New Media in Seoul After Midnight

A dispatch on the arts, technologies and cultures in the metropolitan community served by the Seoul airport.

Seoul, South Korea, the third-largest metropolitan area in the world, has approximately 22 million people living in close proximity to one another, all connected to multiple media. To explain new media in Seoul after midnight, it must be noted that Koreans are a very social people, utilizing all forms of media for the extension of relationships. Also, the physical city is highly networked, with efficient, inexpensive public transit, the circulatory system of Seoul. Midnight is when mass transit stops each day and, consequently, is the threshold at which a group of friends must decide where to go and/or stay for the night. They must decide if their meeting is to continue with an all-night social activity in one general location or if the group will physically separate to persist virtually on-line via cell phones, text messages and chatting or latently through social network services and blogging.

The Koreans' strong focus on relationships and unity is an influence on the homogeneity of media in the country. While Pi Sheng of China invented movable type in A.D. 1040, using clay blocks that broke easily [1], Korean typesetters in the 13th century developed a more robust metal-block typesetting technique to create civil service tests and religious texts such as Da Xue Yan Yi (Scriptures on Confucianism) [2], thus increasing the duplication of literature throughout the Korean Goryeo Dynasty.

This homogeneity of media is also supported historically with the invention of Hangul, the ingenious phonetic writing system developed by King Sejon in 1446. Prior to Hangul, complicated pictographic Chinese characters primarily taught only to the aristocracy were used to represent Korean speech. King Sejong wanted literacy for all Koreans. After the invention of Hangul, both the literacy rate and the circulation of duplicated literature created by printing presses increased. These developments catalyzed cultural unification among the fragmented parts of the Korean peninsula, which has been terrorized by neighboring peoples throughout its history.

In the 20th century, the Korean people banded together to withstand a half-century of harsh Japanese colonial rule. The Korean War immediately followed and split the country at the 38th parallel in 1953, leaving Korea devastated. South Koreans unified to overcome these challenges and collectively decided to rebuild their nation as an international leader. In only 40 years, South Korea emerged from these struggles to become a technologically advanced, democratic, capitalist society with modern infrastructure supporting new media.

One can witness the superstructure firsthand in busy areas such as Jong-No, Gangnam and Bupyeong Market, where co-ed groups of college friends sit next to older businessmen at small, portable vendor stands drinking post-work soju [3] or eating bowls of bibimbap, talking loudly and showing off their brand-new MP3 phones. Approximately 70% of the population uses 3G hand-phones [4], Han Ki Chul, director of the Emerging Technologies Research Institute, reported in an interview [5]. "This means that everyone who could have a phone, has one," he said [6]. This is the primary new medium allowing one to socialize constantly on-line-for instance, using a camera phone to take quick portraits on the fly to post to one's own on-line photo gallery while still eating dessert with friends.

Photo © Jiah Lim

Also, if any of one's friends are at home, they more than likely have a 10- to 20-megabit-per-second connection, 10-20 times faster than the United States' average connection. Korea is often referred to as the worldwide broadband Internet leader. According to a recent report by the National Internet Development Agency of Korea, some 70% of all Koreans over the age of six are on-line, with 87.7% of all users using the extremely fast xDSL connection type [7]. This allows for the rapid sharing of photos, music and video. It also allows people to play massively multi-player on-line games with low latency.

As one walks down an active street-a common experience...