U.S. Digital Deficiency Jeopardizes "Super Power" Status

The title of this post is taken from the article just published by Shelley Palmer, and it pretty much says it all. He notes that children born in America this year will be the first true Digital Natives of the Information Age. They will grow up in a time when all of their telecommunications tools: video, voice and data are based completely upon digital technology. He then appropriately questions whether U.S. public policy contemplates a future constrained by the agendas of big business as opposed to positioning America to truly prosper in the global information economy. His article notes that " An average broadband connection in the United States is 1.5 Mbps down and 768 Kbps up -- about enough speed to watch a fairly low resolution streaming video or do some casual web surfing. Cable modems are faster and you can certainly purchase more connectivity, if you can afford it. But, on average, consumers are offered asymmetrical (faster download/slower upload) broadband connections and no one seems that unhappy about it. They should be. A child born in Korea or Singapore this year will be a digital native of their respective countries. They will grow up in a time when all of their telecommunications tools: video, voice and data are based completely upon digital technology. And they are very likely to start their journey through the Internet with 100 Mpbs symmetrical broadband connection." On my recent trip to the U.S., I experienced just how slow an 11 Mbps wireless connection to the internet from a motel room seems after being accustomed to fast connections here in Korea. Speed is vital to fully use and experience the modern internet. A lack of speed slows down convergence. The Broadcasting and Communications Commission (BCC) reported yesterday that Korean telecom firms (KT, LG-Dacom and Hannaro) are to invest around 1.57 trillion won ($15.8 billion) on Internet-protocol TV (IPTV) services this year. A large portion of that investment will reportedly be used in expanding and improving Internet networks in order to provide the speed necessary to guarantee high quality for real-time TV broadcasting on existing networks. Clearly, in this era of convergence and ubiquitous networks, South Korea seeks to maintain its status as an IT power. What is the U.S. stance?

Yellow Sand (황사) and Semiconductor Manufacturing

A recent Reuters report puts it well. "Dry weather and seasonal winds in China hurl millions of tonnes of sand at the Korean peninsula and Japan from late February through April or May, turning the skies to a jaundiced hue." The state-run Korea Environment Institute says the economic damage resulting from the haze, which occurred 11 days last year, amounts to 5.5 trillion won ($5.82 billion). ``The seasonal winds decrease productivity and increase product defect rates in some of the country's leading sectors,'' said Park Young-woo, the president of the Business Institute of Sustainable Development (BISD), a local group that promotes corporate sustainability. Hynix Semiconductor, the world's second-biggest memory chipmaker, says it operates an around-the-clock yellow dust alert system to inform employees of when dust levels go up. It has had to step up its filtration systems and make employees take longer air showers to make sure the dust does not contaminate its production lines and damage chips, made using technology that operates on a microscopic level. The sand over Korea can be seen quite clearly in the above photo from NASA. Click on the photo to enlarge it.

Communication and National Reunification

Professor Johan Galtung, one of the world's towering intellects, with whose work I became acquainted in graduate school, was in Korea recently for a guest lecture at Dong-A University in Pusan. Early in his scholarly career he thought about and published on the topic of the international flow of news. Therefore, what follows in this post should not be surprising, but I was pleasantly surprised to learn that he had come to Korea and addressed specifically the central political issue here. His guest lecture was entitled "Peace in the Global Era and Perspectives of the Unification on the Korean Peninsula" According to the author of the Left Flank blog, "Galtung quickly laid out his five-point lecture. He began with his distinction between negative and positive peace, and applied it the Korean peninsula. The goal of resolving the Korean armistice precedes political unification. After characterizing the North Korean state as "fundamentalist Confucian", Galtung then argued that unification only necessitated the free flow of people, goods and services, and information and ideas between the two Korean states, not the dissolution of ROK and DPRK into a single Korean state. Galtung buttressed this point by that of three other scenarios, conquest, collapse, or peaceful dissolution, the first two were violent, and the last has never occurred in human history. Galtung termed this "national reconciliation without the unification of two states". Galtung subsequently considered confederation as a starting political point, but unnecessary. " (My emphasis added.)

It is significant that Galtung mentions the free flow of five things: people, goods, services, information and ideas. One could hardly make a better argument that the communication and digital divide between North and South Korea are at the heart of national division today. Accordingly, the opening up of free communication is tantamount to national reunification. In fact, I would argue that if services include modern communications services, which in turn require modern fiber-optic and mobile networks, the five necessities Galtung mentions will result in Korean reunification. I would go further to speculate that fulfilling these necessities will be the beginning of the end of two states on the Korean peninsula. Anyone who has lived in Korea for more than a decade, as I have, will know that free flow of information on this peninsula, culturally speaking, leads directly and probably quickly (빨리빨리) to reunification.

Language and Culture as a Double-edged Sword

Without question, Korea has a strong culture and a strong language. Culture as an element of language or language as an element of culture probably characterizes the human situation worldwide, across a diverse range of cultures. But the relationship is particularly strong in Korea. Despite being located adjacent to China, which also has a long history and looms large on the world scene, Korea can rightfully boast that its alphabet, Hangeul (한글) is a crowning cultural achievement. It is perhaps the most scientific and phonetic alphabet in the world. I would venture that the majority of foreigners, when they first begin studying Korean, are struck by the genius of Hangeul. Today, there is a good argument to be made that the highly scientific and phonetic character of this alphabet facilitated the uptake of computers,mobile phones and other devices for electronic communication. However, as illustrated in the current national debate about English education in Korea, the Korean language and its Hangeul alphabet are also a source of nationalistic pride and can be viewed as limiting Korea's participation in the global internet. The most popular and dominant search engine in South Korea is Naver, a service that searches only Korean language (Hangeul) web sites and documents. The nation's immensely popular social networking site, Cyworld, failed in its initial attempt to penetrate markets outside of Korea. The new government of President Lee Myung Bak is facing opposition to its plan to improve English education, in part because some Koreans believe it will diminish appreciation of the Korean language. Hence, even with rapidly advancing 21st century technology, language remains exceedingly important. Also, it is a double-edged sword.

North Korea's Moment for Mobile? Update

North Korea's plan to implement mobile telephone services is in the news again. According to Reuters, Orascom CEO Naguib Sawiris says that the service will "start in three major cities in the reclusive communist state and the company would then assess the impact." He said his company wants to see first how fast it will sell that and what kind of ARPUs (average revenue per user) can be generated. Sawiris said he was "astonished" how quickly the North Korean authorities wanted the service to start and he had high hopes for business in the country."We firmly believe that in the next three or four years we will be having a couple of million subscribers there and we will be seeing ARPUs in the range of $12 or $15 (a month)," he added. Given North Korea's recent record of attempting to control mobile communications, it will be interesting to follow Orascom's progress.