1004-Chinese eyes on Koreans in Yanbian

Earlier this month, I was in Helong City in the Yanbian Korean Autonomous Prefecture on the Duman River. Across the river, which is the China-North Korean border, is a village in Musan County, North Hamgyong Province. The road was empty, and I took out my camera. About a minute later, a military vehicle with a satellite communication device arrived. 

The soldiers said that taking photography was not allowed in the area. While I was let go with an informal warning, questions remained. How did they know I was taking pictures? How on Earth did they arrive so quickly? Cameras on the Broken Bridge of Liangshui in the lower Duman River, destroyed in 1945, turn 360 degrees, and closed circuit cameras are installed along parts of the river. The network of surveillance is extensive. A local resident informed me that cameras can also be found on tree branches and, supposedly, in the grass.

The Dandong region around the Apnok River, frequented by Korean and Japanese reporters, is quite different. The steel bridge is a popular attraction that tourists make sure to take a picture of. Cruise ships constantly bring in Chinese tourists, and you can rent a motor boat to get close to the North Korean side of the river without much restriction. Luxury hotels and a large-scale industrial complex are right across the river from Hwanggeumpyeong, North Korea. Several steps from my hotel, I could see North Korean soldiers working in the field on the other side of a wired fence. Why are these two border regions so different?

In the cities on the Duman River, shabby lodgings offer various Korean television channels, North Korean Central Television and local Korean-language broadcasting. Since it is a Korean autonomous province, road signs are in Korean. Korean tourists visiting Mount Baekdu say they often get confused as to whether they are in China or Korea after looking at Korean signs for hours.

More than 100 years ago, when Yanbian was called Bukgando, there was no distinction between the Koreans who moved there and the people currently living in South and North Koreas. Koreans shared their history, language and traditions and were fighting to take back their homeland. While Koreans live in three countries now, we still are one people. The region is a strategic point in transportation connecting three northeast provinces, Mongolia and Russia’s Primorsky Krai, and a geopolitical key point connected with Najin Port in North Korea. 

Yanbian is close to Korea economically and culturally, and 830,000 people who share blood ties with South and North Koreans live there. China may be afraid of the hidden, pent up power of Yanbian. If the ethnic Koreans in China are allowed to have free exchanges with the people of South and North Korea, they could create some chemical synergy - or an explosive reaction. While they are Chinese citizens, the ethnic Koreans may be people with potential to ignite national integration.

1002-Got Innovation? These Companies Do.

By 
• MELISSA KORN
 
• CONNECT

Associated Press

Jeff Bezos, founder and CEO of Amazon (No. 7) introduces new Kindle Fire tablets.

Tech firms are still tops when it comes to innovation, according to Boston Consulting Group’s 2013 “Most Innovative Companies” list. Apple Inc. held the No. 1 spot for the ninth consecutive year, followed by Samsung Electronics Co. and Google Inc.GOOG -0.20%

But auto makers are shifting into high gear. The current report includes 14 automotive companies in the top 50—and nine in the top 20. Back in 2010, there were just eight automotive firms in the mix.

Staring down tighter fuel efficiency standards, grappling with regular safety concerns and catering to discerning drivers, car makers have doubled down on innovation of late. (Don’t believe us? Check out these stories on Tesla’s bid to produce a self-driving electric car, BMWBMW.XE +0.48%’s light-weight assembly for electric cars and GMGM -1.57%’s electric-car aspirations.)

Toyota Motor Corp.7203.TO -1.08%, Ford Motor Co.F -1.27% and BMW AG were among the 10 most innovative companies, according to the BCG report. General Motors Co. jumped 16 spots this year, to No. 13, while Volkswagen AG rose 31 positions to No. 14. Audi AG, Honda Motor Co. and Daimler AG also had strong showings.

Meanwhile, Intel Corp.INTC -1.84%, Dell Inc.DELL 0.00% and Royal Philips NVPHG -1.06% all fell by at least 11 spots.

The results are determined in part by a survey of 1,500 senior executives who are asked to name the most innovative companies outside their industry, weighed alongside three-year shareholder returns, revenue growth and margin gains.

“The bar is continuing to rise for what it means to be a world-class innovator,” says Andrew Taylor, a BCG partner who works on innovation strategy. Innovation is no longer the buzzword of tech firms, but companies in all industries must be on top of their creative game to compete, he says.

