(Sorry about the long absence. I've been MIA for some personal reasons and I'm finally getting back to my old self. But for real, I'm back and got lots of stuff ready for you. Let's ride along!)

Say, for a little over a month, Korea has witnessed something that the entire humanity has never seen before; that is, digital democracy in its purest form. It starts with the Web and it ends with changing people's lives. Citizen journalism is the channel through which it's happening.

The impact of the "new media" on journalism and politics is something that's been discussed for years and years. We got amazing opinion leaders in Jay Rosen and Jeff Jarvis. Many talk about how Obama's grassroots ethos positively affected his victory. Sure, social networks and arousing young people to become more actively involved are the right way to go. But trust me, we have never seen anything like this before.

The story is very long and complicated, so I'm going to try to stay as brief as possible. President Lee Myung-Bak, who was elected with nearly 50% of the vote last December and who began his presidency in February, is currently getting under 25% support only. Here's the political background of what's happening, taken from Wikipedia:

Two months after his inauguration, Lee's approval ratings stood at 28%.^[25] Concerns over a possible threat to public health from US beef imports in South Korea in relation to the U.S.-Korea Free Trade Agreement caused popular opposition to the Lee administration to grow. The government's original agreement with the U.S. had limited beef imports to meat produced from cattle under three years of age because younger cattle are thought to be at lower risk of contracting mad cow disease (BSE). This limitation was similar to the agreement between Japan and the U.S.; shortly after Lee's visit to the U.S., the agreement was altered to remove limitations on cattle age. Many Koreans considered this a betrayal, and there was talk of attempting to impeach Lee. Lee later said that a deal had been reached that may allow Korea to ban U.S. beef if it is found to pose a threat to public health...

How did it happen so quickly? This is the fun part. Lee is a very conservative guy, who still believes in "control". What he did was, when numerous protests broke out around the country, he basically ordered the media companies "not to report" to the people about what's happening. There were police at work, trying to stop the "peace candlelight" protests, or vigils now called; some police went quite violent, but none to be reported by major broadcasters, newspapers, Internet news sites, or magazines.

But we're living in the age of Web 2.0. Now people are in control. People that were there became citizen journalists - thousands and thousands. And the force of citizen journalism has grown so immense that basically nobody can stop it now.

The first site was an online discussion forum called "Agora", run by Daum, one of the largest portals in Korea. Citizens got mad at President Lee that they started an online signing of impeachment movement on Agora; within the next few days the number of votes/signs reached 1.5 million--CAN YOU BELIEVE THAT! Some of the articles written by citizens at the protest sites drew millions of views and thousands of comments, like EVERYDAY.

Bloggers were second to none in this, obviuosly. Some blogger protesters were detained at police stations. However, even from there, they kept reporting on their blogs using their cellphones. Obviously, there were new star bloggers born.

But more than anything, here's where I think Korea is awesome! People are gadget-gods. We have ubiquitous connections everywhere in Seoul. What do citizens do? They live-videocast the protests using their devices on Wibro. Afreeca, which used to be barely top 5 video services in Korea, let its users livecast from the protest sites. Basically, it got really popular and became No.1 video site in Korea just in days. Why? Because other services were scared of the political pressure from the gov't, while Afreeca wasn't. So more people flocked together at Afreeca and Afreeca has been living happily ever after.

(This video was actually recorded by a newspaper reporter; however, what you are seeing here is not reported anywhere on "mainstream" media. It was broadcast on the Net and drew lots of viewers, reaching millions.)

We also have an amazing story on how none other than OhMyNews was able to pull off something amazing on its video coverage:

As of June 6, some 34,000 viewers have contributed over 130 million won ($130,000) for the live Web casting. For many Korean expats working or studying abroad but who still wish to follow the drama in Seoul, OhmyTV was the only source available to them. They were the most frequent financial contributors of all, paying a disproportionate amount of money.

In summary, the lessons taken from the whole situation:

1. You just simply can't stop citizens from being reporters when they're motivated and equipped with technology;
2. No matter how much control or pressure are exerted on mass media, "new media" is the new king;
3. All these principles used in blog marketing, such as transparency, authenticity, and truth, are for real; if you look sketchy, you're gonna get caught. Millions are watching you.

Now, there's still one focal point on which the "I-want-to-control" guys can put pressure on the new media: portals. Many funny things happening with portals and how the new media is operated. More on this in the next post!

p.s. just a little disclaimer: I'm not quite a political person. I agree with President Lee on some of his policies and stuff. He and I also have the same religious affliation. However, when it comes to the way he deals with media, and esp. people, I just have blunt objections against his philosophy and actions. Just to clarify :)

(Google image search result on the keyword "pondering")

• how cool mobile gadgets are here
• how the new economics of "free" is being played out here
• why Korea has such an advanced gaming industry
• a rumor on communiation and broadcasting convergence
• why fast are 3.5 networks (Wibro and T-Login) are being deployed here
• what are some of the undesirable effects of fast growing digital culture among teens
  
• some of the less known IT/Media giants here, besides Samsung, LG, SKT, KT, and Naver

1. Why TechnoKimchi?    Explains what this blog is about and for.
2. What the "digital generation" in Korea looks like    A quick snapshot of what every day life technology is like in Korea.
3. Are you excited about the 3.5G networks, too?    A brief introduction to 3.5 generation networks deployment in Korea.
4. First Wibro experiment: watching Joost on the bus and on highway    My tiny test on WiBro in the middle of Seoul.
5. What goes around comes around.    My interview response on the social media landscape in Korea.
6. Things are crazy over here!    A knock on cultural differences on how we approach getting things done.
7. Commenters, not commentators, as citizen journalists    The power of portals in online journalism and a portrayal of what we do as citizen journalists.

...But these days, Insoo and his friends don't simply use their phones to send an SMS, or to take pictures or listen to MP3 music. Whenever funny things happen during the day, Insoo and friends shoot video with their phones and send the clip to portal sites, hoping their clips will be featured on the portals' homepages.

...The first thing Insoo does after Hakwon is, of course, turn on the PC. Insoo has a difficult math problem as homework. He posts it up on Naver Knowledge iN, a popular online Q&A service with some 70 million entries.

Within about 10 minutes of posting, someone chimes in with a good answer, and Insoo awards him with some "Knowledge Power" points -- knowledge-based economy in action among 14-year-olds.

...Gone are the days when kids bought CDs by their favorite singers. For the young generation, music is deemed something that must be consumed over the 'Net -- CDs are for their parents. To date, Cyworld's minihompy streaming music sales amount to more than 200 million songs, or $100 million in revenue.

These virtual worlds are crucial building blocks of global civil society. As such, they harbor the promise for relationship-building and cooperation across national borders. Solutions to the cross-cultural growing pains of this new medium require a sincere commitment to transnational dialogue.