Joho the Blog
An Entry from the Archives

Oh Yeon-ho, , of South Korea's OhMyNews

The Internet started in America for military purposes, but citizen journalism started in Korea.

Ohmynews is the citizen-journal of S. Korea. He talks about how it affected the 2002 election. There are now 35,000 citizen reporters who submit 150-200 posts a day. [No, not each.] They are paid only a little bit — $20 if it's a big story. Readers can also comment on articles. Versioning of content encourages paid subscriptions.

Why in Korea? Because there's resentment of the media monopoly, because broadband penetration is high (75%), it's highly networkedsocially, and the young folks are open minded, liberal and activist. It hasn't happened in Japan because Korean youths are more activist.

OhMyNews is a child of the marriage of technology and democracy.

Stephen Ward, Oxford Internet Institute

Why aren't there more S. Koreas?

1. Because politicians are risk averse. And change is happening outside the parties.

2. The culture of politicians — they're ingrained a f2f culture.

3. There are party rules that make it difficult

Rebecca MacKinnon, Berkman

The biggest influence of the Net will be in emerging democracies such as S. Korea. Philippines, too, where SMS text messaging brought down the president, which it's unlikely to do in the US.

The Net also gives voice to the powerless in controlled environments. The problem is that you can't go from voice to action. You can't use MeetUp because the police will find you.

OhMyNews doesn't claim to be objective in the way the Times does. OhMyNews is lefty. For example, there was a dispute between Korea and China, and OhMyNews set up a special section titled "Chinese Hegemon." OhMyNews counterbalances Korea's traditionally conservative media.

Jeff Ooi, Malaysian blogger

[He talks about the difficulties faced by Malaysian bloggers. I missed it. Sorry!]

Q: Esther Dyson: What does this do to objectivity and our expectations of the media?

Oh: The mainstream media is jealous of what we have done. Citizen reporters are asked to write under their own name, with a social security number and phone number so they can check. Copyeditors do fact-checking. We ask our citizen journalists not to follow wthe style of professional journalists; write in your own style.

Rebecca: Transparency helps with the objectivity issue.

Rebecca: Cellphone may have an impact on politics in repressive countries.

Oh: I went to N. Korea and was able to connect to the Internet by making an international call through China. Maybe someday N. Korean citizens will be able to contribute to OhMyNews.