Tale of Two Browsers: Understanding Users’ Web Browser Choices in South Korea

Internet users in South Korea seem to have clearly different web browser choices and usage patterns compared to the rest of the world, heavily using Internet Explorer (IE) or multiple browsers. Our work is primarily motivated to investigate the reasons for such differences in web browser usage, relating with the use of government mandated security technology, digital certificate. We conducted an IRB-approved semi-structured online user study to examine internet users’ browser choices in South Korea and analyze their usage patterns. Our user study results reveal that there are clearly different users’ browser preferences across different web services, and they are in turn closely related with the security policy enforced by the government 20 years ago. In our study, while younger age group tends to prefer two browsers (Chrome and IE), older age group prefers to use IE browser Also, all age groups commonly prefer the IE browser for the services requiring digital certificates issued from Korean government agencies such as finance and e-commerce sites. Our user study is quantitative to show how the standardization of technologies in a country could affect users’ web browsing activities. Also, despite of the abolishment of the mandatory security technology, we still observe that people are not aware of such abolishment and habitually use technology locked-in IE browser.