What Silicon Valley Can Learn from Seoul | Hacker News Reader

What Silicon Valley Can Learn from Seoul

nytimes.com

78 pointsLibertatea36 comments

The central point discussed here in that the mobile and internet infrastructure is far ahead of its time in Seoul. But the author makes a few statements that don't settle well with me:

> By 2020, the [South Korean] government predicts, it will be 1,000 times faster — so fast you could download a feature-length movie in approximately one second. In the same time frame, the Federal Communications Commission hopes to wire most American homes with broadband Internet with speeds of at least 100 megabytes per second, or roughly one six-hundredth of South Korea’s goal.

South Koreas's land size is MUCH smaller (smaller than most US states). Although there is something to be said about why any single US state isn't as good at infrastructure as South Korea (probably California can be the only candidate), that is a different interesting discussion.

> By contrast, American mobile design is fetishistically minimalist. Silicon Valley applauds itself for good taste in this regard, but this aesthetic has sprung up partly in response to a deficiency: Americans have learned to strip out bandwidth-guzzling elements because they slow down loading times.

This can't be farther from the truth.. "our" design aesthetic is not on a basis of trying to save bandwidth. I don't think we will ever have "Pages are drenched in neon and populated with googly-eyed cartoon animals." even if our infrastructure was better.

It's not landsize its a combination of two things:

They commonly live in massive high rise buildings--like judge dredd looking things--that are easier to network.

And the South Korean government heavily subsidizes/prioritizes deployment. America could afford to this too, but it has other priorities.

"Judge dredd looking things" not only sounds derogatory it's not entirely true.

Seoul is a sprawling mega-metropolis, similar to cities like Tokyo. But it's not only places around Seoul that enjoys fast internet speeds. In fact, cities like Daejeon and Daegu has ISPs with the fastest top speeds. [1]

We've had government subsidies for wider coverage and faster speeds. Perhaps by making our infrastructure less competitive and being lax in our enforcement of contracts we've created this problem for ourselves. High-speed internet isn't something that should be unique to mega-metropolises.

[1] http://au.pcmag.com/networking/30145/feature/fastest-isps-20...

Edit: formatting

I didn't mean it derogatorily, but I agree that sounds derogatory.

I like high rises and loved visiting Korea.

The thing that stuck out most was that you'd have massive high rise buildings in semi-rural areas hours outside of Seoul. Americans would fill that space up with McMansions.

> South Koreas's land size is MUCH smaller (smaller than most US states). Although there is something to be said about why any single US state isn't as good at infrastructure as South Korea (probably California can be the only candidate), that is a different interesting discussion.

We also don't have cities with better internet infrastructure. NYC and SF both come to mind.

Basically, the appeal to density fails to account for the gap in any meaningful way.

We don't have cities like Seoul. Seoul's metro area has 5x the density of NYC's, and the political power that comes from having half the population of the whole country.

And the irony is that the taxes in Seoul are much much lower than NYC.

Even if a city has the 1/10 of the density of Seoul, there's no reason for a city as important as NYC to have internet infrastructure as bad as it is now.

Density argument doesn't make sense. Why can't major cities in US have faster internet than rural areas?

What does "importance" have to do with anything? "Importance" doesn't dictate how much money companies are willing to spend on internet infrastructure. The number of potential customers you can hit for the cost of lying a mile of fiber does.

They do. Broadband access in rural US is terrible [1].

[1] http://www.ibtimes.com/rural-broadband-access-still-lacking-...

The "appeal to density" explains some but not all of it. The other issue is laws that grant de facto monopolies to telecom providers.

> This can't be farther from the truth.. "our" design aesthetic is not on a basis of trying to save bandwidth.

No, it's more to do with 'democratising' app design, and cutting the expense of (good) designers.

