The BlackBerry is belatedly set to reach South Korea, which has so far kept out the mobile e-mail devices despite Koreans being among the world’s heaviest internet users.

SK Telecom, South Korea’s biggest mobile operator, said on Tuesday it had received government approval to offer BlackBerry services. Research in Motion’s BlackBerry devices have not been on the market here because of a regulation requiring handset applications to be based on wireless internet platform for interoperability (WIPI), a homegrown software platform.