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Earlier this week, I was fortunate enough to have spoken at the WEB 2.0 + Mobile conference in Seoul. It was quite amazing to see the fervor in which the Korean development community is following this phenomenon. Of course, they are also interested in how the web converges with mobile business - like, they care about it about 100 times more than anyone here cares about that convergence, except maybe Russ.



First and foremost, .this conference was perhaps the most well organized and accomodating i have experienced as a speaker (for a conference this size), from the instructions and help while creating the presentation, to the logistics of getting to a city 6500 miles away from home. It was put on by BORA EnC at the COEX Conference Center, a place where the most technologically advanced contrast with the Buddhist shrines across the street (as seen below).


But while in a country that was very different from the US in many ways,  was also a culture that is amazingly accomodating of American culture, and extremly welcoming to guests and visitors. Below is a translation device that was provided to all participants,


with an earpiece that could be tuned into English or Korean during every presentation.  Here I was, sitting in a room of 1000 Koreans, enjoying presentations in English via a translator by the likes of Nakyang Seong, CEO of Yahoo! Korea on how Flickr and del.icio.us was going to change their experience on the web, and the folks at onnet.co.kr, who launched a P2P feed reader called Fish so the Korean web community can experience the power of feeds.


Even thought the thirst was there for learning more about the new world of the web, one got the sincere feeling that South Korea was not far behind in understanding the open APIs of the Web 2.0 world - prepared to create their own crop of mashups and businesses that might go well beyond the tired examples of oneupmanship we see in the U.S. week after week.  It was refreshing to see some new faces up on stage presenting instead of the same old Scobles and Searls, and refreshing not to have the audience pounding away on laptops during the presentation (no WI-FI !).

And let us not forget mobile.  In a country where things like streaming video at 15 FPS are old hat, this crowd was defintiely interested in how to create applications that merged user-created content with the montezation stream provided by mobile devices.  It was so refreshing to see this from a society where mobile is so baked into the web economy, where mobile services are not an afterthought.  And it's a case study of how mobile and home broadband can coexist together, in a place where penetration of both into society is among the highest in the world.

So what else is different about the Korean web economy?

For one, the industry clearly looks beyond South Korea for providing its services.  Every startup I talked to was not only creating services for Korea, but also was extremely interested in launching products in China, Japan, and the U.S.  One company, nhn corporation, famous for the NAVER search engine and portal in Korea, also has a very successful online game, hangame (which i think literally means "Korean Game"  oddly enough) and has recently opened an office in Mountan View to try those services in the North American market.

Most Koreans I met had been to the U.S. at least once, and are generally more proficient in English than anywhere else in Asia  where English is not a primary language (e.g. Hong Kong, Phillipines).

As one Korean internet CEO explained to me - Koreans are in the middle of China and Japan more than geographically - the Chinese think very broadly and abstractly, and the Japanese are more focused and precise, but Koreans are exactly in the middle - seeing the big picture but also putting a focus on execution. 

I thought this was apt, and very much followed my own perception of the three cultures.  I'll definitely be following this market more closely having experienced this conference, and look to see some very cool things coming out the Korean internet and mobile communities in the near future.