Korean Job Discussion Forums

[tatertot]

Hello everybody. As most people (that post regularly on the Dave's Technology forum) are aware, Korea uses a whitelist of IMEI numbers to prevent "unauthorized" phones from connecting to the networks here.

In most places in the world, you can display your IMEI by typing *#06# (then maybe clicking the call button) in your phone's dialer program (both smart and dumb phones). However, Korea seems to be paranoid about IMEIs. With my previous cheap slider phone, doing this wouldn't reveal anything. When I try this on my Galaxy S, I get the message "Rejected" in a pop-up window.

I also tried navigating to the Settings -> About phone -> Status menu and found the IMEI number conspicuously absent.

There is really no good reason to try to learn your IMEI (spoofing it is incredibly challenging and probably illegal). However, Korea's ridiculously extreme attempt to block the retrieval of this number irritated me. If you are curious about your IMEI and you have an Android phone, you can download the "IMEI widget" widget from the Marketplace and then see your IMEI number. Of course, there's really no good reason to do this (other than simply because the Korean government doesn't want you to have access to this information).

Anyway, the reason I posted this rambling message in the first place was to ask a question of the iPhone users here in Korea. I am curious if typing *#06# on your iPhone reveals the IMEI. Also, my iPhone 3G had the IMEI written inside the SIM tray. Do your Korean iPhones have the IMEI there as well? I am curious to learn if Apple bent over to the Korean telecoms/government (in this manner) in order to sell iPhones here.

I apologize for the overuse of parenthesis in this post.

[seoul101]

tatertot, yes, it displays the IMEI by doing this. It's also in Settings>General>About - it's not hidden.

What I'm curious about is whether a foreign iPhone can be hacked and have its IMEI changed to a Korean-listed one? Has anyone done this? Or is the only way to have a Korean IMEI is by buying one (registering it)?

[tatertot]

[pkang0202]

I do recall they sell "SuperSim Cards" that will spoof your phone. Not sure if they have them in Korea, but I hear they are available in places like China.