A beggar in the seoul subway station

Today on my way to YangJae station(GangNam is very near from there), I saw old woman hobbled in the station.

3 days ago, I encountered her in the same line.

She put some begging note written in Korean (asking for money for her medical care) on the knees of passengers,
and many Korean woman who are so compassionate would gladly give old woman 1000 won.(1$)

But last time when I saw her she was yelling at foreign woman who does not know the meaning of her note. She was scared.

I was shocked.

The old woman looked very miserable at first sight.

But she acted like someone who have the right to beg in subway.

In Seoul, begging in subway is illegal.

I refused to give her money.

But both woman of my side gladly gave her 1000 won.

But what I am sure is that she is not begging, she is deceiving.


So, what is justice and what is right?

Who does the right thing?

And who deserves the mercy?

Why I still recommend apple than samsung ?

Year 2004, Hwang, who was the president of samsung semicinductor division, was in the airplane to meet Steve Jobs. (He is now the president of KT telecom)

In his suitcase was flash memory samsung developed recently. Hwang wants samsung become a new partner for iPods' memory supplier.

After knowing each other, Steve Jobs sometimes told Dr. Hwang (He called president Hwang as Doctor, because he got doctor degree at standford university) about his dream of making apple products that last values as time gores on.

This may be non-sense to Dr. Hwang. Samsung makes every month new Electronic products to survive.

But Steve Job was right.

I bought iPad II 4 years ago. And it is still running. Very useful for listing music, radio and watching TV.

Design is still fine and iOS update is reliable.

But I do not have any good memory with samsung galaxytab 8.9 which I bought 3 years ago. I sold it at online flee market after 6 month.

What makes the difference?

I think it comes from Company's values.

As Jobs told, apple seeks something sexy. Do not mind what the market wants. But product must follow apple's value. It it more severe than market's needs.

This is the reason why design and product quality is better than competitors.
Surely nowadays apple's new iphone 6 has some issues about it's bending under high pressure.

It may be a big issue.

But still there are rare company who has operating system and hardware.
There are not so many who cares design like apple.

So, if you want to choose something takes values long,
I still recommend Apple's.

True but not so easy to tell, the fact in seoul 2014 summer

Near my home, there are two big universities where I and my wife often visit on weekend.

Last Saturday we walked through small road as a refresh and arrived at the K~ university in 15 minutes.

It was a vacation season but many students are enrolling summer school.
After passing by front I saw the clue what the students did last night.

In Seoul, soju(Korean whiskey) is the representative of public alcoholic drinks. I can meet lots of empty soju bottles in the bright summer light.

May be, this is the way poor students enjoy their campus but I can not understand why they make the public places filled with wastes.

They can live with their own style and have a right to drink alcohols.
But they are not have a right to act out of common senses.


Another shocking accident happened after 3 days.

I was on my way to public library, and there one woman was seeking bins to find bottles to sell.
It is not India! It's seoul .. I am not saying India is inferior country. When I visited India several times, I can easily see such kind of boys and girls on roads. Just I am saying what I saw in india and I thought in seoul it will not be existed.

But it is true that the woman's desperate poverty makes her to live like that.

Some students spend their lives on drinking and some poor people cries for bottles for tomorrow morning meals.

Korea is very rich compared to 10 or 20 years ago.

But Korean is not so generous to neighbors.

We, koreans lived desperately to survive from korea war at 1950's. It may be one of that reason.

But i think it's time for korean to learn true happiness comes from generosity, share, forgiveness and love.

Paradoxically such are the value of chosun dynasty - Old korea before Korea war.

May be we got money for some to go europe for every summer vacation trip, but we lose the value our ancestors had.

I know what you did on sunday morning

A cloudy sunday morning in seoul, I was waiting my wife's coming in the parking lot to go GwangHwaMun - the center of seoul where once King of chosun dynasty lived.

I encountered high school boy with a backpack - it's very easy to find high school students who attend to private educational institute on sunday in seoul.

But instead of going to study, he roamed around the garden and with a speed of light, he picked up something and slipped it into pocket.

I taught high school students on a sunday-school for years and I felt in my  bones it's something!!!

Yes!!!

It was a lighter. 

