Korea is in the process of becoming an icon in the electronics business, just like Japan. Korea harbours a number of key players when it comes to high-tech, and the penetration of internet access is just amazing in that country. 100Mbps connections at home are no exception over there, and everything seems to be cool when it comes to surfing the wwweb in Korea, especially when it comes to site and forum participation. A large number of Korean forums require registration, just like on AkihabaraNews by the way, just to avoid a lot of spam, but things are a bit stronger in Korea. You don't only need to provide your nickname, but also your real name, your address, your phone number and... your ID card (Citizen ID) number! It's quite scary to see that a lot of sites do not have SSH encoding during the registration process, and a bit of hacking should make all those details visible. What also happens according to a number of friends is that a number of webmasters sell these details to shady companies or even spammers!
A number of countries would like to police the net, but Korea is already 10 years ahead of that concept, as well as on the negative aspects of that monitoring policy. The other negative aspect of this whole Korean thing is that non-ID Number holders do not have access like the non-Koreans for example... which smells a bit... a lot actually... of racism.
I don't understand how our Korean friends undergo all this without a fight. Not all websites are affected by this policy, but a lot are. It seems that the Korean government has taken notice of all this though, because they are currently investigating on how they can protect the surfing Korean citizens.
Feel free to post any remarks on our forum (and no, we will NOT sell your details once you register!)
Image courtesy of PITAGORA SA
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