I am busy working on the Cows Gone Wild!! Hysteria review and other items on my main www.usinkorea.org website.

I decided to start a blog associated with the site where I’ll put up news and works-in-progress as they arise – while leaving the main site for the big updates —– because I expect things to be back to normal in Korean anti-US/USFK protest culture:  meaning, I expect a spike in activity about once a year.

You can access the blog at this link.

I’m not thrilled with the older version of WordPress my Yahoo!! webhosting service forces me to use.  It isn’t as user friendly as even the free WordPress blogs, but it will do.  — I’ll be updating it with items most days – both new items and flashbacks and website reviews and so on as I go.

I’ll also cross-post some of the better items here at GI Korea’s.

I set up a PayPal donation widget at the blog.

The new item I wrote about today is —- the large growth in Korean websites covering the protest culture.

Anti-U.S. beef import protests offer a glimpse of what the future may hold for mass communication and journalism.

Alongside Korean television broadcasters KBS, MBC and SBS, numerous Internet journalists were using digital video recorders attached to their wireless laptops and broadcast the candlelit “vigils” on the Web in real time.

At the marathon 72-hour protest that started Thursday night in Seoul, an Internet reporting team from “Ohmynews” was filing news and broadcasting live images. There were also Internet journalists from “People’s Voice” and “Color TV” among others. Also countless protesters used video recorders on their cell phones to upload images to the Web.  (Korea Times 6 Jun 2008)

Ohmy(gosh!!)news (link is for English version) and Voice of People have been around for several years – including covering 2002.

Back in 2002, there were also a plethora of other websites related to South Korean society’s massive NGO or civic group culture.  Many rose and fell as 2002 kept going.  Many gave ground as sites like VOP developed into the better source of information, images, and especially videos.

Since 2002, however, the NGO websites have shifted with the time — as central players like Daum.net and YouTube and other sites —- offered more convenient and cheaper or free hosting of videos and images which sites like VOP could use rather than storing the stuff and paying for the bandwidth itself.

(I still house (and pay for) all my own video edits and have not taken advantage of YouTube or similar site yet, because most of the videos I have are at least a couple years old.  As I do work on new spikes in activity, I might switch to these free hosting sites who have more user-friendly interfaces than the html I have to use).

I am not up to speed on what is what in this part of Korea’s blog-site-sphere right now.  I’ve started looking around to see how things have changed……And this is one of the first things I’ve noticed:  the vast growth in “citizen journalist” outlets — with lots of people covering the protests and sometimes live.

Back in the day, as my students like to say, Voice Of People was about the only source that really had things going on. Now, there are more.  Too many more……And I am hampered in shifting through them due to my pathetic Korean language skills.  But…it is fun locating some of these sites.

—-If you know of any – please leave a note in the comments…

For example, the guys at http://www.chungchun.net/ gained my admiration for the level of propaganda videos they put out back when I discovered the site in 2003 or 2004 (or 2005)…

They too have undergone major changes in their website – as I can tell from a quick look – but I’ll have to stumble around it some to see what goodies they have to offer right now…

Another thing I’ve found is that VOP is not as easy to dig into as in the past:  You used to be able to scan their index pages and see which posts had images and/or videos embedded in them – but not anymore.  Even with weak Korean language skills, I was able to navigate around VOP before and mine it, but now it is more difficult – especially with them switching videos off-site.

I have no idea (yet) about these many live-blogging protest websites (like what they do with their videos after the events)….but I’ll be checking it out over the coming months….preparing for the next spike in activity on the US/USFK front….