Korean surfers have been revealed to have a dual addiction to the Internet and cybercafes, bucking an Asia-wide trend of surfing from home.

SEOUL - While home was the launch point of most Net surfers in Asia, Korea broke the trend finding most of its Internet surfers logging on from cybercafes instead, according to figures released by French Internet measurement company, NetValue.

Forty-three percent of Korean Net users headed to the nearest cyber cafe to go online. That makes Internet cafes the most popular spots for Koreans to gain Internet access, second only to connecting at home.

On the contrary, Internet cafes ranked the least popular venue to surf in Hong Kong with only 6 percent leaving the comforts of home or work to browse the Web. Across Asia precluding Korea, it seems that browsing the Net was a private affair with home as the preferred venue of choice.

Leader of the Asian Pack
With home Internet connections in 53 percent of all households, Singapore leads the Asia pack in connectivity, a figure that also outstrips the United States, United Kingdom and France. Correspondingly, Singapore has the highest number of Internet users in Asia, with 46 percent of people over age 15 going online in the past month.

Figures also reveal that Korea is fast heating up as the next Internet hot spot of Asia with 42 percent of those surveyed connecting to the Internet in the past month. Surprisingly, the heavy hitters surfing the Net in Korea aren't the early adopters but recent entrants with 41 percent having been surfing for less than six months.

The rest of the pack include Taiwan with 36.4 percent; Hong Kong with 29.2 percent; and China with 23 percent in Beijing, Guangzhou and Shanghai.

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