1

Re-traditionalizing the mobile:

Young people’s sociality and mobile phone use in Seoul, South Korea

Kyong Yoon (2003)

European Journal of Cultural Studies (6) 3: 327-343.

http://ecs.sagepub.com/content/6/3/327.abstract

Abstract

This article, based on ethnographic research in Seoul, South Korea, proposes a ‘peripheral’ and

local perspective on teenage mobile phone users and sociality. The teenage users show that the

mobile phone, which has often been represented as an example of global imagination

technologies, is here appropriated in localized ways in which the traditional form of sociality,

‘Cheong’, is rearticulated. After reviewing the recent literature on young people’s identity

formation in relation to globalization, the article explores the way in which the mobile phone is

appropriated as a means of extending traditional sociality between peers and family members.

The study suggests that there is no clear-cut evidence that young people have become

disembedded from local sociality; rather, they are re-imagining the local through the global

imagination technology.

Keywords: the mobile phone, local sociality, tradition, Cheong, globalization, technology, youth.

Introduction: local sociality, global technology and youth

In South Korea, globalization has been discursively constructed as a kind of ‘evil’

forcing Koreans to enter into the fragmented new world (Alford, 1999). Koreans have

been anxious that their traditional norms of sociality will be destroyed by Westernization

which has been represented as tied to individualism. For Koreans, globalization is

perceived to have a potential to pollute Koreanness through its destruction of ‘Cheong’

(cf. Alford, 1999).

Cheong is an expression of affective and attached relationships between people closely

related to one another. Cheong is on the one hand based on an extended form of familism

in that it emphasizes the strong attachment between close people within the network of

Cheong. Once someone begins to be considered as a member of the network, he or she is

treated as like family by other members and in consequence it becomes extremely

difficult to keep away from the network (Alford, 1999). On the other, Cheong represents

2

traditional aspects of sociality in which local people share their affection or ‘togetherness

through a long period of being together or contact’ (Choi, 2001) with other members in a

small boundary of face-to-face based relationship (Alford, 1999: 56-60; Lee, 1994).1 It

should be noted here that the boundary of Choeng network is very subjective rather than

has any agreed criteria. In my study, for instance, some informants considered certain

friends in addition to the family as crucial members of Cheong network while others

included a broader range of people by Cheong relationship.

In the rapid process of globalization, the popular use of mobile phones among young

Koreans2 has given rise to critiques of its individualized mode of communication. Young

Koreans have recently been described in the mass media and academic literature as being

disembedded from the family-oriented social relations due to their consumption of

personal communication technologies such as the mobile phone and their bypassing of

collective means of communication. The use of the mobile has caused concern about the

increasing dislocation of young people from the Korean norms of harmonious sociality,

which derives from the idea that new communication technologies are likely to both de-

familialize and individualize human relationships and consequently that the mobile

phone may destroy collective and affective relationships.

It has been argued that tradition is continually re-constructed as ‘an organizing medium

of collective memory’ which forms a resource for reconstructing the self through the

collective (Giddens, 1994; Thompson, 1996). In conditions of modernity, however, the

mass media and new technologies have been defined as playing a crucial role in re-

inventing and strengthening tradition so that it is no longer based on local sociality

maintained through face-to-face interaction.

Cheong is a manifestation of local sociality among young Koreans, since it is practiced in

everyday relations as well as mythologized. In young Koreans’ narratives, Cheong is

likely to be represented as a certain form of social space – ‘Cheong space’ (Lee, 1994),

within which local sociality derived from cultural tradition is embodied in everyday life

and is applied to personal relationships. In this regard, it can be said that Cheong space is

a site in which tradition is appropriated as a source of identity formation (cf. Thompson,

1996).

The tendency towards maintaining Cheong space has continuously reinforced the sense

of local tradition among Koreans, despite extensive globalization of the economy in

recent years. The networks of Cheong have been effectively mobilized for the economic

development as well as the construction of national identity in this rapid modernization

of the nation-state (Lew and Chang, 1998). In the aftermath of the financial crisis in 1997,

moreover, many Koreans have turned again to the local networks based on Cheong

3

against the ‘threat’ of globalization (cf. Cho Han, 2000). These reinforced local networks

have in some ways consequently fortified Koreanness embodied in the strong sense of

familial ties between Koreans.

Rethinking ‘disembedding’

Recent youth studies of individualization via new global technologies describe young

people as becoming increasingly disembedded from the structural determinants of society.