Venkatesh Prasad, senior technical leader of open innovation at Ford, says the fact that his role even exists is evidence the company understands that “innovation plays a central role in our continuing transformation.”

Prasad helps run “ideation” sessions for long-term projects and new products, and the company hosts hackathons to find creative ways to tackle problems like fuel efficiency.

Companies talk plenty about the importance of innovation in maintaining a competitive edge in the marketplace, citing the value of new-product development, strategic planning and a committed leadership team.

About one-quarter of survey respondents say they see innovation as the top priority, and another 53% say it’s in the top three.

But measuring innovation remains difficult, and BCG doesn’t ask survey respondents to explain exactly how they’re defining it. (And don’t get us started on how to teach it.)

“There really is no one size fits all,” Taylor said, adding that one company in a given industry could focus on one or two blockbuster product innovations a year, while another in the same sector may opt for more incremental innovations, but both could be wildly successful.

Here’s a look at the top 20 most innovative companies:

1. Apple
2. Samsung
3. Google
4. Microsoft
5. Toyota
6. IBM
7. Amazon
8. Ford
9. BMW
10. General Electric
11. Sony
12. Facebook
13. General Motors
14. Volkswagen
15. Coca-Cola
16. Hewlett-Packard
17. Hyundai
18. Honda
19. Audi
20. Daimler

• Auto Makers, 
• BCG, 
• Innovation, 
• Tech Companies

1001-From doodling to iconic cartoonist

Scholar and cartoonist Rhie Won-bok poses for a photo prior to an interview with The Korea Herald on Monday. (Kim Myung-sub/The Korea Herald)

As a kid, cartoonist and scholar Rhie Won-bok spent most of his time doodling alone.

“In the 1950s, you only had two choices as a kid,” Rhie, now 66, tells The Korea Herald. “You either went outside and played with other kids, or stayed inside and found something to do. People were poor and we all didn’t have many things. Books were also very hard to find. I wasn’t a very active type, so I stayed inside and just doodled.”

After many years of doodling, he started drawing random things. He drew a lot of cowboys. At the time, Rhie had no idea he would spend his entire life creating cartoons.

“I saw the cowboys in movies,” he says. “Movies were pretty much the only visual entertainment available.”

Rhie is, without a doubt, a cartoonist with a unique career. For one, he is the creator of one of the most enduring and successful manhwa series in the country. 

 

Rhie Won-bok’s cartoon series “Far Countries, Near Countries” (Gimmyoung Publishers)

His educational cartoon series, “Far Countries, Near Countries” featuring the inner workings and culture of foreign nations, has sold over 17 million copies in the past 33 years.

He finished the series’ last volume, which features Spain, in March. The first volume came out in 1981. The series features Korea, Japan, China, the U.K., the U.S., Germany, France, Italy and the Netherlands, among others.

“This is the end of the series, not my career,” says Rhie, who has been drawing cartoons for almost half a century. “So I’m not overwhelmed with emotions about it. I feel calm.”

For 29-year-old office worker Kang Soo-hyun, Rhie’s “Far Countries, Near Countries” was the only comic book she was allowed by read as a child.

“My mother didn’t think comic books were good for me,” she recalls.

“So I wasn’t allowed to read them in the house. But her only exception was ‘Far Countries, Near Countries.’ She thought the series was good for me even though it was a cartoon. She certainly wanted me to learn about other countries and their history, and there were no other children’s books that were as entertaining and informative as the series.”

The edition on Korea and its culture was translated into English and published under the title “Korea Unmasked” in 2002. The volume will be translated into six other languages ― French, Chinese, Spanish, German, Russian and Indonesian ― and will be published overseas throughout this year.

Although he now enjoys his success, Rhie was never too serious about being a cartoonist until he went to Germany to study in his 20s. At Seoul National University, his major was architecture, which, in Rhie’s words, was “never my cup of tea.”

He seldom went to his classes, and instead spent most of his time in his dorm room, drawing cartoons for Sonyeon Hankook Ilbo ― a newspaper for children and teenagers ― as his part time job. The best part was the monthly pay day. “I’d use the money to buy drinks for my friends,” Rhie says, with an almost impish smile. “It was so much fun. I’m pretty sure I bought drinks for everyone in the program.”

