If you don't have a cell phone, you might as well be homeless.

Korean's lives revolve around their cell phones, to a much greater extent than American's. Absolutely everyone here has a cell phone, including the elderly and kindergarten-aged children. Everyone is constantly using their phones and can't seem to bear separation from it for even a second. I know people say this at home too, but trust me, it's nothing compared to what you see in Korea. The teachers at Jeil have to collect the students' cell phones in a little bin each morning and return them all at the end of the day. You can't walk down a street in Korea or through the underground shopping areas without passing a cell phone store or kiosk every fifteen feet. And it's not unusual for me to be on a crowded subway car, taking a look around, and for every person within my sight to be using their cell phone - talking on it, listening to music, texting, or watching TV. Every single person.

Part of the reason for this is that cell phones in Korea do so much more. I've only experienced the tip of this iceberg, but for example I know that when shopping online, you can use your phone number like a credit card and charge things to it. The charges will show up on your monthly bill. And when I bought my train tickets online (to visit Seoul later this month), instead of printing out paper tickets or picking them up at the station later, I had the option to have the tickets sent to my cell phone in the form of a text message. If I need to show my ticket at the train station, I could just show them my phone with this text message on it.

The cell phone technology here is amazing, years ahead of what we see at home. And if we do use some of the same technology at home, it's safe to assume that the Koreans thought of it first and have already been doing it for years.

Once again, the New York Times comes to my rescue with an excellent article on the topic that summarizes everything and gives examples much better than I could. You can start to get some idea of what cell phones mean in this culture by reading this article:

“In South Korea, All of Life Is Mobile”
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/25/technology/25iht-mobile.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1

The reason I bring all this up that Korea is as obsessed with cell phone charms as it is with cell phones; your phone isn't complete without something hanging off of it.

One of my favorite Korean dishes, bibimbap, in the form of a charm

An example of phone charm-collecting gone bad

An accessories store in Korea (these three pictures are from Google Images)

This is one aspect of Korean pop culture that I've totally bought into - I'm obsessed with cell phone charms now. Besides anything with funny Engrish text on it (which I'll get into later), they're my favorite thing to collect here. I went on a little phone charm spree today - here are some of my latest acquisitions:

Sometimes they’re just too funny and weird to pass up (in case you were wondering, the little tag on the topless guy in the inner tube says “Cute Fellow”).

My collection is up to 12 now - don't worry, I don't use them all at once! My cell phone is currently sporting a blue penguin that I picked up at the COEX Aquarium in Seoul.