Kim Denies Being in Anti-Virus Business

49 year-old Kim Cheol-soo, a prominent South Korean technology entrepreneur, sought Tuesday to distance himself from South Korea's established software circles. "I do not run an anti-virus business" Kim told The Dokdo Times. "I never claimed to be able to remove infections from people's computers, but they are constantly creating stories about it."

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.

Related Links
Ahn denies direct involvement in politics
Ahn coy about presidential ambitions
Fuzzy Logic
One in seven suffered hacking: survey
Infected PCs begin to crash

Disclaimer: Please note the links above are generated automatically by our software and may not always be directly related to the news article.

NK Blasts Upcoming Korea-US Military Drills

North Korea claims it has used secretly developed time-travel technology to blast upcoming Korea-US military drills, sinking several ships and destroying much of the South Korean air force. The drills will take place as part of Operation Key Resolve from February 27 to March 10.

As proof officials in Pyongyang held up a future copy of the South's Hankyoreh newspaper which bore the headline "US 7th Fleet Lost in West Sea Mystery".

This isn't the first time North Korea has claimed significant scientific advances. Two years ago North Korean soccer manager Kim reportedly received coaching advice directly from King Jong-il during the World Cup "using mobile phones that are not visible to the naked eye." The former leader, who died in December, is said to have developed the technology himself, but it is not known if he developed the time-travel device that allows attacks to be directed into the future before his death, or whether he accidentally fell victim to it.

According to South Korea's National Intelligence Service, the invisible cell phones were possibly covered with stealth paint. Fears that stealth paint had been used by North Korea led the government to remove several artworks suspected of pro-North sympathies from the Seoul Metropolitan Museum of Art last year.

Some South Korean scientists have been skeptical of the North's claims, but many others have pointed to the way conditions in North Korea have apparently gone back in time in recent years as proof that the technology exists and is actively being used by the North Korean leadership.

The revelation that North Korea can now attack future targets may not all be bad news however. In revealing its time traveling technology, government officials in Pyongyang claimed that they had also used it to prevent Sarah Palin from running for President in 2012. In November 2010 after the North Korean attack on Yeonpyeong Island, Pain shocked South Koreans by promising to stand with her North Korean allies, raising fears that she would adopt an esoteric foreign policy aimed at hastening the arrival of what her campaign mysteriously called "the end times".

While an alliance with North Korea might have greatly helped the impoverished nation, it is believed that Pyongyang ultimately sought to prevent her rise to the presidency based on a potential threat to their ideology that was judged even more important than potential support for North's brand of communism – her gender.

Related Links
NK blasts upcoming Korea-US military drills
North Korean Soccer Coach Talks to 'Dear Leader' Via Invisible Phone
N.Korea's Stealth Warfare Manual Revealed
Pieces of the Cheonan puzzle
Sarah Palin’s North Korea slip
Police Want to Question Sarah Palin Over North Korea Comments

Disclaimer: Please note the links above are generated automatically by our software and may not always be directly related to the news article.

North Korea Fights Restaurant War With South

A North Korean government-owned restaurant has opened in the capital of The Netherlands, Amsterdam, in what seems to be another attempt to threaten South Korea - which opened a government-run restaurant of its own in New York just over a year ago. The move is also being seen as the communist monarchy's latest attempt to earn hard currency and foster closer ties with European communist sympathizers, who last year caused the EU to side with North Korea in the inter-Korean conflict.

57 year-old and 52 year-old government officials in Seoul said that the North Korean restaurant was not likely to threaten South Korea's plan to globalize Korean cuisine and earn hard currency to bail out the Korean savings bank industry before it collapsed.

But according to 58 year-old Professor Kim from Seoul International University, Seoul should be very concerned by the North Korean move, explaining that the North Korean restaurant is a lower cost operation as the food used within it is supplied for free by the international community as well as the South Korean government and civic groups.

By comparison, while the Ministry of Food, Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries – which runs the New York mega-restaurant – brings pressure to bear on Korean companies to provide various foods on highly favorable terms, it still does pay for them, a principle which also applies to minimum-wage restaurant employees.

58 year-old Professor Kim believes that in the longer term it will prove impossible for South Korea's government-run overseas restaurants to compete with those from the North. "The cost-base is significantly lower, leaving South Korean restaurants having to compete on quality rather than price – but this will also prove impossible." The professor went on to explain that based on his research, he has concluded that the southern-run restaurants can not match the quality of North Korean ones because South Korean kitchen staff are much more likely to own mobile phones than their northern counterparts. In North Korea, the punishment for using a mobile phone is death, whereas in South Korea, the punishment for not using a mobile phone is death, or at least serious social exclusion.

Pyongyang has said any attempt to cut off its supply of free restaurant food from the international community would be seen as an "extreme provocation by the southern traitors and a declaration of war". Plans to open South Korean restaurants have also now been put on hold while ministers in Seoul decide how to react to the North's threat to turn any additional "puppet-government fronted traitor-feeding food-related establishments" into a "sea of fire".

Related Links
NK restaurant opens in Netherlands
Government Seeks to Put Overseas Koreans Out of Business
Too many Korean restaurants in NY
Distribution of private aid monitored in N.Korea
Aid after Kim Jong-il’s death
North Korea Requests More Wailers Before Resuming Six-Party Talks
North Korea threatens to punish mobile-phone users as 'war criminals'
Banking Pyramid Scheme Comes Crashing Down
EU Sides With North Korea in Ongoing Korean Conflict
Party of European Socialists

Disclaimer: Please note the links above are generated automatically by our software and may not always be directly related to the news article.