No Korean population but we have Korean reference to Jeogeot

[iamyourneighbour]

Just curious, was there a time when there are actual notable amounts of Koreans on SL? There is a visible genuine Japanese user population (not people role-playing Asians) but I have not met one single Korean for the last two years. I have met more people from Taiwan than Korea to be honest ?

Nothing against the reference, in fact I like the novelty, I just find it quite funny when SL has a Korean continent with near zero overall Korean population, so what was the history with the Korean references ?

Edited January 31, 2018 by iamyourneighbour

[ChinRey]

17 hours ago, iamyourneighbour said:

Just curious, was there a time when there are actual notable amounts of Koreans on SL?

At least there must have been a time when LL thought there would be.

It's interesting to see which nationalities LL tried to make dedicated continents for: Japan, Korea and France but not Germany or UK.

This list is a bit outdated by now but it is from about the same time as Jeogeot was printed so it's relevant:

http://www.netzfischer.de/2007/02/11/second-life-user-statistics-by-country/

[Prokofy Neva]

LL made an info hub for Germany tho, I think it's still out there, a German castle built by Jauni Wu. And there is a large newbies' info hub that individual Germans have made, not Lindens.

There were some Koreans in SL, I remember friends and customers some years back but for some reason it didn't take off. Remember, there was a time when LL started expanding internationally. They put an office in London, Amsterdam I believe, and was Seoul going to be the next one? I don't recall. It would be a very great choice as South Korea has blazing Internet and wi-fi everywhere, I was there once a few years ago and I was amazed. From the moment you land at the airport, on to the drive into the city, the hotels, getting quite out of the city, it's all good. I recall an 11-year-old kid who spoke English helped me log on at the airport. They also have an avid gaming, programmers, etc. community.

But then there were set backs, pull-backs, they had the VAT crisis, where people didn't like paying VAT when it was put in; basically their user population and the interest in VWs in general, the recession, all kinds of factors led them to undo some of these outreaches and close them down. Many people turned to Facebook and Twitter as their virtual world in 2007; that was around the time the huge fascination with SL from media began to wane because the platform was difficult to use and had griefing and crime and all the rest.

Sometimes the Lindens make things that have no relationship to any country -- like I have land on a sim named Tofalar, an ancient dwindling people of Siberia, they may have just randomly picked out the name from Wikipedia or something. They have all these sims with Russian names that they may not even understand, I don't know. They named a lot of areas for the Finger Lakes in Upstate NY where I'm from, but they are next to rivers, not lakes. Ravenglass, my first sim, is lake area in the UK. The real Ravenglass tourist agency even once rented from me there years ago. Remember when we had Estonia? A real outpost from the real Estonia, not exactly a consulate but leading to consular affairs in E-stonia. Beautiful build on it too. All gone.

[ChinRey]

1 hour ago, Prokofy Neva said:

Sometimes the Lindens make things that have no relationship to any country -- like I have land on a sim named Tofalar, an ancient dwindling people of Siberia, they may have just randomly picked out the name from Wikipedia or something.

That may well be the case. One of my favorite sim names is Lie. I suppose it was named after Trygve Lie, UN's first secretary general, but it doesn't look quite as good in English as it does in Norwegian.

[Prokofy Neva]

Well, it's like with the last names. They went through all those noble names of their own tech culture like Prototype, and then all sorts of names like out of a British novel like Fairchild and then sort of fairy names like Fallingwater and then they got all the Supreme Court judges in US history...rivers..mountains...inventors...scientists -- it was getting harder and harder. They had to make up thousands and thousands of names. I often wonder if they gave up on last names because it was getting harder but I always thought it was fun and I sometimes even wanted to make an alt with some fun new name -- I was one of the lucky people whose real-life last name came by and I grabbed it but of course so did 6 others who were griefing me.