This news is interesting.
Google Korea plans to introduce an age-verification system to its search engine later this year that will restrict adult-themed searches to those 19 years of age and older, it said Thursday.
Users will be asked to verify their age when searching for any of about 700 words in Korean judged to be adult and supplied to the portal by the Korean government, said Lois Kim [cq], a spokeswoman for the company in Seoul.
Users will have to enter their name and national resident registration number, which will be checked against a database to verify the user-- or at least the person whose data has been entered-- is old enough.
The article does go on to say that all the other Korean portals already do this kind of age verification. I wonder if this age verification is based on language or location (i.e. if you search in Korea, you'll be prompted to verify your age, or if you are outside of Korea, you can search on adult terms without a prompt.)
Can you imagine Google trying this in the US?
Google Korea Restricts Search - Yahoo! News
UPDATE: Searchengineland had 5 questions about this new age-verification system answered by Google. Most interestingly, it only affects Google.co.kr. If a person in Korea accesses Google.com, they won't be prompted for the age verification? Seems like quite a nonsensical filter.
Searching For An Adult Topic? You'll Have To Prove Your Age To Google Korea
Yeh, it's really nonsense.
Most of korean portal's contents can be classified by human-monitoring system and content providers. But, is it possible results of web search such as Google? (maybe word filtering?)
Besides, most of youth can find korean social security number with real name of adults via Internet.
Government believes Internet can be controlled by authentication with SSN and real number. But, there has been widely identity theft of hacking of web sites and buying privacy data. It's very serious problem in Korea.
So the auth. for identity has been strengthen with national PKI based on activex. It's dilemma of security.
Not that it matters to anyone, including us, but I'll bet you dollars to donuts that the National ID checker algorithm on Google doesn't work for longterm foreign residents.
It's a minor nightmare -- our ID#s are slightly different in format, and the algorithm to check validity (presumably supplied to websites by the Korean government) doesn't recognize them.
So now, to add insult to injury, not only can I not register on most Korean websites that require it, I can't use Paypal (because they also use the flawed algorithm now for withdrawals to Korean banks), but I can't even use google.co.kr to look for pictures of boobies?
Oh woe, oh despair.
Oh well.
It is a specialty of the Korean government (like others) to address symptoms rather than causes with their wrongheaded band-aid policies. See also: Seoul's recent plan to remove streetside garbage cans to reduce littering. See also: the 'anti-elitist' education system (which supports the most elitist education system I've ever seen). See also: etc.
No doubt that is a knee-jerk reaction to the p0rn that was uploaded onto Yahoo Korea this past March. This comes after the gov't went on to block foreign p0rn sites, which they blame for corrupting young minds. Such backward-thinking policies address the symptoms not the causes.
Talking about education, to reduce suicides occurring in school children, they assigned bodyguards to protect them from school bullies but failed to address the root problems that caused bullying, (i.e., stress and pressure for academic success, clash between the socio-economic classes, etc).
I agree with Stavros, PayPal (the International flavor) is pretty much useless, I can pay but can't be paid. Where's the love in that?