Cartoonist Rhie Won-bok, who recently completed his 15-volume educational cartoon series “Far Countries, Near Countries” featuring the inner workings and culture of foreign nations, looks at the map he used while traveling Europe, in his office in southern Seoul, Monday. The first volume of the series was published in 1981. (Kim Myung-sub/The Korea Herald)

Yet moving to Germany changed his life. “I went into a bookstore and was stunned to discover a huge section dedicated exclusively to comic books,” he says. “I’d never seen anything like that before and thought perhaps Korea’s cartoon industry will soon grow into something like this. It was in Germany that I decided to become a full-time cartoonist.”

He enrolled in a design program at the University of Munster. One of the school assignments he remembers is one where he and his classmates were asked to draw “horror.”

“I was rather puzzled by the assignment,” Rhie says. “I mean, how do you really draw ‘horror’? I drew a Dracula and submitted it. But I was really surprised to look at the works of my classmates. One of them drew something very similar to Edvard Munch’s ‘The Scream.’ There were so many different interpretations of what horror is.”

What fascinated Rhie the most was Germany’s diversity. “Germany shares borders with nine different countries,” says Rhie. “So the concept of what is ‘global’ or ‘diverse’ wasn’t anything new in Germany. But it was new in Korea when the first series came out. It was something that people were interested in reading about.”

Inspired by what he saw and learned in Europe, he started “Far Countries, Near Countries” while living in Germany as a student and traveled extensively while creating the series. It first appeared as a series in Sonyeon Hankook Ilbo. With no Internet at the time, he had to mail his work to Korea each time. Throughout his career, Rhie never missed a single deadline.

“I made the deadline even when I was drunk during college,” Rhie says. “That’s called professionalism.”

As a child, Rhie lived through an era of postwar poverty. It was very difficult to meet someone who have had lived or visited overseas. One time, his classmate’s father visited the U.S. and it was a huge deal in his class. “It was hard to even imagine what it was like overseas,” he says. “We all just had no idea.”

Rhie says he grew up with “ultimate freedom.” His mother died when he was 10, his father when he was 20. He was the youngest among seven children.

“Everyone in my family was busy making ends meet,” Rhie says. “So they just left me alone. I always got to make my life decisions on my own. It’s not something kids these days get to do. I was lucky.”

Even now, Rhie says he enjoys being alone. He loves drawing cartoons, drinking with a small group of people, reading and even playing computer games. The cartoonist calls alcohol his “only religion” and says that throughout his career, he has never gotten sick of his job. He calls himself a “very lazy person” and says he’s never exercised in his life. “I take a car even when I go to a mall across from my house,” he says. And anyone would agree that he looks young for his age.

“Drawing cartoons means you are living in the fantasy,” Rhie says. “It lets you visualize what you dream. All you need are a pen and paper. It doesn’t take money to do whatever you want with your characters. That is why it is never boring. You are free when you are drawing cartoons. You never get sick of it.”

The cartoonist, who also teaches design at Duksung Women’s University, says he would’ve ended up owning a small interior goods shop if he had not drawn cartoons. “Most of my classmates in architecture school went to the Middle East after graduation, as construction managers,” he says. “I’m not particularly a social person with people skills, so I don’t think I would’ve gone.”

Rhie, who is still working on his upcoming books about world history, says he only works about two or three hours a day on his cartoons. He is a firm believer in “quality over quantity.”

Being a professor at a university, he says he often feels bad for the younger generations of artists. “Although my generation experienced poverty, we had a lot of opportunities,” he says. “Everything was pretty much a blue ocean. But now pretty much everything has been explored and crowded with competitors. Class mobility is much more difficult nowadays.”

And his advice? Study the humanities.

“The world is constantly changing now,” he says. “And you have to read those changes and trends. And in order to understand the changes, you have to understand the way we live. And that’s what humanities is all about.”

0930-SoftBank Ready to Reap Alibaba IPO Riches

By Isabella Steger and Bradford Frischkorn

This file picture taken on October 15, 2012 shows president of Japan’s mobile carrier SoftBank9984.TO +1.62% Masayoshi Son speaking at a news conference announcing Softbank will acquire US-based Sprint Nextel, in Tokyo.

 

Agence France-Presse/Getty Images

Investors in SoftBank Corp. are surely enjoying Alibaba Group Holding Ltd.’s progress toward an initial public offering.

SoftBank shares rose 3.7% early Thursday following news on Wednesday that the Chinese e-commerce giant now plans to list in New York after talks with the Hong Kong stock exchange ended.

That’s because SoftBank holds a 36.7% stake in Alibaba–making it the biggest shareholder–and the IPO is expected to value Alibaba at as much as $70 billion. That would make SoftBank’s stake worth around $25 billion, or equal to nearly a third of SoftBank’s current market cap. Not too shabby for a $20 million investment in 2000.