Disembedding is understood as a process of disconnection from given social ties, such as

the family network, and also from tradition (Knorr Cetina, 2001: 532). In this regard,

contemporary young people have also been studied as agents of the process of

‘disembedding’ themselves from given social ties (Bennett, 1999; Fornäs and Bolin,

1992) and from the past (Mitterauer, 1992). Such studies suggest, first, that young people

are more individualized than ever before. It is observed that ‘the stable identity of the

individual is superseded by the much more fluid and ephemeral identifications of the

persona’ (Malbon, 1998: 279). In this movement towards individualization from given

social ties, young people are also represented as dis-individualized since they develop

networks according to diverse but shared cultural tastes (e.g. Bennett, 1999). This

approach rests on an assumption that the ‘space of places’ is changing into the ‘space of

flows’ through consumption-based cultural tastes articulated by global imagination

technologies (cf. Wellman, 2001).

Secondly, it has been noted that young people increasingly have to rely on their own

choices for identity formation since existing institutions of socialisation are disintegrating

(Beck, 1992). According to the de-traditionalization thesis (Giddens, 1994), young

people respond increasingly to the issue of self-identity by continuously re-inventing

cultural conventions of socialization on the basis of individual choice and reflexivity. In

this process, global technologies are assumed to play a crucial role especially in various

local contexts outside the center, so called ‘peripheries’. For example, in previous studies

global imagination technologies in the periphery have been portrayed as local facilitators

of globalization which de-localize frames of reference in young people’s identity work

(e.g. Liechty, 1995).

Bearing in mind the ‘disembedding’ thesis, this article examines the way in which young

Koreans appropriate mobile technology and negotiate norms of sociality derived from

cultural tradition. First, it illustrates in detail that, facing parental control and school life,

young people adopt certain strategies to immobilize the mobile phone and develop local

sociality (thereby ‘facilitating the local’). Secondly, it explores the practice of mobile

communication among young people as somehow ritualized within limited everyday

4

boundaries by the practice of sharing of/through the mobile (thereby ‘ritualizing the

local’).

The data come from ethnographic research into the use of mobile phones by 33 teenage

students (16-17 years old), which was conducted from September 2001 to January 2002

in the North Bank and South Bank areas of Seoul, South Korea.3 The samples are

‘mainstream’ secondary school students preparing to enter higher education and were

accessed via 5 high schools (1 in South Bank and 4 in North Bank). The mainstreamers

(‘Botongaedul’) refers to young people who identify themselves as lying between the

slackers (‘Nallali’ and ‘Yangachi’) and the school-conformists (‘Bumsangie’) both in and

outside school in young people’s narratives. The majority of the subjects are identified as

middle class in terms of their parents’ job and education, as well as type of housing. Most

South Bank informants were from an upper middle-class background, while North Bank

ones belonged to the lower middle class. The young people were engaged in the research

via in-depth interviews on a one-to-one basis or in small groups with follow-up

interviews being conducted by e-mail. A number of diary type self-reports were collected

also.

Facilitating the local

(1) Coming face-to-face with the mobile

In young Koreans’ narratives, the transition into high school from middle school (at 16

years of age) is described as a process by which young people become engaged in more

complex networks which may pollute Cheong space. The strategies which mainstream

young people develop to face the harsh new world seem to extend the narrow familism

into broader one on the basis of the affective relationship of Cheong. In this process,

communication has been defined as a crucial aspect of peer culture among mainstream

young people (Wexler, 1992). In particular, communication technologies are activated as

an essential tool to facilitate the new circumstance of extended Cheong space. Young

people’s motive in purchasing a phone is often to access peer networks or to avoid being

excluded from peer communication. A female informant who had used a pager before

she got a mobile praised the mobile phone for its communicative function:

Interviewer: What did you most like about the mobile phone, compared to

the pager?

5

North Bank female 03: I can COMMUNICATE! With the pager, when I saw

the “message received” indicator flashing, on the bus, I could not check out

immediately the content of the voice message. But my mate here (pointing to

her mobile) doesn’t have any such inconvenience. I can talk directly to

whomever I want to call on the phone.

It is clear from my informants that young people adopt one of three broad strategies

regarding the balance between face-to-face friendships and mobile ones. The first group

of young people use their mobiles to connect primarily with existing school friends. For

them, the mobile is only a supportive communication technology, which does not go

beyond face-to-face relationships. These young people do not have broad circles of

friends who are often connected through the mobile:

Interviewer: How many phone numbers are in the memory of your mobile?

North Bank male 02: Around fourteen. To be exact, eleven excluding Mum’s,

Dad’s and Grandma’s.

Interviewer: I assume you have a lot of friends …

North Bank male 02: Yeah, I have a lot of friends. However, you know, I

haven’t desperately thought that I should contact them by the mobile because

I can see them at school.

For a second group of young people, mobile communication is more useful in keeping

their relationships with ‘old’ friends who are enrolled at other schools. In that case, the

mobile friendship includes a broader circle of friends beyond those seen face-to-face on a

daily basis.

