Next stop, South Korea. An easier one this, because there’s so much going on in the country, and in many ways they’re way ahead of us.
Famously, there is [OhmyNews](http://english.ohmynews.com/index.asp), which got the attention of the net pundits a couple of years ago and sparked the craze for ‘Citizen Journalism’.
Then there’s gaming – the world of Korean MMORPGs is so far ahead of ours that it’s embarassing. A top player like [Lee Yunyeol](http://rossignol.cream.org/?p=284) can earn $200,000 a year, and is on television daily. Gaming/Internet cafes called “[PC Bangs](http://www.driftreality.com/seoul/pcbang.html)” are gradually being replaced by playing at home over a broadband connection, and so the national addiction continues to grow.
South Korean pop culture is taking over East Asia, in a trend given the moniker ‘[Hallyu](http://www.asiamedia.ucla.edu/article.asp?parentid=37127)’, or ‘Korean Wave’. The anti-Hallyu backlash in Taiwan and Japan has made governments there consider restricting Korean-origin broadcasts on national television, and some have even demanded that Korean television broadcast programs from other countries. Currently trendy Korean exports include the film [Oldboy](http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20050324/REVIEWS/50310001/1023) and the singer [Rain](http://www.iht.com/articles/2006/01/27/news/rain.php?rss) ([Ji-Hoon Jung](http://www.asiafinest.com/korean/rain-bi.htm). But I wonder if the whole ‘Korean Wave’ is a storm in a teacup; in 2004 the revenues from foreign sales of Korean TV were only [$71.5m](http://times.hankooki.com/lpage/200504/kt2005042117374410440.htm)
[Global Voices](http://www.globalvoicesonline.org/-/world/east-asia/south-korea/) doesn’t cover Korea as well as I’d expected, but it does at least point to [Asian pages](http://asiapages.typepad.com/), the diary of a foreign worker in South Korea.
Unlike with Mongolia, this has been all pop-culture and no politics. Korea is important enough that we get to hear about the bigger political stories anyway. Recently, the news has been how the [Prime minister forced to resign](http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/asia-pacific/4804018.stm) because he was playing golf rather than dealing with a rail strike. He’s been replaced by [South Korea’s first female Prime Minister](http://en.ce.cn/World/Asia-Pacific/200603/24/t20060324_6483052.shtml). And we all heard about the [cloning scandal](http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/asia-pacific/4824486.st), because that had sex and science and scandal, all rolled up together.
So, that’s enough of Korea. On to the next country…somewhere East European this time, I think.
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WaltDe