Kim Hee-young, a statistics major at Sookmyung Women’s University in Seoul, holds more or less her whole life in her hands.She wakes up in the morning when her mobile phone detonates an alarm, a loud Korean pop song. She checks weather forecasts on its screen before selecting what to wear.In the subway, Ms. Kim breezes through the turnstile after tapping the phone on a box that deducts the fare from a chip that contains a cash balance. While riding to school, she uses her mobile to check if a book has arrived at the library, slays aliens in a role-playing game, updates her Internet blog or watches TV.
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“If I leave my wallet at home, I may not notice it for the whole day,” said Ms. Kim, 21. “But if I lose my cellphone, my life will start stumbling right there in the subway.”It has been a while since the mobile phone became more than just a phone, serving as a texting device, a camera and a digital music player, among other things. But experts say South Korea, because of its high-speed wireless networks and top technology companies like Samsung and LG, is the test case for the mobile future.To read this report from the International Herald Tribune in full, see:
nytimes.com/2009/05/25/technology/25iht-mobile.html
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