Seoul Searching: How Do Mobile Communication Technologies Alter Urban Mobility?

The majority of research on the information revolution in Korea focuses exclusively on the 1990s, disregarding previous historical periods, claiming that decade marked the beginning of an "information society." This article, on the other hand, adopts a wider, sociohistorical perspective on urban mobility and mobile communication technologies in the Korean context. By doing so, it recontextualizes the shifting relationship between mobile communication technologies and urban mobility and provides insights into how the modern social geography of mobility in Seoul is being constantly made and remade. In particular, the article focuses upon the social space of bang (literally "room" in Korean) as a product of the specific modern spatial rearrangement of the public and the private. It examines how the organizing principles of social spaces are moving from enclosure and containment to connection and distribution.