Tropes and technologies for open talk in South Korean offices since the 1980s
1980s South Korea saw many reports promising a ‘new office revolution’ or a ‘new wind’ that would dramatically change South Korean work life through automation (자동화 – jadonghwa). Drawing on newspaper archives from the 1980s and 1990s, this presentation looks at some of the technological promises and narrative tropes that were used in this period to show how offices would allow greater connections to developed countries.
The speaker will also contrast this period with the early 1990s when the advent of commercial chat rooms (pc tongsin) in which actual connections to strangers online saw huge growth in popularity, particularly by office workers. He draws analytical attention to the ways that tropes of communicative connection and intimacy were pervasive across these periods as a way to explain and experience technological development.
About the speaker
Michael Prentice is a Senior Lecturer in the School of Languages, Arts and Societies at the University of Sheffield. Trained as a linguistic and cultural anthropologist of Korea, his research broadly focuses on genres and technologies of communication in contemporary South Korea organizations. His monograph Supercorporate: Distinction and Participation in Post-Hierarchy South Korea, was published 2022 with Stanford University Press. He received his PhD at the University of Michigan and previously held a postdoctoral fellowship at Harvard University.
(Header image credit: Shawn via Unsplash)