National program

South Korea has the most DSL connections per capita worldwide. ADSL is standard, but VDSL has
started growing quickly. ADSL commonly offers speeds of 3 Mbit/s to 8 Mbit/s, with VDSL
accordingly faster. The large proportion of South Korea's population living in apartment blocks helps
the spread of DSL, as does a high penetration of consumer electronics in general. Many apartment
buildings in built-up metropolitan areas have speeds of up to 100 Mbit/s such as the capital Seoul
and Incheon. VDSL is commonly found in newer apartments while ADSL is normally found in landed
properties where the telephone exchange is far away.

The Internet has a higher status for many Koreans than it does in the West and the government
actively supports this.[4] According to the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation, South
Korea's internet is the most developed in the world.[5] Seoul has been called "the bandwidth capital
of the world".[6] In January 2006, it became the first country to achieve over 50% broadband
penetration per capita.[7] By 2005, it was the first country to complete the conversion from dial-up
to broadband.[8] It also has the cheapest, fastest broadband in the world.[3] Now there are
experiments with speeds of 1 Gigabit per second. Additionally, in 2005 96.8% of South Korean
mobile phones had Internet access.[9]

ISP and IDC

There are three major ISPs: KT Corporation, SK Broadband, and LG Uplus (previously DACOM). They
provide broadband and Internet circuit including Ethernet and operating Internet data centers in
Seoul. Major MSOs are TBroad, C&M, and CJ Hello vision.

Internet speed

As of 2017, South Korea had the fastest average internet connection in the world at 28.6 Mbit/s,
according to the report State of the Internet published by Akamai Technologies.[10] South Korea's
speed is four times faster than the world average of 7.0 Mbit/s.[11] It is important to note that 100
Mbit/s services are the average standard in urban South Korean homes and the country is rapidly
rolling out 1Gbit/s connections or 1,024 Mbit/s, at $20 per month,[12] which is roughly 142 times as
fast as the world average and 79 times as fast as the average speed in the United States. [13]

Wireless broadband

South Korea has pulled ahead of every other country when it comes to broadband Internet in all
categories including Speed and Quality, Adoption, Price, and Literacy and Gender Equality according
to Internet Monitor.[14] As many large, powerful countries begin to fall behind broadband experts
look to South Korea for solutions. However, there are multiple reasons why South Korea’s
broadband is successful, such as, “Government planning, healthy competition, urban population
density, private-sector growth, and Korean culture”,[15] which have made it difficult for other
countries to mimic their success.
Real name policy

There is a government-level proposal to stamp out anonymity in the South Korean internet
environment.[16] The Korea Communications Commission is considering this proposal.[17]

Cyberculture

It has been suggested that this section be split out into another article titled South Korean web
culture. (Discuss) (May 2018)

Cyberculture or internet culture is the cultural processes, products, or story of the culture in
cyberspace. Cyberculture is referred to as technoculture, internet culture, post-human culture, and
high tech culture. This confusing terminology demonstrates the diversity of cyberculture. In reality,
cyberculture is designated as a virtual community culture, acting as an identity of online
communication, and cyberpunk. Cyberculture in South Korea is more like a virtual community
culture than anything else.

Cyberculture is prolific in South Korea, both in streams and in internet communities. South Korea's
cyberculture is quite aggressive because of anonymity and trolls. To prevent this from getting worse,
the South Korean government decided to regulate streaming platforms, especially Afreeca TV, which
has become a controversy as to whether it corrupts cyberculture or not.[18][19]

Cyberculture development in South Korea

Streaming Platforms

Many cyberculture are produced on internet streams. There are many contents such as Mukbang,
gaming, and visible radio in streaming platforms. stream Jockey(BJ) try to make their own streams'
atmosphere and sometimes it would be a new cyberculture. Basically, communication between the
streamer and real-time viewer is one of the important things in a stream. In this process, culture can
be created and this immediately surfaces and quickly transmitted in Internet communities.

