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I live here in South Korea next door to the DMZ. If this is a cyber war, it hasn't been very disruptive yet. I'm having no trouble accessing any of the standa

I live here in South Korea next door to the DMZ. If this is a cyber war, it hasn't been very disruptive yet. I'm having no trouble accessing any of the standard Korean websites that were/are said to be under attack (Naver, KEB). My $35/month internet access package is today what it was last week - the fastest unlimited internet in the world. What I can say is that we need to make it much more difficult to infect personal computers here. If you show me a Korean government or non-trivial Korean corporate website, I'll show you a website that uses at least 3 activeX controls and is optimized for IE6. Most public computers and the majority of personal computers I've used here have been running IE6 or 7. I'll admit that in Seoul and larger cities like Pusan, Ilsan, and Gwangju, you'll sometimes catch people using Macbooks at Starbucks. Score one for security via obscurity, but non-IE folks can't use ANY banking website or government site (National Tax Service, National Pension, National Health, etc). Even though I'm in the "most wired country in the world", the majority of high schoolers, uni students, and business people I've interacted with aren't more tech-savvy than your average grandma. Everyone runs the dubious AhnLab Anti-virus as a mandatory magical medallion that came with the computer. We need to do better - Korea's great ability is overnight change on a massive scale. The day President Lee announces that all browsers should be upgraded to the latest version is the day that all browsers will be upgraded to the latest version. Seriously. Barring that kind of concerted effort, should the day come when I see a non-IE browser or something other than WinXP/Vista on a Korean adult's primary/only computer, I will eat this hat. This one, right here.

khafra 17y ago
Five years ago, when I lived in South Korea next door to the DMZ, I got the fastest unlimited internet in the world for $35 a month, but all the computers I saw ran Windows 98. Now, they still use IE6? Do you think that years-long lag behind the state of the art can be permanently overcome, or just temporarily bypassed?
- korussian 17y ago
  The average Korean's internet usage seems to be stuck in something of a walled garden - Naver/Daum/CyWorld/"Cafes"... and that's pretty much it. Most folks around here like the comfort of treading in groups, always where others have trod before. I don't think that is likely to change any time soon, probably about the same time travel agents start to see a decline in package tours in favor of individual trips. In other words: probably never. On the other hand, Koreans are never behind the state of the art - they do relish having the latest and greatest things to show off. You can count on one hand the number of second-hand stores in Seoul, mostly because new=good. They simply have no problem conforming to the flock, which, in the case of internet security, is rarely a smart move. When eventually some high-level government official or TV channel will point this out, suddenly everyone will take notice, and they'll all move on, as a flock, to the next thing, and the next, and next.

khafra 17y ago

Five years ago, when I lived in South Korea next door to the DMZ, I got the fastest unlimited internet in the world for $35 a month, but all the computers I saw ran Windows 98. Now, they still use IE6? Do you think that years-long lag behind the state of the art can be permanently overcome, or just temporarily bypassed?

korussian 17y ago
The average Korean's internet usage seems to be stuck in something of a walled garden - Naver/Daum/CyWorld/"Cafes"... and that's pretty much it. Most folks around here like the comfort of treading in groups, always where others have trod before. I don't think that is likely to change any time soon, probably about the same time travel agents start to see a decline in package tours in favor of individual trips. In other words: probably never. On the other hand, Koreans are never behind the state of the art - they do relish having the latest and greatest things to show off. You can count on one hand the number of second-hand stores in Seoul, mostly because new=good. They simply have no problem conforming to the flock, which, in the case of internet security, is rarely a smart move. When eventually some high-level government official or TV channel will point this out, suddenly everyone will take notice, and they'll all move on, as a flock, to the next thing, and the next, and next.