[HappMacDonald]

> Can, say, the Belgium government read along with all messages on Whatsapp?

There is something to be said for "our populace relies on tech built by foreign companies" though. Said foreign company is at minimum less likely to install a backdoor for a local government (or be as easily hacked by said local government) than if popular language issues leave the ground ripe for local alternatives to be more popular.

[deaux]

Yes, that is about the single only upside to relying on US Big Tech rather than sovereign local tech. It doesn't nearly weigh up to the downsides, but it is a real thing. In Belgium's case though, even if every Belgian migrated iver to WhatsBelgian for their IMing needs tomorrow, given the competency of the government it would take at least a decade before they had things in place to read along.

Maybe I wasn't clear enough, the point was that all above things do hold for Korea yet are not at all the norm in the West.