The activity of play, according to Huizinga, ‘proceeds with its own boundaries of time and space’ (ibid p.13). This creates what is commonly known as the magic circle, which, as with any combination of time and space, takes account of other such combinations, or realities, germane to the player’s current context. With the rapid advancement of media and communication technologies in contemporary society, such layering of realities transpires more quickly, evidently, and variously than ever before. Today, the notion of playground appears to resonate closely with mediaspace, ‘a dialectical concept encompassing both the kinds of spaces created by media and the effects that existing spatial arrangements have on media forms as they materialise in everyday life’ (Couldry & McCarthy, 2004, p.2). Therefore, any play activity needs to be perceived as a multifarious phenomenon, and thus requires considerations to techno-social contexts of the player and of the time and space in which the activity takes place. Here, new media technologies function as toys with and through which the inter-relations between micro- and macro-realities are constantly (re)constructed.

This paper presents a unique case of Seoul: one of the most connected, densely populated, and quickly transforming metropolises in the world. More specifically, the paper looks at the realisation of and desire for play of Seoul residents who are neither children nor adults, but are socially placed in between these two realms, and the role new media technologies play as a coordinator in this process: everyday play culture of trans-youths in Seoul and new media technologies as toys.

—-
international toy research association world congress: toys and culture
wed 25 - fri 27 july 2008
university of the peloponnes
nafplion, greece
http://toyresearch.org/conference_call_for_papers_2008.php
—-

i left korea this morning, leaving behind a gift for my niece:
my korean mobile phone with a new case (with things that bling and pictures of cats).
she badly wanted a mobile phone for a while now. her argument is that it’s very dangerous to walk around (whether day or night) alone these days and therefore it’s ‘unavoidable’ for her to get a phone, which will connect her ‘whenever, wherever.’ she’s in 4th grade. she’s been online searching for ’seemingly’ free phones - i wonder if she’s looked around for advice on how to persuade parents to buy mobiles for them.

i got curious and did a search on naver’s jishikin (knowledge search - where people can ask/answer questions) the other day, and emphasising the danger (esp. for girls) was definitely one of the top suggestions. on the very top, surprisingly (or not), was ‘well, everyone else has got one and i’m the only one without it. i’ll be the wangtta (loner) of the class now.’ a lot of answers were written by children - quote obviously.

anyway, yahoo korea reports that mobiles have topped the list of gifts sought by South Korean children for their day this year:

The poll, conducted by the Korean-language Yahoo web site on 16,661 youngsters nationwide, said 37 percent picked cell phones as the best gift. Nintendo video game consoles ranked second on the list with 30 percent approval, followed by MP3 players with nine percent support.
full - though very short - story here

… 그 가운데서도 압권은 진도의 다시래기 놀이가 아닐까 한다. 이 놀이는 장례식 때 발인 전날 하는 빈 상여 놀이의 일종인데, 놀이 전체가 파격적인 익살로 가득 차 있는 것으로 유명하다. 이 놀이는 상가에서 벌어지니 매우 경건하고 근엄해야 할 터인데 그 시작부터가 영 ‘삐딱’ 하다. 놀이 패거리들이 상가를 휘젓고 다니면서 제상에 차려 놓은 음식을 마구 집어 먹는가 하면, 상주에게 “방안에서 밥만 축내고 있던 당신 아버지가 죽었으니 얼마나 얼씨구 절씨구 할일이요”라고 하는 따위의, 그야말로 블랙 코미디를 연출한다. 그런가 하면 다른 패거리들은 승려와 장님 거사와 거사의 부인 등으로 분하여 남녀의 삼각 관계를 연출하고 부정하게 임신한 아이를 낳는 모습을 재연한다. 그리고 그 아이를 자기 것이라고 서로 우기면서 매우 원색적인 사설을 주고받는데, 사정이 이쯤 되면 부모의 상을 당해 침울했던 상주도 웃음을 터뜨리게 된다. 여흥 때가 되면 잡가나 민요를 부르고 병신춤 같은 것을 추어 비탄에 잠긴 상가 분위기를 즐거운 놀이판으로 바꾸어 버린다.
— 최준식, 한국인은 왜 틀을 거부하는가? 난장과 파격의 미학을 찾아서

