today's reports that prosecutors have indicted KT officials for receiving kickbacks. As reported in The Korea Times, a district prosecution office in Goyang, Gyeonggi Province, apprehended the staffers and dozens of subcontractors on suspicions of taking and providing bribes, indicting seven with physical detention and 47 without restriction.
In one case, a senior KT official allegedly received a bribe of 350 million won ($275,000) from a subcontractor between December 2004 and July 2006 in return for ignoring shoddy construction work and providing other ``favors.'' The KT officials received bribes regularly in return for awarding optical cable network and other construction orders to the subcontractors. They were given from 3 to 5 percent of the contract value, the prosecutors' office said.

More on KT and the Korea Communications Commission

The Korea Times reported yesterday that the Chairman of KT, Lee Suk-chae had gone "one up" on Choi See-jung, the Chairman of the Korea Communications Commission (KCC).  The article suggested that the relatively new KCC is already facing an identity crisis, and that the threat is coming from KT.  As noted in an earlier post, the Chairman of KT recently publicly questioned whether the KCC is the appropriate structure to "guide the country's information technology policies forward."
Last Thursday, the Ministry of Strategy and Finance announced plans to combine KT and state-run banks in a special purpose entity (SPE) to invest about $790 million in the network infrastructure for next-generation telecommunications services such as WiBro and Internet protocol television (IPTV).  An SPE is a legal entity owned by one or more organizations that is created to fulfill specific or temporary objectives. These entities are typically used when companies look to isolate themselves from financial risks on large-scale projects.
The problem is that Thursday's announcement by the Ministry of Strategy and Finance caught the KCC by  surprise.    KT officials noted that they have made no changes to their previously announced plans to invest in WiBro and IPTV.  However, they submitted the idea about the special purpose company to the finance ministry because "we were asked to come up with scenarios to help the economy and boost employment."

Freedom of Speech on the Internet in Korea

Issues relating to freedom of speech for Koreans on the internet are almost continually in the news.  According to the Korea Times, South Korea's National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) said on Wednesday that the current Telecommunications Law infringes upon the freedom of expression protected under the constitution and asked the judiciary to take a cautious approach in dealing with relevant cases. The law (article 47, clause 1) bans the spread of misleading information with the intention of ``damaging the public interest’’ via telecommunication infrastructure including the Internet.  According to the NHRC, ``Since the law was enacted 45 years ago, it has never been applied except for some recent cases, including Minerva. This means the law is unnecessary and outdated."  The law created a stir after online commentator Park Dae Sung, who used the alias "Minerva" was indicted on charges of breaking the law which sees violators face a prison term of up to five years or a fine of up to 50 million won.  Park was acquitted in April.

Publications going Digital

This post has to do with all of my journal articles, books and other writings going digital. It relates to Korea's information society only in that this transition has occurred while I've been working for the Fulbright Commission here in Seoul.

Last week I walked across the street to DHL with new copies of two of my books, Television's Window on the World and The Telecommunications Revolution in Korea. Following the explicit instructions provided on the website of the Google Books Partner program, I shipped them via DHL to Google in California. I now expect that they will be available to read, to anyone in the world with an internet connection, within a matter of weeks. You see, the publishers of the books, Greenwood Press and Oxford University Press, have reverted the copyright to me as author. That gives me the freedom to join the Google Books Partner program and to make the books 100% browseable via the web.

I'm delighted with this development. These two books, in particular, are ones that I want to make available to everyone, including people from developing countries. The first book was an outgrowth of my doctoral dissertation at Stanford, which I completed in 1978, and the book was published in 1984. The second came after two years of research in Korea during the early 1990s with financial support from Dacom Corporation and the cooperation of a multitude of Korean colleagues. Both of the books were influenced tremendously by my doctoral training at Stanford from 1974-1978. While I was at Stanford, it was a leading center for research and training on the role of communication in development, along with the obvious fact that Silicon Valley developed next door, owing to the influence of Stanford.

When I was in graduate school, South Korea was widely acknowledged to be a "developing country." Today, it is one of the world's advanced economies, in large part because of (1) education and (2) the IT revolution that it so enthusiastically embraced.

I've also placed digital copies (PDF) of two of my journal articles on my personal website. Given the current developments in Iran and the influence of the internet on politics in Korea, these may be of interest to some of you. My intent is to place publicly available copies of all my publications on the internet as soon as is practical. I'd welcome comments from any of you that find these publications of interest.