(Vivian Vahlberg)

Eric Schmidt, Chairman and CEO of Google, was in a position he’s not used to last month, when he visited Seoul, South Korea: he was playing second fiddle to another search provider.

In Korea, he’s not King of Search. Not even close. That distinction belongs to the local contender, Naver which dominates the Korean market. Just like Rupert Murdoch’s MySpace isn’t queen of social networking in Korea; Korean-born Cyworld has that market cornered and is trying to expand into the U.S.

So, when Schmidt recently addressed the Seoul Digital Forum -- a four year old annual gathering of high-level movers and shakers in the digital world – he was the first of many to emphasize how much he and other high-tech digital players from around the world look to Korea when they try to envision the future.

Calling Korea the "great laboratory of the digital age," Schmidt noted that Google opened a research and development operation there last year. He announced making some new Korean partnerships and some major improvements to the Korean Google, in an effort to expand Google’s presence there. And he declared, that was “just the beginning” of Google’s commitment to Korea.

Why is a country the size of Virginia so important to Schmidt? As one speaker noted, Korea has become a "window to the future" of the digital media world. Speaker after speaker mentioned what Schmidt did – that their companies have set up R & D operations in Korea to get a jump on what’s technologically possible and what consumers elsewhere will want.

How Korea got to be such a go-to place for digital media is an interesting story. It all started in 1995 when the Korean government, in what Business 2.0 magazine called "one of the most shrewd and far-sighted investments in business history," decided to invest money and adopt policies to propel Korea into becoming the most connected, best-connected country in the world – to take full advantage of the Internet’s many possibilities.

First, they sought to achieve universal, extraordinarily fast broadband connectivity. They’ve largely succeeded: Korea now has the highest per capita broadband penetration in the world -- two to three times that of the U.S. (Depending on who is counting, between 75 and 100 percent of Korean households have broadband.) The speeds they offer are much faster than in the U.S. And wireless broadband penetration is high as well.

Now Korean officials want to usher in the next generation of connectivity -- wireless broadband and digital multimedia broadcasting. They want consumers to be able to get live, high-speed, multi-media content whenever they want it, wherever they roam, on whatever device they’re using.

The country is well on its way, with the world’s highest percentage of third-generation mobile users. And there’s lots of competition between with terrestrial, cable and satellite providers. To see more, click here or here.

Of course, it helped greatly that Korea is geographically small but very dense. Connecting almost 50 million people in a country the size of Virginia doesn’t take nearly as much equipment -- cables, wires, antennae or towers -- as it would in a spread-out country like the U.S.

But what are the implications for journalism? In my next post, I’ll tell you what I learned during a visit to the headquarters of the Seoul Broadcasting System (SBS), creator and host of the Seoul Digital Forum.


What do you think? Please share your thoughts, experiences and reactions by clicking on the comment button below or by e-mailing Media Management Center at v-vahlberg@northwestern.edu.

Vivian Vahlberg is director of digital media at the Media Management Center at Northwestern University.