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South Korean web culture

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South Korean web culture indicates distinct activities that South Korean Internet users enjoy on the web[citation needed]. Synonyms include cyberculture, technoculture, virtual community culture, post-human culture, and high tech culture. Cyberculture in South Korea is more like a virtual community culture than anything else. Most of the Internet users are in the 13–50 age range[citation needed]. People often access the Internet through cyber cafes (Korean: PC방; PC bang).

Most of the activities are targeted to teenagers and college students. Youngsters who feel more comfortable texting than talking are known as the "thumb tribe".[1] The LG Mobile World Cup, an international competition held on January 14, 2010, in which participants competed using their texting speed and accuracy was won by a pair of South Koreans.

Highly urbanized at 92%,[2] South Koreans lead a distinctive urban lifestyle; half of them live in high-rises[3] concentrated in the Seoul Capital Area with 25 million residents.[4] The rise of online social activities closely mirrors the wider cultural trend towards shared spaces, such as the habitual use of coffee houses.[5]

South Korea enjoys the world's swiftest Internet speeds and the highest rate of Internet penetration[6][7] but also suffers from very high censorship of content. Internet culture is particularly prominent in South Korea with its influence of video games, video content, and streaming services.

Major activities

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Video games as spectator sports

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A Korean Air Boeing 747-400 at Incheon International Airport with an advertisement for StarCraft II painted on the fuselage. Jim Raynor is prominently displayed on the plane.

Video games and the watching of video games is very popular. South Korea leads the world in video games as spectator sports.[8]

Blizzard entered into a co-marketing agreement with Korean Air that lasted for six months, in which two of the airline's airplanes on both domestic and international routes prominently displayed StarCraft II advertising featuring Jim Raynor on the fuselage.[9]

This popularity has led to a natural rise in popular commentators on web games as part of the wider blogging community.

It is noted that South Korea served as a significant influence in the development of esports internationally. The creation of the Korea e-Sports Association (KeSPA) in October 2003 was the first esports association in the world. This organization put into practice various regulations and foundations as well as promoted competitive esports leagues. In further expansion of esports across Korea, the Korean Air Force established a military affiliate esports team called Air Force Challenges e-Sports (ACE). This allowed those serving their required military time to explore esports as a career.[10]

Blog (블로그)

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Just like other countries, blogging is also popular in South Korea.[11] Post topics range from personal reflections on philosophical conjectures to simple everyday life stories. Some of the popular Korean blog hosting websites include Naver Blog, Egloos, Blogin (defunct), Daum Blog, Yahoo! Korea Blog, Tistory, and Textcube.com (defunct). Two major portals for online communities in South Korea are Daum and Naver. Both operate as open public forums, or cafés, hosting a wide range of discussion topics—from entertainment, idols, and popular culture to more serious subjects like family, education, politics, and religion.[12]

Instant messaging (메신저)

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In Korea, the most popular online messengers include NateOn, KakaoTalk, MSN Messenger, BuddyBuddy, Sayclub Tachy and more[13][citation needed]. NateOn is known to have surpassed the usage share of MSN, now claiming the most number of users among messengers used in Korea.

Q&A

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Some search engine websites also provide "knowledge searches", which is an answer to a question that has been asked by another search engine user. For example, in Naver Knowledge iN registered users can post a question on any topic of their choice. Some users ask very personal questions pertaining to relationships and the like, since the user's real identity is not exposed.

When various users answer a question they are awarded a certain number of points, the person who asked the question can then select the best answer and will be awarded points. This user can then ask questions on the website using the points that he/she was awarded. The users with most points are ranked daily with the option to display their real identities, if they choose to do so.

Unlike Wikipedia, Q&A promotes a very active community based atmosphere for questions and answers.[citation needed]

Webtoons

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Main article: Webtoon

"Webtoon" (Hangul: 웹툰, RR: wep-tun) is a South Korean webcomic, or manhwa that is published online. The Korean web portal Daum created a webtoon service in 2003, as did Naver in 2004.[14] These services regularly release webtoons that are available for free. According to David Welsh of Bloomberg, comics account for a quarter of all book sales in South Korea, while more than 3 million Korean users paid to access online manhwa and 10 million users read free webcomics.[15]

As of July 2014, Naver had published 520 webtoons while Daum had published 434. Since the early 2010s, services such as Tapastic and Line Webtoon have begun to officially translate webtoons into English.[16] Examples of popular webtoons that have been translated into English are The Breaker, Girls of the Wild's, The Gamer, Noblesse, The God of High School, and Tower of God. In recent years, these webtoons have been gaining popularity in Western markets, rivalling Japanese manga.[17]

As digital comics have emerged as a popular medium, print publication of manhwa has decreased. The amount of material published in webtoon form has now reached an equal amount as that published offline.[18]

Bitcoin trading

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As bitcoin trading and virtual money trading are gaining popularity in South Korea, buzzwords related with these trading are getting popular on SNS and other communities.[19][20]

  • GAZUA (가즈아) - is kind of a magic word. People say it when they want express their hope that bitcoin's price goes up to their expectation. literally it means 'Go'. People started using this word in real world.
  • Jonber (존버) - word represent 'Do not sell the coin till price goes high'
  • Yeongcha Yeongcha (영차영차) - The sound that many people put together to strengthen their energy. People use this word as a hope to increase price of virtual cash.