The lighter gets to work every morning leaving his stone house in the garden.

I am 100% sure his parents does not recognize the fact that his cute child smokes.

In south Korea it is a open secret most of teenagers smoke and ironically many parents believe their children does not  smoke.

South Korean high school students study 15~18 hours a day to pass the college entrance exam !!!!!

He definitely needs a cigarette to ease stress.   :-O_~

Perhaps these butts are the evidence of his agony.

Look at the suspect who keeps one hand in his pocket clutching lighter.

Let's think about today's information technology.

We are living in the era of Life-log where our daily lives are recorded.

In your smartphone app store, you can easily find these lifelog app. It records your daily life and some app helps you to exercise more.

But if the image of every secure cameras and black box camera for vehicles are recorded in the cloud - like google or apple's cloud system, what will happen?

Toady's technology is making it possible to know where you are and what you are doing in real-time.

In this soon coming lifelog era, I am sure these poor korean high school students can not smoke illegally any more.

I am not saying smoking is nothing to teenagers.

But they must choose. At least human can choose whether it is good or not.

And the decision process makes human mature.

The era of lifelog mean crime zero society theoretically.

But can people be happy? It's a another story.


Sometimes people learns and grows through mistakes.

Next society maybe compels us a new utopia where there is no human decision.

Samsung's new OS Tizen Phone 'Samsung Z' begins another war

Samsung's first Tizen smart phone is fianlly here. Samsung in seoul announced first tizen commercial smartphone 'samsung Z' will be launched in Russia in the third quarter.

The phone comes with Tizen Operating System 2.2.1, a 4.9-inch HD Super AMOLED display and a 2.3 GHz quad-core processor and fully supports 2D and 3D graphics.

It also supports 8 megapixel rear-facing camera ( 2.1 megapixel front facing camera).

Surprisingly it includes a fingerprint sensor, health management app and the ultra power saving mode which first appeared in Samsung's Galaxy S5 - samsung's recent flagship Android phone

Actually the first commercial tizen based product is not samsung Z, it is samsung gear 2 - samsung's newest smart watch following galaxy gear. Samsung names galaxy for it's android based product.

Intel is also known to join the open sourced Tizen Operating system development with samsung.

Tizen is not targeted for smartphone only.
Samsung is android smartphone's biggest manufacturer. It may be satisfied with current position.
But android belongs to google and samsung belives next big move is surely software.
That is what made samsung to decide to have its own OS - very smart decision.

So Tizen is not targeted for smartphone market competing with apple and even with google.

Intel and samsung show off Tizen for cars and phones.

This Linux based operating system is designed for common use - not only for smartphone but smart watch, TV, refrigerator, Cars and so on.

This is samsung's very smart strategy.

Galaxy series take samsung much fortune with big success in smartphone war against Apple.

But that' s not enough, samsung needs more. Samsung hates the fact that google is the owner of phone's spirit.

New born baby Tizen releases Samsung's this kind of anxiety on the absence of essential software and also believes it will enable a new products,

Smartphone market is full. Samsung does not target to replace android with Tizen but it want to go further.

As samsung gear 2 shows, samsung will ship Tizen on every products it will produce.

TV may be the next target

The era of Smartphone sinks and the era of IOT(internet of things) is rising.

That's what samsung believes.
Tizen will give samsung great chance to stand alone in this new ear apart from google.

Why?

Because samsung can produce nice electronic gadget very fast which google can not.

With Tizen, samsung can act like apple. It makes hardware and software both.

And may be it is time for samsung to fight against google as it did with Apple during recent years,
For now samsung also has the spirit of product - operating system.

About this blog

My name is KH Choi.
I entered Samsung at 1996 and resigned at 30 september, 2013.

I have a experiences working for developing samsung electronics' management tools and consulting.
I worked as a consultant in samsung and visited so many samsung overseas subsidiaries.

Samsung USA, samsung Texas, samsung hungary, samsung spain, samsung germany, samsung China (there are lots of factories in china from tianzin, shzhou to shenzhen)

I hope this blog helps you to understand more about samsung and how it rises.
And how samsung will be near future?

I will not say anything confidential about samsung in this blog but I will let you know and understand how korean company like samsung came to be changed from local company to top-tier global company.