… of those the best one is probably Jindo’s Dashiregi. This is an ‘empty bier’ play that takes place a night before the coffin gets carried out from the house, known for its extreme shock humour. Naturally one would expect it to be holy and serious - it’s part of the funeral - but right from the beginning it brings some really holyshitness rather than holyness into the scene. The crew (of Jindo Dshiregi) roam around the house like gate crashers, randomly picking up food from jesang (sacrificial table) and even go further to say to sangju (usually the first son or the father of the dead - chief mourner) things like “you must be la la elated now that your useless father who’s just been eating away all holed up in your house’s finally gone” bringing in spices of black humour. It doesn’t stop there - another group casually put on a performance about a love triangle involving a Buddhist monk, a blind devotee, and his wife who later gives birth to an illegitimate child. Then these three start having a loud and lewd fight over the child, instantly replacing sangju’s sadness with laughter. Another moment of entertainment brings in vulga and folk songs as well as Byungshinchoom (dance of the handicapped), turning the funeral into a fun-filled playground.

– Junshik Choi, Why Koreans Deny Teul (mold/frame/formality): In Search of the Aesthetics of Chaos and Irregularity

SK Telecom announced today that the company has signed an agreement with Sony Pictures Television International(SPTI), one of the world’s leading media companies, to establish a strategic alliance for content service

Under the agreement, SK Telecom will provide rich video content, including the latest films from Columbia and Tristar and popular TV series from Sony, to customers through the company’s mobile multimedia service platforms, NATE and June.

While a number of popular TV series aired on HBO, such as “Sex and the City” and “Rome,”are already available, this new service will further expand SK Telecom’s library of video content, offering Hollywood blockbusters such as “Spider-Man 3,” the “Da Vinci Code” and other TV series such as “The Tudors”.
– orginal article from this digital daily article

the cost, according to the article, will range between US$1-2 per film/episode. that’s not much at all. but will the low cost factor be enough to entice the korean crowd who have successfully forced the paramount, universal, and fox out of its dvd market - along with making countless companies and jobs suddenly disappear locally - by ‘(perhaps not so) friendly’ file sharing.

street vendors selling pirated dvds are a common feature of everyday street life in seoul. i was out in daehakno with a friend the other day and we saw a guy selling four dvds for 10000 won.

• jaz: ‘hey, it’s a tad higher than other places.’
• friend: huh?
• jaz: in shinchon you get 5 for that price. gwanghwamun’s the cheapest - six.
• friend: oh, ok. you’re pretty with it.
• jaz: my friends know all this stuff - actually i know quite a few who buy these. mostly foreigners though.
• friend: yeah. i don’t think too many koreans would buy or be interested to buy these anyway. why bother when you can just download? waste of money and space. download, watch, and delete once you’re finished with the film.

this pattern of film consumption is also quite apparent in pc-bangs, where you can usually find a network folder(s) with illegally dowloaded media content including films, music, and scanned manga. they’re there for you to enjoy while you’re there, and for you to take away - and perhaps delete eventually - if you wish.

this kind of ‘instant’ access to media then allows for ‘constant’ access via portable devices - it’s intersting to think about the notion of instant/constant connection in the korean urban context, the connection provided via bangs (instant) and mobile phones (constant) - both distributed and deeply embedded in contemporary korea culturally and figurally (cf. my paper @ interactive entertainment 2007 conference & forthcoming chapter with fantastic adam greenfield in Urban Informatics: Community Integration and Implementation).

almost all of the korean participants in my past (on cyworld) and current (on mobile play culture of seoul trans-youths) research expressed their ‘zilch or bye’ approach to the cost of mobile media use: they ask, ‘why use it when there’s fast and almost free connection for not-so-portable devices (PCs) oh-so-everywhere?’

i say, i’m not sure.

why take up the new hollywood VOD on mobile? i’m not sure.

perhaps a flat-rate plan would work. if you’re into (hollywood) films, then VOD subscription does definitely sound like the smarter option than S-DMB (T-DMB’s free though the handsets are very expensive). and no one can deny that moblie media on demand will be ‘it’ for the future - VERY near future. however, it’s such a shame that the korean telcos see not much future in the film theatres, the power house backing up the korean cinema industry itself (despite the fact that the screen quotas system is decreasing and constantly under threat from US).