Online video

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South Koreans appear to be avid users of online video with thousands watching online stars doing everyday things like eating.[21] This phenomenon known as Mukbang became widely popular across the internet. This form of entertainment served as a channel of connectedness, fulfillment of multi-sensory experiences, or simply performative display for viewers to enjoy.[22]

Search volume for K-pop since 2008 according to Google Trends

South Korea has become something of a cultural giant[23] exporting music (K-pop) through web-based viral success.[24] A notable worldwide success from this approach is Gangnam Style[25] and by September 2012 entered the Guinness World Records as the most "liked" video on YouTube.[26]

Internet Communities

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Internet communities can be referred as the nests of cyberculture in South Korea. Hit-cyberculture on internet communities often permeate even offline. A field of language is the most remarkable field. Internet communities lead this language trend in South Korea.[27] Even though there are countless internet communities, there are some communities to see thoroughly. Each internet community has different interests and different people gather at different community sites. So, their atmosphere and the cyberculture that they produce and consume are different from each other.

  1. DC inside - DC inside has an internet community has many forums (a.k.a. gallery) for different interests. This community was organized as community of interest for cameras and sharing photographs for amateur photographers at first, but its purpose was changed to Internet community. There are forums about almost everything. People who have same interest can discuss it on DC inside. In this process, many cybercultures are produced and consumed.
  2. Todayhumor - Todayhumor is a popular Korean internet forum. Originally dedicated just to humor, it has since grown to encapsulate various different topics and interests. It is widely used, ranking as the most popular Korean internet community in 2014.[28] Its users tend to be left-leaning politically, which generates some controversy for the website during election seasons.
  3. Diesel Mania - Diesel Mania is an online community catering to those interested in substitution for purchasing Diesel Jean and True religion. The biggest male-fashion community in South Korea. This community has real-name policy. Because of it, this community's issues are less rather than other communities.

These differences between communities makes cyberculture in South Korea diverse.

NAMU Wiki

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Main article: Namuwiki

The Angel Halo wiki, the predecessor of the NAMU Wiki, was founded on March 1, 2007. It specialized in animation, comics, and Internet neologism. It was popular because of its unique narrative method of mixing jokes such as puns, and various people continued to write for it making it bigger. It changed its name to the Liga Vedic wiki in 2012.[29] However, it became one of the alternative wikis forking this wiki when it became impossible to operate due to the debacle of the League Vedic wiki operator privatizing wikis, and it was made up as a separate site that backed up about 90% of the League Vedic wiki documents.[30] After the privatization of the League Vedai Wiki, most of the League Vedic Wiki users have become NAMU Wiki and Libre Wiki users.[31] As of March 13, 2017, NAMU Wiki outperformed the Korean Wikipedia in that NAMU Wiki ranked 11th on the list of popular websites in Korea while Korean Wiki ranked 33rd, and Google Search, which reflects user preferences.[32] As causative factors of the wiki's popular, the B-list language used in the NAMU wiki was filled with jokes, such as puns, and people responded to the preference of the users who liked the flimsy stories rather than the hard explanations. Also, it is analyzed that the size of the Korean version of Wikipedia is smaller than other language versions and the lack of content makes the NAMU wiki more popular.[29]

Social media

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Psy, whose music video for "Gangnam Style" became the first to reach more than a billion YouTube views[33]

Social media has been instrumental in the global reach of K-pop, particularly video-sharing site YouTube. Of the 2.28 billion worldwide K-pop YouTube views in 2011, 240 million came from the United States, more than double the figure from 2010 (94 million).[34]

Streaming Platforms

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Many cyberculture are produced on internet streams. There are many contents such as Mukbang, gaming, and visible radio in streaming platforms. stream Jockey(BJ) try to make their own streams' atmosphere and sometimes it would be a new cyberculture. Communication between the streamer and real-time viewer is one of the most important things in a stream. In this process, culture can be created and this immediately surfaces and quickly transmitted in Internet communities.

