Ged Carroll

Category: korea | 韓國 | 한국 | 韓国

Annyeonghaseyo – welcome to the Korean category of this blog. This is where I share anything that relates to the Republic of Korea, business issues relating to Korea, the Korean people, Korean culture and the Korean language.

At the time of writing this category descriptor its been about 10 years since I have last been able to visit Korea. In that time the country has risen on the world stage.

There have been continual disputes with Japan and more recently continual bitter disputes with China. The Japanese disputes are related to history and territory. Korea had been occupied as part of the Imperial Japanese empire. Independence came with the end of the second world war.

The Chinese disputes are more complex. Chinese investors are buying up Korean property particularly in Seoul, Busan and Jeju island, while many Koreans can no longer get on the property ladder. Chinese tourists blitz Korean shops in a similar way to what they’ve previously done in Hong Kong.

Chinese nationalism has seen claims made on Korean cultural assets from the national dress to kimchi. Finally China has interfered in Korea’s efforts to defend itself from the threat in the north.

Often posts that appear in this category will appear in other categories as well. So if Samsung launched a new smartphone that I thought was particularly notable that might appear in wireless as well as Korea. If there is Korean subjects that you think would fit with this blog, feel free to let me know by leaving a comment in the ‘Get in touch’ section of this blog here.

  • June 2016 research slides

    Here is a copy of the slides that I pull together (when I have the time) of publicly available data that would be of use. This is the June 2016 research slides.

    Google search volumes

    This month I have some new data around search which came from disclosures at Google I/O in terms of search volumes. We talk about social as if search has gone out of style but its growth is still staggering. This is now driven by mobile device penetration and adoption as computing devices on the go. It also speaks to the wider number of questions that search now answers. It used to be that search answered with ‘facts’ found online. It then became more contextual with shortcuts that gave you the weather forecast or a foreign exchange rate. Mobile moved this on further to items like local recommendations.

    Partly through the search box, but also by more meta detail about the device doing the searching and its location to within a few metres due to GPS and cell tower triangulation. Voice interaction has also started to impact search volume. Image driven search still seems to be an area that could drive much more potential search volume, that would be valuable for commerce.
    Google global search volume
    Looking at global search revenue over time, Google’s monopoly position becomes immediately apparent. It is amazing how Bing and Yahoo! haven’t managed to grow market share but just transfer value from one to the other. In the Chinese market, Sohu has been obliterated with Baidu search. But one does have to wonder about the value of web search, when so much internet usage now happens in the WeChat eco-system.
    Global Search Revenues
    More details about me here.
    Slide20

    Full presentation

    Full presentation available for download as a PDF on Slideshare and you can find more research related posts here.

  • Competition in logistics + more

    Failure of competition in logistics market – The EU thinks this website is the key to fixing its weak e-commerce market — Quartz – surely there is some arbitrage play for ‘trumpeting’ deliveries in and out to take advantage of lowest cost parcel routing? Given the amount of parcel carriers why is there a failure of market competition in logistics. I suspect that gathering data on this by the EU is the first step; in a similar way to what happened on mobile roaming rates. More Europe-related posts here

    WeChat failed to go global | Techinasia – the thing I took away from this foreign campaigns was how similar they were to what I would have expected a foreign company to do in China. I suspect that they weren’t localised enough and Tencent didn’t think about a compelling hook

    Housing crisis in China’s ‘Silicon Valley’: Huawei, other hi-tech giants head for cheaper cities as rising costs deter talents – also provides opportunities for start-ups to take up staff that don’t want to make the move

    Nokia could cut up to 15,000 jobs | Telecom Asia – not surprising there would have been a lot of overlap between them

    Adidas to Return Mass Shoe Production to Germany in 2017 | Business of Fashion – isn’t likely to be traditional adidas models like the Gazelle or Superstar as designs are adapted for the robot production line that Adidas intends to use

    Why Huawei is suing Samsung over cellphone patents – Recode –  the amount of redactions in this document is interesting. The optics of the court case are trying to position Huawei as an innovator. Huawei will win in the Chinese court filling. The US one could be more interesting. If Huawei is considered to be abusing its position it could find itself in an EU court case though

    A new study shows how government-collected “anonymous” data can be used to profile you — Quartz

    Even Apple is acknowledging that the “iPads in education” fad is coming to an end | Quartz – which has to be worrisome for tablets in business surely?

    Why Big Apps Aren’t Moving to Swift (Yet)

  • Disaster at BBC + more

    A recipe for disaster at the BBC | Broadstuff – really good guide for people outside the UK on what is happening to the public service broadcaster. From beloved Aunty Beeb to disaster at the BBC

    Nokia back in mobile phone business | TotalTelecom – interesting move via HMD. It will be interesting to see how much brand equity is left in Nokia mobile devices. It will be interesting to see how HMD will do things differently from Microsoft/Nokia. More writing on Nokia here.