I moved into Seoul from Pu-Cheon (a suburban city near Seoul). Since then,

I have kept contact with my old friends on the mobile. The place is a long

way away, I usually call them to come to Shin-Chon (a commercialized

district of west North Bank of Seoul). (North Bank female 08)

For a third group of users, the mobile phone has the potential to develop newly acquired

6

friendships. The mobile phone allows young people to initiate, keep, extend, and

strengthen relationships after initial face-to-face contact (cf. Ling and Yttri, 2002: 160).

I can talk to new friends on the phone by text-messaging after our initial

meeting. On my way home, in the bus or on the metro I may receive

messages such as “It was nice to meet you today. Keep in touch! ^^ [^^

means smile]”. Then, I would answer immediately and we can keep talking

on the mobile. We can talk a lot about what we didn’t talk about when we

met. So, at the next meeting we may feel more familiar. (North Bank female

05, self-report)

It should be noted here that, in all the above cases, communication technologies are more

frequently used for strengthening existing relationships than for creating completely new

relationships. Most of my informants consider that any communication not based on

face-to-face relationships is likely to be ‘fake’ or ‘boring’. Young people assume that

genuine communication is generated only when it is based on face-to-face interaction.

A number of commentators have recently argued that technology-mediated

communications such as Internet chatting and text-messaging are increasingly changing

the definition of literacy and resisting the dominant norms of social relations, especially

between young people (e.g. Merchant, 2001; Kaseniemi and Rautiainen, 2002; Rushkoff,

1996). However, physical relationships and face-to-face interactions remain important for

many of my informants and they seem to be somewhat skeptical in their use of new

technologies even though they are knowledgeable users. In young people’s appropriation

of mobile phones, this skeptical attitude towards technology-mediated communication is

more evident in text-messaging than calls. The practice of text-messaging is described as

becoming ‘boring’ with time by a number of young people and young men appear to

become easily bored with it than their female peers:

Boys who have used text-messaging for a long time are getting bored with it.

They just call instead of messaging. (North Bank male 01)

Interviewer: What do you feel when you realize there is a new text-message

on the display of your mobile?

North Bank female 07: “Ah ~ tiresome!” (giggling)

7

North Bank female 08: (giggling) Why? I like it. You still reply to received

messages even though you feel bored, don’t you?

North Bank female 07: Boring!

Then rapid shift from the excitement of mobile communication, especially text-

messaging, into boredom might be compared to the process by which young people

become bored with Internet chatting. Technology-mediated communications with

anonymous others – such as virtual blind dates via Internet chatting – are described as

‘pretending’ ‘not real’ and even ‘formal’, especially when they are not grounded in face-

to-face interaction. Informants often derided this type of communication as so childish

that only middle school teenagers were into it.

Young Koreans appropriate the mobile phone as useful technology when it is based on a

face-to-face relationship; in contrast, mobile communication for young people may be

felt to be restrictive and boring when it is dissociated from such direct interaction. For

this reason, it can be argued that mobile communication articulates face-to-face

friendships but does not negate or move beyond them.

(2) Immobiling

In an attempt to maintain Cheong space, mainstream young people develop strategies to

immobilize the mobile phone to a certain degree. These strategies, which I will refer to as

‘immobiling’, derive from young people’s need to activate local sociality when they face,

on the one hand, the toughness of high school as a competitive and individualized space

and, on the other hand, parental control in and outside the home.

For mainstream young people, the way of appropriating a mobile phone is defined by

certain criteria including the place, time, etiquette, and content of communication mainly

in school and the home. First of all, in school, it is somehow agreed among

mainstreamers that mobile calls, especially oral, should not be permitted during class.

All kids use mobiles in school … in classes where the teachers are a bit

relaxed, some guys receive phone calls secretly or send texts. Normally we

use the mobile in break time. I don’t use the mobile very often in school

because the friends connected through the mobile are school friends. By the

way, using a mobile in school is not wrong, is it? It is OK as long as the

mobile is not used in class, isn’t it? (North Bank female 01, e-mail interview)

8

The following informant complains that spoiled kids are ‘stealing’ mainstream young

people’s time by breaking the rhythm of class.

Interviewer: What do you think about peers using the mobile in class?

North Bank female 02: Because of some kid, a teacher has to temporarily

stop the class and has to tell of the kid. It’s too bad. It’s like, one kid steals

all the others’ time.

Interviewer: What if the teacher just ignores the student?

North Bank female 02: But, we are [high school] students. It’s not university.

It’s high school in which teachers’ control is very necessary. So, we should

do what the teachers say.

This criticism of in-class users reflects the fact that young people internalize the priority

of collective norms of sociality over individual ones. For young people, limiting

‘individual’ uses by conforming to the teacher’s voice is regarded as a basic etiquette for

attaining harmony in school. In this case a teacher is seen by young people as a mediator

of Cheong space. Thus, although Cheong space consists of the hierarchy between the

members in terms of power, as in teacher-student relations, young people tend to

perceive Cheong space as an aspect of extended familism and seek to reinforce it.

