Korea Independent Media Center

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the link that dope left in a previous post seems to not be working so here is the information from a cache...

The Ongoing History of IMC Korea

The following is a brief summary of the long history of IMC Korea up to the point where we are now: July 6, 2005 The following information is from a discussion between Nancy, Christian, and Patcha, (veteran independent media activist, jinbo.net member and former webmaster of base 21) around the beginning of 2005.

The beginning of this history has as its backdrop a supremely “wired” country with probably the most active and healthy independent media in the world. Unlike most IMCs around the world, Korea isn’t really in need of domestic grassroots media. However, there is an acute need for links to the outside…while many NGOs and activist groups have English pages, they are infrequently updated or checked and are a rather poor source of information. Korea has an incredibly vibrant and fascinating activist scene, one that activists around the world would benefit greatly from being connected to through independent media. The gist of the problem of IMC Korea is how to get this “connected community” connected globally.

1998

• jinbo.net begins operation in Korea
• A lot of talk around this time about starting an “English only” web base but almost no one wanted to do it because people thought it was too big a project, especially technically
• Patcha becomes active in NACEP (National Association of Campus English Press), tries to bridge this organization with social movements. He has the long- term goal of build a global independent media network from NACEP.

1999

• The first IMC forms in Seattle in conjunction in response to the awe-inspiring demonstrations against the WTO ministerial meeting held there in November of that year
• Kim Myung Jun (now president of Mediact) attends demonstrations and is totally inspired by the IMC and the people he met in Seattle. When he returned to Korea, he begins to think deeply about the possibility of starting a Korean IMC

2000

• International solidarity coordinators from KCTU, PSPD, jinbonet, PICIS (now KOPA) begin monthly meetings to discuss issues of international solidarity and to share information
• After a few meetings, Patcha proposed making a net-interactive website, a news centre, not just a database
• After 5 or 6 brainstorming meetings, base21.org was officially proposed

The biggest perceived problems re: starting up a globally connected independent media site at these meetings were a lack of English proficiency and a lack of manpower. It was thought that this project would be huge and that each big organization would “democratically donate” a representative to work on the project who would “shoulder the burden” of the organization’s contribution. These delegates already had a hefty workload with their primary organizations and were deeply reluctant to take on more work. It is decided that Patcha will be the full time guy to take on the project.

End of 2000/beginning of 2001

• base21.org goes online with Patcha being the main coordinator and international solidarity being its focus and begins to canvas foreigners/Koreans with good English ability with a handle on the social movement scene here to write stories
• Cho dong won and Kim myung jun of Mediact (according to Patcha, 2 of the very few people in Korea interested in global media solidarity at that time) approached jinbonet with the proposal to start an IMC in Korea *

To my mind, IMC was falsely perceived to be a “monolithic” “western style/foreign” “huge” “somewhat irrelevant to Korea” organization (largely due to the hype of the Seattle protests and the seeming complexity of the network) and people already active in Korean independent media, while recognizing the need for global solidarity vis a vis the internet, were reluctant to initiate a project that they saw as being too work intensive and that necessitated communication in a language they felt unskilled at. This perception persists today. Base21 was formed under the assumption that only native English speakers are “good enough at English” to write for the webzine. There were many meetings between 2001 and 2005 regarding base 21’s fundamental platform and its development.

2001-2003

• Patcha becomes the primary mover and, ultimately, the overworked workhorse for base21 using jinbonet’s server
• Many, many difficulties are encountered in trying to form a core group of members
• Base 21 finally gets put to pasture and Patcha returns to jinbonet full time

I think the problems encountered by Base 21 mainly stemmed from its hierarchical Patcha-centric structure and its reliance on foreign reporters (based on the assumption that foreigners or English savvy Koreans with international connections are the logical global link and only those who are “good at English” can write for global media). Our task with building a Korean IMC requires forging a deeper understanding with the grassroots, non-hierarchical structure of IMC, ORGANISING, confidence building re:English language skills (communication, not grammar is key!) and just getting the site up to physically demonstrate how little labour is really involved in maintaining the site and how it will benefit social movements here in Korea.

By the end of 2004 a new group of Koreans (mostly from the local anarchist community) and foreign activist living in Korea got together to discuses forming an IMC Korea. The group had some connections to past efforts but still faced a large learning curve. What we didn’t know hurt us and in turn we were forced to go back and research the past attempts to start a Korean IMC.

Out of this research we were able to sharpen and define the would-be role of a Korean IMC and the need that it would fill in the Korean activist scene. Then we created the two documents “Proposal for a Korean Indymedia Center” and “On the Management of a Korean Indymedia Center”

Around July 2005 IMC Korea decided that our outreach had gone about as far as it could go and the next step would be to create an example site. Basically we wanted to put up a working site that others could see and become involved with. We didn’t yet feel ready to join the IMC network however. In order to build a strong base for IMC Korea we wanted to get more people involved before completing all the documents and submitting the forms. We started looking around for some one to host our site and had a meeting with Jinbo Net to that end. Then group decided to take a small break until Jinbo Net reached a decision whether to host us or not.

This small break soon turned into something much longer as one of our core members was deported and another left the country to start a life with her new husband in Canada.

suggestions

If a major goal is the international networking, rather than just local networking which is already highly developed, non-hierarchical, radically transparent etc, how about thinking of not just English, but also Japanese, Chinese and Russian? All of these languages are related to states which have dominated Korea in the past and continue to try to influence it, but surely by getting out the information in their languages, anti-authoritarian activists in these different language regions will be better able to resist corporate propaganda about Korea. In any case, ImcJapan and the Russian-language indymedia, http://russia.indymedia.org, both exist and are organised by local, grassroots, open groups of activists. With UTF-8 coding, it's not technically difficult to have all these languages together (though it may require a bit of work to do the translations). -- BouD - 10 Aug 2005

-- NevinD - 07 Jul 2005