Perspectives on Contemporary Korea. Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2017. ix, 227 pp. (Tables, graphs, figures, B&W photos.) US$29.95, paper. ISBN 978-0-472-05337-7.
Dal Yong Jin’s monograph Smartland Korea presents the first book-length research in English on the development of smartphone culture in South Korea, one of the leading players in the current global mobile system. The title is catchy yet also ambitious as it suggests readers will learn why and how Korea has become a “smartland.” Over the years, Jin’s research has provided a collection of informative and in-depth analyses of the globalization process of the cultural industry with a particular focus on the Korean context. Smartland Korea furthers his ongoing research interest by taking up the topic of the smartphone, the latest and one of the most influential information technologies of our time, as a way to address the significant role of the “local-based technologies and cultures in the era of neoliberal globalization” (173). The premise of the book lies in the fact that in spite of the prominent position that Korea-based IT corporations such as Samsung Electronics and LG Electronics occupy in the global mobile system, Korean mobile phone culture, as is the case of many other non-Western local cultures, is still left underexplored in communication and media studies. If the smartphone is the technological device that embodies the technological, political, and economic paradigm shift in the second-half of the twentieth century, Jin proposes that Korea is the “locale” in which this shift is most vividly manifested.
To search for the genesis and significance of “smartland,” Smartland Korea incorporates multiple perspectives and approaches, including technology studies, policy analysis, audience/user research, and qualitative case studies. The book consists of nine chapters, divided into three parts with distinctive focuses: history, political economy, and culture. The overall organization reflects the book’s goal—to provide a comprehensive and holistic approach to the emergence of the Korean smartphone mediascape. The chapters proceed effectively from a macro-level discussion of infrastructure to a micro-level analysis of usage. In the first part, Jin introduces the theoretical framework and offers an overview of the history of the innovation and evolution of smartphone technology. Although informative, it does not add much nuanced discussion to the existing literature of mobile studies, considering a historiographical re-examination of the genealogy of the smartphone is certainly not the focus of this chapter.
The second part, “Political Economy of the Smartphone Systems,” is where the fundamental framework of political economic studies of global media is clearly presented. Jin attributes the rise of smartland Korea to successful strategies of localization—through “government-led developmentalism” and later “reform to neoliberalism”—faced with the challenges by external political economic shift in the broader context of globalization. Chapters 3 and 4 trace the dramatic trajectory of the Korean mobile system, from its sudden emergence as one of the early leaders in the global mobile system through commercialization of the world-first CDMA mobile phones in the 1990s, through the crisis caused by “iPhone shock” in 2007, and to its swift return to centre stage with the aggressive production of smartphone handsets and rapid uptake of smartphone culture. Drawing on various resources including government data, corporate reports, and publications by international agencies, these chapters are informative and theoretical in their examination of the complexity of the globalization process in the smartphone era. Jin saliently articulates the dual position of smartland Korea, as an example of counter flow—a successful local case against the homogenizing force of globalization—on the one hand and of another form of imperialism, what he calls “platform imperialism,” on the other (83). The fact that the growth of the Korean smartphone industry essentially contributes to the dominance of global platforms such as Google Android, governed by global corporations based in the US, demonstrates how the diversification of powers in global mobile markets in the realm of hardware production, represented by the case of Samsung Galaxy, is paradoxically offset by the continuing hegemonic power of US software technologies. This issue of power dynamics is re-contextualized in the following chapters that focus on “access” and “skills” of smartphone usage in a domestic context. Importantly, the discussion of “dual digital divide,” the dark side of a rapidly growing app economy that made Korea one of the most fully saturated smartphone markets, nicely concludes the second part as it redirects our attention to the question of agency and its significance in defining the meaning of smartness in smartphones.
The third part, “Smartphones and Youth Culture,” examines two of the most prominent value-added services for smartphones in Korea: mobile games and KakaoTalk. Two chapters complement the political economic approach of previous chapters with the findings from empirical research that Jin conducted in Korea in 2015 with fifty young Korean mobile phone users (ages 19–29). Building upon Jin’s extensive knowledge of the Korean gaming industry, chapter 7 examines the changes in user groups, game genres, and gaming practices along with the proliferation of smartphones. The analysis of KakaoTalk, a local all-in-one mobile instant messaging service, presents a concrete case that echoes the theoretical ramifications of locality in globalization previously examined. Findings from interviews are mostly quoted to reiterate the significance of KakaoTalk as the most dominant instant messaging service that “paved the way” the smartphone technology is “locally re-contextualized as a device not only for telephony but […] for stories, and game playing” (169). Although more emphasis is placed on the “breakthrough” of the successful localization of smartphones, it is noteworthy that KakaoTalk’s success, or the rise of smartphone culture itself, is undeniably built upon the legacy of a robust local mobile media culture since the late 1990s that showcased cutting-edge convergent media services including mobile TV and 3G mobile content service. Future research in this field will expand on this book’s holistic/interdisciplinary approach in order to address socio-culturally specific configurations of the continuity and discontinuity of everyday practices of mobile phone use as new genres of services, platforms, and devices keep appearing.
Considering the overall dearth of literature on local cases of IT development in global mobile studies, Smartland Korea unquestionably makes a significant contribution to the field by providing a rich collection of data, statistics, and in-depth literature review of existing English-language studies of Korean mobile phone culture. A valuable starting point for readers seeking to understand Korean mobile culture, this book also introduces them to the vigorous discussion of ICTs in the process of globalization.
Hyeryoung Ok
University of Oregon, Eugene, USA