Second, the ‘immobiling’ strategy appears also in young people’s negotiation of parental

control in and outside the home, mainly in two ways: through the control over the mobile

itself, and control through the mobile. In the control over the mobile, parents forbid

young people from having a mobile phone until a certain age at which young people

begin to be considered relatively independent (around the age of 16). After purchasing

the mobile, young people, whose bills are always paid by their parents, have to keep their

phone bills below a certain cost. In addition, young people are sometimes forced by their

parents to disconnect their mobiles because mobile phones are considered to disrupt

study. The main reasons for confiscating children’s mobiles are as a temporary

punishment for the child’s ‘misbehaviours’ such as laziness in study or over-

consumption of the mobile telephone.

Parental control of their children is also maintained through the mobile without

confiscation or disconnection. Indeed, the sort of control sought here is facilitated by

maintaining connection:

9

I tried to stop using my mobile phone … because I sometimes felt it was

intrusive. Then, my Mum asked me NOT to disconnect my own phone. It

was actually to suit her convenience to keep track of me. (North Bank female

07)

Some young people are forbidden to use the caller identification function by parents

because this would enable calls from their parents to be screened. Many of my

informants occasionally used caller identification to avoid answering parental phone calls,

for example, when they were having fun with friends without their parents’ knowledge.

If I am hanging around outdoors without informing my family, they call me

on my mobile phone. These calls spoil my fun, you know. If someone really

wants to be free it may be a nuisance (e-mail interview). (North Bank female

04)

Another form of control through the mobile is to the extension of parenting beyond the

home. Parents try to immobilize young people through the mobile; they continuously

attempt to trace their children to outside home and eventually force them to come back

home through the mobile:

My Mum used to call my mobile even as early as 7 PM. “Come home

NOW!” (North Bank female 08)

When I get a call from home, I don’t really feel so good because such calls

are always something like, “Come home soon! As soon as the crammer

finishes, come back home!” Sometimes I am upset about those phone calls,

so I shout to my Mum on the phone, “I AM COMING.. Don’t worry! I AM

COMING, COMING!”. (North Bank male 01)

10

If I am late, my Mum always calls me on my mobile phone. “Come home

soon!”. Then, I have to come [because I said “yes” in reply]. (South Bank

female 07)

This control through the mobile is frequently practiced in gendered ways in terms of the

role-playing of father and mother. For example, the detailed mobile parenting is likely to

be carried out by the mother, while the father has more fundamental control of all family

members. Some fathers do not call their children directly but call their wife at home and

ask her to track down their child by calling him/her.

It’s unusual to have a call from my Dad. If he has anything to talk to me

about, he calls my Mum at home and then my Mum calls my mobile phone.

(North Bank female 03)

This mode of contact is perhaps rooted in the patriarchal communication of traditional

culture in which the fathers’ contact with children is usually mediated by the ‘domestic

person’, mother.

It is significant that, despite the immobilizing impact of these parental practices, young

people experience these calls as signs of security and attachment. As Ling (1999) notes,

‘the child wants freedom, but still wants the security provided by the home’. In my study,

young people, including those who occasionally did not answer their parents’ calls,

considered calls from parents as expressions of family bonding or attachment between

family members.

North Bank female 02: My parents can use text messages but it is a slow

process for them to press the buttons … so, I am touched when I get a

message from my Dad.

South Bank female 08: My Mum has often sent me messages whenever she

feels bored at home, since I showed her how to use text-messaging …

Actually, I have just got a message from my Mum. She asked me to buy

something on my way home. So, she now wants to make sure I’ve done it by

11

sending a text-message.

Interviewer: Does your Mum send messages even when you are in school?

South Bank female 08: Because my Mum knows when lunch time is in my

school, she sends me a message, “How are you? It must be lunch time”,

something like that.

In addition, the use of the mobile phone gives young users a means of negotiating

parental control in and outside the home.

South Bank female 07: (…) If I don’t have a mobile, my Mum cannot call

me. In this sense, not having a phone would be better.

South Bank female 08: (looking at and interrupting SF 07) It [not having a

phone] is more inconvenient, you know! If I had a phone, it would be better.

My Mum is trying to track me down around my town even at midnight

because I don’t have a mobile!

In the above quotation, these young people describe how having a mobile phone may

provide the possibility of negotiation with parents, although the mobile phone is often

used by parents to locate them. They show also that being connected with family may

make their everyday lives more stable and routine.

To summarize this section, young people re-work traditional norms of sociality in school

and the family by more or less minimizing the mobility of their mobile communications.

In this immobiling process, however, power-relations between members within Cheong

space tend to remain.

Ritualizing the local

(1) Sharing in the family

It is common among young people to practice sharing of Cheong through collaborative

use of the mobile phone. Above all, it should be noted that for a number of young people

a mobile phone itself is often a result of sharing within families or relatives. The first

12

mobile phone was often bought for many of my informants as a gift, mostly as a

graduation gift.

