Korean Cyber-Warfare

The Korean War may have ended in an armistice, but it seems to be continuing in cyberspace.  The latest evidence of this is in press reports that the South Korean-U.S. joint war plans, referred to as Operation Plan 5027, may have been hacked.  According to The Korea Times, the Defense Ministry announced that computer hackers who may be from North Korea might have gained access to this secret plan.
The Chosun Ilbo reported that an officer with the U.S.-Korea Joint Forces Command had used an unsecured USB memory stick and that, in the process, some contents of the secret plan were accessed by a hacker with a Chinese IP address.  North Korea is believed to have military personnel who specialize in hacking.

The Outbreak of Cyberwar in Korea?

In one of the profound ironies of the dawning information age, it appears possible that North Korea has again attacked South Korea, but this time in cyberspace, rather than across the DMZ.  The irony stems from the fact that South Korea has the world's highest levels of broadband internet usage is by far the most densely networked nation on earth, if measured in terms of fiber optic and wireless digital networks.  The attacking nation, North Korea, ranks near last in the world on measures of internet access and usage.  This is not surprising, considering its government takes great pains to insulate ordinary North Korean citizens from outside information.  Television and radio sets are wired and periodically inspected to receive only permitted channels.  Videocasettes, DVDs and mobile telephones have been prohibited and heavy penalties, up to and including death, have been exacted for their use.  Only this year, it is reported that up to 40,000 North Koreans have subscribed to the new mobile system being built by Orascom Telecom.
According to sources in both Korea and the U.S., the denial of service attacks which disrupted some government and other high-profile websites in both South Korea and the United States, may well have originated in North Korea.    In an article on "North Korea's Powerful Hacker Army," the Chosun Ilbo notes that the North Korean regime is believed to emply from 500 to 1,000 trained hackers who attack from third countries, including China.  The article suggests that the North Korean regime recruits hackers mainly from Pyongyang Automation University, also known as Mirim University, Kim Chaek University of Technology, or Pyongyang University of Computer Technology.  The first of these schools belongs to the general staff of the People's Army, has about 700 students and about 500-600 faculty and staff.  It graduates about 100 professionals every year.  The North Korean army also maintains a bureau under the General Staff to manage hackers and develop software.  Reportedly, data compiled by the U.S. Defense department shows that North Koreans are among the most frequent visitors to many of their Defense Department websites.
If the recent cyber attacks in South Korea and the U.S. indeed originated with North Korea, one can only imagine what sort of counter-attack the South and its allies are capable of, should they choose that option.

Kenichi Ohmae on Dodkdo 독도는한국땅 입니다!!

I read with great interest in yesterday's Chosun Ilbo English edition that Kenichi Ohmae, Japan's well-known management expert and futurologist suggests Japan should recognize Korea's effective control of Dokdo. In a Japanese weekly publication, Omae said no nation which failed to occupy territory effectively has obtained it through dialogue between parties concerned or UN arbitration. Everybody knows that a war, the only means possible, is not suitable as a way to solve the Dokdo issue. For a moment, I thought that this was going to be an enlightened statement on the issue by a well-known person from Japan. Then I read that Ohmae had stressed Japan should "continue claim" over the islets, while recognizing Korea's effective occupation, but without criticizing or irritating Korea. He further suggested that, in the future it was necessary “to expand the East Asian economic sphere by skillfully pulling China and Korea into it." Japan, he wrote, "should build a hypothetical great power in the future, when the meaning of national territories will become blurred." What this amounts to, in part, is that Ohmae is suggesting Japan can lay claim to Dokdo in cyberspace. What else will Japan lay claim to in the future? What about the future of history? In one sense the information age may blur the meaning of national territories or boundaries, but at the same time it will offer an opportunity to preserve and protect the memories and history of what actually happened over the past several centuries and more.

Why Google Must Succeed in Korea, for Korea's Benefit

I have read umpteen articles in recent months that note Google's lack of success in penetrating the South Korean search market.  As shown by the accompanying graphic, Korea and China are two stunning examples of markets in which Google is struggling.   Many of the recent media reports extoll the virtues of Korea's own search engines, especially Naver, with its "Knowledge-in" feature that is so popular here.  The clear implication is that Google's streamlined web pages, that return clean, well organized search results, are somehow inferior to the wealth of organized information returned by a Naver search.  In an effort to achieve some clarity here as to what is happening with "search" in the Korean market, consider the following:

• Naver returns only Korean-language results, coming from its own databases, rather than crawling the internet as googlebots do.
• Whereas Naver is a Korean networking site where you can search for answers to your questions in Korean, it does not even claim to search the vast non-Korean parts of the Internet.  Google has a more ambitious goal, to explore the whole internet, including all of its languages. 
• The preceding realities mean that search results in Google will typically be far more complete and comprehensive than those in Naver or similar Korean search engines.
• In addition to the scope or comprehensiveness of a search, there is the question of sponsorship bias, or the role of money. Google provides search results that help you find information about the topic of your interest, while Naver will tell you everything that sponsors want you to know and have paid for you to know about that topic. 

