Neoliberalism influenced Korean culture emphasizes an intense atmosphere of academic competition. Korea’s preexisting education stratification along with its adoption of neo-liberal restructuring and globalization has created an education system where an individual’s ability to achieve in society is heavily influenced by the university he/she gains acceptance to (Abelmann, 2009). Students who succeed academically gain the approval of authority figures and the envy of peers, while those who don’t are left yearning for social validation.

The rise of gaming and subsequent proliferation of PC bangs in the late 1990s created a new avenue for youths to gain social validation. Unsurprisingly, many people who couldn’t succeed in the other areas of their lives became “addicted” to this environment as a means to escape from real world problems. The PC bang also became a place of empowerment, devoid of parental supervision, where youth could “make choices in how they take nourishment, spend money, earn money, and even partake in courtship rituals” (Chee, 2006, Wang-tta). The fact that students went to PC bangs to escape the constraints of their domestic environments and to freely interact with peers highlights a weakening of traditional Confucian familial values.

This new place of relative freedom, however, can also be viewed as another avenue for individuals to fail. The Korean expression, Wang-tta, summarizes this concept. In the piece, The Games We Play Online and Offline: Making Wang-tta in Korea, a student describes Wang-tta by saying “Everyone doesn’t like a Wang-tta. They have a different mind, different behavior…one guy is made the weirdo.” The Wang-tta concept reveals a powerful ostracizing phenomenon in a culture where “…a primary motivator to play games…was to achieve social acceptance among peers” (Chee, 2006, Wang-tta). Indeed, the mob mentality of Korean youth gamers, while readily accepting of people with similar opinions, harshly shuns anyone who rebels against the status quo.

The phenomena of gaming as an escape from real world problems and as a means to bully peers isn’t readily observed in Japan due to differences in cultural perception of gaming and technology. Korean culture emphasizes collectivity and community while Japanese culture emphasizes more individualism in comparison. This attitude of individualism is embodied towards technology as “electronic individualism,” which is the notion that one should have a sense of individual space that doesn’t intrude on others when using technology (Hjorth, 2011). This ideology is the result of Japanese lifestyle factors. In cities like Tokyo, individuals generally spend long periods of time in confined public spaces and travelling, so the desire for a mobile, individuated gaming device reflects this lifestyle (Hjorth, 2011).

These differing ideologies are represented by the social spaces in which each country’s gamers primarily play in. PC bangs, which operate in between the public and private sectors, are designed to encourage socialization, embodying the collectivity and community emphasized by Korean culture. Japanese gaming, however, is primarily done in arcades or at home on gaming consoles. While Korean PC bangs and Japanese arcades seem similar, the key difference is in the type of games played and the level of socialization occurring. Japanese arcade games, like Space Invader and Pachinko, are primarily made for individuals or small groups and require a minimal amount of socialization to play. Similarly, playing console games in a home environment restricts the socialization to peers explicitly invited by a player to play. The low level of communication required to play these games contrasts with the high level of communication required to coordinate among teams of peers playing the MMO or RTS genre games popular in Korea. Japan’s emphasis on electronic individualism and relatively unsocial gaming practices are the primary reason that the aforementioned phenomena of escapism and bullying with respect to gaming are not observed in Japan (Lent).

Citations:

Abelmann, N. (2009). College rank and neo-liberal subjectivity in South Korea: the burden of self-development. Inter-Asia Cultural Studies, 10:2, 229-247.

Chee, F. (2006). The Games We Play Online and Offline: Making Wang-tta in Korea. Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc., 225-239.

Hjorth, L. (2011). Games and gaming an introduction to new media. Oxford: Berg.

Lent, J. (n.d.). Asian popular culture: New, hybrid, and alternate media.