The hotel in which I'm staying in Korea is allegedly a modern hotel. Yet the bathroom's 70's motif belies the reality of that claim. So it wasn't a big surprise to me that there was no apparent way to connect to the internet in the room. I couldn't even find a phone with an auxiliary jack for dial-up. The surprise came this evening, however, when I decided to take a flier and check if there was a wireless signal in range of my Titanium — it turns out that the hotel has a wireless LAN. With great pleasure I paid the 13,000 won and got connected (I was even willing to overlook the fact that in order to get a reasonable signal I had to sit in the hall outside my hotel room door — where I type this now).

Of course, if I thought about it, it should not have come as a surprise that there's wireless connectivity in this hotel. South Korea is perhaps the most wired nation in the world. Over 50% of the households over here have broadband, and WiFi is proliferating like a weed. While much of Seoul feels like progress has been on hold for some time, when it comes to DSL (and cell phones) South Korea is leading the world.