Internet Communities

Internet communities can be referred as the nests of cyberculture in South Korea. Hit-cyberculture
on internet communities often permeate even offline. A field of language is the most remarkable
field. Internet communities lead this language trend in South Korea.[20] Even though there are
countless internet communities, there are some communities to see thoroughly. Each internet
community has different interests and different people gather at different community sites. So, their
atmosphere and the cyberculture that they produce and consume are different from each other.

DC inside - DC inside has an internet community has many forums(a.k.a gallery) for different
interests. This community was organized as community of interest for cameras and sharing
photographs for amateur photographers at first, but its purpose was changed to Internet
community. There are forums about almost everything. People who have same interest can discuss
it on DC inside. In this process, many cybercultures are produced and consumed.

Todayhumor - Todayhumor is a popular Korean internet forum. Originally dedicated just to humor, it
has since grown to encapsulate various different topics and interests. It is widely used, ranking as
the most popular Korean internet community in 2014.[21] Its users tend to be left-leaning politically,
which generates some controversy for the website during election seasons.

Diesel Mania - Diesel Mania is an online community catering to those interested in substitution for
purchasing Diesel Jean and True religion. The biggest male-fashion community in South Korea. This
community has real-name policy. Because of it, this community's issues are less rather than other
communities.

These differences between communities makes cyberculture in South Korea diverse.

NAMU Wiki

History

The Angel Halo wiki, the predecessor of the NAMU Wiki, was founded on March 1, 2007. It
specialized in animation, comics, and Internet neologism. It was popular because of its unique
narrative method of mixing jokes such as puns, and various people continued to write for it making it
bigger. It changed its name to the Liga Vedic wiki in 2012.[22] However, it became one of the
alternative wikis forking this wiki when it became impossible to operate due to the debacle of the
League Vedic wiki operator privatizing wikis, and it was made up as a separate site that backed up
about 90% of the League Vedic wiki documents.[23] After the privatization of the League Vedai Wiki,
most of the League Vedic Wiki users have become NAMU Wiki and Libre Wiki users.[24] As of March
13, 2017, NAMU Wiki outperformed the Korean Wikipedia in that NAMU Wiki ranked 11th on the list
of popular websites in Korea while Korean Wiki ranked 33rd, and Google Search, which reflects user
preferences.[25] As causative factors of the wiki’s popular, the B-list language used in the NAMU
wiki was filled with jokes, such as puns, and people responded to the preference of the users who
liked the flimsy stories rather than the hard explanations. Also, it is analyzed that the size of the
Korean version of Wikipedia is smaller than other language versions and the lack of content makes
the NAMU wiki more popular.[22]

Meaning in Cyberculture in South Korea

The NAMU wiki, which is popular with people because of these stimulating factors is actively
participating in internet culture and events recorded on the NAMU wiki. All the materials in various
fields are constantly generated in the wiki.[26] As the characteristic of the wiki, it could be
considered as Korea cyberculture storage. A lot of participants can be added and modified in one
event, resulting in collective intelligence. As a result of constant user participation and the uploading
of contents in various fields, the cyber history of Korea can be seen.[27][circular reference] For
example, Internet culture created and consumed by streams and communities is eventually stored
on a NAMU wiki. Although due to the large number of participants, NAMU Wiki may have unverified
or biased content. This may lead to arbitrary authoring, creation of untrusted sources, and so on.
This is an inevitable problem that arises from the fact that the motto of NAMU Wiki is that everyone
can contribute.[28] But, this may also be resolved by a large number of steady participation. Articles
that are biased or arbitrarily written are reviewed by others several times, hundreds of times, and
the articles may be modified by anyone. This will fill the NAMU wiki with unambiguous descriptions
and trusted sources that can be selected by anyone.[27]

Example of Cyberculture in South Korea

A gale of bitcoin

As bitcoin trading and virtual money trading are gaining popularity in South Korea, buzzwords
related with these trading are getting popular on SNS and other communities.[29][30]

GAZUA (가즈아) - is kind of a magic word. People say it when they want express their hope that
bitcoin's price goes up to their expectation. literally it means 'Go'. People started using this word in
real world.

Jonber (존버) - word represent 'Do not sell the coin till price goes high'

Yeongcha Yeongcha (영차영차) - The sound that many people put together to strengthen their
energy. People use this word as a hope to increase price of virtual cash.