Wednesday, September 27, 2006

By Wieland Wagner, Shanghai correspondent, Der Spiegel

When Lee Yong-su, 27, was a small boy he liked to play dress-up with his friends. They searched through their parents closet for the clothes that they needed. That was a long time ago. Since that time his home country, South Korea, has become a high-tech country, where children spend most of their childhood in cyberspace and the young entrepreneur Lee makes a lot of money with his Internet portal puppyred.com.

In the virtual, but nonetheless three dimensional, nurseries of puppyred.com, young Koreans meet with friends. Half a million users visit Lee s pages every day and the number is growing. Korean mothers are keen to chat with neighbors or to exchange family photos. They even go there to plan cosmetic surgery. In reality few people go through with such a transformation.

Only the second, cyber-self is in fact undergoing an operation, and it can be put together like a craft-kit. What is still real in Korea , and what is virtual? What only occurs virtually? It is hard to draw a line between the real and the virtual world in Korea , because there is no other country in the world in which the Internet is changing daily life as much as it is in Korea . There are few industrialized nations which link their

economic future so closely to new information technology (IT) as Korea . Internet via broadband connection? Videos viewed on cell phones? Tiny RFID chips to supervise goods around the globe? Many technological innovations, to which people in Germany have a difficult time adjusting, are considered obsolete in Korea .

Of the 48 million Koreans, nearly three-fourths of all households surf the Internet via cheap and quick broadband connections. Korea is not of the countries with the most Internet users. Nearly every Korean older than twelve owns a mobile phone — and in many cases it is the latest model of the third generation of mobiles. The high-tech nation was so quickly netted that its industry, including worldwide operating electronic giants like Samsung and LG, is confronted with the limits of the Information Age. It has become difficult to sell new computers and mobiles in the nearly saturated domestic market. Apart from that there are great fluctuations in the sales of so-called dram storage chips and Korea is the main supplier of these chips.

The Asian tiger has to get out of this tight spot in order to maintain and expand its strong position in the IT business. Since Korea possesses few natural resources, the country relies heavily on IT exports, which make up 30 percent of the countries exports. Information technology contributes about 14 percent to the gross national product. Guided by the government in Seoul the Koreans prepare themselves for a collective step into the next dimension of the Information Century. Korea will offer a variety of online services.

These will include services for downloading via broadband connectionsentire movies which, because of the huge amount of data, is currently possible only in the fixed network. In Suwon , a city less than an hour south of the capital, Korean technicians are currently working under great pressure to develop the mobile Internet. The research and development center of Samsung is situated in a modern sky-scraper. Song Hung, the marketing chief in charge of the new mobile systems, presents the latest device with which his company wants to link TV, digital photographing and telephoning. Starting in June Samsung wants to offer this new device on the domestic market. That will mark the commercial debut of Wibro — a wireless broadband transmitting system. This new technology is already being tested in Seoul . By the end of the year the entire capital city will be supplied with this new technology. During the World Cup the Korean technology will also be tested in Germany .

Whether we are talking about WiBro (the mobile Internet) or DMB (digital TV on mobile receivers), Korea is crawling with technical abbreviations that in other countries are known only by experts. Many Koreans are convinced that the world is facing a second Internet revolution; one that will result in a total wireless network of daily life. The man who prepares his fellow citizens to become pioneers in a new era is named Chin Dae-je. Until recently Chin was minister of information and communication. Due to his success in transforming Korea into a high-tech country, President Roh Moo-hyun selected him to run in the local election.

Chin loves to look at his world map on which he has marked the areas already penetrated by Korea s state-of-the-art technologies such as WiBro. Before he became information and communication minister Chin worked for Samsung. He became the top business executive in his country with a very low salary though, he jokes. Chin likes to impress visitors with state-of-the-art technologies. He puts a shiny device on the table. It looks like a digital camera, but then Chin turns it around quickly and it is a mobile phone. The politician smiles triumphantly. That is something which until recently you could get only in Korea , he says. Very soon the entire world will be supplied with the device.

Korea s high-tech experts are planning a national effort to secure jobs and to create new positions. These jobs will be in fields ranging from the electronic industry to the film and software branches in which new materials will be developed for the mobile Internet. On the first-floor of the Ministry of Information and Communication there is an exhibition which shows how Koreans will live in about five years.

