PARADIGM SHIFT IN KOREA (4)] Internet
changes policy environment in Korea
2010-04-04 01:55
Aug. 15 will be the 55th anniversary of The Korea Herald. To mark the occasion, we will
offer special reports analyzing the impact of the IT revolution on Korean society. A group
of renowned experts will shed light on new trends emerging in political, economic, social
and cultural dimensions. - Ed.
한국사회에서 it발전의 영향을 분석함
Korea`s top trade officials, who concluded the agreement with Washington to import
American beef, must have never imagined it would ignite huge candlelight demonstrations
in which hundreds of thousands of citizens participated.
The problems began with an in-depth report on the potential dangers of vCJD (human mad
cow disease) by MBC-TV. The program`s most sensational excerpts spread online.
Teenagers worried about the harm American beef might cause responded first by attending
weekend protests at Cheonggyecheon.
At the time, it looked like a minor event in which misinformed kids were making exorbitant
demands; an event which could easily be managed by the police. However, it quickly grew
into a typhoon that severely damaged the new government.
빠르게 퍼져간 아이들의 광우병 시위
<**1>
What must be most painful for the new government is that it dramatically narrowed the
room for policy choices in the future. President Lee Myung-bak is only five months into his
five-year term and has a long way to go. He also has to deal with policy issues much more
important than American beef: North Korea, free trade agreements, macroeconomic goals,
tax policy, regional development plans and amending the constitution, not to mention the
controversial Grand Korean Waterway canal project.
Lee will now have to expect a great more difficulty before he can address any of these
issues. Whenever there is resistance to a proposed policy, which is what usually happens
with new government proposals, the memories of candlelight demonstrations will haunt him,
eventually forcing a compromise and thereby narrowing his options.
Statistically speaking, the potential danger of catching vCJD from U.S. beef is known to be
negligible. Other socially accepted risks such as car accidents, tuberculosis and avian
influenza are much greater. Since no policy can be implemented with perfect predictability,
the government has been devising and implementing risk-carrying policies day in and day
out for some time.
Suppose the agreement had been signed 10 years ago. What would have happened? The
most likely scenario is that adversely affected interest groups like the Korean Beef
Association would have picketed in front of the Blue House, instead of the massive
candlelight demonstrations we have witnessed. 10년 전이라면, 청와대 앞에서 이익집단들이 피켓시위했을거다.
집단적 촛불시위가 아니라
The question then becomes: What has changed in the past 10 years, so that what once
would cause a small interest group to picket now sparks a mass demonstration? One
important answer lies in the changing policy environment. The environment in which public
policies are proposed, negotiated and implemented, has been fundamentally changed in a
highly wired, IT-based Korea.
그 근본적인 변화는 IT의 발달 때문이다.
Traditionally, public policy has been formed by a triangle composed of the government,
parliament and interest groups. You can substitute various organizations like unions, NGOs
and class/power elites in place of interest groups. The nature of ties linking the vertices of
the triangle also vary. They can be closely knit or antagonistic.
정부와 의회와 이익집단은 서로가 서로에게 적대적이거나 연결되있다. 그 예시..
For example, if you put the power elite in place of interest groups and find the nature of
the ties is positive and strong, you are witnessing a society where most policies are
produced by a close-knit inner circle, sometimes called an iron triangle. Note that most
citizens are unlikely to be part of this body. Being in the high offices of the government or
the National Assembly means you no longer belong to the people. The only way citizens
can get involved is to form a powerful interest group, which entails considerable
expenditure of time, effort and money. In short, most citizens end up with no say. They
may be discontent with government policies, but they have no outlet of expression.
철의 삼각형일땐, 시민들이 정부정책에 불만이있어도 말 할 배출구 없다.
This is no longer the case in Korea. The old dichotomy between policy-shapers and
policy-takers no longer holds. Easy access to low-cost, high-speed internet has virtually
eliminated the costs of searching, collecting and exchanging information. Furthermore, the
cost of cyber-participation is also near zero. Through the internet anyone can take part in
an anti-American-beef community or an online discussion, and leave supportive messages
for those in candlelight demonstrations with virtually no risk.
하지만 한국은 인터넷을 통해 시간적, 금전적 손해 없이 의견 제시 가능해짐
This new environment makes it possible for new policy proposals to be instantly evaluated
by citizens as soon as they are exposed. Citizens can collectively comprehend what a
specific proposal means, evaluate it, decide whether or not to intervene and also decide
what to do to fight the proposed policy if necessary.
