I had a bit of a laugh when I saw this in downtown Myeongdong. It was almost as brash as the real Tommy store which was literally 100 metres away. Fabulous fakes aside, I was chatting with Korean blogger Danny Taewoo today, who runs the site TechnoKimchi. He had an interesting take on the impact of cultural differences on online social behaviour. Danny connected the Korean obsession with outward appearances, social status and keeping their face with the popularity of avatars and point score result recognition within the youth gaming subculture. And its not just the kids. Naver is the number one search player in Korea. But unlike Google, many of the results to search queries are human moderated. You post a question, and rate the answers that people give. The more highly rated answers you give, the higher your points. There is no financial reward - just pure online social status. Jimmy Wales, founder of Wikipedia, is playing around with a similar idea at the moment. Tommy Atkins indeed.
