Mobile Hallyu: Creativity and Mobility

How does creativity move? What makes creative people, things, and ideas move? This paper is concerned with how creativity moves in an environment that is saturated with mobile media technologies. Focusing on digital media technologies and their related labors in contemporary Korea, this paper intends to examine the role of digital media technologies along with digital labor and Multi-Channel Network (hereafter MCN) entrepreneurship in Korea. Focusing on the Korean Wave as a cultural flow of creativity including cultural products (music, film, drama, etc.) and cultural practitioners (artists, entrepreneurs, etc.), this paper will not only contextualize the emergence of MCN in the brief history of digital network and culture, but also discuss the changing meaning of one-person media, often represented as creativity in Korea for the last couple of decades. This paper argues that the emergence of MCN in Korea can be characterized as online gentrification process of OPM, which is often represented as a transition or evolution from ‘BJs’ to ‘Creators’ and from UGC (User Generated Content) to MCN in Korea. In conclusion, the implication of MCNs in digital mobile Hallyu on the relationship between creativity and mobility will be discussed.