Korean Saga

A bit of dirty laundry first. For everybody loves lurid stories.

Those from outside Korea might have an impression that Korea is "linux friendly". Rightly so, because that's how it was portrayed in the media. See, for example, a news report which appeared at silicon.com on 1 October 2003 ("Korea jettisons Windows for Linux").

Now, this needs to be put in context. In December 2002, Mr Roh Moo Hyun was elected President due largely to volunteer activists who used internet to campaign for his election. This was a remarkable event which demonstrated formidable potentials of internet as a new means of communication and empowerment of grassroot citizens. Professor Lawrence Lessig is not the only one who is intrigued by this.

On 25 January 2003, one month before Mr Roh's official inauguration, the entire Korean internet went completely paralyzed for 9 hours. No banking, no stock transaction, nothing ("Virus knocks out Internet for 9 hours"). The catastrophy demonstrated that the Korean internet was defenceless in the wake of a virus which exploits security loopholes of Windows OS. The attack was worldwide. No other country was so severely affected as Korea. At that time, the market share of MS OS for client PC's in Korea was 99.4% (Source [in Korean]).

President Roh himself is known to be a competent user of computer. He even wrote a small program or two. Also, he is probably one of few Heads of State in the world who actually know what Linux is. Anyway, perhaps in an effort to make up for the "humiliation" of 25 January 2003, Korean government announced, seven months after President Roh took office, an astonishing policy. It was promised that, by 2007, 20% of client PC's and 30% of servers in Korea shall be Linux based! This stirred up a wild excitement among Linux users worldwide which account for less than 3% of computer users. The rest of the world looked upon Korea as a "paradise" for Linux users.

However, in a spectacular reversal of fortune (which has never been properly reported in or outside Korea), the government subsequently changed its policy in the opposite direction. The country is now completely dominated by MS. There is no point in counting the "die hard" Mac or Linux users in Korea who do not even add up to 0.1%. Even these users all have to have Windows as well. The country became most hostile to open source software and Mac users.

And yet, Korea has probably the most progressive statutes which impose various legal duties on the Executive to implement highly advanced and "neutral" IT infrastructure. Electronic Signature Act requires official certificate authorities to provide certification services for Linux and Mac users as well as Windows users. Electronic Commerce Act imposes a legal duty on the government to ensure inter-operability of e-commerce solutions. The statute requires the government to adopt and implement platform-neutral (obviously!) Technical Standard applicable to e-commerce. The Act for Reduction of Information Disparity and the Act for Promotion of Digitisation of Information impose comprehensive duties on the government to take measures to provide unrestricted access to digitised information for people with disability, social or economic disadvantage, ie. those who cannot afford to buy high-spec hardware or Windows pre-installed computers.

The present reality is a grotesque insult to all these statutory requirements. For reasons unknown to us, the government repeatedly granted license to "official" CA's who refused, and still refuse, to serve Linux or Mac users. The vast majority of Korean websites (including 100% of government-run websites) rely on ActiveX controls. Linux, Mac users (and even Windows users who choose "other" web browsers) are prevented from logging on to the Korean e-goverment website (www.egov.go.kr), which is dubbed "open" government with a bizarre sense of humour.

What is more, in the late 90's, the government started to subsidise IT-related education (web designing courses, in particular) offered by private academies. Many of them are members of "Microsoft Partner Program". Most of these government subsidised courses were devoted to the sole purpose of propagating MS-optimized, proprietary web designing techniques. As a result of several years of these government funded "education programs", very few people in Korea now have any knowledge of standard compliant web page designing.

Handful of end-users have been tirelessly complaining for years. The government has firmly ignored their complaints. The Federation of Korean Scientists made an official denouncement of the government's failures in IT related policies (already in 2003; source [ko]). That too was ignored. A tiny portion of web designing community has been making heroic efforts to campaign for standard compliance. But it remains a lone voice in the wilderness.

Now, what do you think?

Do you think this is something that can be remedied by end-users' campaigning? What end-users? There aren't any who can complain now, let alone campaign. Accurate figures for 2006 are not available. But I suppose MS Windows' market share in Korea has "steadily increased" from 99.4% which was reached already in 2002. I want to believe that this whole mess was due to pure incompetence and ignorance on the part of the government. But I sometimes wonder whether upward of 99% market share is something that can be achieved through sheer incompetence and ignorance.

But the best part of the saga is this: Korean government spends about $400m p.a. "to promote open source software and web accessibility".