The usual stance of interest groups and the legislature also changes in this environment. In
the traditional sense, these actors usually attempt to get closer to the core of the policy
triangle, because in doing so they can enjoy political power. However, this does not
necessarily happen in the new policy environment.
이러한 변화된 환경은 기존의 삼각형이 변화하게 만들었다.
Recall that the Democratic Party, the main party in opposition, refused to open the 18th
National Assembly. Instead, they willingly left the triangle to become shadowy participants
in the candlelight demonstrations.
This left the government at a loss because neither the Blue House nor the ruling party
could find a negotiation partner. If the DP and other opposition parties had agreed to open
the National Assembly and sit at the negotiating table, it would have been easier for the
government to escape from the mess, or at least share the accusation.
But the opposition parties, especially the DP, which had lost the presidential election six
months earlier by a record margin, chose to watch the new government suffer through the
demonstrations.
By refusing to open the Assembly, the opposition parties put the validity of two things in
question. One is representative democracy and the other is the policy triangle. If the
opposition party and some interest groups chose to leave the policy triangle, what would
the government have to do to manage the situation?
One thing is to attempt direct talks with the policy-takers. In fact, regarding the candlelight
demonstrations, this was attempted at least twice, but the government failed to find a
negotiation partner in the policy triangle. The first attempt was when President Lee wanted
the head of the Seoul Metropolitan Police Agency to find out who was behind the protests.
Although they intended to arrest the masterminds instead of holding direct talks, this
incidence reflects the belief that there is an organized core to the candlelight
demonstrations. This attempt was widely ridiculed by citizens, because everyone knew that
there was no such mastermind.
Another attempt was made by Agriculture Minister Chung Woon-chun, who made a
surprise visit to demonstration sites to talk to citizens directly. This may look like rash
behavior, but he might have had his own problems leading him to make this surprise visit.
His problem was that there was no such thing as a central organization to negotiate with.
These two instances point to an important characteristic of the policy takers in the new
environment: they can be mobilized even without being organized. To be more exact, they
are organized in a way that is fundamentally different from traditional organizations.
This characteristic explains the emergence of a new kind of movement. Some might call
them the multitude, some smart mobs, and still others the digital masses. Although there
are internal differences among these concepts, one commonality is the organization of this
new kind of movement is mostly nonhierarchical and non-traceable.
Every traditional organization, no matter which arena of a society it belongs to, is
hierarchical to some degree. There are decision-makers and followers, command-givers
and command-takers. It is also traceable in the sense that you can start from any member
of the organization and follow the chain of command until you reach the top. However, this
new kind of movement is neither hierarchical nor traceable because they choose to
participate through their information exchange and discussions on the internet.
You cannot call an internet community where members do not even know each other`s real
names an organization. You cannot call a cyber-community system operator a mastermind
behind mass demonstrations. There are numerous blogs and internet communities where
information and rumor are produced and reproduced, but none of them can be held
responsible for what is resulting, because it is an emergent phenomenon.
Emile Durkheim, a 19th-century sociologist, gave us this illuminating example. Bronze,
made of copper, tin and lead, is much harder than any of the component metals. Can we
blame copper, tin or lead for the hardness of bronze? Obviously not. The mass
demonstrations resulted from a complex interaction among a huge number of blogs and
internet communities. Can we blame any of them for the damage done to the society? The
answer is the same. When the Korean government banned several internet community
sysops from going out of the country, it was once again widely ridiculed because it was
like punishing copper for the hardness of bronze.
The emergence of a nonhierarchical, nontraceable mass poses a serious problem for the
government. Government policies can always confront mass resistance based on incorrect
information or rumor, but no one is responsible for it. This is endless shadow-boxing for
the government. This problem will be most serious for the Lee administration, but it will
also mar the succeeding ones.
The fact that policy-takers, especially those resisting government proposals are now vastly
different from traditional organizations also means the development of an issue is totally
unpredictable. Nobody can accurately predict when and which policy will evolve into a
social issue and in which direction it will develop. These are the properties of a complex
system.
<**2>
According to Kevin Dooley, a complex system evolves according to three key principles:
order is emergent as opposed to predetermined; the system`s history is irreversible; and
the system`s future is often unpredictable. In the case of the recent candlelight
demonstrations, all three principles stood out. Order was emergent in the sense that no
one knew what was going to happen each night when people gathered at Gwanghwamun.
Order was being created every moment as each participant was making a decision about
what to do, responding to the changing situation. Once the candlelight demonstrations
exploded, it was impossible to set the clock back.
