DECEMBER 11, 2000 VOL. 156 NO. 23

How We Got Wired
The Net revolution, as seen by a revolutionary Lee Jae Woong

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
Virtual Vows: A couple live their lives on the Net

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

I don't know how many cafes there are in Paris, but what i do know is that almost anyone in the world, even a Parisian, would be surprised to learn that South Korea has more than 20,000 Internet cafEs equipped with multimedia PCs and cheap high-speed leased lines. Where else on earth would you find a country with half its population signed up for free e-mail, which happens to be my business? The Internet came into Koreans' lives in the past three years. And now everything is changed.

Three years ago, there were only 100,000 free e-mail accounts in South Korea. That figure has grown 200 times. The country has 25 million mobile phone subscribers, some 55% of the population. The Internet has become an integral part of our society, and not only for chatting on the phone or by text. E-commerce is more advanced here than virtually anywhere else in Asia. More than 60% of the securities trading is done online. Countless Koreans have gotten in touch with old classmates or army buddies.

How did this happen? Firstly, we can thank King Sejong, the 15th century inventor of the Korean alphabet, Hangul, which made it easy for Koreans to use computers. Korean parents believe so strongly in education that they have unconditionally invested in PCs for the home. South Korea is also small, with a population concentrated in one city: some 20 million in Seoul and its suburbs.

The economic crisis of 1997 was an important turning point. Well-educated young Koreans are now sick and tired of the tough business barriers maintained by the chaebol, Korea's conglomerates. I know, because when I started Daum, which now has 20 million subscribers, I was a 27-year-old dropout from a Ph.D. program in cognitive science. All I had was an idea I got from studying in France: that diversity makes people happy, and that the Internet would spread diversity much faster than anything else. That was just five years ago. The emerging generation is bursting with new and diverse ideas and the desire to go its own way, and in its ranks are the people working day and night at tens of thousands of Internet start-ups. It's a tribute to Koreans' willingness to embrace new technologies for their future growth and survival—and because it's more fun than the ways of old.

Lee Jae Woong is ceo of Daum Communications Corp., South Korea's largest Internet portal and e-mail service provider

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