Korea Dispatch

A piece in the JoongAng reports that fewer and fewer residents in Seoul read books, preferring to watch TV or surf the Web in their spare time. According to the report, nearly 40 percent of those polled say they have not read a single book in the past year.

Looking at the numbers it’s no wonder that when the anti-beef protests erupted the Internet and broadcast media played such an enormous role in the whole affair. I’m curious what the numbers would be for newspapers.

It’s just another sign of the growing impact that technology is having on Korean society, from family life and traditions to national politics. While the Internet offers access to a tremendous amount of information, alot of that is taken in sideways as users scroll from one page to the next.

Seoul says – pretty weakly – that it’s going to try and get more books into people’s hands, but somehow I doubt they’re going to come up with a way to counter the momentum, much of it first begun by the government itself as a way to boost the country’s economic growth.

Just as an aside, it’s striking that as broad as the Internet is, it can also help feed into a very narrow outlook, as seen in the anti-China — or anti-Korea — slurs that were flying across the netisphere not long ago.