A South Korean woman passes mobile handsets on display at an electronics shop in Seoul. The tech-savvy nation now has 45 million mobile phones, equivalent to 91 percent of the total population

Tech-savvy South Korea now has 45 million mobile phones, equivalent to 91 percent of the total population, the Korea Communications Commission said Wednesday.

The data means each of the country's 15.8 million households has almost three mobiles on average, it said.

Nearly 43 million of the mobile phones had an Internet connection.

The number of landline phone users continues to fall, with 23 million subscribers reported last month.

South Korea is one of the world's most wired societies, with nearly all households connected to the Internet.

© 2008 AFP