iPhone 3g in Korea...
I've been living here in Seoul since Aug 2008, and have had a hell of a time figuring out the cell phone system here... and boy is it a pain in the .....
Being Korean, I speak Korean natively and it's still an incredible pain to get any information, but here's what I know:
1. The first reason why foreign phones do not work in S. Korea is that all 3 of the carriers (SKT, KTF, LG) all have IMEI whitelists of their phones. Simply put, this means that SKT/KTF/LG have lists of the IMEIs of every phone produced on their networks, and only those are allowed to be used on the network. So even though you have a foreign phone, completely unlocked, it will try to connect to the network, find that it's IMEI number is not accepted, and well, you're screwed from there.
>> The only solution to this that I've thought of is to get a hold of a Korean phone, get it's IMEI number, and use a tool to change the IMEI number of your iPhone 3g to match. That way when your iPhone tries to log on, it will be recognized as a Korean phone. The other catch with this is that Korean phones are not programmed to show their IMEI numbers. Most phones around the world will show their IMEI numbers after the user keys in *#06#, but nope, not in Korea. I do know that a few select phones can be hacked to show their IMEI's, Samsung's Blackjack being one of them.... but that would mean: buy iPhone 3g, unlock, buy blackjack, hack blackjack, hack iphone. That's a lot of money....
Plus I dont know if SMS will work via this method...
2. Korean phones operate on WIPI for data transmission. I'm not 100% clear on the details of WIPI, but from what I know it's a mutant younger brother of Java, so people here can do online banking, T-Money (korean rechargeable transit card), etc. That way no matter what phone you use, the application will work.... too bad it's another one of those things that Koreans have to be different from the entire world with. This has been mandated to be removed by the Korean FCC, but will go into effect April 2009. Hopefully this will bring about the allowance of the iPhone 3g here...
Hope that clears up some stuff for anyone who is curious. BTW, anyone willing to do a little experiementation with ZiPhone to see if it can actually change the IMEI of an iPhone 3g? PM me if you are, and maybe we can work out something....
It's been 5 months since I've been out of the US, and damn I miss my iPhone...