Abstract
-
This article sets the context for this special themed issue on the ‘Korean digital
wave’ by considering the symbiotic relationship between digital technologies, their
techniques and practices, their uses and the affordances they provide, and Korea’s
‘compressed modernity’ and swift industrialisation. It underscores the importance
of interrogating a range of groundbreaking developments and innovations within
Korea’s digital mediascapes, and its creative and cultural industries, in order to
gain a complex understanding of one of Australia’s most significant export markets
and trading partners. Given the financial and political commitment in Australia
to a high-speed broadband network that aims to stimulate economic and cultural
activity, recent technological developments in Korea, and the double-edged role
played by government policy in shaping the ‘Korean digital wave’, merit close
attention from media and communications scholars.