Jung Ki-young Spent $300 On Internet Explorer Gravestone That Went Viral

SEOUL, (17th of June 2022) – In the southern city of Gyeongju, a software engineer built an Internet Explorer gravestone which has gone viral. This is 2 days after the company announced that it will end its support for the aforementioned browser.

Jung Ki-young (38), a South Korean software engineer spent a month and ₩430,000 (South Korean Won, or around $332 USD), to commemorate the Internet Explorer’s demise. The gravestone was custom ordered by Jung Ki-young, with the signature “e” logo of the Internet Explorer. And this was set up on the rooftop of his brother’s cafe.

Jung Ki-young - Internet Explorer Gravestone That Went Viral
Jung Ki-young – Internet Explorer Gravestone That Went Viral | Image: Reuters.com

The gravestone went viral, probably not because of what you are thinking after 27 years of its service. But it must have been what’s in the gravestone’s inscription, which reads:

Internet Explorer

1995. 8. 17 ~ 2022. 6. 15

He was a good tool to download other browsers.

Jung Ki-young Internet Explorer Gravestone’s inscription

After the “ceremony“, the uploaded photos by Jung with his witty joke about the Internet Explorer were quickly picked up by other Reddit online users. And the now-defunct web browser photos went viral when it was upvoted tens of thousands of times.

One example of a Reddit post that shared the photos is from this user.

Internet Explorer Was Popular Until It Became Sluggish And Buggy

For 27 years of service, Internet Explorer wasn’t that bad. Surely, if that was that bad, then Microsoft have already removed that a long time ago. The now-defunct web browser could have been “powerful” back then.

However, like any other technology, everything needs to evolve and all tools that need to access things need to be upgraded. And if you let your product stagnant or with less support, like web browsers, your product will be left behind. And end up with a lot of issues and it will become slow.

Probably, Microsoft did stop Internet Explorer development and moved to Microsoft Edge. The common web browser that you will see in Windows 10, Windows 11, and surely on the future Windows OS releases. It is a cross-platform and Chromium-based web browser bundled not only with Windows 10/11 but also on Xbox.

Why Does South Korea Have To Endure Using Internet Explorer When There Are Others?

In South Korea, most people there had no other choice but to use Internet Explorer, especially for online banking and accessing e-retail for shopping. That was until 2014. This is because most of these platforms were required to use a plugin created by Microsoft called “ActiveX“.

And as of today, there are still government websites in Seoul that will only work properly with Internet Explorer. While other government websites are now cross-browser compatible.

Two examples are the Korea Water Resources Corporation and Korea Expressway Corporation which worked properly in Internet Explorer last June 10. This was according to Maeil Economic Daily via Yahoo! News – AFP.

Why Jung Made The Internet Explorer Gravestone With A Witty Inscription?

Overjoyed and free from suffering – This is somewhat Jung Ki-young’s overall feeling at the moment after Microsoft ended its support for Internet explorer. As a software engineer, he suffered constantly at work because of the now-defunct web browser.

When you are a developer, especially a web developer, one of the things you have to consider is to make sure that your application works on all types of web browsers. And this was one of the major problems Jung had to face – compatibility issues. Jung mentioned that in their country, South Korea, before everything else, you need to make sure that your application looks good first in Internet Explorer.

Because of these compatibility issues, Jung had to spend extra hours just to ensure that the application can first look good and work as expected in Internet Explorer. Then at the same time, as with other web browsers such as Chrome. Not to mention, mobile browsers.

Jung Was Holds No Grudge Against Internet Explorer

Although, Jung was not really disrespecting Internet Explorer at all. And does not have any grudges against Microsoft’s Internet Explorer. He also remembered the browser’s heyday – when Internet Explorer was still popular and king of browsers.

This is why Jung decided to put the Internet Explorer grave on their cafe’s rooftop in Gyeongju indefinitely. He even quoted Hayao Miyazaki, a Japanese animator:

People are often relieved that machines don’t have souls, but we as human beings actually give our hearts to them.

Hayao Miyazaki, a Japanese animator