I was bought one by my Mum as a gift for graduating from middle school …

however, it was not so useful at first … not so many of my peers were using

a phone at the time. But months later, when I entered high school, I realized

many peers had one. They had been given one at graduation … same as me.

(North Bank female 01)

I really wanted to have my own mobile phone. But my parents said, “No”.

But one day my uncle on my Mum’s side bought one for me. (North Bank

male 03)

In addition, instead of purchasing a new phone, second-hand phones which have been

used by other family members are passed down to some young people. For instance, an

informant (North Bank male 02), now using his third mobile phone, was twice given

mobile phones by older siblings and once by his father. It is also common for some

young people to use a mobile belonging to another family member before owning one of

their own:

When I went into the third year in middle school (15 years old) I started

hanging around outdoors more than before. So, my Dad lent me his mobile

phone. “Reaching you is getting difficult - take this!” Since then, I had used

my Dad’s phone - until he bought one for me. He said, “It is YOURS. Use it

well”. That’s how I got my own. (North Bank male 07)

Thus, young people’s coming into possession of a mobile phone is, in some families, an

example of gifting within the kinship network. This may be partly due to young people’s

economic dependency on their parents. However, even when they get money from their

parents to buy their own mobile phone, some young people go to choose a mobile phone

with one or more siblings and they are deeply influenced by their siblings’ opinion:

13

My dad gave me money to buy a mobile phone. I went to the shop with my

elder brother. At first, I really wanted to buy a folder-type [the most

expensive] one. However, my elder brother hates young people buying

expensive things … He said, “What an expensive one. Buy something

cheaper!” So I had to buy this [cheaper] one. (South Bank male 08)

It is significant that the passing down of mobile phones between family members is often

made from mother to children. Some young people consider it unnecessary for their

mother to have a mobile phone because they see her as a ‘domestic person’ located in the

home:

South Bank female 05: My Mum got a mobile phone as a free gift. Then she

passed it to me.

Interviewer: Has your Mum had a mobile phone?

South Bank female 05: No. My Mum wouldn’t need one.

(2) Sharing in the peer group

In addition to sharing mobile phones within the family, young people also practice rituals

of sharing within friendship circles; borrowing and lending mobile phones, collectively

receiving and sending messages, and circulating certain messages. Through these

practices, young people are engaged in reinforcing their feelings of family-like friendship.

Exchanging messages between friends is a kind of expression of Cheong,

you know. In particular, we exchange more texts during school term exam

periods to cheer each other up. (North Bank female 02)

Young people’s reciprocal exchange of calls or messages, which is metaphorically

termed a practice of ‘gifting’ (Taylor and Harper, 2002) between two or more people, has

been reported in many other studies based on different contexts (Kasesniemi and

Rautiainen, 2002; Taylor and Harper, 2002; Weilenmann and Larsson, 2002). In my

study, collaborative uses are explored also; circulating chain messages, collective reading

14

and composing messages and so on. Observation revealed numerous activities of this

kind:

A square in front of shopping mall in Myongdong, a central area of North

Bank, Wednesday afternoon

Four teenage girls are standing on the square, forming a circle. In the centre

of circle, a girl is receiving and sending messages and sometimes reading

aloud the messages. Others around her are looking at the screen of her

mobile, laughing and chatting. (Field-note, November 2001)

First of all, it is universal for young people to share mobile phones with friends and peers,

which generally means borrowing and lending a phone. Furthermore, sharing a mobile

among young people is so common that non-sharing users are often criticized. Young

people not involved in sharing practices are described as ‘irritating’:

Interviewer: Between your peers, do you borrow or lend your own mobile?

North Bank female 04: Yeah.

Interviewer: When someone asks you to lend your mobile, how do you feel?

Aren’t you irritated?

North Bank female 04: No, not really. But there are some kids who are not so

happy about lending their phone to peers. They even lock their mobile with a

password. Especially kids, who are really not cool, do that. It’s irritating!

Second, whilst the mobile phone handset can be shared broadly with peers (sharing of

the mobile), sharing through the mobile, an activity of circulating of information or

certain feelings, is a more restricted practice. This may be because the practice of sharing

something through the mobile phone is somehow ritualized and consequently follows

certain processes and norms. This ritual of sharing is mainly maintained by a system of

reciprocity. The members in the friendship circle are subject to the obligation to accept as

well as the obligation to reciprocate (Taylor and Harper, 2002). Text-messages play a

particularly important role in this sharing through the mobile by maintaining continuous

connection.

