Before I go on to talk
about the portal-centric Internet landscape in Korea as I said in the last article, I decided to
write a post on a different topic because the portal topic seems to cover too many areas, so I'll probably need some more time to think through. But
before that, I'll give you guys something juicy again. Namely, "How to
be a broadcasting jockey".
That's what all these livecasting citizen journalists are called. By Afreeca,
they are officially named BJs. They are also called Street Journalists. The question is how do you
live-broadcast while out in the public?
The key lies in Internet ubiquity. People live-upload video content through WiBro. And the setup looks like this:
You connect to the Internet through your WiBro modem like I did
hundreds of times in the past; you capture the scene live with your
webcam or better-quality camcorders connected to your notebook. You run
some Afreeca applications on your notebook. That's it. You have
your own real-time broadcasting station!!
Remember this is only one example of what Internet ubiquity can do for your
country. Now, imagine what could happen when you have this many people
out in the street holding candles; hundreds of them are BJs.
But in this country, one of the most wired and technology savvy in
the world, the month-long series of gatherings has also been a valuable
testing ground for the latest communication devices, gadgets and
websites.
From high-resolution camera phones to instant broadcasting software
and water cannon-resistant camcorders, the latest advances in
communications were in evidence during the five weeks since the
protests began.
Many demonstrators rely on Internet forums to get information on
rallying points, weather forecasts and riot police presence. With
powerful camera phones, they are able to shoot photos and videos that
they can instantly upload on Internet sites thanks to high-speed
wireless technology.
It wasn't even a year ago when I had the Joost-on-highway experiment.
Did I imagine what's happening right now could happen in less than 10
months? Heck, no! So there's goes my lack of imagination. OTL.
There's a reason why this blog is taglined Spicy Thoughts on Digital Generation in Asia. :)
For many personal and professional reasons, this blog has not been really taken care of for...say 2 months or so. But now it's 2008 and I'm ready to get it going again.
Fortunately, I've had a chance to talk to A LOT of people last couple of months in real life, over skype, and through email, etc. What's amazing is that people are still very interested in what's happening here in Korea. Of course, things here simply rock :)
Good news is that I'm getting my Wibro modem back tomorrow. To tell you the truth, I had lost it months ago and because of how the contract was structured, I wasn't able to get a new modem till now. Once I get it, you know TechnoKimchi is going WILD again!
Thanks for your patience and interests. I've needed some time to grow as a person more than anything, overcoming some of the personal hardships. (Yes, I was secretely in love with this girl and it didn't quite work out, so you know how hard that must've been --> this is when you use the expression "OTL") I think I'm through now and ready to fly for another exciting year.
By the way, my book is out. It's named "Meconomy", meaning that the current "Web 2.0" landscape encourages and even empowers individuals, (i.e. ME) to be the center of the economic force. You can purchase the Korean version of it HERE. Sorry, folks, so far it's ONLY in Korean, but for anyone who's interested, I'm up for publishing it in another language! If you're interested, please let me know.
I'll do my best to bring you all some good news and insight about the digital generation here. It'll be about e-sports league, digital devices, citizen journalism, Google vs. Naver, the new 3-D Cyworld, the importance of cultural understanding when going global, and some personal stories as well.
Just for your information, this is how I'm going to be smiling all year in 2008. See ya all soon :)
Yes, you heard it right. I'm in Tokyo to attend Web 2.0 Expo Tokyo. This will be my fourth conference this year: Web 2.0 Expo in SF in April, Supernova in SF in June, State of Play V in Singapore in August, and this one; but this is my first trip to Japan.
I'm in Tokyo with the openmaru team. Here goes my discloser: I've been working with openmaru, a Korean Web 2.0 service provider, for its English blog marketing. Indeed, its English blog has been run by me! (but I'm not an employee, just working on a partnership-based project)
I'm not sure if you guys have come across the blog or any of its services, but not because I'm the marketer, but even from a pure user point of view, you should most definitely try out the openmaru applications, such as Springnote. It simply rocks!
I'll be reporting from the Expo as well as interviewing famous dudes and companies in the Web 2.0-sphere. One thing interesting is that reporting will be done through 4 major channels: openmaru Korean blog, openmaru English blog, Taewoo's log (my Korean blog), and TechnoKimchi. Chances are I'll be posting a lot more stuff in Korean than in English.
