Internet in South Korea

South Korea is the world leader in Internet connectivity, having the world's fastest average internet connection speed.^[1][2] About 45 million people or 92.4% of the population are Internet users,^[3] this shows how the nation has a substantial relationship with their digital space. It has consistently ranked first worldwide in the UN ICT Development Index since it launched. The government established policies and programs that facilitated the rapid expansion and use of broadband.

National program

South Korea leads in the number of DSL connections per head worldwide. ADSL is standard, but VDSL has started growing quickly. ADSL commonly offers speeds of 3 Mbit/s to 8 Mbit/s, with VDSL accordingly faster. The large proportion of South Korea's population living in apartment blocks helps the spread of DSL, as does a high penetration of consumer electronics in general. Many apartment buildings in built-up metropolitan areas, such as Seoul and Incheon, have speeds of up to 100 Mbit/s. VDSL is commonly found in newer apartments while ADSL is normally found in landed properties where the telephone exchange is far away.

The Internet has a higher status for many Koreans than it does in the West, and the government actively supports this.^[4] According to the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation South Korea's internet is the most developed in the world.^[5] Particularly Seoul, the nation's capital, has been called "the bandwidth capital of the world".^[6] In January 2006, it became the first country to achieve over 50% broadband penetration per capita.^[7] By 2005, it was the first country to complete the conversion from dial-up to broadband.^[8] It also has the cheapest, fastest broadband in the world.^[9] Now there are experiments with speeds of 1 Gigabit per second. Additionally, in 2005 96.8% of South Korean mobile phones had Internet access.^[10]

ISP and IDC

There are 3 major ISPs. They are KT Corp, SKBroadband, and LGU+ (previously DACOM) and provides the broadband and the dedicated Internet circuit including Ethernet and operating Internet data centers in Seoul. Major MSOs are TBroad, C&M, and CJ Hello vision.

Internet speed

As of 2015, South Korea has the fastest average internet connection in the world at 26.7 Mbit/s, with a peak internet connection speed of 95.3 Mbits/s according to the report State of the Internet published by Akamai Technologies,^[11] which is nearly 40% faster than the next fastest country, Sweden, whose average internet speed is 19.1 Mbit/s. South Korea's speed is almost five times faster than the world average of 5.6 Mbit/s and more than twice as fast as the United States at 12.6 Mbit/s. It is important to note that 100 Mbit/s services are the average standard in urban South Korean homes and the country is rapidly rolling out 1Gbit/s connections or 1,000 Mbit/s, at $20 per month,^[12] which is roughly 179 times as fast as the world average and 79 times as fast as the average speed in the United States.

Wireless broadband

South Korea has pulled ahead of every other country when it comes to broadband Internet in all categories including Speed and Quality, Adoption, Price, and Literacy and Gender Equality according to Internet Monitor.^[13] As many large, powerful countries begin to fall behind, broadband experts look to South Korea for solutions. However, there are multiple reasons why South Korea’s broadband is successful, such as, “Government planning, healthy competitive, urban population density, private-sector growth and Korean culture”,^[14] which have made it difficult for other countries to mimic their success.

Real name policy

There is a government-level proposal to stamp out anonymity in the South Korean internet environment.^[15]

The Korea Communications Commission considers to stop the real name policy.^[16]

Criticism

The Executive Chairman of Google, Eric Schmidt,^[17] made a negative remark on the South Korean internet environment for falling "a little bit behind" due to governmental regulations during a conference with Choi See-Joong, chairman of Korea Communications Commission, and President Park Geun hye.

Many of the online security breaches in South Korea seem to stem from a common use of comparatively outdated browsers and security software.^[18]

There is occasional criticism claiming that foreign websites are significantly slower than South-Korean websites, for example websites for video streaming. This is a common problem in any country trying to communicate over foreign waters, since the latency in transcontinental communication is higher due to the physical distance that the signal has to travel.

See also

• Internet censorship in South Korea
• Net neutrality

References

Further reading

• McCurry, Justin (July 13, 2010), "Internet addiction driving South Koreans into realms of fantasy", The Guardian 
• Ramstad, Evan; Woo, Jaeyeon (June 30, 2010), "South Korea Relaxes Curbs on Web Browsers", Wall Street Journal