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he mobile
phone plays a
vital role in
South Korean
daily life. What
are the most
interesting
aspects of its use?
First perhaps is the rapid rate of
change. The world average
replacement cycle for phones is
about 18 months. In Korea it is 11
months, so every year the total
population gets a new phone, on
average. Older teenagers and
young adults change phones every
6 months. With this rate of
replacement, a real culture of
fashion emerges for phones, there is
an autumn fashion and a spring
fashion for new phones! It goes
very much beyond that. The
European average usage level of
SMS text messaging is about 2
messages per day. The USA is at
about 1 message per day. Among
students in South Korea, 30% of
ADDICTED
TODIGITAL
The world's first 'rescue camp' for
teenagers addicted to the internet
has been set up near Seoul. South
Korea is on the leading edge of the
digital revolution, as digital guru
Tomi Ahonen
found when he
researched "Digital Korea" with
co-author Jim O'Reilly. In South
Korea the digital future has already
arrived – is it the path to a virtual
nightmare or to doing more fun
things, in more fun ways?
T
THE CHANNEL
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JANUARY08
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students will average 100 SMS text
messages sent per day!!! That
means that the fingers are perfectly
in tune with the keypad of the phone.
Messages are sent at immediate
and "near-telepathic" speeds.
You found that average daily
consumption of DMB digital TV
on mobiles was 129 minutes
(Jan 07), that's over two hours
per day. What are they
watching?
TV viewing is not charged per
session, it is either free (advertising
sponsored) or it has a set monthly
fee for unlimited watching, then as
we have the phone always with us,
it rapidly becomes a "background
noise" device. We are not actively
watching MTV or CNN all day, it
means that the service is on in the
background. Using a bluetooth
headset we can privately listen to
the TV programme while doing
whatever it is we do. The same with
mobile TV in the car, it is mostly
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