Korean Military to Deploy Smartphones on Battlefield

As reported by The Chosun Ilbo, South Korea's Defense Ministry is looking into ways to use smartphones on the battlefield starting as early as 2013. The military presently limits smartphones for personal use due to their vulnerability to hacking and eavesdropping.
This development is both interesting and inevitable. Information and intelligence have historically played an important role in warfare, but their importance has taken a quantum leap with the digital information revolution. U.S. military, for example, have long used these devices in war zones.

Internet Monitoring and Filtering in South Korea

It has been some time since we've posted anything on efforts by the South Korean government to monitor or filter contents on the internet.  Last week this topic came to the fore again, receiving international publicity, when the Korea Communications Standards Commission announced that it would expand a team that monitors Facebook and Twitter posts for violation of rules.  The Commission defines illegal content as including comments or postings that involve pornography, gambling, drug abuse, the spread of false information and anything that incites or promotes crime. It also includes national security.
According to police, as reported by the Chosun Ilbo, more pro-North Korean websites run on servers based overseas out of South Korean jurisdiction.
The number of overseas-based pro-North websites detected by police rose from 73 in 2007 to 127 this year. Some 53 of them were based on servers in the United States, 29 in Japan, 19 in China, and 5 in North Korea.

SKT Maps Patterns of Mobile Data Usage in Korea

As reported today in The Joongang Daily, SK Telecom has concluded a study that maps the usage of mobile data services in Korea's cities and provinces. The SK Telecom analysis of data usage of its 26.5 million mobile users by region is Korea’s first data usage map. As shown in the accompanying graphic (click to see a full-size version)Seoul, whose land accounts for less than one percent of Korea, was responsible for more than 22.3 percent of the country’s data traffic. The survey also showed that, within Seoul, the data-rich and data-poor areas were evident. Looking at the entire country, Seoul and nearby metropolitan areas - namely, Gyeonggi and Incheon - accounted for almost half of the data usage at 49.7 percent.