obviously k-telcos recognise the significance of ‘lifestyle-adhesive mobile plans‘ that offer (mostly financial) benefits for the needs of their chosen lifestyle - e.g. dicounts for tickets, texting, shopping, and petrol. korea’s HUGE on discount cards, well, discount in general (one of the phrases visitors learn seems to be “kkakka jooseyo (cheaper please)”), but yes, discount cards are the ones that fill koreans’ wallets rather than cash, as noted by this new york times article.
also, there’s no doubt that telcos are aware of the significant decrease in the number of cinema patrons (2006: 26,601,710 | 2007: 18,843,934 | 29.1% decrease, according to the korean film council) some of which can be attributed to the telco’s abrupt pull out from the discount deal with cinema complexes (pre-april 2007, subscribers were able to get about 20-30% discount on tickets) - actually, it was the cinema complexes who pulled out, claiming that telcos were putting too much financial demand on them. cetizen.com’s survey conducted in 2006 shows that this was actually the main reason (51.6%)for the decrease, and that 48.5% would be going to see more films regardless of the film’s quality.

(original image from here)

so i’m quite skeptic about this upcoming mobile hollywoodness, and i’m not very happy with HOW mobile video is being developed: mobile media and “old” media industries must be conceptualised as inherently inter-related, not separate, and their development must be mutually beneficial for both and beyond to remain sustainable in any country, but especially korea with its once exciting but now subsiding “wave.”

few days ago i got a phone call from a lady who knew exactly which apartment i, well, my parents are living in. she said now KT’s putting a new network line into our complex (there are about 22 buildings in our complex) which meant that now we have a better Internet option - as we always do ;) actually, i think what the lady was talking about was FttH (fiber-to-the-home), which is not that new, really… it’s been widely deployed here since early last year.

i was about to feed my nephew so didn’t have enough time though i was quite interested to find out about this supposedely better connection. but the boy was crying and i really had to go, so i quickly said to her “we’re on a contract right now and we still have more than a year left with the current provider.” then immediately - much to my surprise - she said “oh, no problems. we’ll pay all the cost involved with switching including the penalty and (no doubt, same-day)installation. we’re also offering you free connection for the first three months plus a lot of gifts you can choose from.”

insane.

i thought.

these ‘gifts’ offered by ISPs are not a laughing matter here. they typically include things like an expresso machine, ipod, and cash. there was a report somewhere discussing the fierce competition in the Korean broadband market and how subscribers actually call their ISPs when they’re having problems with their computers (for example, i can expect my ISP to fix my Windows buggy/sillly behaviour that has nothing to do with the Internet or anything to do with networks). ISPs do whatever to please their subscribers to survive in this broadband jungle.

as i was feeding my nephew in my arms, i thought about the madness of this situation and also some major failures of global brands who tried to gain some share in this society with fast growing hyper-consumerist ethos (much of which can be attributed to the ppalippali/hurryhurry ethos).
some of the major examples include wal-mart and carrfour, the top two in the global food retail industry. USAToday reports:

“They failed to attract customers to the stores,” said S.K. Lee, a retail analyst at Hyundai Securities in Seoul, adding that housewives in particular were dissatisfied with food and beverage offerings.

Wal-Mart also has struggled in Japan, known for its finicky consumers, but has lately boosted its investment there. Last year, it made Seiyu Ltd., the nation’s fifth-largest chain with more than 400 stores, a subsidiary. But Seiyu said its loss widened in 2005 to 17.7 billion yen ($151 million).

Oh Seung-taek, an analyst at Hanwha Securities, says Britain-based Tesco PLC’s Home Plus chain, ranked No. 2 in South Korea, hired a Korean chief executive and made stores “friendly” to the needs of Korean shoppers, who don’t like a “warehouse-style” environment.

while i am all for local victories, i am curious and concerned about how korea’s going to fair in the global neo-liberal - or i could safely say, ‘western’ - model of economy, particularly how it’s isolating itself technologically on the Internet. it’s good to have fantastic locally developed and owned technologies, but what if they are monolingual and thus unable to communicate with non-local techs? is korea going to be an island? if so, how is it going to justify its existence as a node in the global network? i wonder.