The exhibition suggests that Koreans will soon command their fridges and closets with voice via the Internet. Children will come home from school with letters which contain microchips. As soon as the parents pin the scraps of paper to monitor walls, the contents of the letters will be shown in illuminated capital letters. The teacher s picture will appear on the monitor, and his or her voice will be heard.

Korean companies are starting to invent themselves again.

At Pantech, one of the three major producers of mobiles in Korea , the latest technological devices it produced are tested approximately 150,000 times a day before engineer Lee Jeong-rhyul gives his consent to export them.

Pantech also feels well prepared for the mobile Internet. Lee proudly presents his world novelties, including a musicmobile with the biggest storage chip as well as the most progressive portable multi-media player with a state-of-the-art liquid crystal screen. As a manager whose company in 1998 was no more than a small supplier for the U.S.-manufacturer Motorola, Lee is very self-confident. Much has changed since then. The American mobile-giant once had 50 percent of the Korean market but since then its market share has dropped to 4 percent. Lee says that Koreans never avoid a challenge because they are always willing to take a risk. Unlike Siemens, which sold its mobile telephone branch to the Taiwanese company BenQ because of a debit balance, the Koreans are not eager to produce devices capable of lasting for a century, jokes the Pantech-manager.

Korea will start this year with digital television. Koreans will not only watch soccer with their digital, high-tech mobiles, they will also be able to send scenes from the game to their friends during their conversations. The big Korean TV stations are still reluctant to share their monopoly with mobile phone providers. The government in Seoul , however, is exerting much pressure to promote the Internet. To a large extent, this is due to the fact that they owe their political existence to the Internet.

President Roh is the first Korean president who was elected as a result of the flourishing Korean Web culture. Roh s adherents mobilized support for this political outsider of modest descent.

As a gesture of gratitude the president gave his first presidential interview to online newspaper ohmynews.com, not to the traditional media. Ohmynews.com employs many amateur reporters and is visited by approximately 700,000 readers on an average workday. The Internet also symbolizes Korea s development towards the most active democracy in Asia .

Once it was the dictator Park Chung-hee who pushed forward the industrialization of the country. He ordered that the thatched roofs throughout the nation be replaced by corrugated sheet-iron, because he considered it to be more modern. He promoted large conglomerates like Hyundai and Samsung, which produced nearly everything from pins to super-tanks. But during the Asian crisis in 1997 the so-called miracle of the Han ran into trouble. The giant conglomerates suffered from megalomania because the state-controlled banks did not hesitate to support them financially. With the help of the International Monetary Fund Korea was barely saved from state bankruptcy.

Today a new generation of managers — many of whom have studied in the United States — is leading the industrial policy. These managers opened Korea to competition and new knowledge. Nevertheless, the state did not give up its influential role. ETRI, the Electronics and Telecommunication Research Institute in Daejeon, 170 kilometers south of Seoul, which is financed by both state and private funds, has played a decisive role.

The 2,000 technicians of ETRI helped Korea s conglomerates reach a revolutionary breakthrough in multi-media technology. In 1996 ETRI developed the mobile phone network technology CDMA for commercial use. In addition the Institute developed a technology for mobile Digital TV (DMB). Thanks to the close cooperation between policy, research and industry Korea plays a leading role in the world, says Hwang Seung-ku, the chief engineer of ETRI.

But Korea s chief planners are not infallible. They experienced an embarrassing failure in the field of biotechnology, which they supported with huge funds. Unfortunately they supported the wrong person. Two years ago the researcher Hwang Woo-suk announced that he was the first person in the world to succeed in cloning human embryos. The alleged ground-breaking accomplishment turned out to be a shameless deceit however, which damaged the image of the entire country.

In spite of this experience the government still supports prestigious, large-scale projects. Yu Sang-yeol of the real estate company Albatros, for example, is currently preparing a high-tech city in Daejeon.

In his office one can admire the project on futuristic posters. His project: a huge sky scraper with 53 floors. Two of the skyscraper s 53 story facades will be used for advertisements, says Yu enthusiastically. At the end of 2009 the first of 30,000 inhabitants will move into the new, high-tech apartments and offices.

When the residents come home the computer will welcome them and tell them precisely who called while they were not at home. When they go to work in the morning vacuuming robots

will automatically start to clean their apartment.

