South Korea's cell phone culture

[bhchao]

As China deals with a growing automobile culture, South Korea is dealing with a widespread cell phone culture.

This can be both good and bad depending on how you look at it. In the interconnected world we live in today, cell phones are useful for conducting business while on business travel. On the negative side, cell phones foster a materialistic culture where young adults crave the newest models. They can also distract students from their studies by allowing students to use them as tools to text message boyfriends or girlfriends while they are in class.

In South Korea today, if you don't have a cell phone, you are definitely out of the mainstream. In fact, my hypothesis is that if you are a single adult currently dating in Korea, not having a cell phone may be grounds for being dumped by the other person, and may also cost you a date in the first place. Having a cell phone today in Korea is a big must.

Not having a cell phone in China is considered less an abnormality than in Korea. On the positive side, cell phone users in China helped expose the SARS epidemic coverup through text messaging.

I plan on upgrading my old 5-year old Nokia cell phone into a Samsung model.

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/08/27/international/asia/27jeong.html

"...But if getting into what is considered the third best university is her long-term ambition, there is also something closer at hand: a new mobile phone.

"I've been asking for a new phone forever - since last year!" Hye Jin said, raising her left index finger. Good grades had earned her mother's promise to buy her a new model that was supposed to go on sale in a matter of days.

Hye Jin, who has had a mobile phone since the seventh grade, sends text messages without even glancing at the keypad. In class, she looks straight ahead, holding a pen in her right hand, punching away messages with the left on her phone under her desk. (Some boys have taken this rebelliousness further by carving holes in their desks, through which they look down at their phones.)

A new phone, a good university - goals shared, no doubt, with an equal degree of burning intensity by her peers - set the rhythm of Hye Jin's summer. In a country where every teenager's existence seems centered on entering a top university, which can determine one's future here much more than in the United States, such conformity is to be expected.

At the same time, hers is a generation coming of age in a fast-changing society. At 15, Hye Jin has only the slightest knowledge of the military governments that ruled South Korea until the 1980's. South Korea, especially since the financial crisis and deepening democratization of the 1990's, has transformed itself into the world's most wired society and the leading pop culture exporter to the rest of Asia...

Longstanding assumptions about women's roles, marriage, South Korea's relations with North Korea and the United States have been upended in half of Hye Jin's lifetime. The dizzying changes have created new possibilities, but they have also made Hye Jin's mother worry whether her daughter is tough enough for a radically different world.

As for Hye Jin, she thinks North Korea is a "poor country," not a "bad country." Like most South Koreans of her generation, though, she is against the peninsula's reunification as too heavy a financial burden on the South...

"This is the era of women," Mr. Jeong said. Hye Jin, who wants to become an English teacher, is aware that opportunities will be greater for her than they were for her mother.

"When we start working," she said, "there will be fewer instances of men asking women to pour tea or calling you 'Miss so-and-so.' "

But work is years away, at least six or seven, half a lifetime for a 15-year-old. More pressing are Hye Jin's new phone, which was still a day or two away. She would get a new number. She would have to take new photos to replace the ones in her old phone, of herself in different poses, her family, her uncle serving his two-year military service, her dog, Min.

A couple of days later, Hye Jin sent a text message with her new number. She could still type messages without glancing.

"Since the keypad is the same," her text message went, punctuated by emoticons expressing effusiveness and embarrassment, "I can write the same way ~~~^^;;" "

[Ian_Lee]

Interestingly the Japanese and Korean cell phone usrs are more interested in sending text messages than real talk.

In the trains/subways of Tokyo and Seoul, you can see yougnsters keep using their fingertips punching those tiny keypads on their cell phones.

But on the other hand, it is much less often seen in US or HK.

It seems the formers have now transformed to a "speechless" society which is good for my ears.

[Song You Shen]

Interestingly the Japanese and Korean cell phone usrs are more interested in sending text messages than real talk.

This is also prevelent in the Philippines. When I was over there everyone told me that they used Text Messages more because they were a fraction of the cost compared to using talking minutes.

Youshen.

[Yuchi]

This is also prevelent in the Philippines. When I was over there everyone told me that they used Text Messages more because they were a fraction of the cost compared to using talking minutes.

Yep! I'm not sure about how much each minute costs, but when I was in Shanghai, I had a cell phone and I text messaged over 175 messages (If it weren't for my american friend who stayed in China the same weeks, I probably wouldn't have sent any, )! I still have all of them saved to my memory card, they were only 10 cents RMB per message. I used China Mobile I believe.

Cellphones were amazingly expensive though, the phone I wanted was on display for 3992 RMB or 499 USD while only 299 USD here in america. I can understand why though.

[Homeward]

Everyone in the UK prefers to text cos it's cheaper.

You can have a summarized 1 minute conversation (which costs like 30p per minute) into a couple of lines which costs 10p per text.

Also, just like Japan & SK, everyone in the UK has to have the latest phone, even me. But I shop for my latest phone in HK, cos UK latest are 2 years out of date.

[Ferno]

there must be more to the text thing... if they will spend the $$$ on the best phones, with all the frills (still/video cameras, MP3 players, hands-free, wireless internet, etc...), why can't they dish out a bit more for actually talking on the phone instead of using it as an instant messenger? I think they just prefer the directness, annonyominity, and control of text msgs.. (no one can read your voice or mood, you can respond whenever you want to, no akward pauses...)