I’ve had the most amazing experience the past 12 days in Seoul, Korea.

The highlight, of course, was the Yahoo! exclusive interview with South Korean President Myung-bak Lee. This was a historic event as it was President Lee’s first interview with an online news organization and the first foreign head of state ever interviewed by Yahoo! News.

So how did all of this come about? The success of Yahoo! News’ interview of President Bush (in partnership with Politico) got the wheels turning. Interviewing President Bush spurred discussions within Yahoo! over which other world leaders we could get to sit down with us. I’m eternally indebted to Yahoo! Korea CEO James Kim, whose entire team did a tremendous job of pursuing the issue with the Blue House and then executing a highly complex operation in a very short period of time.

It was a great honor for me to get to go to the Blue House, the President’s residence, and meet with President Lee, who was very gracious and generous with his time. I asked President Lee questions about a variety of topics, from the ultra-serious issue of relations with North Korea to lighter fare such as the success of South Korea’s Olympians. I also asked a question from a user after Y! Korea asked for submissions from its users (there were literally 1000s to choose from). The discussion of North-South relations was particularly relevant for me since my father is a Korean War veteran.

One of the other highlights of my trip to Korea was a visit to the DMZ, which is an amazing place on many levels. The DMZ is both a literal and figurative ‘front line’ for a war that technically isn’t over, but it’s also a place where sworn enemies have figured out a way to coexist –- and even partner in a joint economic development project in the area. That gives me some hope President Lee will be right when he expressed confidence reunification will occur in his lifetime — and possibly suddenly as was the case with the reunification of Germany.

As for the rest of my trip, I was struck by the advanced technology available to the “average” Korean. From video conferencing on cell phones, to GPS devices that double as TVs to high-speed Internet access anywhere/anytime, Korea is one of the world’s most wired countries. I got insights on the scene from several tech industry executives and also met the world champion Starcraft player (video games are a huge spectator sport in Korea) — stay tuned to “Tech Ticker” for additional clips from those interviews.

Finally, I was blown away by the incredible hospitality and generosity of the people I met. Everyone I met was amazingly friendly and helpful — from colleagues at Yahoo! to local CEOs to a friend of a friend’s brother who took a day off to show me around Seoul, to the little girl at the Korean Folk Village who wanted to practice her English.

My only regret is I didn’t get to try live octopus (a local delicacy), but apparently it’s not in season. Next time!

Aaron Task
Correspondent, Yahoo! Tech Ticker

Did you know that in any given week, technology stocks represent at least seven of the ten most-searched quotes on Yahoo! Finance? We did, and that’s why today we launched Tech Ticker — a new video initiative from Yahoo! Finance focused entirely on technology investing. Some consider the tech sector the fantasy sports of the investing world, and clearly our users are hungry for more in this area.

Reporting from both the Silicon Valley and the NASDAQ MarketSite broadcast studio in New York, we plan to provide the most in-depth technology investing coverage on the web. Expect Tech Ticker to be both quirky and opinionated. Our renowned editorial team couldn’t be stronger:

• Sarah Lacy, Correspondent, Silicon Valley: A 10-year Valley veteran, you may read her biweekly BusinessWeek.com column titled “Valley Girl.” She literally wrote the book on the business and culture of the Silicon Valley.
• Aaron Task, Correspondent, New York: He covered Wall Street for a decade at TheStreet.com, is a frequent guest on major business news programs and his daily podcast “The Real Story” was an award winner on iTunes.
• Henry Blodget, Contributor, New York: You know the history. Now meet Henry Blodget 2.0, author of the award-winning blog, Internet Outsider and now CEO of Silicon Alley Insider. Outspoken and battle-tested, Henry will never be at a loss for an opinion.
• Andy Kessler, Contributor, Silicon Valley: A former Morgan Stanley analyst, Andy turned $100 million into $1 billion as co-founder of a technology hedge fund. He began his career designing chips at Bell Labs and is now a best-selling author.

And me — I’m Diane Galligan, executive producer of Tech Ticker. I’m especially excited to join the Internet’s #1 finance website after nearly a decade of producing financial news with CNBC and CNN.

Expect 4-8 video segments a day, including breaking market analysis, CEO interviews, and even documentary style editorials. If you’re thinking this sounds a lot like FinanceVision, it’s not. We’re offering short video-on-demand clips that are focused on a single sector of the market, rather than live streaming coverage of the entire stock market. FinanceVision was actually ahead of its time. We hope to learn from their experience, and take advantage of the many ways the Web and Web video have since evolved.

The videos can be found on the Tech Ticker site, or in the headline feeds of the tech stocks we cover. And what about our coverage of Yahoo!? The answer is simple. We have not only the freedom, but the mandate, to call it as we see it.

You can go to http://finance.yahoo.com/tech-ticker see for yourself. Let us know what you think is working, what’s not and what you want to see. In the meantime, check out the video below for an inside look at what Tech Ticker’s all about with Sarah Lacy.

Hope to hear from you — and enjoy!

Diane Galligan and the Tech Ticker editorial team