LOCAL NEWS THE RISING NEPAL (DAILY)

Cellular phone culture

Though I did not fully appreciate the fact at the time, even before my arrival in Seoul, the capital city of Korea in the beginning of March (this year) in a seemingly insignificant conversation, I was faced with an aspect of Korean culture quite different from what I had known on my last visit to Korea. This scribe was in Korea for nearly two weeks to take part in a programme entitled "Partnership Building with Asian Countries" held from March 2- 11, 2003 at the invitation of Korean government's Korea International Cooperation Agency (KOICA). Most of the Asian and Pacific countries' representatives attended the programme.

My friend, who was to meet me at the airport, told me I should call her beeper when I arrived to tell her where I was in the airport. Exhausted from a long flight and jet lag, I painstakingly listened to all the options on the phone at the airport and then left the "surprising" message that I was in the arrivals hall. Then I sat down and waited.

People ran back and forth in front of me struggling with their luggage, greeting relatives and buying cups of coffee as they waited for incoming flights, but what struck me was the proportion of people who accomplished these deeds while on the phone. Not for the last time was I to wonder whether I was the only person in Seoul- world's 10th largest city and the home to over 11 million of the 48 million South Koreans- without a cellular phone. Seoul city is a business hub of the Asia seemed like an unreal city- fairyland where everything around the city looked like a bright, thrilling sideshow.

Cellular phones and beepers do not form an integral part of student life, at least not in the United States or the United Kingdom. Indeed, I don't know anyone who possesses either. When I see someone walking down the street on the phone in New York City, my first thought is that they must be in business.

It was then surprising to me that my friends in Korea not very rich, who are hardly involved in business deal that demand constant availability and instant decisions, had all invested in cellular phone or beepers. It is also often unclear to me why. One might think, for example, that one purpose of the beeper would be to enable the person you are calling to return your call at their convenience, but my friends stop conversation with me mid-sentence and run to the nearest phone the minute their beeper beeps.

Whenever I am in public space I end up wondering just who all these people around me are talking to, people must have a lot of friends to receive so many phone calls. While I was watching movie at the theatre or traveling in the subway train or shopping in the departmental store, thousands of people seem talking on their cellular phone. Of course, not everyone lets their phone control their life to that extent. But it is interesting to consider how technology such as cellular phones, changes our experience of different spaces.

A German scholar Wolfgang Schivelbusch, has argued that in Europe the development of the railway carriage, with all seats facing forwards, spelled the end of conservation while travelling. Then cartoons from the early 20th century often poked fun at people's efforts to avoid eye contact with fellow subway travellers who were seated facing each other. The time honoured strategy of focusing intensely on a newspaper or a book is a common in Korea as elsewhere in the world. What does it mean, then, when these habits developed to avoid contact with people in one's physical presence, are replaced by phone calls from who knows where?

If people are embarrassed to have these strangers seated next to them, are they not embarrassed to have these same strangers listen in to their loud conversations? In any case, the subway carriage is now filled with conversation again. Being the world's 11th largest economy Korea is a high-tech hotbed. User penetration rates of broadband and mobile telecommunications are the highest. Korea is the world leader in CDMA mobile telecoms.

Anywhere in Seoul-the most wired city, the mobile generation will not only be talking on their handsets, but will be actively messaging, emailing and surfing-weaving the world's densest digital web, a true online community. My thoughts on the cellular phone are not as critical. The urge to find what is Korea in the past is hardly new, but I would submit that we would do well to refrain from accepting this equation of the West versus the East. We might think, rather, how these different technologies have taken on different meanings in different contexts.

Korea has done a great job of taking broadband lead. Truly, Korea is where all the action is in Asia and will be occupied. Koreans feel about today's Korea as a miracle in the Hang River. But whatever it may be, Korea is a country of contrast and contradiction, past and present, tradition and innovation, difference and attentiveness.

From this, Nepal should learn the lesson for its development of rich arts, culture and explore of the natural resources.

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