No one could predict how long the demonstrations would last, how many more people
would participate, and whether it would evolve into a full-scale anti-government or antiAmerican movement.
It is widely known that hierarchical control of a complex system is impossible. If it could be
done, our lives would be much simpler. There would be no avalanches, no unpredicted
electrical blackouts and no Black Mondays like in 1987. The fact that the behavior of
policy-takers is beginning to resemble Dooley`s three key principles indicates that
policymakers are now living in a complex world where unpredictability prevails.
This is not totally new to us. Candlelight demonstrations resisting the impeachment of
former President Roh Moo-hyun, the enthusiastic support for Hwang Woo-suk despite his
scientific fraud and the public condemnation of the Seogwipo lunchbox incident all
followed a similar route.
From the perspective of a social movement frame, recent changes detailed above mean an
increasing gap between the objective and socially constructed realities. A frame is a social
science concept used to describe the process by which a public issue is defined and
constructed.
Contrary to popular belief, there are no purely objective realities in the social realm. Once
again taking American beef as an example, there are so many different and often
contradictory aspects that it is impossible to summarize the objective realities. No scientist
would say American beef is 100 percent safe from the possibility of transmitting vCJD, in
which sense it can pose a danger for Koreans. At the same time, many scientists would
agree that it is safer than beef from many other countries. Admitting that the slaughtering
process and distribution of domestic beef is even less well understood, some might say
that American beef is safer than Korean beef.
There are also class issues. It sounds reasonable to argue that those who have to eat
supplied meals, such as soldiers and students, are more exposed to the potential harm
since meal suppliers are likely to prefer low-priced American beef. They go further,
criticizing policy makers by saying that those who can afford expensive domestic beef will
never eat the American variety, suggesting that only poor people are in danger.
However, many people from low-income backgrounds argue that American beef is the only
way they can eat beef at all, because the price of domestic beef is so high.
There are also trade issues. Many people worry that cattle breeders, most whom are small
farmers, will go bankrupt. On the flip side, there will be positive spillover effects for the
entire economy from the manufacturers who will benefit from the free trade agreement. The
list of different aspects of imported American beef is endless.
The truth about realities is they are socially constructed. Social movements are different
from scientific endeavors. A scientist tries to incorporate as many different aspects as
possible in his or her explanations, although even in scientific research complete
incorporation is not possible. Movement participants cannot organize or sustain a social
movement which simultaneously considers many different and contending aspects. They
inevitably simplify what really happened, emphasizing some aspects and deemphasizing
others.
A frame describes this simplifying process. To be more specific, David Snow says that a
frame does three things. A diagnostic frame identifies the problem and determines who is
to blame. A prognostic frame suggests what to do to solve the identified problem. A
motivational frame provides the rationale for action. A frame is often initially provided by
the media, intentionally or unintentionally, and is completed and shared by movement
participants.
In a sense, the framing process is like collective story-telling. The initial frame was
provided by the in-depth report by MBC-TV, emphasizing the potential danger of American
beef and deemphasizing all the other aspects. With the speed of broadband internet, it
spread instantly. Since the initial frame focused on the potential danger of American beef,
there had to be someone to blame and it was the government which supposedly did not
pay enough attention.
Then came the prognostic frame that urged people to gather at Gwanghwamun with
candles in their hands. The motivational frame was also obvious, easy to comprehend and
powerful because it said that those socially weak would be more exposed to danger. It
became every parent`s moral obligation to participate.
One thing the government could never understand was that framing is different from
science. The government responded by citing statistics and other evidence to show that
American beef is not so dangerous. However, framing and science seldom meld together.
A movement frame, once formed, is extremely hard to modify with scientific evidence. An
emotional approach, which Lee later used in his public apologies, or an alternative storytelling might have worked better.
Since realities are socially constructed, there is always a gap between the objective and
perceived reality. But why is this gap increasing? One important reason is the perceived
reality is constructed on the internet. Every social construction of reality necessarily entails
filtering and linking of smaller events that constitute a larger event. Smaller events that are
less important or contradictory to the story-telling under construction are filtered out. Other
smaller, and even distant events are linked to the main storyline and contribute to a new
meaning.
This process is faster and more unpredictable on the internet, where a vast number of
people simultaneously interact and collectively build a narrative.
Recall the process in which strong believers of Hwang Woo-suk were formed on the
internet. Some events, such as his scientific dishonesty and the problems with his integrity
in obtaining female eggs, were largely filtered out or emphasized less, while some
unrelated events such as national pride and Korea`s economic growth were linked. The
result was enthusiastic and persistent support for Hwang even though his research was
scientifically proven fraudulent. Had it not been for the internet this would have never
happened.
