Dong Hyun Songpowerless, the modality of Korean cyberspace did not change in a revolutionary way, but expanded
incrementally as users adopted global services in their daily online practice (Song 2012, 220). De
Certeau contends that ordinary people’s tactics in the place is to “transform themselves in order
to survive” (1984, xi). The online users’ individual cyber migration to the global web service pro-
viders was not based on a revolutionary intention to overturn the power logic but rather based on
their desire to maintain cyber practice free of any concerns. Their tactics were not chosen by ordi-
nary people to “challenge the order of power,” as de Certeau states, but to illustrate how they have
“disguised or transformed themselves in order to survive” within a dominant society (de Certeau
1984, xi). One factor that explains this cyber migration is disbelief in place. De Certeau states
that as the consequence of “the devaluation of beliefs ... the demobilization of workers is grow-
ing faster than the surveillance network”. As a result, he argues that belief is “detached from it”
(de Certeau 1984, 179–180). The migration of online users from Korean web portal-based email
accounts to Gmail and from Korean-based streaming services to YouTube, together with their
abandonment of Agora on Daum.net, Kakao Talk to Telegram can be seen as the devaluation of
beliefs of the future resulting from the detachment of Korean online users from place.
My use of the term cyberspace refers to ordinary people’s spatiotemporal experience online,
which resulted in the emergence and increased significance of cyberspace in society. I argue that
a more cohesive view can be achieved by treating cyberspace as a new place for power holders,
as a daily space for ordinary people, and as a source of profit for web service providers (Song
2012, 19). With reference to the role of social media for online activisms in the Korean context,
I argue that we need to focus our analytical positioning more on the spatial transformation
(whereby the virtual becomes actual) and the subjects’ responses to this.
In view of this, M.I. Franklin’s term “cyberscape” urges us to rethink our concept of cyber-
space. She states:
I would posit that cyberspaces entail more than a digitized amalgam of these two
dimensions. They concern more than technology system and artefacts, static images, or
incumbent viewers. They are particular to the sorts of “imagined world” not consti-
tuted by, experienced as, and circulated through cyberspatial practices.
(2010, 78–79)Her theoretical position is that online is no longer a virtual space which gives users a moment to
reflect on their daily lives offline. Rather, online is an actual space in terms of producing and repro-
ducing political, social and cultural issues. David Morley also argues that the discussion on cyberspace
should focus on “material practices and settings of everyday life” rather than on the dichotomiza-
tion of online versus offline. For this, he suggests conceptualising the distinction between online
and offline as “the virtual” and “the actual” using the materiality-based approach. He states:
We are better able to recognize the distinction between the immaterial and material
worlds, without exclusively reserving the status of the real to the latter, and our atten-
tion can then profitability shift to understanding these different realms as different
modality of the real.
(2011, 275)In this context, the political materiality of Korean cyberspace became actualized while the social
media territories are linked with people’s daily lives. The activisms and conflicts discussed above
resulted in the reconfiguration of cyberscape phases in a political manner, which was driven by
the state’s power.