Monday, January 7, 2002		Lens on IT

South Korean farmer Lee Jong-woo poses at his office in Pyongtaek, 70 km (43 miles) south of Seoul. Despite the fact that e-marketplaces have so far failed to meet expectations and replace traditional methods of doing business for most commodities, the 48-year-old farmer's online rice business is thriving in one of the world's most wired countries.

An Athenian smiles as he holds euro bank notes after his transaction with an automated teller machine (ATM) in Athens. Greece, along with Finland an hour ahead of central European time, welcomed the advent of euro notes and coins with music, song and dance across the country.

Domestically-made phones are promoted in Chengdu, capital of Sichuan province. Foreign and Chinese mobile phone makers are competing fiercely in China which is expected to have more than 240 million mobile phone users by 2005, making it the biggest mobile phone market in the world. China scrapped a ban on foreign investment in its booming telecommunications market after it joined the WTO earlier this month

New Year customers queue to enter Pokemon Centre Tokyo, which sells products concerning the popular animation characters of Pocket Monster, on the store's first sales day of the year. Thousands of Pokemon fans queued to buy goods available during the opening days of the New Year.

A Kashmiri Public Call Office (PCO) owner sits near a notice announcing the non-availability of subscribers trunk dialling (STD) and international subscribers dialling (ISD) facilities, inside his shop in Srinagar. India's state-owned telecomm giant Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd has suspended long distance call offices in Kashmir region, a BSNL offcial said last week.

— Reuters photos