The 1980s were a period of pro-democracy struggles in South Korea. While the fierce anti- dicta-torship struggle based in universities managed to defeat the military dictadicta-torship, the movement quickly weakened with the collapse of the Eastern bloc and the ushering in of a global consumer society. With the emergence of the new generation, which had no experience of poverty, the heavy atmosphere of the older generation was expulsed. During this period, the emergence of cyberspace provided a space for the younger generation to overcome the oppressiveness of the
generation grew weaker, other groups with activist tendencies made their smaller voices heard online, forming diverse activist communities. Looking back at modern history, one can see many instances of social reform movements becoming rigid and conservative, even inciting popular backlashes. However, in South Korea‘s case, the sudden opening up of online space, rather than cutting off the democratic movement, enabled many people to continue the movement using different aims and methods.
From the era of PC-communications, the online space was full of Enlightenment voices who wanted to improve society. The first group of people to go online was citizens who had formed their social consciousness and criticized the structural contradictions through the pro-democracy movement. Meanwhile the wall poster culture of the movement, with its straightforward pro-nouncements, also reproduced itself online through the bulletin board culture. The important thing to note is how the bulletin boards enabled multiple individual voices to emerge into the public. At the time, many of the online posts were by people, who attempted to distinguish right from wrong, and who wanted to expose social wrong-doings. Accordingly, at times, the online space became one of tremendous violence. The introduction contained in this June issue of the college students‘ magazine [Intellect and Aspiration] reveals one aspect of the online culture during this period.
I was flooded with emails. There were too many to read one by one and, in any case, I felt that to read them all was a waste of the connection fee. Not only that, most of the emails was dia-tribes full of violent words. I wondered what I had done to deserve this. No matter how long I thought, it did not make sense. The problem was the fact that I had said something on a bulletin board that everyone read. Even though all I did was to express an opinion that was different from everyone else‘s, it provoked an avalanche of criticisms, in front of which I could not even raise my eyes to read. In cyber-forums, everyone turns into a mini-dictator, I concluded. In the face of an opinion, different from their own, they criticize, censure, and swear, so that you can‘t even get in a word edgewise. When will the sun rise in cyberspace?
If the pro-democracy movement in the 1980s succeeded in opposing the military dictatorship and achieving political democracy, in the new time and space of cyberspace, the people who were either not part of the movement, or who were, on the contrary, oppressed by it, were able to express themselves. Especially with the use of IDs and fictitious names, the naming culture started to flower and online polemics and personalities like Shin-Jung-Mo-Ra, following the new feminist convention of including one‘s mother‘s surname in one‘s name, also appeared. With everyday life becoming more democratic, the activities of those people with different sensibili-ties became more visible. In continuously politicizing the younger generation, the online space performed the role of an expansive democratic forum.
Broadly speaking, four types of activity occurred under the banner of cyber democracy. First, the youth-led political activists, through cyberspace, succeeded in radically changing South Korea‘s mainstream politics. While the Nakson Movement, organized through netizens in the late 1990s, succeeded in making visible the chronic problem of social corruption, the small civic group, NoSaMo (referring to people who love Noh Moo-hyun), which chiefly operates online, helped to get him elected, demonstrating the considerable power of the Internet. The transformation of a funeral for two female middle-school students, run over by U.S. army trucks, into a nation-wide political protest was also due to the efforts in cyberspace. The Anti-American candle-light vigil, held in Gwanghwamoon, was at first suggested by a netizen, becoming the basis for a larger
demon-stration three months later. While online parodies of George Bush entertained young Internet users, an anti- American song by an anonymous singer on the Internet later got heard all over the country. Occurring during the US-Iraq War, these activities later became the basis for both an anti-American backlash and the anti-war movement. The spontaneous and unorganized social movement, created through the participation of diverse citizens, had expanded into an inclusive democratic cultural movement. While women, people with disabilities, and sexual minorities used online bulletin boards to discuss their oppression, young activists, in their teens, emerged to use the Student Welfare Committee, formed during the PC-communication period, to push for a movement for students to have the right to choose their own hairstyles, to lower the voting age to 18. The second example of cyber-democracy comes from the activities of alternative media.
The Internet has provided a space for the appearance of alternative media, and for one or several people to create media. After 2000, a number of Internet newspapers appeared, the representa-tive examples being [Ddanzi-Ilbo]8 and [Ohmynews].9 The distribution system of media sections of portal sites and personal media blogs, which appeared soon afterwards, also contributed greatly to breaking up the concentrated media system, and changing the authoritarian language of the Cold War system into a democratic one. After the timely opening of satellite broadcasting and cable TV, the information network became even more diversified, challenging the power of the established newspapers and broadcasting stations, and opening a new experimental stage in the media industry.
The third field of cyber democratization occurred with the growing ability to sift through masses of information. Sites such as Naver Intellectuals were able to create a knowledge production system where ordinary people could easily participate in the production and circulation of information.
With regard to this activity, it is important to note that it is not the case that a large amount of knowledge could now be accumulated; rather, a paradigm shifted in terms of understanding knowledge. With growing suspicion of the authority of the expert, more people came to directly participate in the production of knowledge. The open source for knowledge production and sharing in turn enabled new experiences and a shift in collective consciousness. The fact that the masses could now participate in the production of knowledge, previously monopolized by a minority, signaled an impressive democratization of information.
The fourth outgrowth of cyber democratization occurred through the celebration and festivaliza-tion of what Emile Durkheim has termed the community for itself, resulting in its politicizafestivaliza-tion the representative example being the street celebrations during the World Cup. Diverse groups of netizens including youth and women took the 2002 World Cup as an opportunity to gather on the streets and celebrate as citizens for one whole month. Completely different from the somber mood of social movements in the 1980s, the citizens who spontaneously gathered to celebrate were surprised to find new aspects of their selves. These celebrations became an opportunity to turn the top down formation of citizen-subjects on its head. Both the mobilized and working subjects of the modern disciplinary system became transformed into spontaneous and playful subjects through the World Cup festivities (Kim Hyun-mee 2003, Lee Dong-yun 2002, Cho Han Hae-joang 2003). These large-scale civic festivals which brought the serious 386 generation to-gether with the consumer generation was likely possible because of the long period of training in self-expression and solidarity in online spaces. As an effort to complete the incomplete project of modernity, this type of space/time of the festival can be said to have been instrumental in cracking the previous authoritarian system and transferring power from the neo-Confucian older generation to the younger generation.