Page 281 - Culture Technology Communication

264 Robert J. Fouser

purchasing power parity, the gap narrows to $13,990 for Korea and
$23,840 for Japan (GNP figures for 1997 from Asiaweek 1998; fig-
ures for 1998 will show a larger gap between the two nations be-
cause of the severity of the economic crisis in Korea). The effects of
the high cost of living in Japan on the Internet will be discussed in
more detail later.
From this quick look at Web pages and Web browsers in Japan
and Korea, two contradictory trends become clear: Japan has more
Web pages and Internet users, but the Web has yet to attract the at-
tention of advertisers and the general public. Korea, on the other
hand, has fewer Web pages and Internet users, but is rapidly at-
tracting attention of advertisers and the general public, despite a
lower level of economic development. A caveat needs to be added
here because advertising revenue from on-line newspapers in Korea
remains a small percentage of total newspaper advertising revenue.
The on-line Choso ˘n Ilbo, for example, receives 150,000,000 won
(about $125,000) in advertising revenue each month (Hong, personal
communication). Though this has been increasing each month, it
lags far behind the print edition in which one-day full-page adver-
tising spread costs about 50,000,000 won (about $40,000). I was un-
able to get figures for the Yomiuri Shimbun or other Japanese
on-line newspapers, but the paucity of ads indicates that the on-line
version is designed to advertise the print edition or make money
from on-line news services and subscriptions such as the one offered
by the Yomiuri Shimbun. So far, there has been little open discus-
sion on charging customers in Korea, so it may be that newspaper
companies in Korea are hoping that advertising revenue will help
offset the cost of maintaining the on-line edition.
Reports on the Web and CMC in the media in each nation reflect
the different levels of public interest. A comparison of AERA in
Japan and News+ in Korea, two major weekly newsmagazines
equivalent to Time or Newsweek, highlights this difference. AERA
covers the Internet and CMC periodically and generally from a crit-
ical stance. News+, on the other hand, has a weekly section devoted
to the Internet and often runs short stories on how news events are
discussed in domestic chat rooms operated by commercial Internet
providers. The tone of most of these articles is positive, particularly
regarding the development of Korean-language software and Web
sites. In the Korean media, surveying chat rooms has become a way
to gauge public opinion and trends in language and popular culture.
Print editions of major newspapers offer an interesting con-
trast. Korean daily newspapers, such as the Choso ˘n Ilbo, have a