When i said that South Korean people lives inside their own bubble, i’m not even kidding.
no no, please don’t skip. Please don’t stop reading. I’m not talking about kdrama or kpop this time, i’m serious.
Well, It must be nice living inside a bubble where there is literally everything
⁃ Samsung, LG, we all know it’s their country’s pride.
⁃ Feeling ugly? just go to gangnam where there are so much plastic surgery clinincs to choose. No worries, your face will still look real.
⁃ Feeling bored? There is so much entertainment you can enjoy with those usain-bolt-fast internet connection.
The list goes on but the one i want to emphasis right now is the fact that they are capable to make anything of their own, including most important part of the internet, Google.
It’s not hypothetical. It’s real.
Instead of searching on google.com, koreans use Naver.
…or Daum,
…or Nate.
Reddit? I don’t think so. They use Pann by Nate.
Instead of listening to music on Spotify, they have various sites but the most popular is Melon.
WhatsApp? What the fuck is that?? Koreans use KakaoTalk babyyyyy~
Who use google maps these days in South Korea when Naver Maps is 837874843 times better
Twitch no. Afreeca TV yes.
(Apparently, Youtube and Instagram doesn’t have its own counterpart, as far as i know)
Some of you might feel deajvu because it feels like….
China.
(quick TMI #4 but more like TLDR : Rep. of China government banned websites such as facebook, google, etc Hence chinese people made their own, e.g Weibo, Baidu, Youku, etc. For further explanation you can watch “Patriot Act by Hasan Minhaj” Season 2 EP1 on Netflix)
They’re just like Republic of China but instead of internet censorship, Koreans use less western sites because of their own preference, it’s much more convinient to use since those sites are optimized for koreans. no shit. Why bother use another website when you have your own?
Let’s go back to Naver aka Korea’s “Google”, shall we?
When you look at the site’s UI design, you might notice that it’s not the most aesthetically pleasing, unattractive and quite outdated. That might be the same case for another sites and the layouts are quite familiar to one another. Due to its familiarness, so many people are used to it already. If they change things, it could lead to a big problem.
To be honest, i think it’s normal if they decided to preserve the classic-looking layout for so many years. One example, many Koreans still mainly use Internet Explorer for banking and online shopping.
Yes, Internet Explorer.
especially it is required by law. So a country with the fastest internet connection in the world still runs their stuff on Internet Explorer. How amazing is that?
I scrolled through their mobile app and it’s so much better! the UI UX design is simple but smooth, easy to use.
Koreans also taking the word “TMI” to the next level cause it’s very interesting to see Naver Maps has insights of many places on the site. They literally had demographic insights of how popular is the place based on age range and gender.
Let’s scroll through South Korea’s “spotify”, Melon and find out their features!
That screenshot above is what “Artist’ Ranking” on Melon looks like. It is updated real time and it tells us what is the most popular artist based on their fans, listeners, etc. Statistically shows the insights of listeners, the percentage of listeners based on age range and gender. It’s part of their UI UX.
Surely spotify doesn’t have this. I bet they don’t have enough nerve. Imagine going to the artist’ rankings only to find piechart or histograms right on the above, spotify users would make a fuss over it saying stuff like “it would ruin the fun.”
Having their own website doesn’t mean shit always good. The sites could be manipulated by people with power. Certain keywords can be misteriously removed or suddenly become a trend if someone wanted to (hiding a crime, red herring, etc.). The public is fooled and they don’t always know between what is real and fake. That could be the reason when every news about the manipulation of search ranking/search keywords came out, Koreans went apeshit.
I made a promise not to talk about Kdrama earlier, but i want to mention this particular k-drama : “Searching: WWW” as one of my favorite kdrama. It’s fictional but it’s one of the good reference to understand the context a little better.
Evidently, i guess living inside one’s own bubble is not always rainbows and butterflies.
I still have very much things to explain but i think that’s enough TMI for today. Don’t forget to stream 9cut by Giriboy.
❤ mori
