In Middle Eastern nations such as Iran, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates, side-by-side refrigerators have become symbols of American-style wealth -- but they are made in Korea. In the case of Iran, 80 percent of the 350,000-unit-a-year refrigerator market is taken up by Samsung, LG and Daewoo Electronics.

Air conditioning is a must in wealthy homes all over the Middle East and North Africa, where LG Electronics' Whisen air conditioners take the biggest market share in sixteen nations like Saudi Arabia, Iran and Morocco. It was specialists produced by 10 LG Air Conditioning Education Centers set up in the Middle East and Africa three years ago who built the Middle East's air conditioning culture as they spread throughout the entire region, even as the technicians often come from the Indian subcontinent. "When you get married in Iran, it's the dream of brides to get a place decked out with Korean home electronics,” says Cho Seung-mi, the head of the Korean Society of Iran who moved to the Gulf nation after she married an Iranian 29 years ago. “Korean home appliances are spreading fast among Iranian families."

LG Electronics holds a photo contest for local children at a five-star hotel in Dubai, United Arab Emirates on Friday.

Wali Asr Avenue could be called Tehran’s Gangnam. Almost all the young people crowding its streets carry Korean-made cell phones. The gadgets are essential tools for communication in a country that seeks to regulate every aspect of its people’s lives, offering almost the only way of flirting in a strictly segregated society -- or for ordering moonshine without the police finding out.

Phones are changing the face of Iran, where half the population is under 20. A woman in her 20s, wearing jeans revealing an ankle bracelet and with bangs spilling out from under a flower-pattern veil, said, "If I didn't have a cell phone, I don't think I could live."

Recently, camera phones are taking the younger generation by storm. With Samsung and Nokia fighting it out for the top spot, Korean-made multi-function cell phones are pushing aside the law and hejab to create a new lifestyle, just as they did in Korea.

Korea's digital products are playing a different role from products like textiles, machines and construction that once made up the bulk of exports. And once Korean cell phones have claimed a market, more humble home appliances are also seen as premium brands.

In that sense, the Digital Korean Wave is having a much greater economic effect than the entertainment-centered Korean Wave or Hallyu said to be sweeping Japan and China for the last two or three years.

As a result, major Korean companies Samsung and LG have gone beyond advertising individual products toward a strategy of advertising made-in-Korea quality to ensure a stable export base for their entire range of products.

"The digital products that have arisen out of Korea's fiercely competitive market differ from previous export goods in that they export Korean lifestyle,” says Prof. Sham Sang-min, the author of "Media Contents". “The strategy of exporting Korea's lifestyle products will give the country’s economy a new lease of life in the 21st century."

(englishnews@chosun.com )