Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
stallation and rental fees are almost always waived if a user signs a 12-month or longer
service contract. Monthly tariffs for standard broadband service with unlimited data usage
average around 30,000 won. Unlike their foreign counterparts, most South Korean Internet
providers typically don't provide subscribers with email addresses, so you'll want to make
sure you sign up for a web-based service such as Gmail or Hotmail to keep in touch with
people here and back home.
Those without a home connection can head for the nearest PC
bang
(room), the South
Korean version of the Internet café, which are found on every street corner. These range
from cramped smoky hovels populated by adolescent gamers to plush outlets with ergo-
nomic chairs and top-end printing equipment frequented by professional types, but they are
inevitably cheap—typically 1,000-2,000 won per hour—and reliable. Wireless connections
are also found all over the place, but there are fewer free or open wireless connections than
there are in your average Western city center; even coffee shops where you're a customer
will present log-in requests.
The failings of South Korea's IT infrastructure are mainly on the software side. Many
important government, bank, and retail sites are in Korean only and often require users to
input a South Korean ID number before they can proceed with the convenient online trans-
actions that so many agencies promise, effectively cutting foreign nationals out of the e-
commerce loop. The government has promised to bridge the gap by persuading more sites
to accept alien registration numbers, but a lot of work remains to be done in this regard.
Firefox, Safari, and Google Chrome users will also feel like something of a persecuted
minority—virtually all South Korean websites are optimized for Microsoft's Internet Ex-
plorer, and many require the installation of small security programs or ActiveX scripts that
work properly only on Windows systems.
The national postal service, government-run Korea Post, is inexpensive, reliable, and effi-
cient, with standard mail taking just a day (sometimes even less) to reach anywhere in the
country, and rarely more than a week or two to arrive at overseas destinations—if there is
a delay, it's probably on the receiving end. Letters or parcels shipped to South Korea like-
wise seem to have little trouble finding their way to the intended recipient, no matter how
mangled the English version of the local address.