15

When I bought a mobile for the first time, I made peace with my friends with

whom I had quarreled, you know, she also had a mobile. Because… I was so

excited … so, I sent a message to the friend ... I messaged, “I did something

wrong to you last time ... sorry about that”… and then, we began to get along

together again. (North Bank female 09)

I’ve got a mobile phone … and I don’t ignore messages from others. I reply

to them, the, they reply again, and I do again… (giggling) Finally, we

become friendly…something like that. (North Bank female 08)

The continuous reciprocal ritual tends to strengthen the ties between members without

intentional disconnection, ‘Chewing-out’ (Ssibgi) which refers to ignoring the calls or

messages from others among young Koreans.4 Young people consider chewing-out to be

one of the worst etiquettes in the use of the mobile. In young people’s use of mobile

phones, an immediate reply is a fundamental obligation upon receipt of a message.

The most upsetting thing in using the mobile is to receive an insincere reply

and to be chewed out by the person to whom I have sent a message (North

Bank female 02, e-mail interview)

Receiving very few calls and messages also disappoints young people because the

number of received text messages or calls is considered to indicate the popularity of the

user (cf. Ling and Yttri, 2002: 161). The following excerpt from an informant’s self-

report shows young people’s concern about a decreasing number of calls and messages

received and it also reveals the extent to which it is felt ‘chewing-out’ should be avoided:

Until a few days ago, I discharged the battery of my mobile for a while

because I didn’t want to be bothered by just anybody who knows me and I

was also tired of having to reply to those messages.

But, now even after I recharged the battery there is no contact on my mobile.

If somebody asks me “Why did you discharge the battery? Why don’t you

just ignore it when you receive bothering texts?”, I will say, I am a quite

honest person and I’d rather die than chew out messages from others. Ha, ha.

16

(North Bank female 06, self-report)

Being chewed out and losing popularity indicated by the decreasing number of calls

received can lead to a loss of self-worth. A young person who is in a position to chew out

others’ calls and messages may make the others feel disempowered in the peer circle.

The phone and its content as objects of exchange are a mechanism through which power-

relations can be played out (Taylor and Harper, 2001: 442). For this reason, it is assumed

by young people that chewing-out may pollute the purity of Cheong space in which every

member is supposed to share everything equally. In this regard, the tendency towards

which young people try to minimize being chewed-out by other peers shows how

Cheong space is maintained by the practice of sharing.

(3) Doing gender in sharing

It is noteworthy that the practice of sharing through the mobile and avoiding chewing-out

are more common among female informants. Boys were more likely than girls to use the

mobile in functional ways such as calling to arrange meetings, while girls appropriated it

in more intimate ways. The use of text-messaging is a case in point. In male informants’

narratives, girls were often described as being obsessed with text-messaging:

Girls rather than boys like text-messaging. Even during class, girls are

sending messaging like this (posing himself as if sending a message). They

never take the mobile out of their hand. Boys, you know, put the mobile in

their pocket and check it out when they have got a new message. Girls send

messages even between classmates in a class. Sometimes they forget to turn

the ring to vibration. It’s really annoying. (South Bank male 07)

For female informants, what are shared through the mobile are often feelings of intimacy,

whilst males tend to share information or humour. In fact, it is noticeable that text-

messaging is increasingly replacing the exchange of friendship letters between girls,

reinforcing intimacy as the following suggests:

North Bank female 10: When using text-messaging, I can say what I can’t do

in face-to-face conversation [between girls].

17

Interviewer: For example?

North Bank female 10: “I love you!”

In contrast to female respondents, males describe differently the intimate phrases

circulated on the mobile phone.

It’s fun. Sending a message, “I love you” to a boy. Then, he may reply,

“What the hell are you saying, bastard?” (South Bank male 08)

If a teacher, especially a tolerant one, confiscates a kid’s mobile during class

and so there is a phone on the teacher’s desk, other boys in class send text-

messages on the phone from their own mobiles, saying “I love you”. “Let’s

have sex at a motel tonight”. What a childish joke! (North Bank male 01)

As in these narrations, male informants do not use text-messaging in order to support

directly intimate face-to-face talks, but rather they frequently appropriate intimate

messages as a joke. For boys, direct expressions of intimacy such as ‘I love you’ is

regarded as ‘childish’, especially when they are circulated between boys. In addition,

using messages because something is hard to say face to face is considered by males as

less appropriate. A male informant states that he does not need such a medium as the

mobile phone in order to express his intimacy to his girl friends:

Interviewer: Do you send messages to your girl friend on her mobile, if there

is something hard to say? For example, very intimate words…

North Bank male 01: There is no reason to use messages for saying things

that are hard to say to someone’s face.

