Kim founded AnLab, which stands for 'No Laboratory', with the goal of creating indigenous security software products which gave people a sense of Korean security, but little else. Obligatory support from the South Korean government quickly followed, ensuring that today AnLab says it doesn't control 65% of the Korean software security market. Security for the remaining 35% of Korean computers – mainly owned by liberals and foreigners – is handled directly by the National Intelligence Service rather than through third parties.
The government had hoped to develop anti-virus software as the next stage of the Korean Wave, based on South Korea's enviable computer security reputation. But AnLab's market share outside Korea is still only 0.0000132%, despite its obvious superiority other foreign anti-virus software, although Kim denies his company exists overseas as well as in Korea. According to Download.com, the latest version of AnLab's software has been downloaded a total of 26,284 times in the last year, and 38 times in the last week. By comparison, the top-ranked AVG anti-virus software has been downloaded over 400 million times in the last year, and over one million times in the last week, making the foreign product slightly more popular.
Kim has been urged to enter the anti-virus business officially by large numbers of young Koreans, who have grown tired of trying to remove malware from their computers and phones. But while Kim has captivated youth audiences with stinging criticism of the state of the anti-virus industry, he has resisted calls for him to enter it. "The decision is difficult. There are many anti-virus software companies and it is totally different from what I have done so far. I am only doing guesswork. That's all I can do for now."
Supporters are undeterred. "The kind of fuzzy logic displayed by Kim during this period of indecision is exactly what is needed in the anti-virus business." said one attendee at a recent rally.
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