SNS and Chirashi

Advertisement: Dangerous Rumors, which opened on February 20, 2014, is a Korean film that turns the spotlight on the seamy underbelly of the Korean Internet. The original title in Korean is Chirashi, a word most Koreans are familiar with but merits explanation for readers from different cultures. The term chirashi, also sometimes used to refer to the stock market, is used in this case to refer to discreetly circulated newsletters of blind items, typically concerned with defaming public figures such as celebrities or politicians.

In Korean, the word chirashi means “flyer.” While a flyer can be an advertisement for anything, in Korea, the Japanese loanword chirashi usually refers to cheap flyers handed out on the street. Nowadays the word is increasingly used to refer to blind gossip rather than its more prosaic meaning.

To be fair, spreading gossip and sharing rumors is practically a human instinct. The problem is that this “instinct” has gained lightning speed and devastating power, thanks to social networking services (SNS). Unlike the pre-Internet days, when gossip was spread by word of mouth, gossip in the digital world spreads at a speed that has nothing to do with its veracity. At some point, people began sharing chirashi on SNS such as Facebook or Kakao Talk (a popular Korean instant messaging app) and the effects have been monstrous. Conversely, the increasing number of celebrity lawsuits brought on by rumors spread via SNS attests to the relentless efficiency of such new media.

Internet connectivity in Korea is remarkably fast and widespread. When asked what they find the most inconvenient when traveling in another country, the overwhelming response of Koreans was the speed of the Internet and Wi-Fi. Constantly being connected and able to access information at record speeds has paved solid ground for social networking services to take root in Korean culture. What has been the Korean response to this phenomenon and how has it been reconstructed in Korean culture?

Cool Media and Detached Relationships

Hanseon knew about Sujin’s comings and goings in New Jersey through Facebook and he could also keep tabs on what kind of people she was meeting. From time to time he would drop a comment of some sort on her posts. But those occasions dwindled over time and Sujin’s posts about her daily life became less frequent as well.

A week passed with no news from Sujin. She was not answering his calls. She replied to texts long after he sent them, only to say that she was busy now and would contact him later. Hanseon began entering Sujin’s information in Google. Things like her name, national identification number, address, and phone number. It was almost too easy to find out who she was marrying and where. Her friends were sharing the news on Cyworld, Twitter, and Facebook. At first, he had only set out to collect information about the wedding, but the search engine dredged up her activities in America as well. She had gone out with a white man with the last name of McGuiness, a man who had been divorced once.

- Kim Young-ha, “Trip”

In Kim Young-ha’s short story “Trip,” from the collection Nobody Knows What Happened, a university lecturer keeps in touch with his girlfriend through Facebook when she goes to study in the U.S. but stops commenting on her posts as their relationship fizzles out. He obtains important personal information about her with ease on social networking sites like Facebook and Cyworld, such as the news of her upcoming nuptials. But that is only the beginning. He also finds out about the men she went out with after breaking up with him and digs up the personal details of the divorced man she dated before meeting her fiancé.

In some ways SNS serve as a voluntary Panopticon. Personal news shared at one time or another is swept up in a stream of data and trickles down to strangers. In the world of SNS, people compete for exposure, spending a lot of time and energy sharing what they eat, wear, and think in a limited number of characters. This kind of exposure, however, can hardly show what an individual is actually like.

Social networking services have degenerated into a space for curating one’s image, including one’s political opinions. Conservatives and progressives alike fill SNS word limits with sensational phrases. They are compelled to share, not because they have important information, but because SNS exist as a place where they must log on and literally create their identity. Novelist Apple Kim's In Heaven depicts the 20-somethings of this generation:

The four hung around the house killing time until night fell. Kay packed, Summer went on Facebook, Dan read a collection of poems by Lorca in Spanish, and Lena stayed in her room and talked continuously on the phone.

