Study Abroad - Japan and South Korea

Profile: Japan and South Korea

Both Japan and South Korea are highly networked countries, with Internet access available in more methods and more locations than most other countries, including the United States.

Power issues

Japan:

Japanese power levels change between the north and the south of the country; an adapter that works for you in Tokyo may not work in Osaka. In the south, most American appliances could work with little or no modification, since the power, the frequency, and the plug types are similar to the U.S. standard. However, in the north, the frequency changes, and in both halves of the country the "ideal" standard is slightly lower than the American standard; if you have a device that requires steady power at 120 volts and 60 hertz and doesn't simply use a wall outlet to charge batteries that supply its running power, you'll probably need a transformer.

South Korea:

While you can still find American-style adapters and power levels in some older buildings, these are being phased out in favor of a different plug type and different power level. Plug adapters will almost always be necessary, and a transformer will be necessary if your device doesn't accept both types of voltage.

For quick comparison:

United States: 120 volts, 60 hertz, type A and B plugs

Northern Japan: 100 volts, 50 hertz, type A and B plugs

Southern Japan: 100 volts, 60 hertz, type A and B plugs

South Korea: Normally 220 volts, 60 hertz, type C and F plugs. Some older buildings may have 110 volts and type A and B plugs.

Keyboard issues

Because Japan and South Korea both use multiple character sets in writing, and because there are multiple ways of adapting both keyboards and computers' character set encodings to the wider range of characters used in East Asian countries, you'll need to understand how to change character encoding sets on a daily basis. Unlike most other countries, you won't be able to choose a single character set and leave your computer in that setting during your study abroad period.

The operating system and software:

There are two approaches you can take to adapting your computer for use with East Asian languages that are often encoded in multiple-byte segments. The simplest method is to install an Input Method Editor (IME) or Language Kit on your English-language edition of an operating system, and the other choice is to reinstall your computer with the foreign language edition of your operating system.

Obviously, installing an IME or Language Kit is a much less drastic step, and makes changing between several languages simpler to do. With Windows IMEs, a new icon is displayed in the task bar, and you can select your language (and often your preferred character set) from the options it presents. With Mac Language Kits, a new icon is displayed in the menu bar, and it also gives you the choice of languages and, when applicable, character sets. You can then type East Asian languages into many of your existing English-language programs. In many cases, you can also install and run software that you've purchased in the foreign country.

However, some Asian software may not run correctly because the software may require the full foreign-language, multiple-byte operating system rather than the overlay of the IME or Language Kit. In these cases, you should investigate whether any local computer labs or libraries offer native-language computers with the needed software.

Similarly, if you do choose to reinstall your operating system in an East Asian language, it will be able to run software that you purchase in Asia, but it may not be able to run English-edition software.

The keyboards:

You'll find approximately the same number of keys on an East Asian keyboard as on a Western one, but each key may have more than one symbol written on it. In Japan, each key usually contains a Roman letter and kana, with a function key available to switch between hiragana, katakana, and kana meant to be converted to kanji. In Korea, keyboards usually show Hangul characters with a function key to select among different input methods, and Korean keyboards may or may not have Roman characters along with the Hangul characters.

For more information about East Asian keyboards, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_keyboard#Note_on_East_Asian_languages

Web pages and network applications:

Since there are so many different character sets used in encoding East Asian languages, good HTML form requires a web page to identify its language and encoding at the top of the page so that a web browser can display a page in the correct encoding. (If the page shows some strange characters (like •¶Žš‰) in place of what should logically be punctuation or accented letters, you're using a different encoding than the web page or application, resulting in a phenomenon named mojibake).

However, not all web pages are well written, and sometimes more than one encoding can be accidentally entered into a single page, meaning that you may need to change character encodings more than once in order to read all the information. If you see mojibake on a web page while in an East Asian country, try selecting another language encoding from the list shown under View -> Encoding or View -> Character Encoding. For Japanese, the three most common options are JIS, Shift-JIS, and Unicode. For Korean, the three most common options are ISO-2022-KR, EUC-KR, and Unicode.

More information on character encodings:

Japanese encodings: ttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_language_and_computers

Korean encodings: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Korean_language_and_computers

Chinese encodings: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_character_encoding

Network issues

Broadband access in metropolitan areas of Japan and South Korea comes through more methods and in more speeds than in America or in many other countries. South Korea has one of the highest rates of use of broadband access in the world.

In most areas, mobile phones are the most ubiquitous method of accessing the Internet and email. The network offerings are also significantly higher-speed than their American equivalents. Computer users in major cities have a choice between wireless networking, cable modems (referred to as CATV), several higher-speed versions of DSL (collectively called xDSL), and fiber network directly to the user's residence (called FTTH). xDSL users are the most numerous, with approximately 10 times the market share of the next leading technology.

However, be aware that computer users in smaller and more rural towns may not have as many options.