Mobile Communications Changing Lifestyles
Korea Times
May 30, 2000Mobile phones have become one of the most important daily necessities these days with one of the two Koreans using the modern device. In particular, many businesspeople carry two mobile phones - one for personal use and the other for official use. What was once considered a luxury has now become a common practice. In matter of years, the popularization of the mobile phone has changed the way Koreans live, far more than when the telephone was introduced 118 years ago in Korea.
Old arguments that wireless telephones are not as reliable nor as clear as using existing lines have been forgotten, while mobile communications development has surged ahead, surpassing wired service last September.
Compared to 21 million people subscribing to a wire hook up, there are 27.5 million registered for wireless communication as of the end of April. Nowadays, people enter a phone booth not to use the public phone but to escape the noise and wind while using their cell phones. Korea has the 5th largest mobile phone user population in the world, only 15 years after it made its debut.
``In providing high-tech services, wireless communication is much better,'' said Chung Yon-taek, president of Korea Multinet. Many dealers at brokerage houses are known to carry more than one phone, because they don't want their tippers to get busy signals just in case of emergencies.
Outside the office, our lives have also been invaded by the wireless communication revolution. High school and college students boast of being able to punch in 300 letters a minute to chat through their cell phone. There is even a television commercial which shows a girl enjoying herself, using the mobile phone to chat in a movie theater because she is bored with her blind date.
``I see many students looking under their desks with both hands busy typing on their mobile phones, making it impossible to teach,'' a teacher complained.
Schools have banned the use of cell phones during class and especially during examinations to stop cheating.
``I use half my monthly allowance to pay cell phone fees. It has become a fashion statement," said Park Sun-hee, a college student. She as well as her friends are worried about the law abolishing communication companies' subsidies to cell phone users.
``We can't afford to pay more than 300,000 won ($264) to buy the phone,'' she added.
The youths constantly change their phones to keep up with the latest fashion trend. Until now cell phones were given out practically free of charge. On public transportation, people can easily be heard talking over the phone. The noise has become so annoying that there was even a public awareness campaign asking people to refrain from using the phones in public places.
Antennae have popped up all over the city, changing the look as well as the sound of our metropolis. There are nearly 15,000 antennae on roof tops of buildings 10-stories or higher. At a control center at SK Telecom, a map showing all the antenna situated nationwide and the web connecting them all covers the wall.
``The nation would be paralyzed if this place lost control of the network,'' said Park Hak-jun, operation manager at SK Telecom.
``Korea was a late starter industrializing, but runs shoulder to shoulder with leading nations when it comes to the mobile communication revolution,'' said Lim Kwang-sam, a researcher at the Electronics and Telecommunications Research Institute.
Advocates of wireless communication say they could never imagine a world without one now.
``After I changed my job to KT Freetel, I realized that the world cannot exist without the wireless,'' KT Freetel CEO Lee Yong-kyung has concluded.
(Yonhap News)
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