    This nifty device translates foreign languages in real-time | TheNextWeb – I would have to try it, I don’t believe it from what I’ve seen so far from the likes of Nuance and Google.

    Kevin Smith Is Making an Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai TV Show – I so hope that this is true. I loved the kooky original film version. It had big vision, 80s fashion, but not a big budget to match – which was a big part of its charm

    Why Snapchat Doesn’t Care About India — The Information – build for the markets were the advertising revenue and mobile structure make it worthwhile. Countries with low ARPU may not enrich the companies. They won’t attract much ad revenue and may even require specialist apps to take account of low bandwidth or local servers to comply with national data laws.

    North Korea’s new ad men try out pitches to new consumer class | Reuters – This uniquely North Korean style of advertising may have developed out of trade fairs, Abrahamian said.

    As the “donju” have earned money in the unofficial economy, the flaunting of wealth has become more commonplace, especially in Pyongyang where those with access to political capital are often the wealthiest traders.

    The advertisements seem acceptable inside shops, but not outdoors, Abrahamian said. During North Korea’s recent Workers’ Party congress, ads could be seen in several Pyongyang shops. – this sounds like the door-to-door salesman that was popular in the UK when housewife was a more common occupation.

  • Granny’s Got Talent

    Granny’s Got Talent – The Korean Cultural Centre has a fortnightly screening of films. The latest one that I went to was Granny’s Got Talent or 헬머니 (pronounced Helmeoni – a literal translation would be Hell Granny).

    The premise is built around an old woman who is released from jail. She lost contact with her eldest son and tries to build that connection whilst living with her youngest son. The eldest son is a salary man with an over-bearing set of rich in-laws. The youngest son an inveterate gambler. To bail the youngest son out of trouble she participates in a Korean reality TV show based around cursing and chaos ensues. Veteran Korean actress carries off the role of Hell Granny with aplomb. I laughed so hard at some points I ended up crying.

    The raucous bawdy humour of Granny’s Got Talent works despite subtitles and has some amazing comedic set-pieces. But this rudeness is only the top layer in the story, where the viewer gets a glimpse at the hard life a strong woman had to live in a fast-developing South Korea.

    The film works on a number of levels touching a number of distinctly  Korean themes including the obsession with hierarchy, its turbulent political past, the corrupt aspects of chaebols and the love of family (no matter how dysfunctional).

    The piece that British audiences will most relate to is the exploitative nature of reality TV formats. Something that the English title translation picked up, rather than going with a literal translation of the Korean ‘Hell Granny’. ‘Hell Granny’ as a title focuses on the profanity. When I was young someone who swore or used bawdy language was said to have the mouth of a washer woman – a low class blue collar job. For more Korea related posts, go here.

    More Information
    Movie page on Daum in Korean

  • Monster internet surveillance + more

    Britain to pay billions for monster internet surveillance network | DuncanCampbell.org – lets park the moral dilemma this represents for a moment, would other countries come to the UK for expertise in terms of how to implement this locally? What countries would they be? What would the optics be on it? Who are the contractors that are likely to benefit from this work in the UK? More on security related issues here.

    I think it will be pretty hard to make lemonade out of these lemons. The business opportunity probably won’t scale to get a ‘space race’ type benefit, the likely client countries may pose problems in terms of optics. After Snowden, you can count out the EU territories. An obvious contractor to benefit would likely be Huawei (mix of telecoms and enterprise tech, fast growing player in enterprise storage) – who wouldn’t need British expertise to sell this monster internet surveillance solution abroad

    Let’s Talk About Amazon Reviews: How We Spot the Fakes | The Wirecutter – Although many reviews on Amazon are legitimate, more and more sketchy companies are turning to compensated Amazon reviews to inflate star ratings and to drum up purchases

    jenny odell • living a designed life – interesting essay on the rendered spaces used by developers in their sales pitches

    Samsung 837 – JWT Intelligence – really interesting retail space

    Italian Crime Series Gomorrah Kills Pornhub Traffic – Pornhub Insights – the power of mainstream media played out online, I am sure there would be a similar dip for something like Game of Thrones or the FA Cup Final in the US and UK respectively

    WPP Mobile New technology service from Maxus makes marketing as easy as Pie – gives WPP a bigger arbitrage opportunity but if you were a large client wouldn’t you be demanding similar implementation times?

    MSN Ceases Chinese Operations | ChnaTechNews – and that’s the last of the western portals when went there leaving the market

    CK Hutchison mulls legal challenge as EC thwarts its UK ambitions | TotalTele.com – not terribly surprising. UK Government’s big mistake was allowing BT to acquire a cellular operator again

    Misused English Words and Expressions in EU Publications – European Court of Auditors – Secretariat General Translation Directorate – fascinating document that explains why English speakers may feel exasperated at times with their EU counterparts

    Xiaomi faces existential crisis | Techinasia – if it loses the Chinese middle classes, it loses the opportunity to sell its eco-system of smart home products to them