For young people, going on Facebook has become merely another way of killing time. Or perhaps it is more accurate to call it a habit, so they “sit gazing into their iPads for hours, going home to make instant noodles when hunger strikes, go back on Facebook, and later in their beds, bored and unable to sleep, message a friend asking if they are awake.” To them, Facebook is more than just a plaything to pass the time, rather it has become a means of communication. Apple Kim once said in an interview, “curiosity, envy, and marvel are the sentiments that rule the world of SNS.” Presumably these are the emotions that fuel the SNS addiction of her characters of In Heaven.

1. Sweet, Cold
Oh Hyun-jong
Minumsa, 2013, 202pp.
ISBN 9788937473029

2. In Heaven
Apple Kim
Changbi Publishers, Inc.
2013, 349pp., ISBN 9788936434069

3. Nobody Knows What Happened
Kim Young-ha
Munhakdongne Publishing Corp.
2010, 300pp., ISBN 9788954611763
 

In this respect, the use of Twitter in Oh Hyun-jong’s Sweet, Cold is even more shocking. A girl and a boy meet in a cram school for students retaking their university entrance exams and later plot to kill the girl’s mother over Twitter. As it is necessary that no one should be able to trace their relationship, they do not follow each other and exchange messages in code. They agree that tweeting the mention, “the bonfire dances,” will serve as their signal that the murder has begun. For them, Twitter is a public space where they can remain anonymous behind coded messages.

This kind of SNS usage also appears in film. In The Five, a movie adapted from a webtoon, chat rooms are used for conspirators to plot and monitor their crimes. Instead of calling or texting each other, members simply share their progress in a group chat.

Far more realistic is the use of SNS in movies like A Very Ordinary Couple. Here, couples use SNS to share their love for each other online. Twenty years ago, jilted lovers stalked their exes by hacking the password to their voice mail, but in the 2010s people hack their ex’s social network accounts in order to get information on who their ex is dating, such as their age, email, and phone number, as depicted in Kim Young-ha’s story.

But does this kind of connection bear any resemblance to human contact? What if, thanks to the digital footprint we are leaving on SNS, we are unnecessarily leaking our personal information around the web? Is it possible that we are entrusting too much of our memories to digital signals that, in the end, can be obliterated by the click of a delete button? We live in an age where people can steal the ID and profile pictures of others and pass them off as their own, a form of digital identity theft that has become a legitimate social problem. The perpetrators of these crimes routinely profess that they stole the images because their online image was more important than portraying who they really are.

The Power of Speech and SNS

According to a story run by The Economist, there are studies that have shown that the more people used Facebook, the more it lowered the satisfaction they felt about their own lives. Voyeuristically following others’ lives on Facebook resulted in increased feelings of jealousy, social anxiety, loneliness, and depression. Indeed, it is nothing short of absurd that so many of us seek validation from how many “likes” we get.

The brevity of writing on SNS also affects how people now approach serious literature. To readers accustomed to reading only short spurts at a time on the small screens of their phones, long and complex sentences can begin to look like nothing more than incomprehensible blobs of text.

Nonetheless, the power of speech on SNS cannot be overlooked. When this power is used negatively, it may only be good for mongering gossip or leaking personal information, but when it is used positively, SNS does provide a very important platform for free speech. The political influence of SNS was most dramatically illustrated, of course, by the Jasmine Revolution. The call for truth overwhelmed oppression and spread throughout the world on SNS.

Closer to home than the Jasmine Revolution, the political impact of SNS can be witnessed in Korean politics as well. The confessions and testimonials on political correctness that flood Korean SNS are sometimes held up as representative of the voice of the Korean public.

Lately, however, the general consensus is that Korean SNS are now dominated by a few loudmouths and their disputes. Rightly so, considering that moderation is a virtue few seem to be concerned with on SNS. Only the most provocative tweets from the extreme right or extreme left garner any attention, while people with moderate or skeptical views find themselves increasingly marginalized.

The same principle applies to Facebook, where people “friend” those with similar political views. The opinions they share on SNS are more often about seeking confirmation than exchanging different points of view. SNS, however, are still developing as tools of communication. The relationships we cultivate online may turn out to be poison or panacea, depending on how we wield the double-edged sword of SNS.