Why is the net-revolution in South Korea so advanced? That's a story that no one has fully explained yet. And the answer to the story is important, as we ponder what changes we might be able to unleash here in the US. The founder of OhmyNews, Oh Yeon Ho, gave a speech at the Berkman Center's "Votes, Bits and Bytes" conference last week that you can read here. While certain factors are obviously important--the dominant media was uniformly conservative and overbearing; the country leads the world in broadband penetration at 75%, making interactive news more viable [the US is falling behind rapidly]; it's relatively small and homogenous so stories can spread and permeate quickly--the most important reason is cultural. Oh's remarks on that point deserve careful consideration:
How did Korea get such active netizens? It didn’t come easily. We Koreans have been paying dearly, since modern Korean history itself is the cost. Struggling against military dictatorship to achieve democracy was the cost. Living in a divided nation is the cost. The Korean War in 1950, and The Kwangju Massacre in 1980 [where over 2000 workers and students were killed while protesting a military coup--with the tacit approval of the Carter Administration, by the way--MLS] were the two representative events that Koreans paid in blood.
The Korean War taught people to keep silent in order to survive. The Kwangju Massacre too. But there has been an endless struggle for democracy and liberating form keeping silent. During the 1980s, university students stood on the street yelling "perish military dictatorship, unveil the truth about the Kwangju Massacre." Some, including me, served in jail or made the uneasy decision to sacrifice future job prospects by demonstrating. We can call them the children of the Kwangju Massacre.
These historical experiences are the deep-rooted background of today's active Korean netizens. Now the children of Kwangju are making their voices heard in cyberspace instead of on the street. Married, with children, they still have their enthusiasm: “If we participate, we can make a difference.”
They are teaching the next generation to remember modern history, and to struggle for a more vibrant democracy.
The positive effects are incalculable. Participatory democracy is flourishing.
Here, I would stress this: technology itself cannot change society, only prepared people who can use technology positively can change society more democratic.
While American society and government has suffered several shocks to the system in the last decade or so (Perot, money-in-politics scandalorama, Clinton's impeachment, Florida 2000, 9-11, Enron, and Bush's rush to war in Iraq all go on my personal list, but if you were thinking like a "righteous" voter you'd probably list abortion, Janet Jackson and gay marriage on your list), they don't produce a critical mass for change--they produce several critical masses pushing in different directions.
Personally, I think what unites us is greater than what divides us--but I also understand that culture can trump economics in how people decide their own self-interest (as much as I love and agree with Tom Frank), and thus we may have a lot of difficulty aligning the great many-to-many against the tiny, greedy few.
Rambling thoughts on a cold Friday morn...
Posted by msifry at December 17, 2004 09:32 AM