I dunno, I don't really think we're that far behind. It may honestly be a different lifestyle approach. The US is a very active-lifestyle oriented place, even if we are pretty chubby these days ;)

Plus, it's a lot harder to coordinate things amongst the layers of government that are set in place to govern 300 million people. Some places are more tech-oriented than others. Plus...we sure as crap have to lay down more wires and build more cellular towers than South Korea does...

...and we're busy launching satellites for, y'know, South Korea, Japan, Europe's communication infrastructure.

<font color=skyblue>As a side story to back my original post that there is a problem with gaming addiction in the East...here's a story out of China.

http://www.cnn.com/2007/TECH/interne...eut/index.html

A 26 year old man died in China after having played online games for nearly all of a 7-day vacation.

Also, 2.6 Million (13%) of 20 million teenagers under the age of 18 are classified as gaming addicts. </font>

Larry: Don't trust the Chinese figures, they send people to be "cured of addiction" at special centers because they spread dissident messages or figure out how to break the government's censorship on their internet access.

Mostly this "treatment" seems to consist of things that are essentially the same as torture.

Johnny: I really doubt they have to worry. South Korea and Japan are probably the two of the safest countries in the world, militarily. If either was to be invaded, it would have to be a sea invasion(Assuming that North Korea isn't going to invade South Korea, which I think we safely can, jealousy is extremely impossible to happen there since the citizens know nothing of the outside world and the leadership is convinced of it's own superiority.), and a sea invasion of a modern nation would be the same as a massacre of the invading forces. The only way to really take them down would be some sort of artillery barrage, but both of them are tight with the US who can probably rain down a more high-tech barrage than anyone else. Whoever launched an all-out assault, attempting either invasion or termination, would have to be ready for MAD.

Ilander: NASA does not have a monopoly on space access. The ESA has a launch facility in French Guyana, Russia has a launch facility in Kazakhstan, Japan also has the Tanegashima Space Center(On Tanegashima Island), India has three launch facilities(Thumba, Shriharikota and Balasore.) and for the moment I cannot recall where China has it's launch facility. I have not dug up the exact details on all launches, but I do know that the most advanced European communications satellite currently in orbit was an ESA launch.

[ 03-01-2007, 02:06 PM: Message edited by: PurpleXVI ]