:: Deepquest ::

The first international hacker conference held in this most wired of nations would never be confused with its Western forebears. Instead of jeans and T-shirts with clever slogans, attendees wore button-down shirts and pleated slacks while listening quietly and attentively to speakers dressed in suits. There were few jokes, no interruptions and not a drinking game in sight.

But in terms of content, the two-day Power of Community conference that opened here Thursday follows squarely in the tradition of events like Defcon and Hope in the United States, featuring everything from a civil liberties stump speech from free-software guru Richard Stallman to live demonstrations of taking over a remote voice-over-internet-protocol session and remote exploits against Fedora Core.

For organizer “Vangelis,” inspiration for the conference came while attending a similar event in Malaysia, where the IT infrastructure is nowhere nearly as advanced as Korea’s, but the culture of hacking and security research has been more vibrant. He went home and started planning a conference “by and for hackers.”

For Vangelis, the goal is to bring people together and change the perception of hackers in Korea. “Some people who have a negative point of view think we do bad things,” he said. “We are not criminals. We are showing … (that) hackers are needed for security.”

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