But if you ever had questions regarding openmaru or me, or the Web and digital landscape in Korea, feel free to come around the openmaru booth to find me. I'm not there, other openmaru members will be more than kind enough to find me for you :)
I'm very excited to attend the conference for many reasons. But for TechnoKimchi, I think this will definitely mark an important milestone as this is the first time I'm officially exploring the Web in Asia, outside Korea. As I've been writing in my Korean blog, there are so many things that are just completely different about the Web and the digital culture in Japan from Korea that I'm almost lost. Too many thoughts in my head.
But for now, I'm resting for tomorrow. Hopefully, I'll be able to run into some of you guys!
CNN is featuring a whole series called "Eye on South Korea". You'll purely love it! It's basically everything I've been trying to say at TechnoKimchi: what's it's like to have a digital generation like in Korea.
You can watch the video clip of my interview HERE.
At first, I thought it was really incredible that a little boy like me could be featured on such prestigious media like CNN. And it was possible because of this blog: THEY FOUND ME THROUGH TECHNOKIMCHI!
It's just so weird. Tons of people have been contacting me since the broadcast. Lots of people actually searched for the term "technokimchi" to land at this blog. What a day!
Below are some pictures taken from the set. I'll go over more on CNN: Eye on South Korea in the coming days! Until then, hurrah!
Business 2.0 lists up top 12 wired cities that are suited best for business. Obviously, Seoul is one of them. What caught my attention, though, is that 6 out of the 12 cities are Asian cities: Bangalore, Hong Kong, Seoul, Shanghai, Singapore, and Tokyo. This is what I exactly spotted while over in Singapore. Some serious things are happening over in this half of the world! I'm not sure if all the U.S. cities were dropped out on purpose or the Business 2.0 folks really couldn't find a single U.S. city fit for this.
Wondering what your cell phone will be like in three years? Head to
Seoul, home of electronics giants Samsung and LG and the world's
proving grounds for cutting-edge wireless technologies.
Well, I've been writing so much in Korean that I thought maybe taking a 20-min break to write something in English might refresh my hands and thoughts. Ok, back to work!
I wasn't able to write too much after the first session. So, rather I'm going to try to put down the summaries of the last 3 sessions I had today.
Regulating Virtual Worlds
Legal experts explore how controversies related to intellectual property, real-money transfer, gaming as political speech, time-limit addiction laws and the policing of Internet cafes play out throughout the region. They will also draw our attention to culturally variable assumptions that underpin analytical approaches to these issues.
Much of the panel discussion revolved around whether it's better to have communities self-regulate or have external forces to step in. At large, there are three forces at play: 1) community of players regulating themselves, 2) game and virtual world makers deciding what needs to happen within through creating systems certain way, 3) actual regulating bodies like the government. Many factors come into play here. Obviously, it'll be the best if all the players and communities act reasonable enough to reach certain social agreements and norms to control themselves; however, not quite so in reality. That's what makes things complicated. Besides, creating laws and regulations for a world that doesn't really exist is a very difficult task itself. For example, let's say there is a crime in Second Life. What country's law should be applied to that member? Is it for Linden Lab to decide? Or should the U.S. government intervene? What if the player was Korean?
Education, Kids, and Teens in Virtual Worlds
There has been an explosion of interest in the use of virtual worlds in education. This panel will examine what works and what doesn’t work, and will present some ideas for the effective use of online spaces for student learning. It will also ask examine how children and teens interact within virtual worlds, and what this teaches us about building kid-and-teen-friendly environments for learning and playing.
This session was very interesting because I've always known there's so much learning, in a non-traditional sense, that could be done through an environment like virtual worlds. People indeed train themselves and learn a great deal in this kind of environment. They set goals for themselves, leadership becomes visible, and they collaborate with each other to solve certain problems. Some of the examples in the session were astonishing--like teaching classes in StarWars Galaxy. Now how much of this could be applied to the real world education?
