Kim Ji-won used to enjoy a good day out at the shops, but retail therapy no longer has much appeal because the young South Korean mother has her hands full with a child.
Now, the 28-year-old has turned to the Internet to buy everything from powdered milk and diapers to cosmetics.
Kim is not alone. From high school students to company workers, droves of South Koreans have taken to online shopping in the world's most wired country, helping make Internet firms a rare bright spot in a deteriorating economy.
"I don't feel like shopping in crowded malls, carrying my baby in my arms," Kim said.
"It's much cheaper on the Internet," she added. "Some sites even offer price comparisons, so I don't have to hop from shop to shop."
About 70 percent of South Korea's 48 million people enjoy Internet access and the country has the world's highest fast-speed broadband penetration rate.
About a fifth of the population have access to broadband, which is up to 100 times faster than dial-up modem services.
The rising number of online shoppers has helped the nation's major Internet portals actually make money after years of losses.
The trend has also been mirrored in China where four US-listed Chinese Internet firms turned profits in the last quarter.
The profit trend among Chinese Internet companies, including Sohu.com, Sina.com, NetEase and Chinadotcom, sparked a small-scale replay of the stock boom that collapsed elsewhere in the world three years ago.
Online shopping transactions in South Korea topped six trillion won (US$5 billion) last year, up more than 80 percent from a year ago on growing Internet purchases of home appliances, computers, cosmetics and clothes, government figures showed.
South Korea's biggest Internet portal, Daum, and other Internet firms passed a break-even point in the third quarter and posted record earnings in the fourth quarter, attracting investors and advertisers to the new media.
Operating profit at Daum Communications Corp topped 6.9 billion won (US$5.79 million) in the last three months of last year on sales of 77.1 billion won.
Over 70 percent of South Koreans have a Daum email account and Daum users view an average of 400 million pages a day, the highest rate in the world after US portals Yahoo and AOL Time Warner.
Surprise numbers
Another leading portal, NHN Corp, estimates it made a net profit of 21 billion won last year and aims to double profit this year, backed by its profitable online games.
"Their fourth-quarter earnings were really surprising, so much better than expected," said Lee Seung-moon, a fund manager at Midas Asset Management, which has some exposure to leading Internet portals.
Analysts attribute the results to high growth in Internet advertising and e-commerce despite wilting consumption in the wider economy.
"Online shopping has relatively low sensitivity to economic swings, as a purchase amount is relatively small," said Park Jun-kyun, an analyst at Good Morning Shinhan Securities.
The leading Internet portals have succeeded in building a loyal subscriber base by providing unique online communities and selling popular online characters for Internet users.
Called Avatar, the characters look like a cartoon or a doll and these can represent users for online chatting, emailing and shopping.
While major Internet portals have performed well, other areas of Korea's Internet empire may have reached saturation point.
Broadband-service provider Korea Thrunet Co recently filed for court receivership after excessive investment designed to catch up with rivals.
Bright outlook
Analysts also played down the impact of the recent "SQL Slammer" computer virus attack, which nearly shut down World Wide Web access and hit South Korea particularly hard.
"The virus was only a temporary shock and earnings growth in Internet firms will continue this year," Park said, citing the government's aggressive promotion of e-commerce.
Aiming to hook up every household to the Internet, South Korea plans to invest 13.3 trillion won in broadband networks by 2005.
Daum shares have outperformed the tech-heavy Kosdaq over the past three months. The shares ended down 750 won at 34,100 on Monday.
Online gaming has become an obsession among many young South Koreans, who often forgo food and sleep to play adrenalin-charged, often violent games in Internet cafes dotted all over South Korean cities.
Online advertising has also become more important.
Internet advertising accounted for a paltry 1.2 percent of South Korea's total advertisement revenues in 2000 with 71 billion won. The market grew 85 percent year on year last year to 185 billion won, analysts said.
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
Malaysia’s leader yesterday announced plans to build a massive semiconductor design park, aiming to boost the Southeast Asian nation’s role in the global chip industry. A prominent player in the semiconductor industry for decades, Malaysia accounts for an estimated 13 percent of global back-end manufacturing, according to German tech giant Bosch. Now it wants to go beyond production and emerge as a chip design powerhouse too, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said. “I am pleased to announce the largest IC (integrated circuit) Design Park in Southeast Asia, that will house world-class anchor tenants and collaborate with global companies such as Arm [Holdings PLC],”
Thousands of parents in Singapore are furious after a Cordlife Group Ltd (康盛人生集團), a major operator of cord blood banks in Asia, irreparably damaged their children’s samples through improper handling, with some now pursuing legal action. The ongoing case, one of the worst to hit the largely untested industry, has renewed concerns over companies marketing themselves to anxious parents with mostly unproven assurances. This has implications across the region, given Cordlife’s operations in Hong Kong, Macau, Indonesia, the Philippines and India. The parents paid for years to have their infants’ cord blood stored, with the understanding that the stem cells they contained
Sales in the retail, and food and beverage sectors last month continued to rise, increasing 0.7 percent and 13.6 percent respectively from a year earlier, setting record highs for the month of March, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said yesterday. Sales in the wholesale sector also grew last month by 4.6 annually, mainly due to the business opportunities for emerging applications related to artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing technologies, the ministry said in a report. The ministry forecast that retail, and food and beverage sales this month would retain their growth momentum as the former would benefit from Tomb Sweeping Day