an overwhelming sight

I haven’t really traveled a lot outside of Seoul, so my understanding of urban landscapes in other parts of Korea is pretty much limited to a few places I’ve been within the limits of Seoul. Yet, one thing I am struck by, during the short stay I’ve been here, is the overwhelming sight of what seems like fortresses of apartment buildings everywhere, and most of these apartments are new, less than 10 years, by US standards. These are not the kind of apartments you would typically find in the States, mostly 30 to 50 years, instead these are luxury apartments. If one walked into one of these, one would find that the place is better than most houses in the States in terms of looks and style. The floor is almost always wooden so that it looks good as it is to maintain.

Much to my surprise, home systems in the apartments are of digital. Residences of the apartments don't carry home keys around with them because all the locks are either digitally programmed numerical combinations or some form of card detector where you just sweep your home card to open. I was told that in the near future, most locks will have a finger-print sanner whereby you just scan your finger to open, however, some apartments already do. In fact, nobody carries home keys in Korea anymore! Not only that, the main entrances to these buildings all have motion detectors of some kind that when you reach the entrance door in about 5 feet, it automatically opens it for you, along with the motion detect light lamps to lighten up the hallway at night. what's more, every elevator has an LCD screen that makes important public announcements as well as useful health, food, weather news etc...

That’s not the only thing. You ready for this? When you hit the wrong floor number in an elevator by mistake, you can DESELECT it by hitting the same floor number again! I went wow when I first saw it. How many times have you hit the wrong floor number just to waste a valuable few minutes, not to mention the frustration and embarrassment you have to endure when you share the elevator with other people. I was kindly reminded of this feature when a girl of about 10, watching my fiddling with the panel with multiple selections, deselected for me.

The speed of broadband is also something to boast about, too. It is amazingly fast. I was told that Korea has the most fastest network available in the world, making it the only country to provide its broadband connections to more than 2/3 of the population. As a matter fact, most broadband speed is 8 mbps. 8 megabits per second! That's 8 times the speed of the most broadband in US households. And 8 mbps is just an average speed in Korea. The speed of broadband is one thing but what you can do with it is quiet another. The country is planning on replacing all of its lines to fiber optics in a few years. Even now, there are some apartments that get 100 mbps. They watch HD content comfortably in their homes through the internet connection. You might say, "well, so what? I don't need that much speed." Only thing I will say is this, your life changes once you have one of these broadband connections.

There are so many of these amazing technologies at work in these apartments, one wonders how backward a country US is in this regard. Intel, in fact, saw the potential to all of this and decided to learn a thing or two from South Korea to pave the way for the future. The daily pervasiveness of broadband here is one of the primary reasons that Intel created a new lab dedicated to the digital home in Seoul. The company is studying how Koreans use the Internet, from shopping to gaming, to understand how the technology can be developed for other countries.

As if all of this is not enough, the country has announced even more apartments like this to be built around the country, by 2012, three times as much Korea currently has, only this time they will be even more advanced.

Come to think of it, all of these digital systems are incorporated into major public transportation systems in Seoul. For instance, when you ride the bus you just have to get your transportation card or smart card, called here T-money, close to the card detector and you are good to go. You don’t have to take it out of your wallet or even out of the pocket. I saw one rider who just walked close to the panel box without even getting out his wallet or anything and a couple seconds later he was walking down the center. You just get it close to the card detector, it will automatically register your card. It is so un-messy! In fact, you don’t even have to buy a metro card like you would in NYC. Your bank card, or credit card will do the trick if you ask for that feature. I heard even your cell phone can do that. Wow. Not only that, your cell-phone can double as a debit, credit card. I’ve seen some people using ATM with it. It seems, there is just no limit to what technology can do here. For a gadget lover like me, this place is bliss.

I will definitely update more on this with my new findings. Until then…