The dramatic advancement of cellphone technology has fundamentally
changed our daily lives. Smartphones and their applications have created
new capital for information and communication technology corporations
and changed the way people communicate. Because of an interesting
awareness of the significance for digital economy and people's daily
culture, many countries, from the U.S. to China, have massively invested
in the smartphone industries since the early 21st century. Among them,
South Korea has become one of the centers for technology development and
digital culture, although the country was once lagging behind in the
penetration of the phones and their apps. Yet within the last few years,
the country has taken a big step toward their goal of becoming a 'mobile
game wonderland' by appropriating smartphones and it now exists as a
curious test-bed for the future of smartphone technology. Smartland
Korea, as the first attempt to comprehensively analyze mobile
communication in the context of Korean smartphones, looks into a largely
neglected focus of inquiry, a localized mobile landscape, with
particular reference to young Koreans' engagement with their devices and
applications. Dal Yong Jin focuses not only on the celebratory
achievement of technological advancement, but also the significance of
social milieu in the development of the smartphones. He situates the
emergence of smartphones within the growth of mobile technologies and
overall telecommunications industries embedded in Korea's information
and communication technologies. The book examines the technology's
innovation and the evolution, the digital economy through the lens of
political economy, and the youth culture embedded in the Korean
smartphone context.
