South Korea’s high-speed 5G mobile revolution gives way to evolution

Engineers setting up a 5G base station in Seoul, South Korea, on May 31, 2019. Asia’s fourth-biggest economy has remained the 5G pioneer, but the hype had begun to fade even before Covid-19 slammed demand for 5G devices. — SK Telecom/Handout/Reuters

SEOUL: South Korea was the first country to launch a fifth-generation mobile network in 2019, heralding a warp-speed technological transformation to self-driving cars and smart cities.

Three years on, the giddy promises are unfulfilled.