Here are some of the more notable excerpts from his speech: (via AFP)

Lee, grappling with IT-inspired mass protests over his decision to resume US beef imports, bemoaned the "spread of falsehoods" via the Internet in a speech to an OECD ministerial meeting on information technology.

"The Internet economy is expediting the development of a knowledge-based society, thus leading to new economic growth and job creation," he said.

Lee also called for the Internet to "be a space of trust. Otherwise, the force of the Internet could turn out to be venomous rather than beneficial."

He also noted that the system is still out of the reach of 80 percent of the world's people and pledged Korea's efforts to redress the situation. "The Internet gap is bound to lead to a socio-economic cleavage between individuals and nations, and the gap will be ever-widening."

Now, one particular phrase I paid attention to was "venomous rather than beneficial". A better translation of what he said is actually "poison rather than cure."

I believe that's his honest stance on the Internet that it's just powerful and could go either way. He's even created the Ministry of Knowledge Economy, so I'm sure he does believe in the power of the Internet for economy growth.

But, apparently he views the Internet more as poison and than cure at this moment. Well, at least for himself. Just few hours before he gave the speech, the CEO of Afreeca.com was arrested. Remember Afreeca? That was the citizen broadcasting station for many Korean people. You might go "What? President Lee let the CEO of Afreeca arrested to kill the freedom of speech? I thought South Korea was a well-established democratic country!"

Well, to be fair, let me explain more. Moon Yong Sik is the CEO of Nowcom, which runs a Web-disk service as well was Afreeca. Moon was actually arrested with copyright violation charges because of the Web-disk service. A Web-disk service is basically an unlimited file-uploading and file-sharing service where you can basically upload/download anything you want, like P2P, including movies, mp3s, porn clips, documents, ripped software CD images, etc. Obviously, there's been a long battle between the copyright holders and those companies. Nowcom isn't an exception; indeed, its services drew some of the most fierce debates regarding copyright issues in Korea.

So what happened to Moon is quite legit. Can't argue with that. But here's the problem.

Why now?

I do believe there's a good chance that this was a pure coincidence. But, come on! And here's even more serious problem.

People are asking "why now?"

President Lee might have just offered another tool for people to use against him with. Again, it might have been coincidental, but ain'g gonna do any good to restore his reputation.

Protests are still going on with less fervor than before. The only thing left for President Lee might be "pick your poison" soon. The Internet is powerful and could go either way. So, please make it work good for you. And what Lee's doing isn't necessarily the right way to do it.

Before I go on to talk about the portal-centric Internet landscape in Korea as I said in the last article, I decided to write a post on a different topic because the portal topic seems to cover too many areas, so I'll probably need some more time to think through. But before that, I'll give you guys something juicy again. Namely, "How to be a broadcasting jockey".

That's what all these livecasting citizen journalists are called. By Afreeca, they are officially named BJs. They are also called Street Journalists. The question is how do you live-broadcast while out in the public?

The key lies in Internet ubiquity. People live-upload video content through WiBro. And the setup looks like this:

You connect to the Internet through your WiBro modem like I did hundreds of times in the past; you capture the scene live with your webcam or better-quality camcorders connected to your notebook. You run some Afreeca applications on your notebook. That's it. You have your own real-time broadcasting station!!

Remember this is only one example of what Internet ubiquity can do for your country. Now, imagine what could happen when you have this many people out in the street holding candles; hundreds of them are BJs.

Reuters has an excellent coverage on the topic (via Futurize Korea):

But in this country, one of the most wired and technology savvy in the world, the month-long series of gatherings has also been a valuable testing ground for the latest communication devices, gadgets and websites.

From high-resolution camera phones to instant broadcasting software and water cannon-resistant camcorders, the latest advances in communications were in evidence during the five weeks since the protests began.

Many demonstrators rely on Internet forums to get information on rallying points, weather forecasts and riot police presence. With powerful camera phones, they are able to shoot photos and videos that they can instantly upload on Internet sites thanks to high-speed wireless technology.

