When I checked into my hotel in Seoul, this is what I found on the desk beside the widescreen plasma TV: a laptop computer and a mobile phone in a cradle.

Is there any other country in the world where hotels offer laptops and mobile phones?

South Korea isn’t known for nothing as the most wired nation in the world.

Just stroll through the subway system. It seems like a third of the passengers are staring into their mobile phones, wearing earplugs to catch the audio. They are actually watching television. According to The Economist earlier this month, some 7.5 million South Koreans enjoy mobile television services.

Japan also has this service, but South Korea got an earlier start. Cell phone manufacturers like Samsung and LG have done well selling new mobiles with larger, crystal clear screens to users.

The mobile television market is about to boom: This report says by 2010, the market of mobile TV handsets is expected to reach 70-80 million according to a low estimate and up to 160 million units on the high end.

Like in Japan, the South Korean service providers haven’t yet figured out how to make money off the mobile television services. After all, they are free to consumers. And advertisers haven’t yet decided to pony up the big bucks. Maybe mobile programming has to be customized to a greater extent.

On my last day over the weekend, I checked out of the hotel and expected a lengthy delay while someone physically registered the calls I had made on the mobile. Nope. All automated. Check out was a breeze. All my calls were monitored and automatically billed.