As many of you already know, there are areas where the development of the Internet in South Korea has been influential in China, especially online gaming, which was really born there. Compared to China today though, the Internet in South Korea has much deeper penetration and is much more pervasive than in China. For most South Koreans, it would be unthinkable to live without the Internet and their mobile phones. Penetration across generations is much higher than in China.
Part of this is because the South Korean government in the late nineties decided to open up a huge amount of bandwidth and make it available to all South Koreans. Compare that to the US, China and most other countries, where the amount of bandwidth is much lower.
When this started in the late nineties, the Internet was still considered a young person’s thing, and most adult South Koreans still did not trust it for content, advertising and information. This is no longer the case.
I am looking for information on:
- What changes made the South Korean go from not trusting the Internet to gradually trusting the Internet? Were they laws, applications or events?
- Were there certain laws, applications or events which made the attitudes of certain generations of South Koreans change? What were they?
- Would any of these changes have been possible if the South Korean government did not open up bandwidth?
- How has the Internet and cheap, high-availability broadband fundamentally changed the society?
Look forward to hearing from you.