Futures of Learning

Cho-Han Hae-Joang et al, Seoul, Korea: Yonsei University Press, 2007

I visited Korea recently. Since it was a short stay, I did not have much chance to update myself with busy observations on ever-changing technosphere in Korea as I would usually do. Yet I managed to meet a young cultural studies researcher, Kim Hee-Won who has been keeping a sharp eye on the Internet world and its young inhabitants, thanks to Larissa Hjorth’s kind introduction. Chatting with/interviewing Hee-Won in the midst of my jet lag stupor was more than refreshing, and we simply could not agree more about the dearth (and urgency) of serious research on new media practices and cultures in Korea in the shadow of the hyped image of wired Korea.

One of interesting points from our conversation that grabbed me was Hee-Won’s view on the generational identity of young Koreans in their 20s with regards to their new media practices. Hee-Won reads their intensive attachment to such new media services as Minihompy, messenger, and SMS and their often obsessive attempt to be constantly connected as a form of performing a reciprocal “check-up of (their) survival for another day.” It is generally true that these new social media intensify the sense of ‘constant on’ for users across generations. Yet as Hee-Won suggests, this practice may reflect the desire for the emotional comfort from assuring one’s presence within the network. In particular, this interpretation makes quite appealing sense when it comes to Korean youth in 20s whose insecure social status, resulted from increasing unemployment rate since 1997 economic crisis, has become a widely acknowledged social issue. In other words, Internet has provided the major playground and outlet for this frustrated generation.

Our speculation on this specific group of youth got me rethinking and reassured about the simple principle of our study on digital media and youth: the importance of considering historical and cultural specificity of diverse groups of young people under the umbrella of the term ‘youth’ as well as recording the transformative and transient nature of media practices. Certainly, Internet would not be the same space for Korean teenager who is born into it with many other available options of digital media and the twenty something whose primal new media experience began with the burgeoning Internet.

Moreover, I am glad to find my question is not wasted yet more profoundly addressed in Internet and Asian Cultural Studies, an anthology Hee-Won kindly gave me. Written in Korean by renowned as well as young cultural studies researchers who are mostly rooted in Yonsei University’s Graduate Program in Culture and Gender Studies, this book provides a great historical standpoint to what they call, “holding back” moment of Internet culture in Korea. Declaring the end of the first stage of Internet fever, it attempts to surmise the legacy of wired Korea in early 2000s and record the transition of the Internet from the wild new space for various voluntary and civil experiments to the striated space for tired/accustomed patterns overrun by the commercial logic, at the threshold of institutionalized “networked era.”

Each article based primarily on ethnographical field research presents so many interesting findings and rich details of what have constructed newly emerging alternative space for Korean and Korean youth. Yet, an anthology format always makes it hard to dwell on each argument. To briefly introduce the gamut of researches, the book includes Cho-Han Hye-Joang’s thought-provoking review of the history of Korean Internet culture with focus on specific ‘agencies’ and ‘sites’; Kim-Cheong Hee-Won’s comprehensive analysis on Cyworld community; Hwang Sang-Min’s, an author of the Dehanminkook Cyber Sinillyu (Korean Cyber New Generation), qualitative study on online community, Gaming(Maple Story), and the role of play for learning and identity formation in cyberspace; Park Geon-Ha on Progamers’ world; Yun Te-Jin on the transnational consumption of popular cultural products, especially reception of foreign television drama content across Asia; Kim Hak-Sil and Lee Chung-Han on active consumption and re-appropriation of Japanese entertainment content by young Korean fans; Kim Hyun-Mi on the lagged establishment of accompanying laws and policies and shifting cultural values in Internet space.

In spite of limited space here, I would like to highlight Cho-Han Hye-Joang’s works as her article presents overarching themes of the book. Cho-Han is a renowned cultural anthropologist who has been delving into the issues of gender and youth culture in modern Korea for the last 30 years. She is one of few anthropologists who not only keep critical eyes but also act out pronouncedly on the emerging cultures and changes of Korean society along with Internet and new media technologies. For example, Seoul Youth Factory for Alternative Culture (Haja Center), where Cho-Han is the founding director, is one of exemplary institutional projects that run alternative and innovative learning programs for young people.

In her article, she raises two questions: how has Korea established the infrastructure of the Internet network so fast and where are the Internet venture companies and online netizens who built and grew out of this environment now? While there have been various academic and journalistic attempts to unearth the secret behind the success of IT-power house Korea, Cho-Hans’s answer to the first question resonates to those views that pinpoint the operating discourse of techno-nationalism underlying rapid technological developments, which I also see as the central drive behind the development of mobile technology in Korea. It is no doubt that the nationalistic and collective (state-leading yet with active engagement of market and citizens) model, which had once worked well for the rapid industrialization of Korea, did the same trick for the informatization during the 1990s. What Cho-Han adds, based on her rich experience as an educator and early adopter of the Internet at every stage, is her reflective examination of the role of the ‘civil’ sector - the vigorous civil and voluntary experiments in online space of early days (1998-2002)- which she characterizes as the process of establishing “condensed modernization,” “cyber democracy,” temporary self-regulated space,” and “alternative public space.”

In spite of many strong points, however, this book bears one noticeable weakness: the limited attention to the ‘Asian’ aspect of given issue. Betraying what the title promises, it mostly focuses on Korean phenomena. When the Asian and transnational perspective comes into play, it only tackles Japan-Korea cultural exchange. Nevertheless, this anthology expresses its commitment to connecting Korea with other Asian contexts by providing the substantial analysis of Korean case that could potentially illuminate similar social changes undergoing in other Asian countries. Yes, it is true that what we learn from early examples could light up the following discussions yet it would only be the beginning step of what we expect from future comparative researches.