“The only real question [for SoftBank] is how much of the latent value is already priced into its own stock. With a price-to-earnings ratio of under 18 times, shares may yet see significant upside after Alibaba lists,” said Tachibana Securities market adviser Kenichi Hirano.

Yahoo Inc.YHOO +2.44% owns 24% of Alibaba and founder Jack Ma holds about 7%.

Alibaba wants a listing structure that would allow it to go public without forcing its partners, including Mr. Ma, other co-founders and long-term employees to relinquish the right to nominate the majority of the company’s board.

Led by billionaire founder Masayoshi Son, SoftBank invested in Alibaba when the Chinese company, which was founded in 1999, was still a startup.

SoftBank’s investment is paying off as it pushes into the U.S. market following its $21.6 billion acquisition of telecom carrier Sprint Corp., the biggest takeover deal in Japanese corporate history.

0927-East Asia to form single Confucian community

Professor Park Hong-sik


By Chung Min-uck

East Asian countries rooted in the Confucian tradition are likely to form a single cultural community in the near future, said Park Hong-sik, professor at Daegu Haany University and chairman of the Korean Society of Confucianism, a private academic organization.

“The Western civilization of Christianity and science has reached breaking point after leading the 18th, 19th and 20th centuries,” said Park in an interview with The Korea Times, Sunday. “In the 21st century, the central axis of the world’s civilizations is shifting toward East Asia, in other words, a pan-Confucian culture.”

“I expect a single Confucian community in East Asia in the future within this century,” said the professor.

Following the June 27 Seoul-Beijing summit, the two countries agreed to launch a joint committee dedicated to strengthening cooperation on bilateral people-to-people exchanges and developing their common cultural heritage. The decision drew fresh attention to Confucianism which has been the philosophy for countries in the region including China, Korea, Japan and Vietnam for over 2,000 years.

“The world is craving new values, and the increasing political and economic power of the East Asian region is not a coincidence,” Park said. “Confucian scriptures are the repository of highest level of humanistic work that mankind has ever achieved.”

To this end, the chairman said, new light should be shed on the “Neo-Confucian” tradition, a philosophical system codified by the Chinese Southern Song Dynasty scholar Zhu Xi (1130-1200), who wrote the basis that formed much of the state ideologies of later dynasties in East Asia.

“Neo-Confucianism which effectively combined humanities and science gives contemporary man an important message,” Park said.

Neo-Confucianism, unlike Western science which gained a competitive edge by separating humanity from nature, synthesizes the two by combining early Confucian morals and ethical teachings with metaphysical and cosmological terms developed respectively in Buddhism and Daoism. Simply put, personal morality is inseparable from material development under Confucian thinking.

“With Confucianism, one must care about other human-beings while embracing nature as well,” said Park. “That’s the core of Confucian teachings, entailing universal values that people are currently searching for.”

Meanwhile, among the four criteria suggested for Seoul-Beijing humanities initiative _ regional, youth, scholarly, and traditional and artistic exchanges _ the professor pointed out youth exchange as the most critical.

“There must be long-term investment in the field of humanities to develop,” he said. “So, more investment should be made for youth exchange programs.”

During the annual board of directors’ meeting of International Confucianism Association (ICA), a Beijing-based private international body on Confucian studies, held in Beijing in April, Park appealed to form a subcommittee on youth exchange. In turn, ICA members have decided to hold a separate meeting on launching the subcommittee as early as October.

“I hope things go well in the ICA just like the Seoul-Beijing committee,” said Park.

Prompted by the economic prosperity of Confucian-rooted countries, the ICA is also attempting to expand its scope of activities from previous academic exchanges to discussing and networking with the members in forming a single Confucian community.

Headquartered in Beijing, the association receives financial and administrative support largely from the Chinese government. The idea of launching a global Confucian organization was, however, originally proposed by South Korea in the early 1990s.

The ICA was established by scholars around the world who study Confucianism, largely from China, Taiwan, Korea, Japan, Singapore, Hong Kong and Vietnam, in 1994 in Beijing. Its general assembly meeting is held once every four years.

0926-Demand for secondhand imported brands increasing

By Kim Tae-jong
Jung Hak-jong, a 42-year-old office worker, recently learned that he was deceived by a secondhand car dealer. He was told that his Honda CR-V SUV was accident-free when he bought it in June, but discovered that the vehicle had been in a major wreck.

