Since one goal of this special issue of The Journal is to provide insights into the social factors affecting the usage of ICTs, the Korean study outlined in this article provides a useful qualitative illustration of a whole range of processes at work, especially as an introduction to more technically oriented readers. There are some examples that are specific to Korea, the clearest being Cyworld, the Internet home pages offered by the main telecom company that has proved to be extremely popular and, as we shall see, has generated a range of social practices. In some senses this prefigured the social networking sites such as MySpace and Facebook that have recently gained popularity in the West. In fact some of the Korean response to Cyworld is understandable if we look more widely at the existing literature on youth and information and communication technologies. In particular, there is now a, mostly European- and Japan-based, literature on youth and mobile phones. This study also looks at how much the practices identified here carry over from the Korean context, or whether there are some that are specific to Korea.
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