I lived in South Korea some years ago, and it was interesting how they had a separate ecosystem of apps and services. “KakaoTalk” and “Naver” had approximately the roles that WhatsApp/Meta and Google have in the West.
I think it’s great how these managed to thrive, despite increased competition from multinational companies. In many other countries, local tech companies seem to have become nearly irrelevant over the past decade, which is a sad to see.
It's the result of protectionist government policy. The policies are protectionist not just against foreign entry but also against entry of new products into the market. The government picks technology winners. Unsurprisingly, the government doesn't do a great job of this. Infamously it mandated usage of ActiveX and Internet Explorer for banking long after ActiveX had its time in the sun (the government made this the mandate in 1996 and didn't reform it until 2021!)
In case of Kakao Taxi vs Uber, it was Uber's unwillingness to work with existing taxi operators that killed any chance Uber had in the Korean market. Kakao (at least until they became dominant) acted more like an agent that sends additional customers to existing independent taxi drivers while Uber kept trying to find legal loopholes to bypass the taxi licensing system. S Korea is a civil law country, and its courts have no patience for actors whose entire legal strategy is to subvert the intent of the laws, and that was the end for Uber there.
To be accurate, Uber didn't abide by laws in most countries it went up against. It was a little slimy but also the taxi systems of most places were very entrenched. I remember never enjoying riding taxis in San Francisco for years, the cars were gross and the drivers were grumpy and generally shady about having their "credit card readers being broken" so they didn't have to pay the fees. Uber and a bunch of companies did and end run around those very politically entrenched systems and I certainly am happy to have clean, friendly, safe, modern rides with good tech where reviews keep things in line and payment is easy and I can share my location easily and know I'm going to end up at the right place way better.
Exactly. Uber was shady, but that kind of shadiness and willingness to ignore laws is necessary to bring positive change in a highly corrupt society. It's a lot like Batman: when the police are completely ineffectual or corrupt and working for organized crime, you need a vigilante who ignores the laws that just protect the criminals.
However, in better-run and not-so-corrupt societies like Korea, it's not necessary and probably downright harmful.
> However, in better-run and not-so-corrupt societies like Korea, it's not necessary and probably downright harmful.
South Korea was under varying levels of dictatorship from the Korean War until the Sixth Republic in 1987. Roh Tae-woo, the first president after authoritarian rule, was imprisoned for corruption. Roh Moo-hyun, the President from 2003-2008 was investigated for corruption and died by suicide rather than face charges. Lee Myung-bak, his successor, was imprisoned for corruption. Park Geun-hye, his successor, was imprisoned for corruption.
I don't know that South Korea is the poster child for a "better-run and not not-so-corrupt" society.
>I don't know that South Korea is the poster child for a "better-run and not not-so-corrupt" society.
It's not a poster child, but the US sets such a low bar that SK looks great by comparison.
Note also that the US isn't so visibly corrupt at the federal level; it's at the local levels where it's really no better than the typical poster children for corrupt countries. Taxis are a completely local (municipal) issue.
Yeah, I wouldn't go quite that far. Here's Samsung's heir, convicted in court of bribery, getting a special presidential pardon because, and I quote, he's "needed back at the helm to spearhead economic recovery post-pandemic".
Not sure I'd call Korea and its countless cases of political corruption with Chaebol more and more appearing to be basically running the show "not-so-corrupt".
When you mention it, as a Linux user at the time I struggled a lot with the ActiveX thing… Eventually I think I gave up.
I had no idea that stuff was government-mandated.
It was government mandated but it was an attempt by their government to strengthen security at the time when they couldn't import stronger crypto. Then it became established and hard to remove.
>Due to restrictions on the export of cryptography from the United States, standard 128-bit SSL encryption was unavailable in Korea. Web browsers were only available to Koreans with weakened 40-bit encryption. In the late 1990s, the Korea Internet & Security Agency developed its own 128-bit symmetric block cipher named SEED and used ActiveX to mount it in web browsers. This soon became a domestic standard, and the country's Financial Supervisory Service used the technology as a security screening standard. ActiveX spread rapidly in Korea. In 2000, export restrictions were lifted, allowing the use of full-strength SSL anywhere in the world. Most web browsers and national e-commerce systems adopted this technology, while Korea continued to use SEED and ActiveX.
