Most South Korean websites work on every browser, including Google Chrome, which takes up about 54% of the country’s internet usage. Internet Explorer is less than 1%, according to Statcounter. And yet after the announcement from Microsoft, there was a last-minute scramble among some essential sites to prepare for life after IE.
The South Korean arm of the British bank Standard Chartered warned corporate customers in May that they would need to start using the Edge browser in “IE mode” to access its “Straight2Bank” internet banking platform. Various Korean government websites told users that some services would likely face disruptions if they did not switch to Edge.
In May, Naver, one of Korea’s biggest internet companies, highlighted a feature of its Whale browser that allows access to sites that required Internet Explorer. Kim Hyo, who heads Naver’s Whale team, said the company had originally added the option in 2016. He thought it would no longer be needed when Microsoft shut down IE.
But as the final days approached, Kim realized that some Korean websites would not make the switch in time, so he kept the feature and changed its name to “Internet Explorer mode.” Modernizing websites that had catered to IE for decades was “quite a large task,” he said, and some sites “just missed the deadline.”
South Korea’s reliance on Internet Explorer dates back to the 1990s when the country became a forerunner in using the internet for banking and shopping. In order to protect online transactions, the government passed a law in 1999 requiring encrypted digital certificates for any matter that had previously called for a person’s signature.
Verifying a person’s identity required additional software that connected to the browser, known as a plug-in. The South Korean government authorized five companies to issue such digital certificates using a Microsoft plug-in called ActiveX. But the plug-in only worked on Internet Explorer.
At the time, using a Microsoft plug-in seemed like an obvious choice. Microsoft Windows software ruled the personal computer market in the 1990s, and Internet Explorer had leveraged that position to become the dominant browser. Because key Korean websites required IE, other websites began catering to Microsoft’s browser, reinforcing its importance. By one estimate, Internet Explorer had 99% market share in Korea between 2004 and 2009.Most South Korean websites work on every browser, including Google Chrome, which takes up about 54% of the country’s internet usage. Internet Explorer is less than 1%, according to Statcounter. And yet after the announcement from Microsoft, there was a last-minute scramble among some essential sites to prepare for life after IE.
The South Korean arm of the British bank Standard Chartered warned corporate customers in May that they would need to start using the Edge browser in “IE mode” to access its “Straight2Bank” internet banking platform. Various Korean government websites told users that some services would likely face disruptions if they did not switch to Edge.
In May, Naver, one of Korea’s biggest internet companies, highlighted a feature of its Whale browser that allows access to sites that required Internet Explorer. Kim Hyo, who heads Naver’s Whale team, said the company had originally added the option in 2016. He thought it would no longer be needed when Microsoft shut down IE.
But as the final days approached, Kim realized that some Korean websites would not make the switch in time, so he kept the feature and changed its name to “Internet Explorer mode.” Modernizing websites that had catered to IE for decades was “quite a large task,” he said, and some sites “just missed the deadline.”
South Korea’s reliance on Internet Explorer dates back to the 1990s when the country became a forerunner in using the internet for banking and shopping. In order to protect online transactions, the government passed a law in 1999 requiring encrypted digital certificates for any matter that had previously called for a person’s signature.
Verifying a person’s identity required additional software that connected to the browser, known as a plug-in. The South Korean government authorized five companies to issue such digital certificates using a Microsoft plug-in called ActiveX. But the plug-in only worked on Internet Explorer.
At the time, using a Microsoft plug-in seemed like an obvious choice. Microsoft Windows software ruled the personal computer market in the 1990s, and Internet Explorer had leveraged that position to become the dominant browser. Because key Korean websites required IE, other websites began catering to Microsoft’s browser, reinforcing its importance. By one estimate, Internet Explorer had 99% market share in Korea between 2004 and 2009.
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