I'm very sad to see that basically nothing has changed since 2007.
One new effort that is getting off the ground is the WebCrypto work in the W3C that is an effort to provide a JavaScript-based cryptography in the browser. This could potentially allow S. Korea to move away from Active-X plugins but would require significant changes to their existing laws.
It has been 5+ years since I first reported on this issue and we've seen little change in desktop browser market-share. I'm not holding my breath, unfortunately.
(untitled comment)
As the writer of the blog post in 2007 that exposed this defacto monopoly,
http://www.kanai.net/weblog/archive/2007/01/26/00h53m55s#003095
I'm very sad to see that basically nothing has changed since 2007.
One new effort that is getting off the ground is the WebCrypto work in the W3C that is an effort to provide a JavaScript-based cryptography in the browser. This could potentially allow S. Korea to move away from Active-X plugins but would require significant changes to their existing laws.
http://www.w3.org/2012/webcrypto/
https://wiki.mozilla.org/Privacy/Features/DOMCryptAPIS pec/Latest
It has been 5+ years since I first reported on this issue and we've seen little change in desktop browser market-share. I'm not holding my breath, unfortunately.