The quality of the connexion has little to do with geography or urban planning, but national unity and pride: think of South Korea as the country that builds both the largest boats and the fanciest (non-Apple) phones. Large engineering companies are helped by an alignement of government and industrial elites. Other countries with similar traditions (France, Sweden) have large militaro-industrial complexes, in addition to faster internet speeds than the US. Rather than make weapons, South Korea focused on telecoms and boats. They have futuristic speeds because they wanted to, and every one in charge (real estate promoters, local officials) made that happen. They did not stop to install fibre because the mayor didn’t get his pork-barrel, their cut over sales of new flats, or because models projected the installation would not be profitable if only x% of local users would switch to the Premium option: they built it, because internet access was good for everyone.

Counterpoint, Japan also forwent building arms and instead built infrastructure and "robots and ai" and have their chaebol counterparts in keiretsu yet their internet infrastructure lags. I don't think its simple as not spending on arms and having heavy government-industry cooperation.

Could you explain where Japan's internet infrastructure lags? There has been cheap and fast internet for as long as I have lived here (since 2006)

I misspoke in that I broadly meant not just broadband, but the software and hardware industry in general lags Korea as well as most western economies, of which Japan, despite being in the east, is a "western" economy.

So yes broadband is well adopted, but the national industry didn't adopt computer science as well as other economies. That's my feeling anyway, please correct if this take is incorrect.

I think you're exaggerating on both counts. While rental Wi-Fi in Seoul was cheaper and more reliable (at least last time I was there), broadband in Tokyo is definitely better than America. I may be wrong, but FLETS (NTT's FTTH/FTTB service with 1Gbps speeds) seems to be available everywhere in the 23 wards, and probably most of the urban areas around them.

The real problem is that the prices are high for both broadband and mobile, so many people forego broadband for a Pocket WiFi.

Seoul is probably cheaper than Tokyo (in mobile, broadband and many other things), but that doesn't make it significantly more advanced.

I think the same could be said about software and hardware. I'd like to hear better examples of where Japanese hardware lags behind Korean (in technology level, not sales). When it comes to software, I'd say both countries are actually ages behind the US, especially Silicon Valley - but almost everyone does. I'm not very much familiar with the Korean Software market (except for their SEED and ActiveX fiasco), but being a Samsung owner (on my third Samsung phone) who is not an iPhone fan to say the least, I can't say any good word whatsoever about the Samsung Software. Android is a good OS, but once Samsung add their touch(wiz), it becomes a bloated bugfest. The hardware is definitely amazing though.

> Although there is something to be said about why any single US state isn't as good at infrastructure as South Korea (probably California can be the only candidate), that is a different interesting discussion.

Which part of California has good infrastructure? Besides all the highways.

Having many highways isn't quite the same as having many good highways...

The land size argument falls flat when you consider that places like LA, SF, or NYC are just as densely populated, yet have shit for broadband.

our" design aesthetic is not on a basis of trying to save bandwidth

Netflix. Amazon Prime Movie. I often, often, get notices on Neflix/Amazon that some movies can't be streamed due to network issue. Come on...

You're absolutely right; South Korea traditionally tended towards making interfaces more complex.

"Because Koreans like things to look complex," they responded. It is a symbol: it shows their status. [1] This piece is from 2007, though, and some of the lines in it that refer to the West simply don't apply anymore. I think we all know who made simplicity the new, expensive status symbol.

[1]http://www.jnd.org/dn.mss/simplicity_is_highly.html

I sometimes wonder how much of the US tech industry's success and influence depends on, 1) access to the world's largest market (including the access that comes from cultural familiarity), 2) the U.S.'s already enormous global cultural influence, 3) English, it's distribution across the globe and the fact that much IT is built on it, and 4) first-mover advantage.

In other words, to what degree are those the reasons that the world uses Facebook and Android, and not the South Korean equivalents?

(Yes, the question is a bit theoretical and likely impossible to answer definitively.)

This is a very good point, and I'm sure it depends on all 4 of things very heavily.

There were multiple Facebook competitors, but Facebook executed their product MUCH better than everyone else (real names/people, exclusive to certain communities at first) and I would think it was a big cause for their success.

