A 17-year-old girl won W20 million for fast and error-free text messaging at the LG Mobile World Cup in Korea on Sunday (US$1=W1,162).

Ha Mok-min, a student at Eunkwang Girls' High School, sent text messages backwards and while blindfolded without any spelling errors in the preliminaries of the event.

In the final round, she correctly spelled the names of the 10 countries where LG Electronics is holding text-message competitions in just 18.74 seconds.

Ha will travel to the world championships in New York in January to compete with texting heroes from Russia, South Africa, the U.S. and other countries for a US$100,000 prize.

"I exchange a lot of text messages with my family and friends, and I try not to misspell them. Those efforts helped." Ha said.

Some 2.8 million people participated in the competition in Korea, and they were not all teenagers -- people aged 40 or older made up 7 percent or 200,000 of the contestants. The oldest participant was a 77-year-old man.