Currently the real world education system is designed for a world back in 1950's. Kids are growing up enormously influenced by the digital technology. They are a lot more participatory also. The social and economic scenes are changing faster than ever due to the Internet. Unfortunately, none of this is reflected in the current one-way-teaching and text-based education system. For us to be able to adopt the opportunities given by virtual worlds and other technologies, we need a completely new mindset.
However, not everything can be learned in virtual worlds, obviously. It's our job to figure what virtual worlds can offer in this space. It seems at the moment that virtual worlds are good providing an environment in which people can come together to collaborate to solve certain problems, rather than learning specific skill sets.
Connecting East and West
Experts explore variations in playing styles, the influence of game mechanics on cross-cultural cooperation, the challenge of intercultural communication, and outcomes of forced localization. This panel will also explore issues of society, governance and virtual worlds as a vehicle for people-to-people diplomacy.
Well, as you know, that's the goal of this blog. I want to let known to the world what's here in Korea and Asia and see if we can make any connections between East and West. I was actually one of the panelists during this session. But, I wasn't invited as an "official" panelist, but rather as a translator to Judge Unggi Yoon, who is a very well-respected member here. He'd explain what the MMORPGs are like in Korea and I'll translate that into English for the audience. But, hey, I was still up on the stage. What an honor! ;)
The session covered various topics ranging from the two different purposes of playing games in Lineage and Second Life, gold-farming, index for measuring the east/west-ness and etc. I really enjoyed the session while listening on the side most of the time. We definitely need to take a more analytical approach to crossing the gap. While there are fundamental differences between the two which will never get any closer than they are right now, there are also a growing number of commonalities among the two that something could be done for further development. The most important point of the session, I guess, was acknkowledging the value of the differences and how the differences indeed enrich our virtual world experiences.
- - -
Just like every time I attend a conference, I really enjoyed meeting new people and having conversations with them. It's simply because you get to learn so much by doing so. For me, this is a completely new experience: the first time being in Singapore and first time being immersed in the virtual worlds talk.
I'm very excited for tomorrow and hopefully I'll be able to bring even more interesting stuff to you all.
These virtual worlds are crucial building blocks of global civil society. As such, they harbor the promise for relationship-building and cooperation across national borders. Solutions to the cross-cultural growing pains of this new medium require a sincere commitment to transnational dialogue.
As I briefly mentioned before, in order to appropriately cover the digital generation in Asia, the gaming culture and industry, now expanded to virtual worlds altogether, must be extensively studied. Unfortunately, my expertise has been more on Web 2.0 and Enterprise IT industry in general, not so much games and virtual worlds.
But they're all coming together. I get to interact with lots of kids of age 5-15 or so at church and they live in a different world than the one I grew up in. (I'm only 28 by the way). They don't seem to draw the line between the "real" world and the "virtual" world. The two worlds are so interchangable in their lives. What's imaginary and what's physical? They don't care and they don't know, but it's all in their minds. I get to talk to people working at NCSoft and Nexon, two largest game companies in Korea, and Cyworld. AND I HEAR SOME CRAZY STORIES FROM THEM.
IBM is training their employees in Second Life. When I attended Supernova in June, there was this great session on virtual worlds and I remember Raph Koster, one of the gurus in the field, saying "many of the Web 2.0 principles and phenomenon have come from games." I totally agree with him, especially as far as how social interactions are concerned.
I go to PC bangs and see middle/high school guys in their school uniforms spend 4 hours straight playing Starcraft, Lineage, WoW, FIFA, etc. after school. What's scary is how this is such a big part of their lives. I mean their real lives.
What would happen when you combine everything together? I mean combining different virtual worlds with blogs, mobile, social networks, and messengers. Maybe some efforts towards standardization would help? What if you can play WoW on the bus for an hour using Wibro on the way to school? What if your Cyworld buddy can be found on Club Penguin? Possibilities are endless, I think.
Of course, we'll be seeing various social and legal issues come up in this fast-developing medium as well. I know much about what's up with social networks and blogs. Can the same principles be applied to virtual worlds? What's the same? What's different?
