Some spamming can save lives

Joo Ah-young, a 15-year-old with a mental handicap, was separated from her parents on an outing, and was missing for 15 days before the police decided to take another approach to the search. An SMS message with her photo was sent to people in Seoul and Gyeonggi province. Two days after the message was sent, a call came to the police from a security guard of a shopping mall in Dongdaemun, saying that he had found Ms. Joo.
Now that most people, regardless of age or social status, carry cellular phones, they are being used as a form of broadcasting messages that involve social welfare or national security.
Finding lost children is one example. SK Telecom’s mobile child-seeking service is operated jointly with the National Police Agency and the Korea Welfare Foundation.
Subscribers of SK Telecom, which is the largest mobile service provider in Korea, receive text messages that come with photos. Users can choose not to receive the messages. They can also make a free phone call to report any sighting.
Text messages are first sent to people who are around the area where the child was first reported missing, and then the radius is expanded if no one responds. Similar to child-finding services, there is also a mobile broadcasting service to find lost senile elderly citizens.
Mobile disaster broadcasting services are also available, through the National Emergency Management Agency’s agreements with SK Telecom, KTF and LG Telecom. Typhoon warnings, for instance, tell people of extreme weather conditions and relay messages if they have to evacuate their homes. Last summer, this network saved lives when torrential rains hit the mountainous regions of Gangwon province and caused landslides and floods. In the past, such announcements were made through television or radio, but many people do not keep those devices on all the time and the broadcasts do not cater to specific regions.
For Koreans traveling abroad, service operators offer special alerts if any emergencies are occurring in their area. Conducted in cooperation with the Foreign Ministry, people using global roaming service can receive a text message that explains the situation and gives the number of the Korean embassy in that country, or any other numbers that the person can call for help.
“If one is in a foreign country, some emergency may be happening and one may not know it, because of language problems. This service was used in the British bus terror incident and Southeast Asian tsunami,” said Kim Hye-jin, a SK Telecom spokeswoman.by Wohn Dong-hee

Barely-clad models cause controversy at game expo

Korea’s four-day game expo Gstar 2006 ended on Sunday, with a little more exposure than its organizers had planned for. On the last day, a special event took place at the Nexon booth, involving a team of female dancers wearing bra tops. During the performance, the top of one of the dancers was pushed up, baring most of her breasts. She quickly fixed her attire, but many of the people attending the show, including minors, were quick enough to capture the moment with their digital cameras.

▶ In addition to models dressed up like game characters, this year’s game show Gstar created controversy because of the revealing attire of some models that had little to do with the games.

The game developer apologized for the incident, but many Internet users took to Web boards to say the accident was not at all surprising, since the dancers and female models in the booths were mostly scantily-clad.
Similar to motor shows, where models ― dubbed “racing girls” ― pose in front of cars, game booths also have models at their entrances. In most cases, the models are in costume to look like characters from the games. But some exhibition booths, such as those for Internet game portals or those games that only have cute cartoon characters, have models dressed in attire unrelated to the games.
“Game shows should be about the games and not the girls, but you have to have something visual and a lot of the players are men, so in a sense, it’s inevitable to have pretty models,” one exhibition organizer said. “You have to attract people to your booth in order to get them interested in the game, but a game is a conceptual thing while a gorgeous model is flesh and blood.”
Game companies made reservations three months in advance to book the more popular, sexier models. “The daily pay for a model is about 1 million won ($1,070),” an industry insider said. “Booths had at least five or six models each ― a couple wearing costumes and others standing around. The ones that actually explain the games, of course, receive higher wages.”
This year, Gstar’s second, the fashion was indisputably edgier. “I know I should be looking at the games, but I keep on looking at the girls,” admitted 27-year old Kim Kyoung-soo. Not everyone, however, appreciated the models. “The game developers should be spending money on developing their games, not on lavish presentations,” criticized Jo, a columnist for a game magazine. “The G in Gstar may as well stand for girl and not game.”

by Wohn Dong-hee