“My dealer gave me a clean car history report as proof that the vehicle was accident-free,” he said. “But when I visited a car repair shop for maintenance services, they said my car had an accident-related damage.”

Furious, he demanded a refund for the vehicle but all he got were excuses. He later filed a complaint with the Korea Consumer Agency (KCA).

The secondhand car market has been growing fast, but loose regulations have produced a number of victims like Jung.

According to the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport, the local used car market is estimated at 22 trillion won with 3.2 million used cars traded last year, more than double the 1.5 million new vehicles sold in the year.

But KCA said the number of complaints related to secondhand vehicles has been on the increase, recording 11,083 in 2010, 12,940 in 2011 and 10,564 in 2012.

But less than half of them were properly compensated. For example, about 38 percent of all customers who filed complaints were compensated in July, the agency said.

Most complaints involve fake car history reports that miss accident-related records or have forged mileages. Flood-damaged cars are also sold without revealing repair records.

Dealers also advertise very attractive vehicles online to lure customers and try to sell other vehicles.

“I found a very good car online and made a reservation,” said Lee Kyung-joo, a 25-year-old office worker. “But when I visited the dealer, he showed me a different vehicle, saying the one I chose had been sold. Later, I realized that it was a kind of bait to lure customers.”

Gov’t’s new measures

Experts pointed out that the lack of a transparent trading system victimizes customers and also is a major obstacle against the growth of the market.

“The biggest problem is that customers are not fully provided with necessary and reliable information,” said Kim Pil-soo, an automotive studies professor at Daelim College. “The consequence is that customers are often ripped off.”

He urged that the authorities should make more of an effort to establish a system in which customers can check car history, including repair records.

The government recently announced that it has revised a law regarding car history reports to prevent breaches in oral agreements made in good faith, and unfair omissions of material facts by used car dealers.

Under the new regulation, dealers, mechanics and car scrapping service providers are required to send key information to the transport ministry, which will be available to secondhand car buyers.  

“Buyers were able to only judge a used car by inspecting its mechanical condition and maybe leafing through the dealer's or owner’s file of service records,” an official from the ministry said. “But such information was often unreliable.”

But thanks to the improved record collection system, buyers can check reliable vehicle history reports at www.ecar.go.kr with a vehicle identification number and the approval of an original owner or dealer, he said.

Some of the key information available at the site includes repair records, related safety features and mileage.

Growing market

Despite various problems, the local secondhand car market is growing with the rising presence of imported car brands. Industry insiders said that buyers want to enjoy driving premium vehicles at affordable prices.

“As sales of vehicles from imported brands are increasing, the sales of secondhand imported cars are also soaring,” said Kim Kyeong-mi, an official from SK Encar, the nation’s largest used car dealer.

She said used imported cars are much more affordable due to their high depreciation rates.

“Many drivers choose imported used cars as their depreciation rates are bigger than local ones, translating into a better deal for potential buyers,” she said.

Best-selling models in the secondhand markets are Hyundai Motor’s Grandeur, Sonata and Avante and diesel-powered sedans from luxury imported brands such as BMW 3 and 5 Series and Mercedes-Benz E-Class, she said.

With increasing growth potential, some carmakers such as BMW and Mercedes-Benz have also jumped into the used car market directly.

BMW Korea, the leading imported brand here, started to sell used cars from 2005, expanding its premium services and sales volume under the name of BMW Premium Selection.

Mercedes-Benz Korea also runs the StarClass program in which the automaker guarantees the quality of used cars through thorough inspections.

Tips for purchase

When shopping for a used car, consumers are concerned that they could be deceived or ripped off. But experts say there are a few simple steps that can help customers avoid being tricked.

1. Do your research

First, decide how much you can afford to spend, including registration, insurance and regular maintenance and running costs. Then, have a thorough look at what’s out there before buying a used car. It’s important to get an idea of a model’s current market price.

2. Choose best car

If you find a used car where the price is much lower than the market, there should be a reason. If something seems too good to be true, it probably is. Experts suggest that the best purchase would be a vehicle less than three years old with clean vehicle history report.

3. Check the car’s history

If you find a car you like, you need to check a vehicle history report first, which is available at various organizations’ websites such as online used car companies, the transport ministry at www.ecar.go.kr and the Korea Insurance Development Institute. You should check the history of the car to make sure it’s not stolen, encumbered by an outstanding loan, or severely damaged in a car accident or flood.

