The Marmot’s Hole

In the IHT, veteran journalist Choe Sang-hun discusses Korea’s unfortunately notorious netizen community and the government’s moves to limit cyberviolence:

In South Korea, which has one of the world’s most developed Internet communities, the problem known as “cyberviolence” has reached frightening proportions, officials say.

Complaints filed with the government’s Korea Internet Safety Commission more than doubled to 42,643 last year from 18,031 in 2003. Women have reported sexual harassment. A 16-year- old schoolgirl accused of informing on an abusive teacher ran away after her photos and insults were splashed on her school Web site. A singer struggled with rumors that she was a man. Twist Kim, a singer and comedian, had a nervous breakdown after pornographic Web sites proliferated under his name, as if he had created them, causing television stations to spurn him.

In most countries, Internet users oppose government attempts to censor the Internet. In South Korea, however, in both government-funded and private surveys, a majority of people support official intervention to check unbridled freedom of speech on the Internet.

A poll taken in November showed that nearly one of 10 South Koreans from 13 to 65 said they had experienced cyberviolence.

The problem in South Korea may presage what will happen in other countries, according to the authorities, who have begun cracking down on the problem.

Read the rest on your own.  My only comment is that while it’s very possible that Korea, thanks to its highly advanced IT infrastructure, may simply be experiencing what other societies will experience in the years to come as their populations grow more “wired,”  I think there are also cultural factors at work.  To put this as briefly as I can, Korean online culture is much more gregarious than its Western counterpart, and the linkages between online and offline are deeper.  This may be natural given Korea’s Confucian social structure, its small geographic size and its ubiquitous access to broadband Internet.  It should also be noted that in a society like Korea’s where social rules of behavior tend to be stricter, the Internet is a place where people release the pent up frustration they cannot release offline (which, when it happens en masse, can make cyberspace a bit nasty).  My limited knowledge of Western netizenry is that it operates differently and, accordingly, its problems may be different.

But I’m not a cyber-sociologist, so this is nothing more than my own uninformed opinion.

(HT to reader)

NOTE: As much as a lot of people—including myself—like to bitch about the netizens, it is worth remembering that Korea’s online citizenry is a diverse lot whose energy and creativity are changing the face of modern Korea.  It’s their positives, not their negatives, that point to the future.  Or at least hopefully.