Nintendo Wii on its way to Korea

At long last, Korea may finally get the Nintendo Wii by next month. The popular video game console has been on sale in North America and Japan since 2006.Nintendo Korea holds a press conference today to lay out the details of the Wii’s launch in Korea, including the day it will go on sale and its retail price.The Wii’s entrance into the video game console market is expected to stimulate competition here.In Japan alone, according to Enterbrain, a Japanese market survey company, the Wii led the market by selling over 5.6 million units in 2007. This is far larger than the 2 million PlayStation 3 units and 602,000 Xbox 360 units sold. The Wii’s launch in Korea is a long time coming. The video game console was rumored to hit the Korean market in the winter, but Nintendo Korea delayed the release because localizing the software took longer than anticipated. This process entails translating text and adding region-specific features.

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I also read from other source that Wii machine for sales in Korea, will be specially encrypted so that only officially released wii software from Nintendo Korea can be played. In other words, if you buy Wii software from US, Japan or Europe, it will not work, similar to DVD's regional code.
Supposedly this is in order to go against heavy piracy they experienced when promoting NDS. Furthermore, this is also pilot marketing strategy from Nintendo before going to Chinese market. Nintendo wants to see how this would play out in Korea, then implement same strategy to China.