4. Examine the car

Take a printout or copy of the seller’s advertisement with you to check that details like the odometer numbers are accurate. It is necessary to test drive the car but also make sure you have a thorough look over the car yourself, and best of all, have an independent mechanic or automotive center check it out properly on a hoist.

5. Paperwork

Make sure all the paperwork is in order, and that you have original versions such as registration papers, service history and logbook. It needs extra caution if a seller and owner of the vehicle is different. In that case, you have to check a letter of attorney.

0925-Say, Where Did That 450-Meter Tower Go?

• By Jeyup S Kwaak

Building a skyscraper a few miles away from a major international airport sounds like a project that needs careful calibration—such as making it easy for aircraft to see and avoid.

Instead Incheon will be getting the first high-rise that can go into stealth mode.

GDS Architects announced last week that the South Korean government approved its plan for a building equipped with light-emitting diodes and cameras that allow it to mimic the skies behind it, tricking the eyes into believing it has disappeared into thin air. Computer-generated pictures and video clips of the glass tower slowly blending into a blue sky dotted with clouds sent ripples of excitement around the Web.

GDS Architects

Oh, there it is. By night (and from above), City Tower should be easy enough to spot.

GDS, based in Pasadena, Calif., calls the 450-meter (1,476-foot), fountain-pen-shaped structure “Tower Infinity,” but it’s officially referred to as the City Tower. Planned as the centerpiece of the waterfront development in Incheon’s Cheongna district—about 30 kilometers (18 miles) west of Seoul and half that distance east of the country’s main air hub—it won land ministry approval last month.

The project’s state-owned backer, Korea Land & Housing Corp., denied Friday that the structure could pose a risk to air traffic, and played down its disappearing trick.

The optical illusion works only during certain hours of the day and from certain angles, said Kim Hee-jae, who is in charge of the tower’s architectural planning at Korea Land & Housing. The electric lights shining from inside the building will provide a further limit to its stealth, especially at night.

“It’s a building with a glass exterior like most other ordinary new buildings these days,” said Mr. Kim.

The technology hasn’t yet been officially certified, Mr. Kim said. If the tests prove successful, the invisibility trick would be showcased only during brief periods at specific hours. Even then, the buildings red aircraft warning lights would have to be on—as at all hours—guiding pilots away.

Construction is on hold and without a deadline, Mr. Kim said, while the search continues for private investors to fund a portion of the project.

0924-Big in Korea: Virtual Cafe Sounds

• By Jenna Davis

Mary Fleming

The team behind Coffitivity, a U.S. website that streams ambient cafe sounds, was surprised to discover that one of the site’s biggest markets is in South Korea, a country with a thriving cafe culture.

Coffitivity, a U.S.-based website that allows users to stream ambient coffee shop sounds for free, is creating an unexpected buzz — in Seoul.

The site, which launched half a year ago, touts the slogan “enough noise to work,” based on research that shows a moderate level of noise is conducive to creativity. The result is a soundtrack of clanging dishware, muffled voices and the occasional unbridled chuckle—all at 70 decibels, the ideal level.

While Seoul has the highest concentration of coffee shops of any major city in the world, that hasn’t stopped locals from shunning brick-and-mortar cafes for an online experience in their homes and offices.

“When you go to a real cafe, sometimes you sit next to a loud, talkative customer,” said Yoon Ja-young, 24, a frequent user of the site. “Sometimes there aren’t enough seats, so it can be inconvenient.”

Ms. Yoon is the founder of a fashion startup. According to her, she first listened to the site one day when her team was confined to a small office and unable to agree on background music. Coffitivity provided a compromise.

Coffitivity

Coffitivity was founded on the premise that moderate noise can boost creativity.

ACe (pronounced “Ace”) Callwood, a founder and the creative director at Coffitivity, says his team is baffled by the growth of the site in Seoul and other major cities in Asia. “I guess we just expected it to be local,” he said, calling the number of users in the region “astounding.”

Seoul had been the site’s top user city up until recently, when it was edged out by New York City, which accounts for 2.7 percent of the site’s overall traffic to Seoul’s 2.1 percent. Coming in third, at 2.0 percent, is Taipei, another Asian city with a thriving cafe culture.

The site attracts about 7,000 to 12,000 hits per weekday, and Asia as a whole comprises 23 percent of that overall traffic, second only to the Americas at roughly 50 percent, Mr. Callwood said. He attributes Coffitivity’s popularity in the Asia region to a feature on Japan’s edition of Lifehacker, a website that offers tips on productivity.

