Everything That's Wrong with the Korean Internet

And all in one relatively concise Korea Times article. Sarcastic comments in Italics:

The unveiling of 'Chrome,' Google's new Web browser, is one of the biggest stories to come out of the computer industry in years.
In Korea, the self-proclaimed capital of the digital world, however, the highly anticipated debut of Google’s latest product was met with relative indifference.

Self Proclaimed! Ha!

The beta version of Chrome, revealed Wednesday, certainly had a good share of innovations, such as its impressive quickness in loading pages and the independent functioning of tabs, which allows the browser to run when even one of the tabs crashes.
And it even works offline, making it a serious contender to challenge the dominance of Microsoft and its Internet Explorer browser.
However, all of this doesn’t matter much to Korean Internet users, who are so accustomed to IE, which comes packed and ready on their Window-based computers.
Most Korean Internet sites are reliant on Active -X , a program used to install software components on Web pages to enable particular functions, which can run on IE only.
This means that users of Chrome, or any other non-Microsoft browser like Firefox, would experience trouble logging in to email accounts, be prevented from online transactions like banking and credit-card purchases, and even stopped from downloading officials documents on the country's egovernment site, www.egov.go.kr, which only functions on IE.

Aaaaaaah!

When tested on popular portals such as Naver www.naver.com or Daum www.daum.net, Chrome was quick to load the main pages. However, the log-in security programs on the sties, which are installed through Active - X, didn’t function.

Double Aaaaaah!

The sites of major Korean banks such as Kookmin and Woori didn’t function normally on Chrome either. Accessing the e government site with the Google browser and the user is left with a message declaring 'install control for Macintosh user.'

Fucking typical!

However, Google is not intending to miss out on the Korean market and said it is planning to make Active - X operate on Chrome for a designated number of Korean sties.

Don't Encourage them!

The company is currently making a white list of major Korean sites that would be accessible on Chrome despite their reliance on Active - X, although that would certainly raise some eyebrows among supporters of the open-source movement.

Someone obviously doesn't understand Open Source...indeed, Google says you are more than welcome to tinker with the code. Doing so to make it possible to do my fucking online banking would be a welcome addition to the programme.

'We don’t intend to make Chrome inconvenient to Korean Internet users,' said Lois Kim, head of corporate communications and public affairs at Google Korea.

No! Make it inconvenient, then someone might actually get the point and dump Active - X because users are pissed off!

According to industry estimates, about 95 percent of Korean Internet sites are reliant on Active - X, which puts them in an awkward situation as Microsoft is moving to phase out the program over security concerns.

See - even Microsoft admits Active - X is shit.

As a result, Korean Internet users bite their fingernails whenever Microsoft releases a new product.

Bite their fingernails? Shit! I almost chucked my monitor out the window yesterday!

The release of Windows Vista, Microsoft's latest computer operating system, caused a massive disruption last year when Active - X programs used by online shopping malls and Internet banking sites didn't function properly. It took Microsoft and other companies nearly two months to adjust the problem.

You would have thought that might have been a clue - no?

Another worry is that Microsoft will reduce its support of Active - X in the soon-to-be released IE8, the latest version of its Internet browser.

Again, Microsoft gets half a clue. Shit! No one in Korea even uses IE 7 - they all still use IE 6 for God's sake!

ActiveX controls require full access to the Windows operating system,

which is why they are shit

which represents a serious security risk as malicious Web sites can direct the browser to download files that compromises the user's control of the computer.

Like spastic and ultimately useless "personal firewalls" and "Anti-keyboard logger" programmes from Ahn Labs and Hanabank that make (XP at any rate) into an unstable flying shit pile. (My computer blue screened twice today!?)

Die Active - X Die!

Comments

[Martina]

I know this is an old post of yours, but it's new pain for me as I'm new to Korea. Not being able to do online banking BLOWS, plus you can't even register on shopping sites like G-market or load the new Seoul Metro map on its website. Even before I was a Mac user, I sure as hell didn't use IE on my computer.

[Wayne]

There is a lawsuit being filed by a law professor in Korea University against the Korean government which promoted, if not created, this insane situation by indirectly endorsing the Active-X based user authentication process on the Internet. He's lost in the first ruling but an appeal is in progress (so keep your fingers crossed!). Despite the fact that there is a special law regulating e-commerce in Korea which stipulates that the user be given a choice not to install the service-provider's security software, banks and other financial institutions have disregarded this law and adopted a faux security system that pulls the wool over the eyes of on-line banking users and gives them a false sense of security.

http://openweb.or.kr/?page_id=61
http://openweb.or.kr/?page_id=22

[Stafford]

Wayne - Not to mention that even Microsoft now considers Active - X a bit on the dodgy side. The Government was actually ahead of it's time adopting SSD encryption, it's justthat now the worldwide standard has changed.
Just watch what happens in Korea when Windows 7 comes out.