The Korean Internet Freak Community and Its Cultural Politics, 2002–2011

In this dissertation I will shed light on the interwoven process between Internet development and neoliberalization in South Korea, and I will also examine the formation of new subjectivities of Internet users who are also becoming neoliberal subjects. In particular, I examine the culture of the South Korean Internet freak community of DCinside.com and the phenomenon I have dubbed “loser aesthetics.” Throughout the dissertation, I elaborate on the meaning-making process of self-reflexive mockery including the labels “Internet freak” and “surplus (human)” and gender politics based on sexuality focusing on gender ambiguous characters, called Nunhwa, as a means of collective identity-making, and I explore the exploitation of unpaid immaterial labor through a collective project making a review book of a TV drama Painter of the Wind. The youth of South Korea emerge as the backbone of these creative endeavors as they try to find their place in a precarious labor market that has changed so rapidly since the 1990s that only the very best succeed, leaving a large group of disenfranchised and disillusioned youth. I go on to explore the impact of late industrialization and the Asian financial crisis, and the nationalistic desire not be left behind in the age of informatization, but to be ahead of the curve. I argue that DCinside users are ambivalent subjects who try to become a desirable and successful neoliberal subject but, at the same time, are aware of their subordinated status in which they can easily become a failure and fall into a position of social loser. The culture “anything goes” of DCinside enables its users to speak out their voice and belie the consequences of neoliberalization, which makes up the politics of loser aesthetics in DCinside. As DCinside users challenged the protocols of their predecessors the netizens, so now a more extremist group has evolved to challenge the current status quo.Ph.D.2018-02-19 00:00:0