As for Android, I was told recently that it was released in a time when carriers (Verizon) defined what apps should be shipped in phones, and largely commissioned manufacturers to make said apps.. Android helped make this a non-issue by letting anyone make apps, making a market, and letting every phone manufacturer ship it for free (no one else did this). Even if Android was crappy in comparison to the iPhone initially, it provided a lot of freedom for the manufacturers, making it very attractive.

Not to mention every non-iOS/Android mobile OS back then was garbage in comparison.

There may be a strong case for the English part of it. India also has a thriving tech sector and English knowledge plays a significant role there.

Actually not impossible to answer.

Yes, all 4 factors do help US tech industry succeed.

1) Google could have made the amount of cash from ads because of population size of US. Had it started in places like Korea, it could've been profitable but not to the point where it can finance other fantastic ideas and projects, starting a snowballing effect.

2) True too. A tech company from US? Everyone else around the world is bound to hear about it. A hot tech company from non-US? Most others hear about it when it's acquired by US company. KakaoTalk makes millions and millions in real profit and has 93% market penetration of a fairly not-so small country but no one outside knows about it. And when Facebook buys WhatsApp for $16 billion in paper money, and everyone knows about WhatsApp.

3) Programming is possible only if you know english alphabets. Much tools/methodologies are first available in English. Big factor why large S Korean corporations have sucky software. If you can speak/write/read English well, far more prestigious careers paths are available for you in the mega corporations. Although this is fast changing due to effect of Facebook and other internet success stories.

4) Maybe. But not always. Cyworld in S Korea was a social network service that was launched about 4-5 years before Myspace and facebook. At one point it dominated S Korean cyber space. Then they got complacent and stagnated. And facebook came in.

Interesting anecdotal. I heard that Andy Rubin first floated Android OS to Samsung to launch. Samsung already had been one of the big phone makers at that point. Samsung for some reason turned down the offer. I think they knew (probably right) they couldn't make Android succeed. They are hardware makers, weak in software overall, and not part of the English speaking sphere. Some Korean observers chided Samsung for letting Android get away to Google, but I think had Samsung been the main partner of Android, Android wouldn't have succeeded as it has now.

I don't believe there's much causation between SK's infrastructure and the kind of software they make. What they described in the article - horizontally integrated apps, cluttered websites, higher adoption of online payments and a well developed delivery culture are common all across SE Asia, including China which until recently had pretty bad internet infrastructure (and it's still not good).

This nature of SE Asian tech has been there for a while. It seems like they are generally faster at adopting technologies that have been validated somewhere else but perhaps not widely adopted.

There's definitely lessons to be learnt but I think they're sociological.

EDIT: "information-dense" is perhaps more accurate than "cluttered"

This article misses a lot of things.

First of all, it's not what SV can learn from them, it's US carriers and gov't who should learn from Korea.

Second, SV companies are doing just fine, creating products that are right for the market under given infrastructure. Should the market/infrastructure change, SV companies will adapt and create products/services fit for the market. I don't believe SV companies' products behind. They are just right for the markets they serve, as Korean products are right for Korean market.

can anybody tell me is South Korea is still stuck with Internet Explorer for e-commerce?

I thought it was some bit of legislation that mandated the use of an ActiveX plugin in order to do encryption.

edit: found this link http://betanews.com/2015/04/03/south-korea-looking-to-scrap-...

It's still atrocious, at least with online banking.

'virtual stickers' == 'virtual scarcity'

Many of the points seemed good and worthy of examining when considering policies locally, however that is one idea that I really think needs to die.

The article says that Google put their first Asian campus in Seoul this May. Hasn't Google had campuses in India and China for a while now?

And Tokyo, Singapore...

the trans-pacific gap described in the style of product design is interesting, but i doubt the idea to look at the habits of seoulians as a crystal ball to predict the future - rather, the diffrence probably stems from the internet culture and history unique to seoul. i don't think its necessary or likely that the tech cultures of the west and east converge anytime soon.

NY Times loves to lecture Silicon Valley - almost as if they are rooting against us.

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