Because all of these REALLY annoy me, and small explanations for those who may not be aware, I present the Top 5 Annoying Tech Issues in Korea:
They are all meant to annoy you, while offering either no, or highly arguable, benefit.
End rant.
- Active X in all its glorious forms.
As SSL security methods are not used here, all online transactions must be handled through individual site plug-ins. Meaning once you proceed to check-out, you have to install 400 damn stupid little plug-ins, then repeat your order all over again. Grr. Until recently, this required the use of Windows and Internet Explorer, but nowadays plug-in frames are available for Mac, and Chrome/FF on Windows, but suck it Linux users. If only we'd voted for this guy. - Flash.
The most important and necessary Korean websites that foreigners would find useful, aside from lacking English information, contain nearly all their Korean text in images or Flash animations/menus. Thus, one cannot simply pass the page through an online translator. Perhaps this made sense 15 years ago when browser text encodings were screwy, but there's really no excuse today. Apparently they haven't heard of Unicode/UTF. - No Right-click.
Most Korean portal-hosted sites, particularly blogs and cafes, employ bizarre Javascripts that prevent or severely limit your ability to right-click on their sites. There are browser extensions to counteract this, but it is an unnecessarily annoying practice at the least. It reminds me of pens that are tied to the desk at the bank, except if there were infinite pens, all tied there. - Android Market restrictions.
I don't know about iPhone, but Korea places several restrictions on what can be accessed in the Market. Until recently, all Games were banned under the guise of being "unrated." Yet today, features of Google Maps such as Latitude, Check-ins (oddly still available in the G+ app), and Location History are blocked, citing "Privacy Concerns." The same applies to the Android app version of Google Earth. Other Google products (Music, Voice, etc) have at least semi-legitimate reason to be unavailable. - Porn Warn.
Nearly all porn is blocked at the IP level, so changing your DNS is not enough. A VPN or proxy is required. As if Koreans weren't tech-savvy enough to figure this out.
They are all meant to annoy you, while offering either no, or highly arguable, benefit.
End rant.