I heard Korea had a problematic mandatory Internet login wall specifically built for IE with ActiveX on XP, and that that made use of Linux and/or Firefox complicated.
Funnily it lead to creation of PC F2P gaming culture too for some reason.
Running IE in wine wasn't always the easiest thing in the world, and when you were specifically running it to try and use weird integrations even less so.
While you're right, in the specific case of navigation apps (Google maps) or apps that need navigation data (uber), it's typically because of the Geospatial Information Management Act. High-quality mapping data isn't allowed to leave the physical borders of Korea so most foreign companies just stop trying. Nowadays it's just protectionism, but the original justification was to make it harder for north korea to aim artillery.
Just like how British car companies collapsed when foreign competition entered the market on equal footing, these companies will disintegrate if forced to compete.
> The reason American apps penetrate the world usually is because America is a superpower that has almost colonised the web.
I live in the USA and EU, and the reason that I prefer a Samsung display in almost all cases is because it is the best product. Korea has not colonized us, but the product is often superior, so that is why I buy it.
Why is it that Korean software cannot do the same? I find it very interesting, and I mean to ask this in a very neutral/curious way.
Now that you bring it up, I can't recall ever (knowingly) using a piece of Korean software that wasn't a game or baked into a phone's firmware. Does seem kind of odd considering how much Korean hardware there is in my life.
TVs for most of their existence were simple devices, with mostly a few different consumer relevant parameters, which were mostly objective.
Apps on the other hand strongly reflect the philosophy of usage, control, privacy etc, and the design aesthetic of their creators. Different countries/cultures have radically different philosophies, and old countries have aesthetics that go back thousands of years. Using apps from the creators of a different culture almost certainly causes significant friction with your own culture's philosophy and aesthetics.
To give a related example. I don't know Korea, but many in the English speaking world are marginally know of Japanese TV shows - you know with the crazy antics. Imagine that you were forced to consume only that form of TV, and how jarring that would be compared to your own philosophical and aesthetic inclinations. The same with Apps.
> The reason American apps penetrate the world usually is because America is a superpower that has almost colonised the web.
Love how the word "colonise" is thrown out without any thought.
Please tell us one example where America enacted a hostile takeover of a Korean site, and extracted its resources solely for the benefit of American interests.
This doesn't really fit with the way the US government ensured dominance of its tech sector globally in the 80s, 90s, and even early 2000s. It was not a fair competition by any stretch of the imagination and involved a lot of strong-arming by the US government abusing its leverage.
As if those were sufficient or necessary. Even a passing familiarity with the history of computing would show that these had little effect. A deep understanding would reveal what actually did.
If you created it, then you're not colonizing it in any meaningful sense of the word (you are using the word to invoke implications of historical atrocities, etc.)
Each of language groups across the globe has its own dominant and different messaging apps. US has Messenger, Korea has KakaoTalk, Japan took LINE, China built WeChat, Russia picked Telegram, and so on. The Meta Facebook/Messenger/Instagram triad isn't the global default of social apps the way it might look to people from US.
And I don't think it takes conspiracy theories to explain it, maybe users don't like platforms that isn't dominated by similar users of their primary language, or maybe there are something else that prevent app experiences optimized for two distinct cultures at the same time.
This isn't really true. WhatsApp was used pre-acquisition and continues to be dominant throughout LATAM, Africa, and Europe in addition to US/NA. Only in the APJC region and Russia do we see significant divergence in messaging apps.
Having traveled extensively in these places, I always theorized it was due to UX behavior aligning well with the local languages. While the countries WhatsApp dominates speak different languages, they all use the Latin alphabet. In Russia and APJC there are many non-Latin alphabets used and those languages may also use different directions for writing/reading than Romance and Germanic languages.
One advantage of Telegram over WhatsApp is that you don't have to display your phone number to your contacts and random people in group chats and blogs.
With some amusing exceptions: doctors are exclusively on WhatsApp; older (60+) people are often only on WhatsApp (and pre-Microsoft Skype before that).
LINE is very popular in Thailand for unclear reasons, I've heard the theory that their cute sticker packs set them apart in the early days. In the rest of SEA Whatsapp is the most popular.
I think it’s great how these managed to thrive, despite increased competition from multinational companies. In many other countries, local tech companies seem to have become nearly irrelevant over the past decade, which is a sad to see.