North Korean "world class" ski resort? Read between the lines

According to press reports, North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un recently visited a mountain area in Gangwon province to give "on the spot field guidance" on the construction of a new ski resort.   This news, which was also reported in the South Korean media, caught my eye.  However, none of the press reports that I saw drew the obvious inference that I took from the news.  My immediate thought was that the young North Korean leader, who was educated in Switzerland and no doubt familiar with skiing and winter sports from that exposure, was motivated by the impending 2018 Winter Olympics in Pyeongchang.  Without going into the full argument here, I will simply mention that readers may want to check my earlier post on how the problem of national division affects the forthcoming 2018 Winter Games.
For additional detail on Kim Jong-Un's visit to the Masik Pass in North Korea, read the account published by the Tokyo correspondent of The Telegraph.
Why on earth would North Korea suddenly want to build a "world-class" ski resort in the northern half of Gangwon Province?   I think the most probable explanation is apparent.  The North Korean leadership, fully aware of the approaching 2018 Winter Olympics, and having failed to even participate int he 1988 Seoul Olympics almost three decades ago, wants a bargaining chip.

Scrutinizing North Korea in the information era: crowdsourcing and satellite imagery

In the new globally-networked information environment, it would seem that the North Korean government's efforts to control the flow of information in and out of the country are facing multiple new challenges.  These include crowd-sourcing and the increased use of publicly available satellite imagery by North Korean watchers, both individuals and groups, around the world.

For example, DigitalGlobe has been working for the past several years with the U.S. Committee for Human Rights in North Korea to monitor activity at political prisoner camps in North Korea.  A report published in February of this year focused on a facility commonly known as Camp No. 25.  (click on the graphic to see a full size version of the photo here, one of many contained in the report.)
Another example, as reported by Computerworld and in other media, involved an Australian software engineer, David Jorm, who recently completed a weather study that focused on the famine in North Korea during the 1990s.  At a conference in Australia, he said “My research was around using satellite data to try and map the impact of the famine. I had a theory that because people would be harvesting crops before they were ready this would result in land degradation. From satellite sensing, you would be able to see that they had a certain level of agricultural productivity and after the famine it was reduced. I did this research and proved that this is what happened.” As Jorm noted in his presentation, there are a variety of free and commercial sources of satellite imagery available today. For example, Google Maps now contains names of towns, provinces and street names in North Korea. This was due to crowd-sourced information entered into Google's online Map Maker tool.

Malware: The downside of Microsoft's "monoculture" in Korea

As readers of this blog will know, I've commented frequently on the "Microsoft monoculture" in South Korea, most recently in a December 2012 post.  Consequently, coverage in the local press of Microsoft's latest Security Intelligence Report caught my eye as it contained more evidence of the negative side effects of over reliance on Microsoft software.

As shown in a line graph from the report (click on the graphic to see a full size version), Korea ended the year with a malware infection rate of 93.0, much higher than the other locations with high infection rates.  The report explains that the spikes in the infection rates were mainly due to increased detection of the rogue security software family Win32/Onescan.  Onescan is a Korean-language rogue security software distributed under a variety of names, brands and logos. (click on Figure 40 from the Microsoft Report to see a full size version of the "VaccineHelper" example)  In the fourth quarter of 2012, miscellaneous Trojans were found on 75.6% of all computers scanned in Korea. Furthermore, the report noted that Windows XP retains a larger market share in Korea than in most other large countries and regions.

Google-Samsung and the Android Ecosystem

A study by Strategy Analytics shows that Samsung currently captures nearly 95 percent of global Android system smartphone profits.  (click on Exhibit 1 from the report to see a full-sized version of the graphic)  Along with LG, the two Korean companies reportedly account for 97 percent of operating profits from the sale of Android smartphones worldwide.
The Strategy Analytics news release also included the following interesting observation by Neil Mawston, Executive Director. “Samsung is, for now, the undisputed king of the global Android smartphone industry. We believe Samsung generates more revenue and profit from the Android platform than Google does. Samsung has strong market power and it may use this position to influence the future direction of the Android ecosystem. For example, Samsung could request first or exclusive updates of new software from Android before rival hardware vendors.”

Naver, Korea's "Walled Garden" and Economic Democracy

As reported in the Joongang Daily and other Korean papers today, "The government’s first IT target in its campaign for “economic democratization” is Naver, the nation’s largest Web portal site, and its aggressive expansion into various services. (click on the accompanying graphic to see a full-sized version) The Fair Trade Commission is currently conducting an investigation into NHN, the operating company of Naver." The investigation is in line with the government's economic democratization drive, aimed at creating a sound online market that protects small players.

To place this news in larger perspective, one must consider that Korea is still among a small handful of the world's nations in which Google does not hold a leading market share.  Google's near-universal popularity is based on the fact that its robots index the largest portion of the so-called "visible web."  Consequently, people interested in a comprehensive search for information use Google.  Incidentally, my undergraduate students at KAIST, both Korean and international overwhelmingly favor Google as a search engine.
As readers of this blog will know I've been very interested in the continued popularity of Naver, given the dramatic differences with Google in terms of what it does.  (see numerous posts by entering "Naver" in the search bar at the right)  Basically, Naver deals exclusively with Korean language source material and formats its search results in a manner that appeals to Koreans.   It appears much more like a web portal than a search engine and its most popular feature, by far, is called "knowledge-in," which allows users to ask a question, which is then answered in Korean by other Naver users.  Naturally, the "knowledge-in" database has grown tremendously over the years.
The most interesting thing about the current news of an FTC investigation is that Naver epitomizes the continuing "walled garden" character of Korea's internet.  Whatever else one may say on the matter, those who rely on Naver search results are choosing from a relatively small universe of Korean-language content, rather than the far larger universe of content on the visible web.  In today's global economy, it would seem that Korea's efforts to move in the direction of stronger software, content and services will eventually mean a shift from the heavy reliance on Naver toward Google or other search tools, yet to come, that are more global in their scope.