In South Korea, one of many world’s most technologically superior nations, there are few limits to what will be achieved conveniently on-line — besides if you’re utilizing the flawed net browser.
On Google Chrome, you can not make enterprise funds on-line as a company buyer of one of many nation’s largest foreign-owned banks. If you’re utilizing Apple’s Safari, you’re unable to use for artist funding via the National Culture and Arts web site. And if you’re a proprietor of a kid care facility, registering your group with the Health and Welfare Ministry’s web site will not be attainable on Mozilla’s Firefox.
In all of those circumstances, Microsoft’s Internet Explorer, or an identical various, is the required browser.
When Microsoft shut down Internet Explorer, or IE, on June 15, the corporate mentioned it might begin redirecting customers to its newer Edge browser within the coming months. The announcement impressed jokes and memes commemorating the web of yesteryear. But in South Korea, IE will not be some on-line artifact. The defunct browser continues to be wanted for a small variety of important banking and government-related duties that many individuals can’t dwell with out.
South Korea’s fealty to Internet Explorer, 27 years after its introduction and now into its retirement, presents a heavy dose of irony: A rustic recognized for blazing broadband and modern gadgets is tethered to a buggy and insecure piece of software program deserted by many of the world way back.
Most South Korean web sites work on each browser, together with Google Chrome, which takes up about 54% of the nation’s web utilization. Internet Explorer is lower than 1%, in line with Statcounter. And but after the announcement from Microsoft, there was a last-minute scramble amongst some important websites to organize for all times after IE.
The South Korean arm of the British financial institution Standard Chartered warned company prospects in May that they would want to begin utilizing the Edge browser in “IE mode” to entry its “Straight2Bank” web banking platform. Various Korean authorities web sites advised customers that some providers would probably face disruptions if they didn’t change to Edge.
In May, Naver, one in all Korea’s largest web firms, highlighted a characteristic of its Whale browser that enables entry to websites that required Internet Explorer. Kim Hyo, who heads Naver’s Whale workforce, mentioned the corporate had initially added the choice in 2016. He thought it might now not be wanted when Microsoft shut down IE.
But as the ultimate days approached, Kim realized that some Korean web sites wouldn’t make the change in time, so he saved the characteristic and adjusted its identify to “Internet Explorer mode.” Modernizing web sites that had catered to IE for many years was “quite a large task,” he mentioned, and a few websites “just missed the deadline.”
South Korea’s reliance on Internet Explorer dates again to the Nineties when the nation turned a forerunner in utilizing the web for banking and buying. In order to guard on-line transactions, the federal government handed a legislation in 1999 requiring encrypted digital certificates for any matter that had beforehand referred to as for an individual’s signature.
Verifying an individual’s identification required further software program that related to the browser, referred to as a plug-in. The South Korean authorities approved 5 firms to concern such digital certificates utilizing a Microsoft plug-in referred to as ActiveX. But the plug-in solely labored on Internet Explorer.
At the time, utilizing a Microsoft plug-in appeared like an apparent alternative. Microsoft Windows software program dominated the non-public pc market within the Nineties, and Internet Explorer had leveraged that place to develop into the dominant browser. Because key Korean web sites required IE, different web sites started catering to Microsoft’s browser, reinforcing its significance. By one estimate, Internet Explorer had 99% market share in Korea between 2004 and 2009.
“We were really the only game in town,” mentioned James Kim, who led Microsoft in South Korea from 2009 to 2015. Kim, who now heads the American Chamber of Commerce in Seoul, South Korea, mentioned Microsoft didn’t attempt to thwart the competitors, however lots of issues “didn’t work” with out IE.
When Kim returned to South Korea in 2002 after instructing overseas, he found that he couldn’t do something on-line together with his pc working Linux, a free, open-source various to Windows, and Firefox. Every 12 months, he went to an web cafe to entry a pc with IE as a way to file his taxes on a authorities web site.
In 2007, Kim filed a lawsuit towards the Korea Financial Telecommunications & Clearings Institute, one of many 5 government-approved personal firms assigned to concern digital certificates. He argued that the corporate, which issued about 80% of South Korea’s certificates, had unjustly discriminated towards him by not permitting different browsers.
Over a three-year interval, Kim misplaced the case, misplaced the enchantment and misplaced on the nation’s Supreme Court. But his court docket battle drew broader consideration to the pitfalls of South Korea’s system, particularly after a 2009 cyberattack exploited ActiveX to unfold malware on Korean computer systems.
With the arrival of smartphones, an business constructed on software program from Apple and Google, South Korea, like a lot of the world, began to cut back its reliance on Microsoft. In 2010, the nation issued tips that authorities web sites ought to be suitable with three totally different net browsers. But altering the plumbing of South Korea’s web was not simple — particularly as banks and bank card firms stood by the prevailing system.
As public opinion shifted, customers bristled on the inconvenience of needing to make use of ActiveX to purchase issues on-line. Critics argued that the know-how had failed to satisfy its objective as a result of the plug-in software program had truly made customers much less protected.
Microsoft launched Edge in 2015 as a substitute for Internet Explorer, and the corporate mentioned it was not supporting ActiveX within the new browser. Chrome turned the nation’s high browser three years earlier.
In 2020, South Korea amended the 1999 legislation to remove the necessity for digital certificates, a transfer that appeared to shut the e book on ActiveX and Internet Explorer. That identical 12 months, Microsoft began eradicating help for IE in a few of its on-line providers. A 12 months later, the corporate introduced that it deliberate to retire Internet Explorer altogether.
This article initially appeared in The New York Times.