We'll find out at the conference. I'm not sure if I'll be able to live-blog the conference, given I don't know much about the wireless connections at the site. But I'll be constantly feeding you guys with what I learn there. And trust me, what I'll be learning there will be extremely important to anyone who has anything to do with anything digital--Web 2.0/portal services, H/W & gadget makers, game makers, social networks makers, book publishers, network providers, teachers, legislators, parents, kids, or even HR people.
Should I go, "stay tuned and excited" again? ;) Well, I am!
[a picture of kimchi by Nagyman on flickr, used under CCL]
Kimchi is the best known Korean food, which Korean people are most proud of. We simply cannot live without kimchi. It tastes really good though it stinks really bad. It's really good for your body, too. For more information, obviously go check out the Wikipedia article on kimchi.
Now, why the name TechnoKimchi? Some people liked the name very much. Some thought it was purely stupid. Some even told me it sounds too much like TechCrunch. Fine, all points well taken.
To tell you the truth, it took me way over a year to come up with the name. I've had an idea about a blog like this for a long time. After all, my Korean blog is one of the most widely read IT/Web blogs in Korea. Just to flex my muscle, my Korean blog was started like a year before TechCrunch was born. Subscriber-wise? Probably 1/100 of TechCrunch :)
Anyhow, I really wanted a name that can well represent what I want to write about--the Digital Generation in Asia. Somehow it needed to have the word "Tech" combined with something very Asian. Even better if it can maximize people's prejudice about Asia or even the "oriental world".
Now, I'm Korean. Korea does not, by any means, represent Asia. China, Japan, India, even Vietnam are far more famous Asian countries to those over in the other half of the world than Korea is. From my personal experience, every time I told somebody in U.S. that I was from Korea (especially given I lived in South Carolina for so many years), the first question I would always get was "North or South?"
But I really love kimchi. I also thought TechnoKimchi was such a great brand name for a blog like this. In all truth, some other candidates were "TechKaraoke", "DimsumTech" or "Chopstech(s)". I liked them all, but had to shed tears choosing TechnoKimchi over them. I love Karaoke, dimsum and I use chopsticks every day. But I just love kimchi too much. And obviously, "TechnoKimchi" sounds far better than "TechKimchi"!
And it turns out that kimchi is extremely spicy and hot. So I added the "spicy thoughts" part to the subtitle. Personally, I love both the title and the subtitle.
So that's how "TechnoKimchi: Spicy Thoughts on Digital Generaton in Asia" came around. Unfortunately, kimchi is only vegetable stuff. I guess it's now time to add some meat to it. :)
People cheering during World Cup 2006 around the Seoul City Hall Square
"Pali Pali (빨리빨리)" is known to be the first phrase which those start working in Korea are required to learn. What does "Pali Pali" mean? It means, "Hurry Hurry" or "Faster Faster". People in Korea are hardcore like that.
While the title of this post "Things are crazy over here" is obviously meant to catch your attention a bit, I really do mean that things could get quite crazy over here in terms of the pace of things changing.
I'm a huge NBA fan, especially of the Miami Heat. I went back to U.S. for a business trip about a year ago, first time in 3 years. I was watching the NBA playoffs on TNT and ESPN, the first impression I got was "nothing's changed in 3 years!" Ads looked the same. TV presentations looked the same. Even the guys on the show, including dear Kenny and Charles, were the same! Not bad after all, right?
NBA was only one of many things that didn't seem to have changed. The language, people, food, atmosphere, etc. You might ask "Well, how much change do you really expect just in 3 years??"
Things are quite different in Korea, though. Language changes a great deal in 3 years. So does what we eat. So does what we wear. Even what we watch. 5 years ago we were only watching Korean soap operas. Now everyone's watching Heroes or Prison Break over here, thanks to various P2P applications.
Why do things change and go around so fast and we still work so many hours? I don't know. Maybe we are all unproductive workers. Maybe we don't have firm principles or philosophies that govern and tie together the society in general, which keep weird changes from happening. Maybe people are just having fun running out of breath every time there's another change to adapt themselves to.
But more than anything, it's all cultural again. In Asia, things are often about people only. This often means when a small group of people start changing and making a noise, it can spread through the rest of the world at lightning speed without people considering the bigger pictures behind it. You see butterfly effects happening everywhere all the time. May I remind you of the word "emergence"? I'm not sure if you can apply of any of those complex network theories to the way we interact with each other over here, but it surely feels like it.