Live streaming has been integrated in South Korea’s as a form of public communication and as a rising full-time career. It became widely accepted for its convenient participatory aspect between the hosts and user. The most popular live-streaming platforms include YouTube, Twitch, and Afreeca TV. Live streaming has been used as one of the first lines of communication for political news and popular culture influence. Due to its real time nature, live streaming content is less likely to be edited or manipulated allowing the audience to feel more connected. In 2017, former President Park Geun Hye live streamed her first interview on YouTube regarding her scandal.[35]

Virtual community

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In Korea, there's many virtual communities like Daum Cafe, Naver Cafe, etc.[citation needed].

Cyworld (싸이월드)

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Main article: Cyworld

Cyworld is a hybrid between a blog and personal homepage. Although its primary prevalence is found in Korea, its influence has spread over China in recent years. Cyworld users range anywhere from elementary students to middle-aged adults.

Cyworld requires a person's real identity (Koreans: verified by Korean national identification number (주민등록번호); Foreigners: scanned school/state ID, driver's license, or passport) to become a member. Since all identity is usually truthful and non-anonymous, users often use this to seek lost friends from childhood or former classmates on the website, or make and progress their friendship by system that called by 'mini-homepage (minihompy, 미니홈피)'.

Similar to blogs, many people share their thoughts and photos that other friends (called 일촌, il-chon) can comment on. A typical 'mini-homepage' features a main page, a photographic album, a guest book, and a personal diary. Users are given many choices for personalizing their pages with music, backgrounds, and even fonts. One of the major differences between Cyworld and blogs is that Cyworld is optimized for the users who prefer to write very short and succinct diaries. One popular personalized feature is the 'mini-room (미니룸)', where a user is given a single rectangular room to decorate with different objects. These objects (as well as personalized features) are bought with online dollars called dotori (acorn, in English). Every user is given a 'mini-me (미니미)', a caricature. Although each user is given a prototype, gender-appropriate figure, they liberally personalize these figures with a variety of dress and hairstyle options.

Because the website contains mostly truthful information, social issues have been raised such as Cyber-bullying.

Web page usability

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Most Korean webpages (such as weather, search engine Naver and news) incorporate Flash and images, preferably animated. Often text is substituted with images in such a way that in order to copy and/or translate it visitor has to type it manually or, in the best case, take it from alternate text of the image[citation needed]. The impression[according to whom?] is that widespread broadband created a stimulus for web developers to write overly complex and rich web-pages, which can even make the browser work slowly (when about twenty pages are opened at once). At the same time, the webpages can sometimes in one aspect or the other deviate from standard: Naver is too narrow on some screens, some pages throw several pop-ups at the user, introduction on Korean website because it's all in images, etc.[citation needed].

Criticism

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Many of the online security breaches in South Korea seem to stem from a common use of comparatively outdated browsers and security software.[36]

There is occasional criticism claiming that foreign websites are significantly slower than South-Korean websites, for example websites for video streaming.[citation needed] This is a common problem[citation needed] in any country trying to communicate over foreign waters, since the latency in transcontinental communication is higher due to the physical distance that the signal has to travel.

