*This is part III to the series on Korea’s cybersecurity issues. We all know that security is a vital investment for survival. In this article, I will cover: Issues involving China; Issues involving North Korea; Their implications; Evolution of cyberattacks, and APT; Korean government’s plans; and Reactions to those plans. For Korea, the biggest concerns are ‘Chinese and North Korean hackers’. Some may remember the attack on the U.S. by Chinese hackers who succeeded…

Last Sunday, the South Korean Ministry of Justice announced the revision of the ‘Enforcement Decree of the Immigration Control Act’, which includes granting of startup visas to foreigners for better facilitation of foreign investment activities in Korea. It also aims to encourage international students in Korea to establish startups in the country. (Is Seoul going to be the next Silicon Valley?… Maybe, maybe.) I have looked at the proposed revisions to the…

This Week’s Startup – DreamCosmo   DreamCosmo <Dreamallow>     Our Dream is to help your “Dreams Come True”- DreamCosmo “It was all started from my dream. My dream to help others’ dreams come true!” said Mr. Shin,  the founder of DreamCosmo. DreamCosmo’s first ever app service in public called “dreamallow” is now getting popular in Korea by providing various interesting tools to achieve users’ goals. Dreamallow presents challenge missions in various…

BootstrapAccelerator Asia, the joint-venture between Silicon Valley-based BootstrapLabs, and Malaysia-based MAD Incubator is opening its doors officially to the public July 3rd, 2013. It is the first Southeast Asia-focused Tech Startup Accelerator with a Silicon Valley Fast TrackTM program for its most promising candidates. First announced back in May of this year, BootstrapAccelerator focuses on early-stage capital efficient software startups that leverage the speed of Internet distribution and the scalability of cloud…

Zuckerberg (center) walks into Samsung Electronics’ building to meet with executives of the Korean tech giant. Samsung We wrote earlier that the CEO of Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg will be in Korea (read the article here). The meeting with the Vice Chairman of Samsung Electronics, Lee Jae-yong was one of the key points in Zuckerberg’s short itinerary in Korea. It was speculated that he will be visiting President Park Geun-Hye – but he had also…

Business is a zero-sum game. Collaboration is a plus-sum game. Everyone seems to be talking about “The Sharing Economy” – everybody literally gets a share of your meal, and vice versa. Take the Korean startup, Zipbob. So: Forget zero-sum games; people are all about “collaborative consumption” now. And the people in Asia, especially Korea, are rising up. Wait. Collaborative consumption? Short answer: commercial arrangements and transactions in which participants share and access…

We wrote previously about the current situation in the South Korean startup ecosystem. We said that the global startup capital is declining whereas the Korean venture world is seeing more fundings, more startups, and more enthusiasm. The rise of startups in Korea really started with KakaoTalk i n 2010, and since then we have seen $191 million US dollars raised in Korea (in 2013, up from $189 mil in 2012), and increase…

Facebook’s Co-Founder and CEO, Mark Zuckerberg will visit Korea at the end of this month, according to Yonhap News. Seeing that Bill Gates and Larry Page visited Korea recently, it seems likely that Zuckerberg, too, will discuss the future of IT with the Park administration. People are speculating that he will visit Cheongwadae (the presidential residence in Korea, or the ‘blue house’) at the end of June. He will be spending about…

  KT Will Spend $2.65B Upgrading Network And Create Jobs Remember how KT said they set up a fund of USD 132 million by 2017 to help smaller and mid-sized firms in Korea earlier on this year? Well, according to Yonhap News yesterday, they will spend KRW 3 trillion (approximately USD 2.65 billion). KT is more ambitious than we thought. That means that the south Korean telco is spending approximately half of the USD 5.3 billion…

This Week’s Startup – Jelly Bus Inc.   JellyBus Inc. <Picsplay Pro> <Official Web Link> Anyone can make awesome photos with us! Whether you are an unskilled user or a photo experts, Jelly Bus assures that you can make a stunning photo by this photo editing app service “Picsplay pro”. As it is called an Image processing engine, it provides a basic features and cutting-edge technologies. For example, its newest HDR functions…

We thought it’s about time we wrote about the U.S. National Security Agency’s PRISM program, the latest phenomenon around the world today – and yet, it’s old news, because information is and has always been the ultimate power. This issue is quite divisive – some people care, some people don’t, some people think you ought to care. What do you think about the PRISM issue? What is PRISM? PRISM is an electronic…

Good thing the Koreans went for the fiber early. South Korea dominates the top lists when it comes to broadband, according to latest edition of Akamai’s State of the Internet report for the three months ending December 31, 2012. The quarterly State of the Internet report puts the South Korean city of Daegu at the top of the 100 fastest cities. Here are some highlights from Akamai’s official press release: Global On…

Korea is still seeing some immense growth. According to the Korean Venture Capital Association, venture capital firms in Korea raised $191 million in the first quarter this year, up slightly from $189  million in 2012. Interestingly, there is a general slowdown in the U.S. startup scene – U.S. venture capital firms raised $4.1 billion from 35 funds during the first quarter of this year according to the National Venture Capital Association (this is about a 34%…

Good morning everybody! June is the last month for Q2 – hope you are all satisfied with the results you’re getting. Here are some beSUCCESS-approved readings for this morning: 1. The New “Handmade” (Part Three) This series from TechCrunch is all about 3D printers. Consumer interest in 3D printing is booming, thanks to affordable printers. But 3D printing is fueling artists’ creativity, too, and turning your consumers into artists. The series tells you about 3D-printing technology, the artists…

International markets are too big an opportunity to pass up. Why allow physical borders to dictate the limits of your business? Dave Goldberg, CEO of SurveyMonkey, once said that “if you have a product business and you aren’t focused on international, you are missing out on two-thirds of your potential customers.” This is still widely relevant to many startups around the world. Michael Fertik, the ‘serial entrepreneur’ said in his Harvard Business…

A panel discussion titled ‘Disruptive Asian entrepreneur: Cracking the Silicon Valley code’ was organized on Day 2 of beLAUNCH 2013, the biggest startup and technology conference in South Korea. The panel discussion was designed as a forum for successful Asian American entrepreneurs to share their insights and experience from starting and growing their company in Silicon Valley. The moderator of the session was Jay Eum, Co-CEO of Translink Capital and the panellists…

Cooliris today announced the release of the new Cooliris mobile app which offers endless discovery of friends’ and followers’ photos, and adds Dropbox to the portfolio of media sources users can seamlessly explore from the app. Cooliris has already integrated the mobile library, Facebook, Instagram, Flickr, Google+/Picasa, Twitter, SmugMug, Google Drive, Google Images, Yandex.Fotki in Russia, and Renren in China. Cooliris, which has reached the #1 iPad app in 75 countries for…

For the first time this year, cheaper and smaller devices gained favor with the consumers. Google surpassed Apple in tablets — Google’s software will power more tablets than Apple’s, or so Bloomberg reported. It is expected that Google’s shares will rise to 49% in 2013, while Apple’s share will dip to 46% – last year they had 51%, and Google had 46%. Tablets from Google, and products from Samsung and Amazon are gaining favor due to their prices; the prices start at around $200, which is less than half the cost of the newest iPad model. iPad Mini was released to defend their market dominance amid mounting competition.

Organized by TechinAsia.com, Startup Asia is a 2-day conference organized for entrepreneurs, investors, media, and people across the Asian tech community.

1 in 3 North Americans use Korean smartphones. Apple was the number 1 smartphone vendor in the USA with 37.6% market share in 2012. LG and Samsung are catching up, and their sales in the US and Canada continue to grow. Who will be the no.1 smartphone vendor in the US in 2013?