And in the catbird seat: The companies that supply mobile-phone and Internet services. For a year, Choi Won Hee, a 21-year-old law student at Yonsei University in Seoul, had been resisting pressure from classmates and friends to buy a cell phone. She had grown attached to her pager and didn't think she needed a phone, too. "I was the only one in my class still carrying around a pager, and they complained that I was out of touch," says Choi. And she was. One day in April, Choi waited for hours for some friends who had changed their meeting spot by zapping e-mails through their mobile phones. Choi, phoneless, never got word of the switch. Soon after, she bought a cell phone from sk Telecom, South Korea's largest wireless operator. "Funny, but I got so sucked into it that I can't do without it anymore," says Choi with a grin.
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