See also

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References

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  1. ^ Sang-Hun, Choe (28 January 2010). "Rule of Thumbs: Koreans Reign in Texting World". The New York Times.
  2. ^ 지표상세. Index.go.kr. July 24, 2015. Retrieved June 20, 2016.
  3. ^ [수도권]‘응팔 아파트’ 만들기 서울시의 이색 도전 : 뉴스 : 동아닷컴. News.donga.com (January 7, 2016). Retrieved on June 20, 2016.
  4. ^ "Current population of the Seoul National Capital Area". Statistics Korea.
  5. ^ "In Korea, coffee shops just keep on multiplying". 29 August 2010.
  6. ^ "Why South Korea is really an internet dinosaur". The Economist. 10 February 2014.
  7. ^ "Digital Populism in South Korea? Internet Culture and the Trouble with Direct Participation | KEI | Korea Economic Institute". Archived from the original on 2011-10-11.
  8. ^ "Gentlemen, start your computers". The Economist. 10 December 2011.
  9. ^ "Blizzard Announces Starcraft II: Wings of Liberty Co-Marketing Campaign with Korean Air". IGN. Retrieved July 6, 2010.
  10. ^ Hong, Hee Jung; Hong, Seung Han (14 September 2023). "Transitioning Out of Esports: Exploring the Experiences of Professional Esports Players in South Korea". Journal of Electronic Gaming and Esports. doi:10.1123/jege.2023-0008. Retrieved 13 September 2024.
  11. ^ "The Twelve Best Blogs in South Korea | Kimchibytes". Archived from the original on 2013-05-04.
  12. ^ Nguyen, Thi (2017-09-16). "Online communities in South Korea: a case study". Medium. Retrieved 2024-10-22.
  13. ^ "Most Popular Messaging Apps By Country (2023)". 2021-04-26. Retrieved 2023-02-16.
  14. ^ "Korean webtoons going global". The Korea Herald. 2014-05-25. Retrieved 2016-04-27.
  15. ^ Welsh, David (23 April 2007). "Forget Manga. Here's Manhwa". Bloomberg.com. Retrieved 2016-04-27.
  16. ^ Lee, Jun-Youb (2015-04-03). "Startup Battles Naver in English Webtoons". The Wall Street Journal.
  17. ^ "[다시 도전이다] 미생·스틸레인 웹툰작가들, 美·中 독자도 웃고 울린다". Wow TV. 2015-01-01.
  18. ^ Noh, Sueen. ""To Be or Not to Be, That Is the Question": What Is Happening with Korean Comics, (Manhwa), Today?" International Journal of Comic Art (IJOCA) 9.2 (2007): n. pag. International Journal of Comic Art (IJOCA). John A. Lent, Sept. 2007. Web. 3 Dec. 2015.
  19. ^ ""가즈아" "구조대 언제"...비트코인 열풍에 유행어도 광풍". Yonhapnews.
  20. ^ "비트코인 신조어 몰라도 일단 '가즈아~'". MBN News.
  21. ^ "Sign in - Google Accounts".
  22. ^ Anjani, Laurensia; Mok, Terrance; Tang, Anthony; Oehlberg, Lora; Goh, Wooi Boon (2020-04-23). "Why do people watch others eat food? An Empirical Study on the Motivations and Practices of Mukbang Viewers". Proceedings of the 2020 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems. CHI '20. New York, NY, USA: Association for Computing Machinery: 1–13. doi:10.1145/3313831.3376567. ISBN 978-1-4503-6708-0.
  23. ^ "BBC Arts - BBC Arts - Seoul power: How South Korea became a cultural giant".
  24. ^ "How did Gangnam Style Go Viral and made $8 Million for Psy". 5 June 2014.
  25. ^ "Case Study: How Gangnam Style went viral with a strategic marketing campaign from YG Entertainment".
  26. ^ "How Did Gangnam Style Go VIral?".
  27. ^ "인터넷 커뮤니티의 명암... 유행의 선도자·여론 주도자이지만 자극적 글 재생산 공장 노릇도". Kyunghyang Shinmun.[dead link]
  28. ^ "직장인들이 활발하게 활동하고있는 커뮤니티 순위". tstroy. 5 April 2014.
  29. ^ a b "History of namu wiki". Retrieved 12 March 2017.
  30. ^ "김작가. 《보그 한국판 2015년 8월호》. 202-203쪽. "그리고 이 모든 일을 시간 단위로 작성한 나무위키는 빠르게 리그베다 위키의 대체재로 자리 잡았다. 그리고 어떤 사건으로 인해 문서 작성을 열혈적으로 하는 이용자들에게는 '사관'이란 별명이 붙었다. 몰락한 위키를 떠나 새롭게 탄생한 위키가 이 전쟁을 통해 예상을 뛰어넘는 속도로 뿌리내렸다". Archived from the original on 25 April 2016. Retrieved 17 August 2015.{{cite news}}: CS1 maint: bot: original URL status unknown (link)
  31. ^ "이대웅 기자 (2016년 4월 22일). "나무위키에서의 개인 명예훼손, 이대로 좋은가". 《크리스천투데이》. 2016년 4월 26일에 원본 문서에서 보존된 문서. 2016년 4월 26일에 확인함". 27 January 2016. Archived from the original on 8 February 2016. Retrieved 26 April 2016.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: bot: original URL status unknown (link)
  32. ^ "와우스타 웹컬처팀 기자 (2016년 1월 27일). "[2016 웹컬처 키워드] 국내 집단지성 위키, '대위키시대' 도래". 《한국경제TV》. 2016년 2월 8일에 원본 문서에서 보존된 문서. 2016년 2월 8일에 확인함". 27 January 2016. Archived from the original on 8 February 2016. Retrieved 8 February 2016.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: bot: original URL status unknown (link)
  33. ^ Anthony Wing Kosner (December 21, 2012). "Out Of This World! Gangnam Style Hits One Billion Views And Now Even NASA's In PSY's Orbit". Forbes. Retrieved 2012-12-21.
  34. ^ "K-Pop Videos Set New Record on YouTube". Soompi. January 2, 2012. Retrieved 2012-09-17.
  35. ^ Kim, Ji Hyeon; Yu, Jun (June 2023). "In Search of 'Truths': South Korean Society and the Politics of Live Streaming". American Behavioral Scientist. 67 (7): 898–912. doi:10.1177/00027642221092804. ISSN 0002-7642.
  36. ^ "Korea's Broken Internet Paradise - Eat Your Kimchi". 27 March 2014.
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