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0 pointsseoulmetro2y ago0 comments

Korea has a philosophy of local conglomerates first and foreign companies only existing if they prop the local conglomerate up.

It's a very good strategy as the Korean market is lucrative and the Korean companies have opportunities to spread worldwide. (they just suck at it)

Twitch got sent a foreigner-tax and didn't pay it, that's all. Korea already has a thriving version of Twitch called AfreecaTV. (edit: Oh it's not that thriving on their international site, maybe Korean site is better.)

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TMWNN2y ago

>Korea has a philosophy of local conglomerates first and foreign companies only existing if they prop the local conglomerate up.

I don't doubt that there is some degree of domestic favoratism—it would be surprising if there weren't any—but Korea was for years the last bastion of Internet Explorer because of government requirements, as opposed to Chrome, Firefox, or some special Korea-reskinned Chromium. iPhone has lots of market share despite Samsung.[1] Relevant to this discussion, Korean players going back to Starcraft a quarter century ago were and are well known for competing in and livestreaming mostly non Korean-developed videogames.

[1] Yes, I know about Apple being a Samsung customer

seoulmetroOP2y ago

What does this have to do with my comment? This just sounds like you wrote a bunch of funny Korean computer history facts.

johannes12343212y ago

> (they just suck at it)

That's the counter-argument.

As they don't have competition from global products, they can deliver worse products and don't have the need to improve.

This can be seen in many markets with import restrictions/tarifs.

seoulmetroOP2y ago

No, they really just suck at it as a culture. Tech in Korea is terrible and startups are even worse. The culture may be set by this big players though, that's for sure. It's not about competition leading to this. This is just a "grab" based on the great success of international market trade from Korean companies like Samsung, LG, etc. The same way Facebook and others call Chinese tech terrorism, they earned the privilege locally to hinder competition.

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse

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TMWNN2y ago

>Korea has a philosophy of local conglomerates first and foreign companies only existing if they prop the local conglomerate up.

[1] Yes, I know about Apple being a Samsung customer

seoulmetroOP2y ago

What does this have to do with my comment? This just sounds like you wrote a bunch of funny Korean computer history facts.

johannes12343212y ago

> (they just suck at it)

That's the counter-argument.

As they don't have competition from global products, they can deliver worse products and don't have the need to improve.

This can be seen in many markets with import restrictions/tarifs.

seoulmetroOP2y ago

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse