I don't remember it ever being $100, you probably paid for 2 years. When I got my first domain name in the early 90's before the commercialization of the Internet domain name registration was free. I had my name for a couple of years at no charge (also had a class C subnet assigned to me, which I turned back in last year to ARIN). After the InterNIC transferred from SRI over to Network Solutions (think it was 1994 or so), and the Internet became commercial, the government decided to charge $50 for domain names in which $35 went to Network Solutions and $15 to the U.S. Government. After I think 2 years or so it was determined that the $15 could be considered an illegal tax, so that was revoked leaving the standard $35 Network Solutions fee.

I also agree that the downfall of the domain name registration was when it was passed to ICANN. People may have complained about the $35, but we didn't have squatters and people hijacking names just because someone forgot to "pay the bill".

The United States is approx 100 times larger in size than Korea and over 6 times the population. This is one of the reasons why smaller countries in Asia and Europe tend to have higher speeds and can roll out a new infrastructure to their entire country faster. We have areas of our country too that have very high speeds, however compared to the rest of the U.S. it's just a drop in a bucket, even if the number of people are the size of a small country elsewhere. Other parts of our country have no Internet access, cell service, etc. Increase your country by 100 times its size and let me know how your WiMax is working then.