The New York Times has highly praised Korea's mobile application developers and the high-speed Wi-Fi infrastructure in Seoul.

In an article published on June 7, "What Silicon Valley Can Learn From Seoul," the newspaper reported that U.S. investors have begun to think of Seoul as, "a sort of crystal ball," and that the most ambitious dreams of Silicon Valley have already been realized in Seoul.



Mike Kim from Auckland, California, who was interviewed by The New York Times, said that when he was in San Francisco, people called it the mobile capital of the world, but that he was blown away because Korea was, "three or four years ahead."

Kim worked for companies like Zynga and LinkedIn, but five months ago joined Woowa Brothers, a Korean company that operates a food-delivery application called Baedal Minjok.

Kim said that back home, people celebrated when a public park got Wi-Fi, but in Seoul, people could stream movies on their phones even in the subway, deep beneath the ground. "When I go back to the U.S., it feels like the Dark Ages," said Kim in the article.

The newspaper wrote that many of the smartphone app services just now growing in popularity in the U.S. have been commonplace in Korea for years. It also mentioned that Silicon Valley hopes to get people in the U.S. to learn how to pay for things on their phones, but that Koreans have already been carrying out daily transactions, like paying bills and shopping, on their smartphones for years.

The article said that a number of cities around the world, including Tel Aviv, Berlin and Bangalore, are trying to challenge Silicon Valley in terms of technological innovation, but that Seoul is, "the Valley's closest rival." It also said that U.S. investors are beginning to catch on. An early-stage U.S. venture firm called 500 Startups recently spun off a small fund called 500 Kimchi that focuses exclusively on Korean startups.

By Limb Jae-un
Korea.net Staff Writer
jun2@korea.kr