Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 2016. xi, 241 pp. US$68.00, cloth. ISBN 978-0-8248-5656-4.
Given the recent global attention directed at South Korea’s candlelight protesters in Gwanghwamun Square in Seoul, Jiyeon Kang’s monograph on South Korea’s Internet-born youth activism in the first decade of the twenty-first century is timely. Kang perceptively captures emerging modes of post-authoritarian youth activism through an effective triangulation of ethnography, discourse analysis, and historical analysis. In this book, Kang examines the sociocultural context of South Korean youth in the twenty-first century, the online discourses that emerged during candlelight vigils, and ways in which candlelight protests were remembered by the young participants.
Kang’s study comprises two chronologically divided yet thematically interwoven parts, along with introductory chapters and a conclusion. The two introductory chapters provide the theoretical and historical contexts in which the emergence of the Internet-born and candlelight-equipped protesters are situated. The author proposes the intriguing anthropological concept of “captivation” to explain why and how this new post-authoritarian mode of social activism emerged through the convergence of online and offline spaces. According to the author, young people captivated by images and news circulated on the Internet were involved in a larger process of “cultural ignition” that led to candlelight protests as a new form of activism. Following this introduction, the author engages with the historical analysis of South Korean youth activism in chapter 1, where authoritarian legacies are compared with changes of the post-authoritarian era.
After the two introductory chapters, part 1 focuses on an earlier phase of post-authoritarian activism by analyzing the 2002 candlelight protests. In chapter 2, the author examines the origin of the Internet youth protests with reference to the 2002 candlelight vigils that emerged following the accidental killing of two civilian Korean girls by US military troops during a military exercise on South Korean territory. In particular, the author explores how images and texts about the tragic incident were captivated and circulated through online forums and how feelings of injustice were expressed in response to the incident and the following acquittals of the two US soldiers responsible.
In chapter 3, the author discusses how candlelight protests converged with mainstream politics during the presidential election of December 2002, in which Roh Moo-hyun emerged as a metonym for a new democratic era. As described in this chapter, despite the post-election disenchantment among young Roh supporters, the election revealed how vernacular discourses on the Internet could influence and articulate with mainstream politics. Drawing on interviews with Korean youth conducted in 2006, chapter 4 introduces young people’s memories of their experiences during the 2002 candlelight protests. The young people’s retrospective narratives suggest heterogeneous interpretations and memories. In particular, the author illustrates how young people’s corporeal and affective experiences of the protests contributed to shaping their political orientations. The author also claims that the co-existence of various and even contradictory interpretations of the candlelight vigils implies an emerging repertoire for youth activism in the post-authoritarian era.
While part 1 focuses on the 2002 candlelight vigils, part 2 addresses the post-2002 period with reference to the 2008 protests against the Lee Myung-bak administration for its decision to resume the importation of US beef, which provoked public concern about the danger of mad cow disease. By analyzing online discourses, chapter 5 discusses how the 2008 protests differed from the earlier 2002 protests. Here the author finds further development of Internet-born youth activism, wherein the Internet played a significant role in reconfiguring young people’s process of “doing politics.” The same period is addressed in chapter 6 through the memories of young participants. In the 2011–2012 interviews, despite varied personal memories, the young people revealed how they developed their own political views through affective and corporeal experiences during the protests. The author argues that, regardless of their individual social situations, the young people proposed personally meaningful political activities beyond the established institutional discourse of politics. In the conclusion, the author discusses the consequences of Internet-born protests by looking at the Internet’s influence on youth and the connection between online and offline spaces. The author suggests that post-authoritarian youth politics is “evolving beyond the repertoire of candlelight protests” (161).
This study offers both compelling analysis and rich ethnographic data. Its insightful exploration of the Internet and activism moves beyond the binary opposition between criticism of Internet-mediated, low-risk protest and the celebratory acknowledgement of the Internet as the new driving force of activism. Moreover, Kang offers up a critical framework through which she analyzes the heterogeneity of social actors and the processes of social movements. She interweaves an analysis of South Korea’s socio-political landscape in the first decade of the twenty-first century with a comparative examination of the perspectives of the government, mainstream media, alternative media, and the actual protesters. Further, while maintaining its critical and analytical perspective, this study is written in a highly approachable style that will appeal to a wide range of readers. I highly recommend this book as one of the first English-language monographs on youth activism in post-authoritarian South Korea, one that paints a particularly insightful fresco of South Korean society and digital media activism in the first decade of the twenty-first century.
Kyong Yoon
The University of British Columbia, Okanagan, Canada
pp. 829-831