Web users in one of the world’s most-wired countries seldom “Google” anything. They “Naver” it

… When NHN, an online gaming company, set up the search portal in 1999, the site looked like a grocery store where most of the shelves were empty. Like Google, Naver found there simply was not enough Korean text in cyberspace to make a Korean search engine a viable business.

“So we began creating Korean-language text,” said Lee Kyung Ryul, an NHN spokesman. “At Google, users basically look for data that already exists on the Internet. In South Korea, if you want to be a search engine, you have to create your own database.”

– NY Times, July 2007(original post here)

this beloved nei-buh (we don’t have anything close to the v or r-sound in korean)’s moving out, it seems.

joins.com reports naver lovers are becoming increasingly not so fond of the idea ‘love thy naver’ and now migrating to other portal sites (notably daum) - and they have good reasons for it, too. naver has been implementing strange restrictions on user partipation, especially political ones: to start with, mid this year, users found that they were no longer able to leave comments on individual political news items. instead, they were able to participate in the general politics discussion boards. excuse me? yes, precisely.

there is a major reason behind this change, apprently: the upcoming presidential election. naver feared its possible involvement in fierce political debates and how they could maintain ‘fairness’ in discussions and promotions. excuse me? yes, precisely… for the second time.

the following is a monthly comparison of news hits between naver (grey) and daum (black) and changes occurred on naver:

May 19: redesign of new site
Jun 22: national eleciton commision announced banning on supporting/criticising specific parties/candidates online (wha-?)
Sep 10: no comments on individual politics news item
Oct 28: introduction of the ‘comments hiding’ function

what’s really shocking is the national election commission’s (nec) approach. read this global voices article (Korea: Role of the National Election Commission for the Coming Presidential Election) for more info. basically if you wanted to post anything like what’s happening on youtube (most obviously example’s hilary vs. obama videos), you’d have to be prepared to face one year sentence or a fine up to 200 million korean won. how is this even possible? do they even understand the basic concept of democracy? do they understand what this thing called internet is all about? since they’re also from Korea, the most connected nation in the world, i thought they would have at least a little bit of idea. and how wrong was i? am i the only wrong one here?

naver’s still the top visitor-magnet in korea. it’s closely followed by daum, and cyworld and nate are 3rd and 4th respectively, which means, if you combine these two (cyworld is a sub-division of nate), they would actually be the no.1. i’ve been talking about cyworld and nate (especially jishik-in service: can be translated as knowledge-in or person with knowledge) with my research participants, and it seems nate talk is gaining popularity. this is where you could talk about practically anything - e.g. problems with their current romantic situations, suggestions for good restaurants in a particular suburbs, etc. anything. it promotes comments, and my research participants were enthusiastic about reading the comments. they can be very humorous, and users can vote for the best comments, too.

naver’s knowledge-in service was absolutely brilliant. yahoo and daum made replicas, not only within korea but also on other yahoo! international sites. it seems pretty obvious that naver’s making a big mistake. yes, there’s political pressure, but portals also have the responsibility to provide a safe venue for people to communicate their ideas, considering portals mean nothing without voluntarily participating individuals. yes, for pragmatic reasons, portals need their own databases to survive here in korea where people speak korean, not english. this may present better opportunities for the portals to actually control what’s stored in those databases. but who stocked the empty shelves? who changed the storage space into interactive knowledge space?

naver has recently announced that they would work with and in support for the association of korean independent film and video. great. well done to you there. but i’m confused now. and this move makes me question your motives. i am not forgetting that postmodern society does not exist without capitalism. if users sense foolish tyranny (whether secretely or consipicuously) by the portal that they used to ‘live in’ without proper justification that is understandable within the current techno-social context, they will abandon the place. they may return sometime as long as their user information does not expire, but the domain of portal is diverse, competitive, and unpredictable.

naver relied heavily on people. right from the beginning, it not only saw what they could do, but it was basically built upon them. abandoning them like this is simply wrong. no excuse will do. let us love our neighbours. talking together would be a good first step, don’t you think?