Screw Korea's dark age cell phone system and the people who perpetuate it through corporate greed and consumer ignorance.

Five years ago, Korea's cellphone system was something to be proud of… an amazement to every foreigner who set foot in the country.

Now it is an embarrassment to the country and an impediment to being anything other than the Hub of Ridicule by Multinationals Which Require Flexible Telecommunications to Make Korea the Hub of Anything.

Let's see why…

1. No matter how pretty the box, or how flashy the unnecessary features are, every phone produced for the Korean market is the same crippled junk year after year. Sure, it is technically capable of playing music and movies, taking pictures and transferring with Bluetooth… but you will never be able to get much practical use from these function other than to tell your friends you have them.

My phone requires me to go through 4 menu steps to send a single picture to my computer via Bluetooth… there is no option to send more than one. Uploading anything to the phone is impossible (Access Denied!). That means no ringtones, no MP3s, no pictures, no Flash programs… no nothing.

Nothing is accessible via the USB… unlike every $20 Chinese product that is recognized as a removable hard drive.

Download and use the official software, you say? Sure. I tired it. It uses 360 gig of disk space for God-knows-what, hijacks the media player and picture viewer, installs a crappy toolbar and adds startup processes that hog system resources and don't play too well with other stuff.

Then, it opens quiet network connections and keeps in contact with the home office… I didn't bother to find out exactly what spyware specifics that was all about. To top it off, it connects to a server in Hong Kong that an IP search shows to be a collection point for a data mining virus. Unintentional viruses in official software are hardly unknown in Korea… looks like this version had it.

2. Stuck with one phone. My friend in Hong Kong has about 10 phones. When he goes to work, he drops his SIM card in the full-function smart phone. When he goes on his boat, he drops his SIM card in the waterproof phone and when he goes clubbing he carries a flashy little fashion phone. In Korea, you get what you get… which isn't much… because…

3. In the Philippines, some guy living in a bamboo hut with no running water has a phone (made for export only by LG or Samsung) that is a PMP, plays Flash games and has a full QWERTY keyboard for fast texting… as well as an excellent digital camera and full bidirectional computer connectivity. Wow! An actually useful tool!

There are a number of other reasons… such as the ease of SIM card use for international travel, ease of modifications and upgrade, variety of styles and functions available in other countries due to competition from other manufactures, transportability of phonebooks and photos… which I could elaborate on for hours if I had time… which I am short of these days.

But, to summarize… screw Korea's crappy phones.

Power to the People!