South Korea brings the big guns to the mobile OS knife fight
![](https://s.yimg.com/ny/api/res/1.2/bIScr_1jgvuJRtHi1unjoA--/YXBwaWQ9aGlnaGxhbmRlcjt3PTcwNTtoPTgxNg--/https://s.yimg.com/uu/api/res/1.2/bH_Up5Xe6jmeGqg8.wINSQ--~B/aD00MjU7dz0zNjc7YXBwaWQ9eXRhY2h5b24-/https://www.blogcdn.com/www.engadget.com/media/2011/08/koreansmartphone.jpg)
Publicly, Samsung and LG tersely supported Google's union with Motorola (which we've taken to calling Moogle) -- privately it appears the South Korean giants aren't as thrilled to be at the mercy of Mountain View's whim. Imagine their predicament if they were frozen out of Android tomorrow -- which is why the Korean government has stepped in to create its own OS. Kim Jae-hong, deputy minister from Seoul's Ministry of Knowledge Economy, thinks that American dominance in mobile software is generally a bad thing. The minister said that the country would "foster a habitat" for the open-source OS, which might mean incentivized pricing on these devices, and we're hearing a cloud-based Chrome OS is also in the offing. The biggest news Jae-hong slipped is that Samsung had been very dismissive of a Korean OS until it heard about the Google / Motorola deal. What a difference a Moogle makes, eh?