{"id":326,"date":"2017-12-08T10:45:28","date_gmt":"2017-12-08T10:45:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog-staging.cdn.persona.ly\/blog\/?p=326"},"modified":"2022-01-20T15:03:51","modified_gmt":"2022-01-20T15:03:51","slug":"blurring-the-line-korea-as-a-lens-into-the-future","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog-staging.cdn.persona.ly\/blog\/2017\/12\/blurring-the-line-korea-as-a-lens-into-the-future\/","title":{"rendered":"Blurring the Line (Part I) &#8211; Korea as a Lens Into The Future"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">When you ask a random, younger westerner what he knows about Korea and Koreans he would probably mention one or more of the following off the top of his head: <\/span><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">They have amazing Internet speeds.<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><strong><em>OPPA GANGNAM STYLE!<\/em><\/strong><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Starcraft is kind of a national sport there.<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">While all of these statements are trivial and rather dull on the surface level (except the Starcraft one), they are all true.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">This article series will try to show you they are also intertwined, why the <\/span><b>ARPU of Korean gamers is now estimated at $86.68 <\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">(source: <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/www.statista.com\/outlook\/211\/125\/mobile-games\/south-korea)\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">statista<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">), and how Line became a mobile powerhouse, which isn\u2019t doing badly in the offline world as well, making close to $20 million dollars from merchandise sales in 2014 (source: <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/techcrunch.com\/2016\/06\/13\/chat-app-line-makes-over-270-million-a-year-from-selling-stickers\/\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">TechCrunch<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">).<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">This 1st article in the series discusses the Korean Internet infrastructure and some of its effects on Korean culture.<\/span><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<h3>South Korea Really, Really Cares About the Internet<\/h3>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Let\u2019s start off by understanding what makes Korea\u2019s Internet speeds so great. You\u2019ll probably be surprised by the fact that during 1988-2002 the Korean government invested 11 billion dollars in DSL infrastructure, while the United States government invested a measly amount of 2 billion dollars.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">If you take into account the differences in size and population, as illustrated below, you can start to understand how much Koreans understood the Internet is going to become a major part of our lives and the economy way ahead of most of the western world.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><a href=\"https:\/\/blog-staging.cdn.persona.ly\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/12\/US-vs.-KR.png\"><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"aligncenter wp-image-328 size-full\" src=\"https:\/\/blog-staging.cdn.persona.ly\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/12\/US-vs.-KR.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"600\" height=\"400\" data-wp-pid=\"337\" srcset=\"https:\/\/blog-staging.cdn.persona.ly\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/12\/US-vs.-KR.png 600w, https:\/\/blog-staging.cdn.persona.ly\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/12\/US-vs.-KR-300x200.png 300w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 600px) 100vw, 600px\" \/><\/a>(sources: Wikipedia <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/United_States\">US<\/a>, <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/South_Korea\">KR<\/a>, Jin, D., 2010, <a href=\"https:\/\/dl.acm.org\/citation.cfm?id=1941906\">Korea&#8217;s Online Gaming Empire<\/a>)<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Korea is a <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">100x <\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">smaller and has 6x fewer people, yet they invested 5.5x more than the US in DSL infrastructure between 1998-2002. <\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Even when taking into account the fact that it\u2019s significantly harder to build infrastructure across the huge United States compared to the relatively tiny South Korea, this really shows how much Koreans dig the Internet and understood its potential extremely early.<\/span><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<h3>What Does This Have to Do With Starcraft Being So Popular?<\/h3>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Starcraft is an RTS (real-time strategy) video game for the PC that was released in 1998 by Blizzard, who have grown to be one of the biggest game developers in the world. The game gained popularity worldwide rather quickly following its release, and a lot of us already know it helped create the huge phenomena that we know today as esports. <\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">But if I told you that competitive tournaments of Starcraft were broadcasted on Korean <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">television <\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">in <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">1999<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">, would you believe me? Well, you don\u2019t have to take my word, you can see for yourself:<\/span><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/5xQjEDnFhAM\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">I know, right? They even had a studio with special chairs based on the Starcraft\u2019s design. Back then you might have called the producers of this televised tournament deranged. In retrospect, they are geniuses and visionaries and basically invented\u00a0esports.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><strong><em>The next article in the series will discuss the effects of the\u00a0Starcraft on the Korean Internet and culture further as well as the growth of Line and other Korean mobile giants (or Colossi, for you Starcraft fans out there).<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>When you ask a random, younger westerner what he knows about Korea and Koreans he would probably mention one or more of the following off the top of his head: They have amazing Internet speeds. OPPA GANGNAM STYLE! Starcraft is kind of a national sport there. While all of these statements are trivial and rather &hellip; <\/p>\n<p class=\"link-more\"><a href=\"https:\/\/blog-staging.cdn.persona.ly\/blog\/2017\/12\/blurring-the-line-korea-as-a-lens-into-the-future\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;Blurring the Line (Part I) &#8211; Korea as a Lens Into The Future&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":329,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[23,6],"tags":[20,26,27],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog-staging.cdn.persona.ly\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/326"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog-staging.cdn.persona.ly\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog-staging.cdn.persona.ly\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog-staging.cdn.persona.ly\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog-staging.cdn.persona.ly\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=326"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blog-staging.cdn.persona.ly\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/326\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog-staging.cdn.persona.ly\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/329"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog-staging.cdn.persona.ly\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=326"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog-staging.cdn.persona.ly\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=326"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog-staging.cdn.persona.ly\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=326"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}