The big question regarding the social implication of the internet is how it contributes to the
transformation of ordinary people from passive policy-takers to active, unpredictable,
agents of change. Not everything is clear yet, but one secret lies in how people connect
with others online.
In my own research on some 35 million users of Korea`s largest portal site in 2005, the
results were striking because people`s connections on the internet very closely followed
so-called scale-free networks. A scale-free network is a physicist`s term that describes a
situation in which a large number of events with very small values and a tiny number of
events with extremely large values coexist. Plainly speaking, the vast majority of internet
users are tied to a few targets, be they people or information, while a small number of
people are tied to a great many targets.
For example, most bloggers have only a few readers. There is, however a tiny group of
bloggers with some 20,000 readers. Another example would be the number of members in
a cyber community. Most communities have a membership of 10-20 people, while some
communities have a membership base of up to hundreds of thousands of people.
What is the social consequence of this scale-free network? Think of peer pressure, or, the
social contagion of opinion. We are all fragile in our opinions and thus are unavoidably
influenced by the views of those in our vicinity. As long as this last statement is true, the
scale-free network of the internet implies that most people can be quickly and powerfully
influenced by a small group of people or information located at the core of the internet. In
this society, the oscillation of opinions spans greater distances and happens more quickly.
Furthermore, the research in 2005 also revealed that there are three different types of
internet users in terms of the way they are connected to others. The first group is people
with a traditional type of connection. Homophily, or love of the same, prevails in these
people. Prominent people are likely to be friends with other prominent people, and citizens
are likely to be friends with of other citizens. This group is not so interesting because
homophily has always existed in human society. About 22 percent of internet users belong
to this category.
More fascinating are the remaining groups. One is a group of stars who receive great
attention, like bloggers with 10,000 readers. Stars are clearly distinguished from traditional
elites because most of their friends are ordinary people. Homophily no longer exists. Since
they are not networked with other prominent people but with a great number of citizens
who like what they do, they have to create and re-create themselves as stars everyday.
This is why popular entertainers such as singers and actors usually belong to this category.
Slightly more than 1 percent of internet users belong to this category.
The majority of internet users, about 75 percent, are citizens with a few friends. They are
different from the traditional notion of "ordinary people" because one or two of their social
ties go to extremely prominent people, like a high school student who has a cyber
connection with Rain, the world-famous singer. It is not only the number of people with a
certain opinion in my social vicinity but also the prominence of them that influence
opinions.
How much influence, for example, can a famous pop artist`s remark on a policy issue have
on a teenage girl with just a few social ties on the internet? This explains why entertainers
are speaking out and gaining significance in policy issues at a rapidly accelerating pace.
Policy makers in Korea are in an environment fundamentally different from that of 10 years
ago. Citizens are no longer passive policy takers. They are easily mobilized and organized
in a non-hierarchical and non-traceable way. Which policy will bring about massive
resistance is unpredictable. Scientific explanation and evidence hardly help. The traditional
policy triangle has dissolved and the boundary between policy shapers and policy takers
blurred. Old policy measures and remedies won`t work because there is no one to be
accused. Everyone is partially responsible but no one fully so.
What is to be done? The answer lies in two directions. One is to think of a progressive
transformation of the internet industry. Although the internet in general tends to bring about
changes mentioned in this article, those changes are much faster and go much further in
Korea than in other countries. At least part of this uniqueness is associated with the portal
structure predominant on the Korean internet. Because the current portal structure
centralizes the events and information of popular interest and automatically exposes them
to all users, it tends to exaggerate the unpredictable oscillation of interest and opinion on
the internet.
In this strict sense, the Korean internet is not a horizontal media. However, repression of
the portal business will not work. It will only invite more mass resistance. Industry-wise, the
Korean IT business has now arrived at a crossroads where full-scale entry to the Web 2.0
era is required for sustained growth of the industry.
Government support for rapid transition into this new era will be a much better solution,
because Web 2.0 is fundamentally a horizontal social sphere. The other is to build a
consensus on new social governance. Mankind has long established shared rules, i.e.,
social governance, regarding who is entitled to do what and who is to be responsible for
which deeds. It is clear that in a world where people live with multiple nicknames and even
multiple identities on the internet the rules are losing their relevance.
An effort for constructing new social governance is called for. This will take a long time;
much longer than any specific government`s lifecycle. That is why the current government
should not approach this problem politically.
By Chang Duk-jin