“I think that’s where the beginning of our Asian traffic started picking up, but from there, Korea has just knocked it out of the park,” he said.

Based in Richmond, Va., Mr. Callwood and his partner and co-founder Justin Kauszler came up with the idea for Coffitivity when they spent two weeks working largely in coffee shops on another venture. When Mr. Kauszler returned to his silent office, he found it impossible to concentrate. He recalled the research paper that credited ambient noise in spurring creativity.

The pair began recording their first ambient sounds at a Richmond coffeehouse. They called the track “Morning Murmur,” with the tagline “a gentle hum gets the day started.”

A month later, with the help of graphic designer Nicole Horton, the site launched on March 4. Just two days later, traffic jumped from 120 page views to 49,000, and they have since registered 4.3 million page views. They have also added two more team members.

The site originally targeted 20-somethings in the U.S. who were “locked into the office environment and couldn’t leave,” so its international appeal came as a surprise, Mr. Callwood said.

More In South Korea

• Say, Where Did That 450-Meter Tower Go?
• Big in Korea: Virtual Cafe Sounds
• SceneStyle: Tory Burch in Seoul
• Reality Show Hunts for Next K-Pop Boy Band
• Surgeons in Korea Defend 'Smile Surgery'

According to a GAIN article released by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, there were more than 12,000 coffee shops in South Korea at the end of 2011, up 54 percent from the previous year. The report listed the country as the world’s 11th largest coffee market.

Despite Seoul’s saturation of caffeinated hangouts, locals complain that it’s difficult to find a cafe suitable for serious work. That explains why Coffitivity users in the city will forgo an actual cafe for an environment they can control themselves.

Kim Jin-wook, a 29-year-old graduate student, uses the site to break the silence of the lab where he spends most of his time. “My first impression was that it was remarkable you could convey a sense of space, or spatial presence, through the medium of sound,” he said.

Mr. Kim added that he prefers Coffitivity to a similar Korean site calledWheresound, which emerged shortly after the U.S. site, because he finds Korean conversation too distracting.

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South Korea has long offered private rental study rooms, some of which include white-noise generators, but Coffitivity is a more economical option for many because it’s free.

Coffitivity’s founders may never really get to the bottom of Seoulites’ infatuation for simulated café sounds, but they’re hoping their mobile phone app, launched last month, will do just as well in the region. The app is available on iTunes for $1.99, and an Android version is currently in the works.

The website currently offers two soundtracks, and the team hopes to travel globally and collect audio from different locations in the future. For now, they are enabling users to upload their favorite audio to the website, following a set of guidelines.

Mr. Callwood says that only one person so far has submitted audio, a five-minute clip that sounds like “an outdoor cafe with construction on the sidewalk next to the recorder.” Submitted by a Coffitivity user from Kentucky, the clip was called “Jackhammer Java.”

“Honestly, we thought it was hilarious,” Mr. Callwood said. “Our fans definitely keep us on our toes.”

0923-Twitter's IPO Plan: Don't Do What Facebook Did

By 
• EVELYN M. RUSLI
, 
• TELIS DEMOS
 and 
• YOREE KOH
 
• CONNECT

The Twitter Inc. executives leading its long-expected initial public offering have a mission: Don't repeat the mistakes that muddied Facebook Inc.'s FB -0.99% IPO.

Endpoint Technologies Founder and President Roger Kay discusses challenges facing Twitter in winning Wall Street's favor as it prepares an IPO filing. Photo: Getty Images

More

• Heard on the Street: #Twittersuccess Isn't #Facebookfail
• How to Value Twitter

While the two social networks offer services that increasingly overlap, Twitter executives have put distance between themselves and their rival in the lead up to an IPO. Among its efforts, Twitter has acted conservatively in building a business case for advertising on its short-message service, kept remarkably quiet about its IPO process, and notably picked a different lead banker for its offering, Goldman SachsInc. GS +0.40%

The goal, according to a person familiar with the board and senior executives' thinking, is to make Twitter's IPO a contrast to Facebook's botched offering, after which its stock fell following its May 2012 IPO. The moves could help Twitter be taken seriously both by investors and by marketers as it tries to become an online advertising juggernaut.

A Twitter spokesman declined to comment.

