SKoreans named world texting champs

The team of 17-year-old Bae Yeong Ho and 18-year-old Ha Mok Min went thumb-to-thumb against competitors from a dozen countries to win the title in a competition Thursday in New York City.

The LG Mobile World Cup challenged nimble-fingered youths on both speed and accuracy. The winning team took home a $100,000 prize.

Second place and $20,000 went to the US contestants - 16-year-old Kate Moore of Des Moines, Iowa, who is the 2009 US National Texting Champion, and 14-year-old Morgan Dynda of Pooler, Georgia, the 2009 runner-up. An Argentinian team came in third and the Brazilians took fourth.

With many languages at play, English was the texting language of the US competitors and those from Canada, South Africa, Australia and New Zealand. Other nations represented were Indonesia, Portugal, Russia, Mexico and Spain. Interpreters were hired for non-texting communication.

Privately, Moore averages 12,000 texts per month, entering up to 3.5 characters per second.

The event is sponsored by LG Electronics Inc.'s mobile-phone division, a company based in Seoul, South Korea, that supplies its latest handsets for the contest. Each participant was mailed an LG international phone several weeks ago, to get accustomed to the keyboard.

The 26 finalists who made it to the World Cup were chosen from more than 200,000 wannabes in a global text-off that began in May. Before they even got to New York, female texters had the advantage - hands down, Moore said; Kazinform cites China Daily. See www.chinadaily.com.cn for full version.