On election day in December 2002, the South Korean online newspaper OhmyNews began posting up-to-the-minute reports about how presidential candidate Roh Moo-hyun was lagging in the polls. The blanket coverage by the Web site proved to be a blessing for the leftist candidate. OhmyNews’s reform-hungry young readers besieged Internet bulletin boards and fired off text messages, imploring their compatriots to go to the polls and vote for Roh. By day’s end, Roh had pulled off a come-from-behind political upset, narrowly winning the election by 2.3 percent. As for OhmyNews, the scrappy start-up became a part of global media lore overnight. In a nod to the site’s newfound political power, Roh granted it his first exclusive interview.
That a maverick Web site like OhmyNews could become a political kingmaker was unimaginable a few years earlier. South Korean media, in part because of the country’s early years as a military dictatorship, have long been controlled by a handful of elites. But in February 2000, Oh Yeon Ho, formerly a reporter with the left-wing magazine Mahl, was fed up with newspaper barons’ conservative bent. “The voice of citizens had been ignored for too long,” says Oh. “I think progressive and conservative voices should be heard equally.”
So, Oh bought some new computers and launched a Web site. He capitalized on his citizens’ affinity for communications technology—some 75 percent of Koreans have access to high-speed Internet—by encouraging ordinary citizens to sniff around the country for news stories to post online. He asked them to submit articles, commentary, pictures, and video via computers and cell phones,...