It wasn't even a year ago when I had the Joost-on-highway experiment. Did I imagine what's happening right now could happen in less than 10 months? Heck, no! So there's goes my lack of imagination. OTL.

There's a reason why this blog is taglined Spicy Thoughts on Digital Generation in Asia. :)

(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.

1) A decision to require Web readers to use their real identities when posting articles online on Internet news sites is sparking concerns over privacy and free speech. What is your view on this?

While there’s been a great number of occasions where anonymity caused lots of real world problems in Korea, I don’t think the real identity regulation will be the cure for all. There will be lots of new problems springing from this kind of approach: freedom of speech will be threatened in many ways as there’ll be lots of people unable to honestly expressing their opinions. Privacy is obviously even a bigger concern. Making your real name up there won’t naturally create more responsible comments online. It’ll reduce both good and bad behaviors online.  I’d say rather urging and educating many Internet users and companies to create an environment where people will be more responsible will eventually pay out.

2) What are some of the restrictions that the Korean online community is facing which prevents for further development in social media?

Practical applications, like flickr of del.icio.us, aren’t really taking off in Korea. Most of the popular applications except search are about making sites people-friendly. It’s social nature of the Web users in Korea, which I believe need some change.

3) What impact does citizen journalism have on the social media arena in Korea? How are sites like News 2.0 driving change?

Unfortunately, News 2.0 isn’t actually doing particularly well in Korea. OhMyNews has also lost its brightest shining moments as well. Online media has been completely concentrated around portals, like Naver and Daum, where both mainstream media and citizen-based media (often called UCC-User Created Content) are both very strong.

4) How powerful are Internet mobs in Korea? Does the “Dog Poop Girl” controversy have any consequences?
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/click_online/6112754.stm
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wpdyn/content/article/2005/07/06/AR2005070601953.html

We actually have seen incidents like Dog Poop Girl so many times that many people are almost numb to such things happening. People carry around digital cameras and camcorders all the time that you basically have eyes and ears everywhere. People sometimes try to act more responsibly out in public since they know the horrifying and tremendous consequences of things spreading so quickly online. Often people take for granted how (private) things can be discovered so easily. It’s happening at a greater scale and there isn’t much that can stop it from happening, I think.

5) How are Korean businesses using Web 2,0  to their advantages? Please highlight an example. For example, how are businesses leveraging on Naver?

The best case is obviously Naver Knowledge-iN, which has used user participation to answer other users' questions. This mechanism eventually made Naver the Wikipedia + Google of Korea. We have seen a very high level of participation among the Web users in Korea across many areas. However, Internet companies, especially portals, have been accused of not being particularly keen at opening up their services to the masses.

6) Why is the Korea online community so advanced in terms of using social networking sites(e.g. CyWorld) and Web 2.0 applications? Does Korean Culture or Government play a part in this?

It’s mainly two things: a great broadband connection (this is the govenment part) and a culture where everyone just loves flocking together. Unlike MySpace, Cyworld is much about “decorating” your own space with lots of fancy stuff, like avatars and virtual items. That’s played a great deal in the development of services like Cyworld.

7) How different is the Korean online community different from other communities in terms of internet behavior with regard to social networking sites?

The active Web participants in Korea in general are much younger in contrast to other countries, especially the Western ones. So we see a Web that is a lot more social and entertainment-oriented than heavy and more serious one in the West. Lots of bloggers in Korea only write about travelling, food, photography, relationships, or games while many in U.S., for example, would write about business, tech, and media.

8) At the moment, what are new exciting Web 2.0 developments taking place in the Korean Online Community?

There’s been a good number of venture startups putting efforts into developing the new “web 2.0” services in Korea. As mentioned above, the Web in Korea has been greatly concentrated around portals. While there has not been too many great success stories among those startups yet, many portals are slowly moving in the direction of finally distributing more traffic to outside of the portals. I see it as a great sign of the Korean Web moving in the right direction. The Web was never meant to be so concentrated.

9) What are the signs that the lines between mainstream media and social media are blurring?

