Nobody in the world has faster thumbs than Koreans.  Don’t you love the New York Times because once again, they publish some odd esoteric story about Koreans, and this time it’s about how excellent we are at texting.  Actually, Koreans are the kings of texting with the fastest thumbs in the world.  Apparently Team Korea trounced the international competition this past month in a phone texting tournament that was held in New York city.  The goal of the competition was to determine who could send text messages the fastest and most accurately from a cell phone.  For some of my friends, it takes hours to get a text message returned.

Bae Yeong-Ho and Ha Mok-Min were the winning duo for Team Korea that beat out 13 different teams/countries at the Mobile World Cup, which coincidentally was sponsored by Korean chaebol LG Electronics.  They won a $100,000 cash prize and came home as conquering heroes, or texting heroes really.

Sadly, this may not be a good thing as the New York Times notes that they are part of the “Thumbs Tribe” – youngsters who feel more comfortable texting than talking.  Whatever happened to old media of talking to each other?  Human interaction through words formed from the vocal chords used to be the way we used to communicate to each other.  But people from the Thumbs Tribe like Mr. Bae text anywhere from 200-300 messages a day.  The irony in all of this is that Bae Yeong-Ho may be communicating via his thumbs but he’s studying to be an opera singer.   For the full article, go to the New York Times.

Source: New York Times

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