Back in 2007, I published the cost of monoculture, a blog post that was the first English-language explanation of the situation in South Korea where a series of independent decisions created a de facto monopoly for Microsoft Internet Explorer. The blog post was widely covered in 2007, in Salon, Slashdot, Boing Boing, etc.
Fast forward 5+ years to the late part of 2012 and basically nothing has changed. In fact, things are so bad in Korea that a candidate for the President of Korea, Ahn Cheol-soo, has taken the position that if he were voted in, he would abolish the laws that have locked Korea to Microsoft Internet Explorer.
Ahn Pledges To Wipe Out South Korea’s Outdated Internet Encryption Rule – Korea Real Time – WSJ
Internet Explorer becomes Korean election issue • The Register
Sure this candidate is from the IT/software field, but the fact that his platform has this position says that this is still a painful issue for most people in Korea today. It’s stunning that the Korean government has not proactively moved away from Active-X plugins when Microsoft themselves are deprecating this technology in Windows 8 and Internet Explorer 10.