If you are skeptical about the last bullet point, take any search topic, open two tabs in your browser, and do a search for the term using both English and 하국말 as you please.  Earlier this afternoon, I did side-by-side Naver and Google searches using the term "Community College" in English and  "커뮤니티컬리지" in Korean.  The results are very revealing.  For an interesting blog posting related to this topic, see the Waiguoren's Weblog posting from September 2007.
Because the leading Korean search engine, Naver, has limited its search offerings to the Korean language, it is "searching" and building only a small part of global cyberspace.  While I agree that Korea and Korean language searching are very important, they should not be presented to Korean netizens as the ultimate solution to search.   In a sense, because of the realities mentioned above, the success of Google in Korea is an important measure of globalization and mindset here.  After all, why should Google not do well in Korea?  Google Korea is a Korean company, hiring Korean employees, and contributing directly to this economy.  Furthermore, its corporate goals seem to very compatible with some of Korea's central aspirations.  Ultimately, for Korea to succeed in the information age, it will need to be fully and seriously engaged in the internet search market, not narrowly focused on Korean-language-only social networking.  The success, even if moderate, of Google Korea, can be a great help to this country in achieving its economic goals.  The failure of Google Korea, in the absence of a better search algorithym and method, will not bode well for this nation.  There is a great deal more to be said on this topic.  More later.  In the meantime, I'd like to hear what the rest of you think.

Korea in Cyberspace: National and Brand Images

The current political uproar in South Korea and the flood of images it has released are important politically, economically and culturally. The images emanating from South Korea these days help to create the image of this nation in North America, Europe an other parts of the world, as well as here on the peninsula. Use of the term "flood" to describe the flow of images is appropriate insofar as the internet and modern digital communications accelerate the diffusion of political information. Here in South Korea, former President Kim Dae Jung and others have observed that the country is experimenting with "Direct Democracy." Without doing a quantitative empirical study, I would hazard a guess that the current political activity in South Korea, centered as it is around the internet and new digital media, is having an effect on Korea's national image in the world. According to an article in the Korea Herald, South Korea's embassy in Washington D.C. surveyed 136 U.S.-based experts on July 12-13. The survey found that 60.2 percent of the respondents believed the anti-U.S. beef rallies and candlelight vigils would damage Korea's image among Americans, while 27.2 percent said that they would not.

Candlelight vigils in the Spring are an ideal place to exploit the new media. Think how easy it is to snap photographs or record videos with your cellphone, and then share these with netizens. By definition, sharing such images with netizens means that they are available to anyone in the world. In other words, they help to define Korea's national image and its place in cyberspace. The point of this post is simply to note that South Korea is building its national image, or its place in cyberspace. Once constructed, national images cannot easily be altered or torn down, for the simple reason that the digital images stay there in cyberspace. Some elements of the emerging image also seem clear: candlelight vigils, labor demonstrations and anti-government protests, anti-Americanism, genuine fear of American beef, gullibility to rumors about Mad Cow Disease, and so forth. These elements are mixing with South Korea's existing national image which includes such aspects as being an "IT Powerhouse," "Broadband Leader," and a country which places a high priority on education, science and technology generally.

"Haechi" as New Symbol of Seoul?

It is not only the city of Seoul, but South Korea and the Korean peninsula more generally that has an "image problem." I will address this problem in much more detail through posts on this blog, but wanted to share with you the latest effort to address the image problem. In today's Korea times, an article reported that "As corporate identify (CI) is used to upgrade corporate image, the city wants the new symbol to become the city's new icon and contribute to boosting the capital's international image. The Mayor of Seoul is quoted as saying that "Despite the scale and reputation of Seoul, we don't have any representative symbol. We've selected Haechi as the symbol and we hope it will promote the city internationally.'' The Mayor wants Haechi to become like the Big Apple of New York, Merloin in Singarpore and Buddy Bear of Berlin. The city made the selection after six months of preparation, including various surveys and public hearings. Most respondents picked Gyeongbok Palace as a representative icon of the city but the city chose the palace's guardian Haechi for its practical variations along with its historical characteristics." I commend the Mayor and the City of Seoul for recognizing the problem. However, is this how Seoul wants to be represented in the media around the world, let alone cyberspace?

More on Net Neutrality and Conceptions of Cyberspace

Speaking as a long-term resident of South Korea, the current national debate in the United States about "net neutrality" seems strangely out of touch with the times. Here in Korea, full access to the internet, as with other digital communications services, is taken for granted as the right of every citizen. If someone were to suggest that this right should be taken away or curtailed, it would be loudly opposed by the majority of "netizens." This was not always the case. History teaches us that South Korea suffered major social problems and lagged behind most other countries of the world in basic telephone services until at least 1980. However, in the 1980s they implemented policies, invested heavily and worked hard to change the situation. The result: Korea has become a beacon for the rest of the world, showing the importance of broadly-based access to broadband internet. To make the point as sharply as possible, South Korea ended its debate about "net neutrality" over a quarter century ago. The networks they built then were electronically switched, with fiber optic backbones, and were not considered completed until they had reached a majority of the farming and fishing villages that characterize rural Korea. For information on what "net neutrality" means in the current U.S. debate, one can turn to Google. They have published a Guide to Net Neutrality for Google Users. There are many other sources of information about this issue, some of which will be mentioned and linked in future posts. However, at this point in time it would appear that the United States is experiencing a profound failure of telecommunications policy. By deferring to the private sector, led by the likes of Comcast, the United States is falling behind many other countries in the development of this century's "information society." In the emerging information age, those nations that invest in the free access to and free flow of information will benefit.

Conceptions of Cyberspace and Korea's Vision

As the world moves more fully into the information age, Korea promises to be an important contributor to the shaping of that new environment. One of my goals for this blog and my wordpress blog on Korean telecommunications is to outline Korean ideas about cyberspace and to suggest where they fit in the global scheme of things. In order to consider the internet as a whole and the global picture, the work of Stanford Professor Lawrence Lessig over the past decade is essential background. A good starting point for any serious student of these matters would be to download and read each of his books. (from http://www.lessig.org/ ) In making these books available for personal use with a simple pdf file download, Professor Lessig is leading the Creative Commons effort by example, and what a fine example it is!