The netizen movement: a new wave in the social movements of Korea

Abstract

Introduction South Korea now leads the world in terms of Internet use, with 77.8 percent of the population identified as Internet users (KISA and KCC, 2010). Based on highly developed technological infrastructures, the Internet has been broadly used for progressive and oppositional civic actions and political campaigns in Korea since the 1990s. While a number of previous studies have analyzed the political uses of the Internet, most tend to focus more on the Internet as a “tool” of mobilization mainly adopted by “established institutions,” including social movement organizations (SMOs) and political parties. But this tendency will likely to fail to explain new, significant phenomena arising in Internet-based activism fields. Recent years have witnessed individual Internet users who, neither mediated nor mobilized by any specific political organizations, are increasingly involved in social movements. As Earl and Schussman (2003) assert, new media technologies have reduced the incentives of established activist groups, such as social movement organizations, allowing “movement entrepreneurs” to emerge as new agencies who act outside the framework of institutions. Movement entrepreneurs are defined as non-professional individuals “who are motivated by individual grievances to undertake social movement activity and who rely on their own skills to conduct their actions” (Garrett, 2006, p. 211). As individual actors emerge, new technologies affect the internal structures of social movements, particularly structures relating to decision making and leadership. In lieu of organizational membership and hierarchical leadership, ad hoc and discretionary decision making and horizontal leadership become paramount in this new mode of activism. These changes, in turn, inspire citizen participants to foster alternative political ideals influenced by the logic of peer-to-peer networking and decentralized nomadism (Juris, 2005). This study approaches current social movements in Korea through the framework of the netizen movement. Netizens – most of whom maintain independence from institutionalized political groups, such as social movement organizations, labor unions, and political parties – have broken new ground of civic activism in Korea. This chapter delineates the historical context in whichthe Internet and new media have been adapted to progressive and oppositional civic actions, and furthermore examines the ways in which these new forms of civic action have reshaped the political and social landscape of Korea.