Well, then. What about the Web? It changes so fast that it's lierally crazy. I mentioned above our language changing so fast. It's actually because there are so many jargons being born on the Web that it directly influences how we express ourselves. If you say a phrase that was popular on the Web even a year ago, you're already not cool any more. News that comes up on portal news sites, the most powerful journalistic institutions in Korea now, which I'll cover later, can affect so many people that one picture taken with a cellphone and uploaded by a high school student in subway gets viewed by half of the entire Korean population the next day, stirs up the whole nation, and forces politicians to change the law within a week.
If you really think about it, this "craziness" or "intractability" is what represents the new Web. Things are crazy and cannot be controlled. Korean people are so used to that. We've been living like that for decades even before the Web was born.
So what's the conclusion of this post? I miss the laid-back culture in California. I miss the diversity in New York. But I'm here now and things are running only faster because of the Web. Sometimes because of the insanity I'm used to here, many things found in Techmeme seem to be a warmup session to me.
Like I said, the gap is closing. Trust me. Things are only getting crazier for everybody. Maybe we're all just doomed like this dude. Ask any dedicated blogger.
People have asked me, "why do you feel compelled to start another blog when there are already 80 million out there and you're running 7 blogs?"
The need was born quite naturally. I'm from Korea and I'm subscribed to something like 150 feeds, mostly English content. While most of the "Web 2.0" stories have been coming from the Western part of the world, I've been increasingly convinced that there's so much happening over here in Korea that just simply must not go unnoticed. Moreover, I've been seeing, time after time, that things that happen in Korea end up taking place in U.S years later.
It's probably because
we have better broadband connections and mobile infrastructures,
we have a better "gadget culture" where teens are not hesitant to easily spend $500 on mobile phones or PMPs, all coming at the expense of their parents,
we have a culture which values the virtue of "flocking together" much higher than that of "staying as individuals", empowering the growth of mass collaborative efforts across the Net, and
we have a mental world where the virtual stuff is often blurred with the physical reality.
Of course, there are many other reasons why this is happening, but this is the short list I could come up with. All of these factors together have enabled the younger generation in Korea to experience the "digital society" much earlier than those in other parts of the world.
While I could much talk about the cold and dry biz/tech aspect of the whole picture, I feel that's already being sufficiently done by some of those 80 million other blogs. I'd rather like to focus on the social dynamics, cultures, and economics behind the scene. Definitely, there's a reason why the fancy and pretty Cyworld works in Korea and the coarse and logical MySpace works in U.S. Cultures matter and we're not gonna change the cultures in Asia and Americas and Europe over night just because we're now all connected to each other through HTTP. Accordingly, many of the things I talk about in this blog might be simply irrelevant to many people that are looking for business opportunities using the principles derived from Asia and applying them to the U.S. or European market.
But, here's what's important. The gap between the young generation in East and West is closing. The reason is because better broadband and mobile infrastructures are now set place in the West while the East is learning to be somewhat more "logical" and "open" on the Web like the West has been. However, more than anything, the digital generation from both East and West is developing a culture that is commonly observed across all different countries, philosophies, races, ethnicities, languages, and continents. Seriously, an average 6th grader from Japan has a much higher chance to be like an average 6th grader from Canada than ever before. They play games, send numerous SMS messages to friends, listen to mp3s through iPod. What does that say about business opportunities? Plenty, I think.
Hi, guys. I'm Danny Kim, the dude behind TechnoKimchi. This blog covers the digital generation in Asia, mostly Korea. Obviously, I'm going to be talking much about gadgets, mobile, games, broadband, and the Web in Asia.
Just as a quickie, in Korea, teens watch live TV on their cellphones in subway, real mafia gangs jump into the virtual item trading business because it is such a high margin business, and there's a pro Starcraft league where gamers are regarded as highly as and get paid as much as soccer or baseball stars.
I have not had a chance to put stuff into the blog yet, but after having introduced, and even advertised, this blog to so many people I've been meeting here at Supernova, I feel obligated to start really "doing" it. And trust me, I love blogging.
Thanks for visiting. You're allowed to expect big things here :)
