ABSTRACT

This chapter aims to investigate the specificities of users’ online culture in the developmental mode of digital technology and the Internet in Korean society since the early 1980s. It examines the dialectic tensions arising within digital culture between the dominant power of Korea’s neoliberal governments and the autonomous political subjects from below in the histories of the Internet in Korea. The chapter focuses more on the subcultural wave of Internet history in Korea, which has largely been unnoticed in institutional and policy studies of Korea’s Internet history. It reveals dynamic relationships of control and autonomy by displaying some patterns related to significant issues raised in analyses of electronic activism. The chapter concludes that throughout the historical evolution of cyberactivism, online users’ activities can be considered significant, both in creating innovations in digital culture and in increasing the democratic attitude of society.