DECEMBER 11, 2000 VOL. 156 NO. 23

Online Life
Prisoners of the Internet
By DONALD MACINTYRE

ALSO
All Wired Up
Their country has gone from being an online backwater to one of the most connected places on the globe in double-quick time. Now millions of Koreans are living the Internet revolution
Player Power: Online gamers are in a league of their own
Viewpoint: How Koreans took to the new technology

ALSO IN TIME COVER: All Wired Up Their country has gone from being an online backwater to one of the most connected places on the globe in double-quick time. Now millions of Koreans are living the Internet revolution • Player Power: Online gamers are in a league of their own • Virtual Vows: A couple live their lives on the Net • Viewpoint: How Koreans took to the new technology JAPAN: Did Somebody Mention Pinochet? Peru's ousted ex-President Fujimori copes with exile in Japan INDIA: Reform Behind Bars Delhi's notorious Tihar Jail is now a kinder, gentler prison HONG KONG AND SHANGHA: May the Best Town Win The former colony is losing business to China's largest city CINEMA: The Chosen One Chinese actress Zhang Ziyi's effervescent talent pours through Zhang Yimou's The Road Home, and Hollywood is beckoning. But she still struggles to be appreciated back home TRAVEL WATCH Get Insured: No One Plans for a Shark Attack

The handsome couple moves slowly down the aisle to the strains of the traditional wedding march. At an altar decorated with white and gold flowers, they listen to a brief sermon, exchange vows and bow to the minister, as parents and a sister look on. A typical wedding, but with one important difference—it is being held entirely in cyberspace in a three-dimensional virtual world. Computer-generated "avatars" represent the bride and groom, who in the real world are sitting at a computer in an isolated log cabin 50 km northeast of Seoul. Their parents, also present as avatars, log on via an Internet hookup from Seoul, while the groom's sister joins the ceremony from San Jose, California. And yes, the bride and groom avatars kiss.

The marriage of Song Sun Kyung and Kim Tae Ho is believed to be the world's first full-scale cyberwedding—and, amazingly, it was but a single moment, though a precious one, in a much longer cyberexperiment. Last May, Kim shut himself up in the cabin with nothing more than a computer and a high-speed link to the Internet. His goal: to survive solely on the Net for 18 months. After the wedding last August, Song joined him in the unusual experiment—sponsored by a local software company—and the two are cyberhermits. (Although they are allowed under the experiment's rules to take walks near the cabin for health reasons.) To this day, "I feel like a pioneer," says Kim.

Sponsor LAS21 says it hopes the experiment will help it develop new Internet services. For Kim, it is a chance to do something daring and unprecedented: "This is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity." Like any pioneer, he started out roughing it, with no food, no furniture and no heat. All the necessities of life had to come from the Internet. The first night he successfully ordered rice, kimchi, eggs and small side dishes, and also managed to get some blankets. That was lucky because it took him a month to figure out how and where to buy home heating oil. (Online malls didn't have any, so he ended up using the Internet phone to call a gas station.) But gradually things got more comfortable, even enjoyable: no clock watching, no frustrated hours in traffic, everything delivered to the front door.

These days the Kims shop, work and socialize in cyberspace, sometimes competing with each other in online games to decide who has to do the dishes. But living on the Internet has its moments of inconvenience and even danger. The Net wasn't very useful, for example, when a viper slithered into the couple's home one morning. Fortunately, a delivery man from a Chinese restaurant caught it and took it away with him. But the hardest thing is the solitude. The couple is allowed real-life visitors only on weekends. Song misses her mother and older sister: "Looking at their faces on the monitor can't replace human contact," she explains. Kim misses drinking with friends. And when he tried to raise three cyberdogs (existing only as online avatars), the animals died because Kim didn't log on enough to look after them. It just wasn't the real thing, he says. "I want a living thing that will come and demand things, even when I don't want it to."

He won't have to wait long—his wife is now pregnant. The baby is due next June, five months before the end of their online adventure. Doctors at a major university hospital in Seoul now check her condition via an online conference call once a week. It hasn't been decided where, or how, the delivery will take place. Concerned from the beginning, Song is not sure whether she can trust the online medical system, but Kim doesn't want to give up. So they may look for a good midwife via the Internet. Meanwhile, they are already checking out sites for diapers.

With reporting by Stella Kim

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