South Korea is giving entrepreneurs tax breaks and exempting them from military service to take a flyer on a good tech idea. Sure, South Korea's chaebol are burdened with massive debts and its banking system is a mess, but it's still experiencing rapid growth in high-tech startups. Japan has the same problems with its big companies and lenders, but not the same startup boom. And it shows no sign of abating. There are already some 27 million mobile-phone users.
Consumers are on waiting lists for the latest broadband Internet connections.
Japan doesn't come close to this kind of penetration or enthusiasm for the Internet Age. The contrast is all the more remarkable given that just two summers ago, one could run across soup kitchens in major parks around Seoul, thanks to the 1997 Asian currency crisis and the austerity plan the International Monetary Fund imposed in exchange for emergency loans. But now President Kim Dae Jung's South Korea is gripped by techno-euphoria, and the results are astounding. By contrast, Japan hovers just above the water line. A couple of interesting theories are regularly thrown around by Seoul's high-tech types and government officials.