Has Internet closed Korea more?

The Internet has been used to worsen South Korea's chronic "herd mentality," writes Jon Huer

The Korea Times
Saturday, April 26, 2009

By Jon Huer

It has been held as an article of faith that the Internet would goad Korea into the Global Age and force Koreans to become more open and international in their hitherto herd-dependent cultural outlook.

My observation on this is that the Internet, instead of opening up Korea and Koreans, has made them more herd-minded and more tribal and less global than before the Internet.

In other words, the mechanisms of the Internet have made Korea a more closed society, and Koreans more susceptible to bunker mentality and mean self-defensiveness.

The Internet's "English hope," that Korea's English would improve as a result of its exposure to international communication, has been completely dashed as Korea's Internet use is exclusively "Korean" in every way.

There is no sign that Koreans venture out more into the world channel of communication where English is the dominant mode through the Internet. Rather, the Internet has only made Korea more secluded and herd-like in its outlook because of it.

This so-called "herd mentality" is widely recognized even by the Koreans themselves. As a nation of long history and limited outlets, Koreans have developed a mentality that identifies all Koreans as if they are bees or ants in a colony: One does, then all do. For most Koreans, being "Korean" overrides everything.

No intellectual differences, no ideological varieties, no religious or philosophical conflicts, mean much in the way Koreans feel as one.

Koreans cannot imagine any one of them becoming something entirely un-Korean, intellectually, culturally, ideologically, or religiously.

They expect their sons and daughters to always be "Korean," no matter how much time lapses or how many cultures are crossed in their overseas experience.

Born of historical insecurity and a lack of firm identity, either as a class or as individuals, Koreans lurch here and there depending on which way the wind blows.

If item X is rumored to be popular, every able Korean will rush to possess X. If method Y is hinted as a good trick for children's academic advancement, there will be a mad rush to try it out.

If country Z is whispered as a lenient place for immigration, there will be a flood of applications. It is safe to say that Koreans are always in search of something that will be their next collective fashion, popular adoption, or competitive consumption.

Foreigners who envision advanced civilization through variations and individualities are constantly surprised by Korea's herd mentality and wonder when Koreans will feel secure enough to go their separate, individualized, independent ways.

Ironically, Seung-Hui Cho, the killer of 32 people at Virginia Tech, for whom Koreans apologized to America, was virtually the only un-Korean Korean we know of, or notorious enough to be remembered.

In spite of all the apologies and regrets from the Korean public and government, Cho was utterly unconnected to, and shared nothing with, the "herd." The mass murderer was one Korean who had escaped "Korean-ness" completely.

Now, enter the Internet.

By all accounts, Korea has gone Internet mad. It ranks near the top (if not the top) in Internet access. Ninety-seven percent of Korean homes are connected to broadband of one type or another.

Virtually all Koreans carry a cell phone, which is becoming a national symbol of normalcy. Given the high density of the population in Korea, most of them living in Seoul and other major cities, and in high-rise housings, and given the peculiar "herd mentality," it is easy to see why Korea is such a hotbed of Internet culture.

The Wall Street Journal noted this "wild" cultural addiction to the Internet among Koreans.

Cyber cafes, called "PC Bang" here, filled with teenagers in dimly-lit computer rooms playing games, chatting, and browsing the Internet, are everywhere. Recent research described close to 50 percent of middle-school students in Korea as "cell-phone addicted."

Foreigners who land in Korea are easily struck by this cyber wild card and are puzzled that Korea remains just as provincial in its mindset regardless of its Internet proliferation.

Indeed, the contradiction is puzzling: Why, contrary to the founders' dream, has the world-class Internet not broadened the Korean perspective? Why does Korea's broadband narrow the Korean Mind, and why does Korea's Information Highway lead to an alleyway perspective?

The Internet is supposed to connect Korea to the world and Koreans to the world's citizens in an open forum of universal communication, mostly in English.

With its world-leading networking and its cutting-edge technical savvy, Korea's Internet using citizens were expected to have become world citizens.

There they were expected to exchange ideas, debate issues and communicate influences with netizens from all over the world, becoming some of its leading members through the Internet.

The reality, contrary to this expectation, is grim: It is through the Internet in its "community" exchanges that Korea reveals its most narrow-minded, herd-locked, and emotionally charged tribal mentality.

Their entries in the cyber spaces are so full of vitriolic hatred and pent-up ill will that normal people do not dare come near these open forums of exchange.

There the Korean writers discharge their most repressed and suppressed wrath accumulated during their five-thousand-year cultural history as well as their relatively young life spans.

Amazingly, the content is about the same whether it is presented in English or in Korean. In those junkyard dogs' no-feelings-spared attacks expressed as thought, there is not a hint that the Internet has edified the Korean Mind into a semblance of international protocol.

If anything, Korea has become more "herd-like" as a nation, and Koreans more closed-minded as a people, than before the advent of the Internet. Simply, the protective anonymity of the Internet mechanism has given the Korean netizen a perfect sanctum from which he can fire all his savage fury and barbaric vengefulness that have been long denied.

What promised to open Korea to the world has, instead, given it a weapon of self-destruction as Korean Internet users merely form a secret society of sorts among themselves, Koreans to Koreans, and exchange among themselves mostly tribal secret messages only they understand. Thus, contrary to everyone's expectations, the Internet's blessings have turned into a curse for its most ardent followers.

Date Posted: 4/26/2009