Cell Phones Create Youth Nationalism
By Kang Hyun-kyung
Staff Reporter
Teenagers turned up at rallies to protests U.S. beef imports held in downtown Seoul last week. Internet chat rooms and cell phone technology, particularly text messages, were the two major vehicles leading these young nationalists to become ``smart mobs'' here.
In a book, titled ``Smart Mobs: The Next Social Revolution'' published in 2002, technology writer Howard Rheingold coined the term to refer to people who use mobile communications and Internet technology to mobilize and coordinate their collective actions.
Rheingold said the Internet and cell phones are powerful technologies that ``enable people to act together in new ways and in situations where collective action was not possible before.'' The author observed there were both positive and negative aspects to this trend.
Joshua Kurlantzick, an adjunct fellow at the Pacific Council on International Policy in the U.S., told The Korea Times that ``the Internet has fostered the spread of nationalism because it allows people to pick up historical trends, and talk about them, with little verification.''
He, however, declined to comment on the role of cell phones in engendering and spreading nationalistic sentiment.
Local media said about 60 percent of participants at candlelit vigils are middle and high school students. These students, who are called the network generation here, are hyperactive in a variety of online forums and chat rooms. They use text messages as a major communication tool with their peers.
A second year middle school student in Seoul said on condition of anonymity that she went to a candlelit rally early this month as she was scared of what she called the harmful effect of the imported beef on her health.
The 15-year-old girl said that she saw the scheduled event on the Internet and decided to go there with two of her friends. She added she would go to the scheduled May 17 candlelit vigil in Seoul again.
She said 28 classmates out of 34 in her class use mobile phones, and the majority of her peers with cell phones chose a monthly payment policy designed for teenagers, which required them to use phone services below 20,000 won per month.
Another teenage girl attending a middle school in Seoul, who had not attended a candlelit vigil before, received a text message from her friend asking her to go to the upcoming rally. Her friend told the source that she did not take the rally seriously but simply wanted to go there for fun.
These girls shared the view that there is no doubt text messages are the most widely used tool for communications and coordination of their activities or outings.
As a text message service is much cheaper than phone calls, teenagers prefer the former.
The middle school girls said they usually send tens of text messages per day to their peers, and exchange text messages with their classmates even during class. They said some cell phone addicts tend to send hundreds of messages to their friends every day.
Experts said online chat rooms and forums are another widely used tool for these young smart mobs to organize collective action.
Kang Ji-won, a former chairman of the National Commission on Youth Protection, told The Korea Times that web information is a hundred times more powerful than print media articles in terms of the impact on young people's perception toward the beef issue.
``Teenagers make online buddies through blogs and tend to create their own world there. Therefore, it is no wonder that the online world gives a huge impact on these young people's value system.''
Kang pointed out there is plenty of inaccurate, unverified information on the web and there are also people who purposefully take advantage of cyber space for the production and circulation of misleading information.
He said it is time to review ways to deal with these unverified stories online as their impact is so huge on society overall.
Park Won-suk, deputy secretary-general of the People's Solidarity for Participatory Democracy, expressed different views regarding youth nationalism.
Park said middle and high school students came out on the streets as they felt their health was under real threat. ``They are wise enough not to be distracted by misleading information, and they make their own, right decisions,'' he said.
If the story was about automobiles, which are not closely associated with their welfare, Park said he did not think the students would participate in the protests.