Daum, one of the major portals in Korea, has started a service named “Blogger News”, where it’s a combination of Digg and OhMyNews. It’s trying to find the right balance between a completely user-based quality news and professional journalism. Many of the content sites, including blogs, video sites, and picture sites, are also displaying and leading traffic to both mainstream content and user generated content. What we often see is the social media content generated off one big mainstream news article.

• South Korea has a population of 49 million. 14.3 million out of the country's 15.9 million households nationwide are linked to broadband Internet connections as of May 2007. In particular, Seoul and the surrounding Gyeonggi Province posted 106.8 percent and 100.7 percent in the broadband penetration rate, respectively.
• The average person visited the internet 13.8 days a month, and spent 20.2 hours viewing 2,172 pages--below the global averages of 17.1 days, 25.2 hours, and 2,519 pages. However, South Koreans topped the world averages--with scores of 17.4 days, 31.2 hours and 4,546 pages.
• According to the new research report by ROA Group the number of mobile users in South Korea will reach 41.95 million by 2010, which is 85% of the total population.
• In South Korea, a single service (Cyworld) already has 18 million accounts—enough for 30 % of the entire country's population. The survey was done in 30 days. Within that 30 days, more than half of all Internet users in South Korea have accessed a social networking site.
• Between 2001 and 2006, the Korean online advertising market's volume grew at annualized 48 per cent compared to entire advertising market's 4.6 per cent yearly growth during the same period.
• In the event where any law suits arose from the online activities, portal operators can disclose this private information to the court. The disadvantage that this law brings about is the disruption to freedom of speech. People will feel that they are being restricted into giving their comments.
• There were many cases where teenagers had spent more than a day continuously playing computer games. Some of them eventually collapsed from exhaustion and passed away.

1. Millions of Korean people are watching major Korean TV channels for breaking news night and day;
   
2. Stories are first captured by global-scale media entities as the Taliban keep giving stories to those large companies. This is probably due to three reasons: first, they're likely to deal with the "big guns" to make sure stories travel fast; second, they're likely to deal with media companies whose main language is English. After all, I doubt any of the Taliban members actually speak Korean; last, they're likely to deal with those with big pockets as it's been known that each time they approach with a news story, they give the stories to those media companies in exchange for some six-digit dollar money. (Just think about it. How sad is it to watch the Taliban sell news about the captured who don't know when they're going to be shot in the head.)
3. Korean media companies, unable to get the stories firsthand, are keeping their eyes and ears on what the global media companies are saying. Pretty much all of the breaking news on Korean channels is being reported in this manner: "according to AP, ...", "according to Reuters, ..."
4. Often, some of the stories propagated through different media channels don't match with one another. Korean TV channels get really confused as they face different stories about the same thing happening. Mostly, they just go "we'll see as things settle down."

No room for citizen reporters. Of course, the situation demands way too much even for the best news companies in the world. But, it's just very difficult for someone like me to sit and wait only to hear "AP said...", "AFP said.." Can't we please have more eyes and ears?

However, even with the limitations on how citizen journalism could do in terms of reporting, we're definitely seeing a huge surge of citizens participating in journalistic activities. No, it ain't blogosphere. No, it ain't Twitter, Facebook, or Cyworld. It's in the comment section of the news stories on portal sites.

The picture above is a screenshot of the comment section to a breaking news story posted on Naver, the largest portal in Korea. You can see there are already 155 comments to the news only an hour after the story was posted at 1am. If you look through the comments (all in Korean), you can see some real high-level discussions going on. It talks about the Korean government, what's wrong with the current Korean Christian churches, whether to take military actions, and harsh criticism of what U.S. is (not) doing with the situation. You can also see some comments added to each comment.

Commenter journalism, if you will, is an extremely strong force in Korea. It's so powerful that every time there's a major issue, all the mainstream media--TV, newspapers, magazines, etc.-- do not hestitate to report from these comments and say "this is what we Korean people think." It's so powerful that many of the malicious comments left on celebrities' blogs or Cyworld pages are considered one of the primary causes of some

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