By Cho Jin-seo Staff Reporter Not many South Koreans are aware of the location of the country named Tuvalu. But its Internet country code ``.tv'' is becoming ever more popular with the rise of video-sharing Web sites. Like youtube.tv is automatically redirected to youtube.com, dozens of home-grown video-sharing and Internet broadcasting sites such as Pandora TV and Saychannel are using the ``.tv'' domain as it is easily related to television or video. www.mlb.tv for the Major League Baseball league and www.nba.tv for the National Basketball League are other popular ``.tv'' members based in the United States. ``As video-sharing sites such as YouTube are gaining popularity all over the world, the `.tv' domain is drawing more attention,'' said an official of Gabia, an Internet domain agency here. `.tv' is the Internet domain suffix allocated to Tuvalu, a Polynesian island nation located between Australia and Hawaii. With little more than 10,000 residents living in an area of 26 square kilometers, it is one of the smallest members of the United Nations. The domain business is a major income source for Tuvalu. Its government receives a quarterly payment of $1,000,000 for use of the top-level domain. According to Verisign, the operator of the `.tv' domain, about 70 percent of its users wanted to extend their contracts, which is significantly higher than 60 percent of `.com' users or 10 percent of `.net' owners. A total of 1,460 new `.tv' domains were registered between January and July this year, up from 483 registrations in the same period last year, according to Yonhap. indizio@koreatimes.co.kr