Six hundred years later, Korea, or at least its southern half, is at the forefront of another revolution, this one a result not of a domestic invention but a foreign one. South Korea is the world’s most wired nation, and its vibrant Internet culture is a sign of things to come for the rest of the world. With the highest per capita broadband penetration in the world, the Republic of Korea has established itself as a global IT leader. In South Korea, 76% of households have broadband access, compared to just 30% for the United States.
It was another Korean invention, made shortly after the Korean printing press, which might have a large part in Korea’s current IT success. In 1443, the Korean alphabet, Hangul, was invented and promulgated in 1443. Before that time, Chinese characters were used, which did not conform to the Korean languages pronunciation or syntax. Hangul is phonetic, and easy to learn and use. For that reason, it was despised by the Confucian literati and largely fell into disuse, only to be revived in the 19th Century by mutually reinforcing nationalism and American Protestant missionary activity.
It might be thought that Japan, or maybe Taiwan, would be more conducive to the Internet revolution now being heralded by South Korea, but not only the Chinese language but also Japanese depend on the use of tens of thousands of Chinese characters in writing, which make writing on a keyboard cumbersome and painstaking. Korea’s Hangul alphabet, with only 24 basic symbols, is as easy to use on a keyboard as is the Roman alphabet. It is easier, in fact, as it has no upper- or lowercase letters.
Another factor lending to the growth of a cyber-culture in South Korea is its highly stratified Confucian society. Age is all-important, and a difference of one year makes for a senior-junior relationship, full of mutual obligations that must be fulfilled and roles that cannot be transgressed. Korea’s highly codified language marks differences for age level; the younger speaker is required to use elaborate honorifics when speaking to someone only slightly older. A Korean proverb says that there is a generation gap between twins.
This, in addition to the importance placed on the group, makes it difficult for people to meet strangers. Enter the Internet. Cyber-space is seen as a place of unparalleled and previously unimagined freedom. One is free to create a new identity online, and break free from prescribed social roles. Many Koreans have an online “avatar,” a sort of alter ego, for whom cyber-clothes and other accessories can be bought with cyber-money. For many high-school students, who study in cram schools until midnight or later, this online personality can seem more real, or at least more exciting, than the real one they feel stuck with.
How then, does this cyber-culture manifest itself?
First and foremost there is the “minihompy,” short for mini-homepage, which is a personal webpage. The minihompy is the creation of one Internet company, Cyworld, with 13 million registered users, a staggering one-fourth of the country’s population. Furniture, wallpaper, music, and other accessories can by bought with dotori (Korean for “acorn”), Cyword’s cyber-currency, which can be purchased at stores, banks, or online with credit cards or by cell-phone transfer, using very real money, of course. Cell-phones, which are much smaller and as much as ten times faster than those used in the United States, are all equipped with cameras, which the Cyworld citizens use to document their lives on their minihompies. The cell-phone companies are able to increase profits by charging for the uploading of photos.
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