What would the mobile future look like? The Nytimes.com takes a look at the widespread appeal of all things mobile in South Korea, where the population, particularly those in their twenties, use their phone for nearly everything. Aside from the more typical—playing games and listening to music, South Koreans use their phones as a subway pass, to pay for both virtual and digital products, to watch TV, as an e-reader for books and comics, which as the nytimes.com writes makes “South Korea, because of its high-speed wireless networks and top technology companies like Samsung and LG,…the test case for the mobile future.”

One area that South Korean carriers and tech companies are making a particular push in is mobile payments. Last year, 4 million South Koreans bought items—including music, videos, ringtones, game subscriptions and newspaper articles, among other online items—worth 1.7 trillion won, or $1.4 billion and charged them to their phone bills. Carriers and banks are now trying to widen the use of mobile payments with new payment products.

Late last year, South Koreans started using T-money, electronic cash that is stored and refilled in the SIM cards and other chips in their phones. Now public transportation, convenience stores, online shopping malls, and even some taxis allow the use of T-money. Of course, mobile payments are still a very tiny sliver of online banking. In 2008, online payments were worth 22.8 trillion won ($18.3 billion), of which 151 billion won ($121 million), or less than 1 percent came from mobile phones. Still, with the pervasiveness of mobile phones in the lives of young people in South Korea, banks and carriers are “optimistic” about the future.