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SEOUL, South Korea -- The two warriors arrive at 8 a.m. every weekday, carrying cigarettes and cellular phones.

They make their way to the back of a dimly lighted third-floor room and sit down at computer terminals No. 64 and 65. There, beneath whirring ceiling fans, they do battle in the stock market with the titans of world finance until 3 p.m., not counting a timeout or two for computer games.

Sul Dong Un and Eom Dae Hyun, both 29, are part of South Korea's army of individual investors who trade stocks online. Tech savvy and confident of their stock-picking prowess, these e-traders have made South Korea a world leader in computerized stock picking: Online trading accounts for more than half the volume on the country's stock exchanges.

"It's actually something of a social problem," says Lane Leskela of technology consultant Gartner Group. "You've got people taking coffee breaks and trying to get into the market during working hours. Some companies have to block these (online brokerage) sites."

Crazy for the Net

The e-trading craze is only the most vivid example of the astonishing enthusiasm with which South Korea has embraced the Internet and e-commerce.

"Koreans are eager to try new things," says Sungwon Suh, managing director of NuVista Asset Management, a Seoul firm that invests in young technology companies. "Secondly, they're very impatient" and know they can save time by going on the Net to trade stocks or book vacations." Consider:

* Nearly 57% of all stock trades are conducted online in South Korea. Estimates for the amount of U.S. trading done online range from a quarter to a half.

* South Korea ranks No. 1 in Asia in per-capita e-commerce retail revenue, according to a study by Boston Consulting.

E-commerce revenue, an estimated $37 million last year, is expected to hit $23 billion by 2005 in South Korea, lagging only Taiwan and Japan among Asian countries, Salomon Smith Barney estimates.

* Nearly 1.6 million South Korean households -- 13% -- have access to the Internet at home. The figure is expected to pass 4 million -- nearly a third of all households --by 2005, says Salomon Smith Barney.

Currently, online trading contributes 70% of e-commerce revenue, Boston Consulting estimates.

It's everywhere

Using personal computers and, increasingly, mobile phones with Internet connections, South Korean e-traders can buy and sell stocks anywhere. They trade from home, from cars stuck on Seoul's congested streets, and from special PC rooms (called "bangs" in Korean) such as the one Sul and Eom frequent in a computer-crazy neighborhood in southern Seoul. Many of South Korea's cyber-investors sneak in a little online investing at the office, one reason the Korean stock market recently decided to stay open through the lunch hour.

Specialty brokerages are springing up to assist online traders. And traditional brokerages, usually part of unwieldy conglomerates called chaebols, are scrambling to remake themselves for the Internet age.

Seoul's failing, chaebol-connected Ssangyong brokerage, for instance, was rescued by foreign investors, renamed Good Morning Securities and plunged into the online brokerage business. E-trading already accounts for about half of Good Morning's business and is headed to 70%, says Sung Hwan Tae, a general manager who oversees e- trading.

Investors are attracted by the cost of online trading: The commission on online trades can be as low as .03%, at least a third lower than commissions on off-line trades. E-traders also like seeing their buy and sell orders carried out near-instantaneously instead of having to wait two or three days for paperwork to clear. "You buy it and pay for it right away," Sul says.

Like a lot of other small investors here, Sul doesn't trust regular brokers, believing they work to benefit big institutional investors and corporate clients at the expense of individual investors. He prefers the autonomy of investing online.

Working at the terminal

He also finds the atmosphere of his favorite PC bang a lot more relaxing than the typical brokerage house.

On a recent weekday morning, Sul sat as usual at Terminal No. 64, his buddy Eom beside him at No. 65. A handful of other computer users were scattered around the computer room, most of them playing computer games or checking their e-mail. This PC room attracts a hard- core group of only five or six regular e-traders, and Sul and Eom are the most hard-core among them.

Unlike the office workers on the city streets outside, Sul wasn't in a dark suit and tie. He wore blue shorts and a plaid shirt. Beside him was a small silver bowl containing a little water, in which he doused cigarettes. Every once in awhile, his cellphone rang: a friend or a fellow e-trader seeking stock tips. He gets his own investing ideas from online tip sheets and by studying financial statements. He arrives at 8 a.m., before South Korea's stock market opens, and stays until the market closes at 3 p.m., skipping lunch. Then he goes home and plays with his children. At night, he goes online to conduct his own investment research.

On this morning, he was taking a short respite from trading to play an online version of the Korean chess game ba-dook. "The company I invested in hit a high," he says with satisfaction. "So I'm taking a break. Whenever I want a break, I go to a PC game."

Investing as a job

Six months ago, Sul shut down the small public relations firm he owned and started investing online full time. He says he and Eom have turned an initial investment of 360 million Korean won (about $320,000) into 1 billion won (about $890,000). They invest primarily in the Kosdaq, South Korea's version of the USA's tech-heavy Nasdaq market. Although the Kosdaq is notoriously volatile, Sul says he follows a disciplined investment approach: He lets profits run up but unloads losers quickly, once they've slipped 3%. He doesn't panic when the market collapses, believing that the setbacks will be short- lived and perseverance rewarded.

In the broader market, Sul says, individual investors are at the mercy of big institutional investors and foreign fund managers -- the ones many Koreans hold responsible for the Asian market meltdown of 1997-98 that pitched South Korea into a brief but painful recession.

But the Kosdaq is the domain of individual investors, many of them e-traders who know the market better than and can move just as quickly as the big players. "We are the ant troop," he says. "In the normal stock-trading market, the individual investors can lose lots of money because of the big institutional investors. But (in the Kosdaq) they can't read the mind of the ant troops. On the Kosdaq, we revenge ourselves against institutional investors and foreign investors."

Other South Korean e-traders, though, seem to be a little more jittery. E-stock trading volume plunged 46% in April as tech stocks worldwide took a beating. "The market is very unstable," Sul concedes. "It's high risk, high return."

No wonder the PC bang where he takes his chances every day is named Veg@s.