The high-tech city will also be a safe place. People will only be able to enter their apartment after their eyes have been scanned. Fifteen thousand automatic cameras will prevent burglars from entering. Microchips will help forgetful car drivers find their parked cars. Because of these high-tech appliances, the apartments in this skyscraper will be 30 percent more expensive than other apartments. But is it really possible to push Korea onto the next level of technological advancement with such futuristic projects or are they nothing but a gigantic disguised project to support the domestic industry? For the time being the entire world shall be impressed by the obsession and dedication with which the Koreans promote and realize their vision of the future.

But at times even Asian Internet pioneers prefer to rely on traditional methods in the real world, as does Lee Yong-su of the puppyred.com .

Thousands of Korean children send letters to Ayo, the cyber mascot that they believe is a real living creature. Lee did not want to destroy the illusion of his young customers and saw only one solution to the problem: One of his employees had to answer each letter. The letters could not be answered by e-mail — Lee thought that this would be too impersonal — but by handwritten letters, just like in good days.

[Courtesy: Korea Policy Review-ed. ]

Early indicators seem to suggest that Thailand needed to take this step

Mrs. Vanvisa Thamrongnavasawat , Thailand Ambassador in Nepal

Kathmandu : The Thailand Ambassador, Mrs. Vanvisa Thamrongnavasawat, in a press note released by her embassy dated 25 September, 2006 , regarding the fresh developments that have happened in her country has tried to clarify some of the misconceptions that have been emanating in certain quarters.

Madame Ambassador, says among other things in the said press note that, "while the military intervention which occurred on 19 September 2006 may be perceived as a set back for democracy in Thailand, I wish to point out that early indicators seem to suggest that Thailand needed to take this step to propel our democracy forward".

Nevertheless, Madame Ambassador assures all that the support that the people have extended towards this new Thai political developments "should not, however, be interpreted in any way that our people have turned against democracy."

The full text of the Thai Ambassadoir's clarification regarding the political happenings in that country follows:

"Following the recent political development in Thailand , I feel I must write to update your readers on the current political situation as I believe they deserve the most accurate information on what is actually going on before they decide what to believe.

While the military intervention which occurred on 19 September 2006 may be perceived as a setback for democracy in Thailand , I wish to point out that early indicators seem to suggest that Thailand needed to take this step to propel our democracy forward. Indeed, indications are that public support for the intervention has been overwhelming. For example, according to the polls conducted on 20 September 2006 by a respectable local independent polling agency, Suan Dusit Rajabhat University , 84 percent of 2,019 people who took part in the survey support this political change. Another 75 percent also believe that it will improve our political situation. Besides, the situation in Thailand has remained calm and peaceful throughout. Our capital, Bangkok , remains as safe a place to be as ever.

Such public support should not, however, be interpreted in any way that out people has turned against democracy. The reality is indeed quite the opposite. Conscious of this public sentiment, ever since the political change took place in Thailand , the Council for Democratic Reform (CDR) has clearly stated that it would return power to the Thai people at the earliest opportunity.

Concrete actions with participation from various sectors of our society are being taken in order to accelerate the democratic reform process that, unfortunately, could not take place properly under the previous caretaker government. The Council for Democratic Reform has firmly stated that it would do its best to ensure that the ongoing process of drafting a provisional constitution is completed by next week. A national legislative assembly will then be formed, which will in turn task a constitution drafting body to elaborate a new constitution.

Also, the Head of the Council for Democratic Reform has firmly and openly stated that he will, within 2 weeks, transfer all of the Council’s administrative power to a respectable civilian Prime Minister who will at once form a government to run the country. This government, along with the Thai people, will then have oversight over the drafting of our new constitution. We expect that free and fair general elections, based on the new constitution, will be held within 1 year, if not sooner. To this end, the Election Commission which was appointed by the former Senate has already made concrete preparations.

What we ask from all good friends of Thailand is, at least, your understanding. For despite the recent intervention, our friends will see that respect for human rights and the rule of law, together with the profound belief in the principles of democracy, remain very close to our hearts. We remain firmly adhered to the UN Charter and obligations under international treaties and agreements, on the basis of the equality of states, as always. No one should doubt that Thailand would resolutely pursue the path of democratic reform to achieve sustainable progress and stability for its people.

Yours sincerely,
(Mrs. Vanvisa Thamrongnavasawat)
Ambassador of the Kingdom of Thailand