It isn't yet clear how Twitter will price its stock at its debut. The current thinking among Twitter's leadership, people familiar with its thinking say, is to be more conservative than Facebook.

Twitter wants to avoid overpricing its shares or offering too many, as it looks to models from tech companies LinkedIn Corp. LNKD -0.04% and Workday Inc.,WDAY +0.55% both of whom saw their stock soar after their debuts, according to a person familiar with the board's thinking. One of the people, however, said Twitter also doesn't want to leave too much money on the table.

On Wednesday, before Twitter's disclosure, Facebook Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg joked at a conference that he would be the last person to advise Twitter executives on "how to make a smooth IPO."

Digits on Twitter

• What People Are Saying About Twitter's IPO
• Confidential S-1? Why Do That?
• Three Areas Fueling Twitter's Growth
• Twitter's Founders: Where Are They Now?

Before Facebook's IPO, executives increased the size of its offering and the price, despite some internal concerns about the strength of its ad business. While the offering was also haunted by technical challenges on the NasdaqNDAQ -1.66% market, some critics blamed the stock's challenges on greed among Facebook's management.

Twitter chose Goldman Sachs Group Inc. as the lead underwriter for its offering, over the Morgan Stanley MS +0.39% team that advised Facebook, according to people familiar with the decisions. Twitter is in the process of discussing which additional banks will be involved in the process, according to those people. A number of other banks are already in the mix, including Morgan Stanley, Bank of America Corp.'sBAC +0.07% Merrill Lynch and J.P. Morgan Chase JPM +0.67% & Co., who had leading roles on LinkedIn's IPO in 2011, and Deutsche Bank AG, DBK.XE +0.93%which worked on Facebook's IPO they said.

The discussions with the banks also include possible extensions of credit to Twitter, people familiar with the talks said. Twitter would use the loans for general working capital and to pay taxes incurred when employees' stock options vest, one person familiar with those discussions said. In this respect, Twitter's IPO process appears to mirror that of Facebook, which secured similar credit lines ahead of its own IPO last year.

For years, Twitter's management has been careful to avert the pitfalls of its larger rival.

While Facebook's stock traded aggressively in the secondary market, Twitter made efforts to tame its own. From early on it prevented sales by shifting to granting restricted stock units to employees, according to people familiar with the company's practices.

Twitter actively exercised the right of first refusal in stock sales to funnel shares to a cherry-picked group of preferred buyers, which include veteran technology investors Ron Conway, Chris Sacca and Joi Ito. When it allowed investors to buy shares, Twitter also pushed them to agree to hold on to those shares for a long time, according to one person with knowledge of the transactions. The rampant trading on Facebook, exacerbated by the number of owners, pushed the company against a federal rule that requires financial disclosure once a company has more than 500 shareholders.

Twitter has also done a better job at keeping secrets. While details about Facebook's IPO trickled out in advance, Twitter's filing was kept secret, taking many industry watchers by surprise on Thursday when Twitter announced via its own short-message service that it had filed confidential papers with the Securities and Exchange Commission to begin the IPO process.

"They kept it pretty tight lipped," said one banker who has discussed an IPO with Twitter in the past and was surprised to read the company's disclosure in a tweet.

In timing its offering, Twitter is telegraphing a different message than Facebook about its revenue growth prospects.

At the time of its offering, Facebook had hit a plateau as it struggled with the transition to mobile ads, disappointing investors. It had more users at the time—close to a billion—but its IPO was clouded by concerns that it wouldn't be able to make as much money from users on mobile devices.

But by all external indications, Twitter's ad revenue continues to grow, particularly on mobile devices. Twitter's revenue is sealed inside its confidential filing, but analyst firm eMarketer expects its ad revenue grow to a little under $1 billion next year, up from about $583 million this year. It also purchased MoPub earlier this week for $350 million, a mobile advertising firm that sells ads across a broad swath mobile of properties, giving Twitter a revenue stream beyond its own services.

Even as its user base has surged to 200 million monthly users, Twitter has taken its time to build up its business and its decision to go public. "The thinking was, don't open a fine wine until its time," said one person familiar with the matter.

Twitter recently said it experiments with a new feature or product every day. Yet in the last three years, it has only rolled out three types of ads. Meanwhile, Facebook has introduced a flurry of different types of ads over the past year, generating a new revenue but also fanning concerns that more and more ad products could eventually alienate its user base.

"They're not just throwing everything they think of at them [the users] like Facebook," said Nate Elliott, an analyst at Forrester.