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Special thanks to Dr Shin Dong Kim (kimsd[at]hallym[dot]ac[dot]kr)
to have allowed us to publish his article.
PRESIDENT OF CYBERSPACE.
The South Korean presidential election in December 2002
marked
another significant advancement in the country's ongoing
process of
democratisation, which began in the mid-1980s. Newly
elected
president Roh Moo-hyun enjoyed widespread popular support
encouraged by volunteers organising themselves using
the internet
other new technologies. The main supporters' group called
itself
Nosamo, which literally means 'people who love Roh Moo-hyun'.
Roh's opponent, Lee Hoe-chang, had long enjoyed solid
support
from most of the conservative newspapers that dominate
the nation's
media. However, Nosamo's active campaign successfully
attracted
media attention and turned public support towards Roh
Moo-hyun.
Alternative information channels on the web, such as
Ohmynews and
Pressian, proved to be an effective counter balance
to mainstream
journalism.
On polling day, Nosamo members and young supporters
of Roh
launched an extensive mobile phone campaign encouraging
their
friends to come out and cast votes. It was widely accepted,
after the
election, that Roh's victory owed much to the use of
new media.
In Korea, online communities began in the early 1990s,
before
widespread use of the internet, through PC networks
developed by
service providers. This community culture migrated to
the internet,
and now hundreds of thousands of cyber communities are
thriving in
every field. Politics is no exception: political activists,
non-
governmental organisations, media, politicians, and
just ordinary
people talk and talk and talk online. They build groups,
they curse
some politicians and bureaucrats, and they know that
they are not
alone anymore.
Nosamo was one such very visible and successful cyber
group which
later grew to be a nationwide political solidarity.
It helped a
progressive politician, Roh Moo-hyun, become a national
figure.
Nosamo's on- and off-line activities attracted attention
from large
numbers of people who had previously known little about
Roh.
Nosamo's activity also sparked television and newspaper
coverage,
and accordingly Roh's popularity grew.
The 2002 election showed a dramatic discrepancy between
young
and old. Father and son chose different candidates.
Regional
discrepancies did matter, but they were overshadowed
by the
avalanche of young power. So-called '20-40' voters found
that they
were no longer minorities against a conservative majority.
Political
ideologies have predominantly been selected and presented
by
established major newspapers and the spectrum of political
ideas was
too narrow to include more liberal and progressive generations.
But
the young now found an open and accessible space for
political
opinion on the web.
On polling day, bulletin boards on the web were full
of messages
encouraging young people to cast ballots. After exit
polls, they made
calls to their friends to urge to come out and vote
by using their
mobile phones. It is difficult to imagine how these
political activities
could have happened without the use of new media.
The Roh administration is now determined to continue
to use the
internet and digital technology to promote political
participation. In
the coming years, we will see if these new experiments
will lead to
further advances in Korean democracy.
NOTE: This article is adapted from 'The shaping of new
politics in
the era of mobile and cyber communication: the internet,
mobile
phone and political participation in Korea', by Dr Shin
Dong Kim of
Hallym University, Korea.
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