By the practice of sharing text-messages, existing friendships become more visible in

particular between girls. For some females, the words hard to say in face-to-face

conversation are often circulated via the mobile phone. This gendered aspect of sharing

through the mobile implies that the invisibility of young women in Cheong space can be

18

made visible through mobile communication, for example, through text-messaging. It is

occasionally found in young people’s narratives that Cheong space is hierarchically

structured in terms of gender-relations such that women are rendered invisible in Cheong

space:

Women are nowhere. I don’t know where they are hiding. It may be obvious

that the world consists of half male and half female … I did not notice this

before; however I can see that everywhere now after I realized that. I had

completely no idea before. (South Bank female 02)

To summarize this section, the practice of sharing in mobile phone use represents the

way in which traditional sociality, Cheong, is embodied in friendship networks as well as

in the family. This sharing, however, involves certain power-relations between the

members involved in the practice. But it should be noted that this ritual of sharing is not

only an expression of conserving tradition but it suggests also the transformation of local

sociality by re-appropriating power, as one can see in young female users creating

intimate networks more actively than ever before.

Conclusion

In current studies of young mobile phone users, the focus tends to be on individual and

liberating aspects of the mobile phone as a symbol of global technologies. As a result, it

is claimed, young people are disembedded from the social and the traditional. This

empirical study, however, has suggested that traditional norms can be reinforced to a

greater or lesser extent through mobile phone use. In this article it has been shown that

young Koreans try to maintain local sociality embodied by Cheong space by

appropriating the mobile in certain ways; for example, the practices of ‘immobiling’ and

sharing. Using this example, I have addressed the argument that, in certain local contexts,

globalization can be re-worked via local sociality, which is deeply influencing and even

re-traditionalizing the global.

The material presented, moreover, demands a critical re-examination of the

‘disembedding’ thesis. First, it is necessary to review arguments that new technology will

rapidly disembed young people from the local since, in reality, young people’s everyday

lives are less differentiated from their parents’ ones than is often suggested (cf.

19

Nicholson, 1980). Although the ‘disembedding’ thesis is likely to focus on the

discontinuity with tradition in young people’s everyday lives, certain norms of sociality

appear to remain crucial within ongoing processes of cultural tradition in a number of

contexts (cf. Fukuyama, 1995). In particular, it has been observed that, for ‘peripheral’

young people traditional norms of sociality are still central in the identity work they

undertake.

Secondly, individualized and globalized representations of youth tend to neglect the

‘ordinary’ sides of young people’s everyday lives by over-emphasizing the spectacular in

global contexts as the sub-cultural studies once did (Facer and Furlong, 2001). In fact, it

has been agreed that subcultural young people and mainstream young people appropriate

information technologies in a similar fashion in local contexts. In particular, the strong

sense of conformity in East Asian Confucian culture has led young people into a

‘uniform individualization’ (Clammer, 1997) which may be closer to collective

conformity than individualization in a Western sense.

Third, it is significant that some Western case studies also present the importance of

collective norms of sociality among young mobile phone users, which are similar to

Cheong-based sociality among young Koreans in some respects (e.g Weilenmann and

Larsson, 2001; Talyor and Harper, 2002). For example, Talyor and Harper (2002) have

suggested in their ethnographic study of young British mobile phone users that young

people practice ‘gifting’ through the specific rituals of sharing text-messaging on their

mobile phone. This kind of consideration seems to be based on the generational

distinction in which young people’s appropriation of technology is clearly demarcated

from adults’. However, in my study young people’s cultural practices via the mobile

phone did not contradict that which was valued by adults. By and large, young people

would rework traditional and local sociality by practicing strategies of re-appropriating

the global technology.

20

Bibliography

Alford, C. F. (1999) Think No Evil: Korean Values in the Age of Globalization, London: Cornell

University Press.

Beck, U. (1992) Risk Society: Towards a New Modernity, London: Sage.

Bennett, A. (1999) ‘Subcultures or neo-tribes? rethinking the relationship between youth, style

andmusical taste’, Sociology, 33 (3): 599-617.

Cho Han, H. (2000) ‘You are entrapped in an imaginary well: the formation of subjectivity

within compressed development: a feminist critique of modernity and Korea culture’ Inter-

Asia Cultural Studies, 1 (1): 49-69.

Choi, S-C. (2001) ‘Discovering Korean Culture through Interpersonal Relationship: Cheong and

Chemyon’, Dialogue: Newsletter of the Korea UNESCO cultural exchange services, 20,

Korean National Commission for UNESCO.

Clammer, J. (1997) Contemporary Urban Japan: A Sociology of Consumption, Oxford:

Blackwell.

Facer, K and Furlong, R. (2001) ‘Beyond the myth of the “cyberkid”: young people at the

margins of the information revolution’, Journal of Youth Studies, 4 (4): 451-469.

Fornäs, J. and Bolin, G. (eds) (1992) Moves in Modernity, Stockholm: Almqvist and Wiksell

International.

Fukuyama, F. (1995) Trust: The Social Virtues and the Creation of Prosperity, London: Penguin

Books.

Giddens, A. (1994) ‘Living in a post-traditional society’, Beck, U. et al. Reflexive Modernization,

Cambridge: Polity.

