Kathreb

While the sun is shining outside I find myself, as always, shut in this office devoid of airconditioning. At least outside a cool breeze would be nicer than this stuffy hot-box of an office.

The two Koreas are at their summer fun games again playing skirmish. Probably in part because they want access to the fishing grounds and partly cause of the G8 Summit being held in Evian, France. Accordingly, US put out aggression on the peninsular and sales of arms, etc. But for now I think things are still going quietly and slowly. One report came out that Japan had spoken to China about getting in on the next round of negotiations as well as South Korea and some rumors of North Korean acquiescence to such has been circulated.

A couple months back I read a book about the progress of e-government. The book mostly gave examples around the world of how e-gov was being used to make our lives easier and government processes less complicated and confusing. It all sounded good but to my (mild) surprise, despite Korea's high broadband and computer penetration, it was not cited at all in a book on e-gov. I guessed it was because Korea has been behind the leaders in building its e-gov and despite some obvious advantages in this field has failed to become a pioneer in e-gov. And now it seems the criticism of Korea's e-gov program is about to become more vocal. This somehow seems typical of Korea, wherein often they lead in technology and development, they pick up new things quickly and easily, but when it comes to practical usage, they somehow seem to often start making things difficult and too much ad-hoc decision making and organising leaves people feeling lost and uncertain of how to apply these 'practical' things into their daily life. At least that is one explanation, I'm sure there is a great mix of factors of varying importance which has lead to the poor start of e-gov in Korea.

I start Korean class again today after a two week spring break. I bought a Winnie the Pooh theme folder to start the new semester. This will be the last semester of study before I leave for US so I'm keen to make the most of it. Afterall, more study now means less study at Stanford.

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