Aju Business Daily

SEOUL -- Cumbersome cyber gatekeepers that have hindered the globalization of South Korea's online service infrastructure will officially disappear from public websites. Plug-ins mainly focus on the fortification of web security to protect personal information, but they sometimes cause unexpected crashes and slow down computers by consuming resources, or often engage in a friendly fire to eradicate other plug-ins.

The Ministry of the Interior and Safety said in a statement on July 20 that 3,175 plug-in apps, or 82 percent of the total, have been removed from 2,738 public service websites. Plug-in programs are additional apps that are required to be installed before using public services. An ordinary public service website requires about two or three security plug-in apps to be installed.

"We will establish a 'no plug-in digital government' by removing all inconvenient plug-ins by the end of this year," a safety ministry official was quoted as saying. The ministry said that 714 plug-ins used by 447 public websites will be removed by the end of this year.

Other than problems related to the compatibility and stability of plug-ins, the online menace has limited the access of foreign shoppers to South Korean online shopping malls. While popular online shopping malls like Amazon thrived for their convenient, simple and consumer-friendly user interface, South Korean shopping malls are now adopting other means of security and user verification including biometrics, fingerprints and palm prints and blockchain, a decentralized verification network service, to offer simple shopping services.