Heelas, P. et al. (1996) Detraditionalization, Oxford: Blackwell.

Kaseniemi, E-L. and Rautiainen, P. (2002) ‘Mobile culture of children and teenagers in Finland’,

Katz, E. and Aakhus, M. (eds) Perpetual Contact: Mobile Communication, Private talk, and

Public Performance, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Kim, D. (1990) ‘The Transformation of familism in modern Korean society: from cooperation to

competition’, International Sociology, 5 (4): 409-425.

Korea National Statistical Office (2002) ‘Statistics on mobile phone users in South Korea’,

http://www.nso.go.kr/cgi-bin/sws_999.cgi, accessed 23, April 2002. [in Korean].

Knorr-Cetina, K. (2001) ‘Postsocial relations: theorizing sociality in a postsocial environment’,

21

Ritzer, G. and Smart, B. (eds) Handbook of Social Theory, London: Sage.

Kulp, D. H. Jr. (1966) Country Life in South China: The Sociology of Familism, New York:

Columbia University Press.

Lee, S-W. (1994) ‘The Cheong Space: A zone of non-exchange in Korean human relationships’,

Yoon, G. and Choi, S-C. Psychology of the Korean People: Collectivism and Individualism,

Seoul: the Korean Psychological Association.

Leichty, M. (1995) ‘ Media, market and modernization: Youth identities and the experience of

modernity in Kathmandu, Nepal, Youth Cultures: a cross-cultural perspective, London:

Routledge.

Lew, S-C and Chang, M-H. (1998) ‘Functions and roles of the non-profit/nongovernmental

sector for Korean social development: the affective linkage-group’, Korea Journal, 38 (4).

Ling, R. (1999) ‘We release them little by little: maturation and gender identity as seen in the use

of mobile telephony’, International Symposium on Technology and Society (ISTAS`99),

Rutgers University, New Brunswick, New Jersey, USA.

Ling, R. and Yttri, B. (2002) ‘Hyper-coordination via mobile phones in Norway’, Katz, E. and

Aakhus, M. (eds) Perpetual Contact: Mobile Communication, Private talk, and Public

Performance, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Malbon, B. (1998) ‘Clubbing: consumption, identity, and the spatial practices of every-night life’,

Skelton, T. and Valentine, G. Cool Places: Geographies of Youth Cultures, London:

Routledge.

Merchant, G. (2001) ‘Teenagers in cyberspace: an investigation of language use and language

change in internet chatrooms’, Journal of Research in Reading, 24 (3): 293-306.

Mitterauer, M. (1992) ‘Youth groups in transformation’, Fornäs, J. and Bolin, G. (eds) (1992)

Moves in Modernity, Stockholm: Almqvist and Wiksell International.

Nicholson, J. (1980) Seven Ages, London: Fontana.

Rushkoff, D. (1996) Children of Chaos, London: Harper Collins.

Taylor, A. S. and R. Harper (2002) ‘Age-old practices in the “new world”: a study of gift-giving

between teenage mobile phone users’. CHI 2002, Minneapolis, MN, USA.

Thompson, J. B. (1996) ‘Tradition and self in a mediated world’, Heelas, P., Lash, S and Morris,

P. (eds)(1996) Detraditionalization, Oxford: Blackwell.

Weilenmann, A. & Larsson, C. (2001) ‘Mobile phones in local interaction’, Brown, B. et al. (eds)

Wireless World: Social and Interactional Aspects of the Mobile Age, London: Springer.

22

Wellman, B. (2001) ‘Physical place and cyberplace: The rise of personalized networking’,

International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, 25 (2): 227-252.

Wexler, P. (1992) Becoming Somebody: Towards Social Psychology of School, London: The

Falmer Press.

NOTES

1

There are few academic works exploring the notion of Cheong although young people in my study

considered it as a precious value of Koreanness. This may be because the notion has been appropriated too

intimately into everyday lives to be analyzed in academic terms. While Cheong is underdeveloped as an

academic concept, familism or tradition has been more often defined in international academic writing

where it has been used to highlight the significance of the family (e.g. Fukuyama, 1995) or tradition (e.g.

Heelas et al. 1996) as a central reference in identity formation. See, for example, Kulp who defines familism

thus: ‘a form of social organization in which all values are determined by reference to the maintenance,

continuity, and functions of family group.’ (Kulp, 1996 cited in Kim, 1990)

2 According to the government’s national statistics in 2001, 77.7 percent of teenagers in South Korea

owned a mobile phone (Korea National Statistical Office, 2002).

3

The so-called ‘North Bank’ areas of the Han River, Seoul, are considered to be a lower middle or

working class area, while the ‘South Bank’ is indicative of modernized, upper middle class culture.

4 In comparison with the English term “chewing-out” – which refers to talking angrily to someone –

“Ssibgi” in Korean slang means avoiding talking by not responding to others.