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252 Sunny Yoon

Facing the Kidnet movement mobilized by Korean journalism,
people organize public discussions in order to resist its commer-
cialism and what they fear will be the negative cultural impacts of
the Internet on young Koreans. Although it does not represent the
opinion of the all Koreans, it is valuable to look at these opposition
readings.
The point of this research is not to attack Korean journalism,
but to examine its impact on everyday life of the Internet users in
Korea. Internet users are mobilized and affected by newspaper re-
ports of the Internet. Journalistic discourse about the Internet con-
tributes to the habitus of the Internet users. Users voluntarily
participate in conforming to the dominant discourse, or habitus,
without “being the product of obedience to rules . . . presupposing a
conscious aiming at ends” (Bourdieu 1977, 72). They are not aware
of being affected by power/knowledge as represented by the Inter-
net. They use the Internet based on a kind of mythical belief, or
meconnaissance. In particular, these users conform to the dis-
course of scientism and technocratism—the beliefs that science
will discover objective truth in evolutionary stages of human his-
tory, and technology will set people free from physical and mental
constraints; users make themselves believe that the Internet will
bring about a futuristic dreamworld. They also believe that Inter-
net users will be leaders of the “Information Society” of the twenty-
first century.
But it is precisely these scientistic and technocratic myths of in-
evitable advance that Bourdieu characterizes as meconnaisance. We
should note, however, that meconnaisance is different from false con-
sciousness or ideology as Marx understands these. Meconnaisance is
not externally imposed by repressive authority. Rather, it is inter-
nalized in peoples’ minds and it produces reality by means of human
practice. In these ways, it constitutes a habitus that constructs his-
tory and society. In order to look at the habitus of Internet use in
Korea, I now turn to an ethnographic study of young Korean Inter-
net users.

The Habitus of Internet Users and Subculture of Korea’s
New Generation

This section examines the habitus of young Koreans who use the In-
ternet in their everyday lives. The new generation of Koreans is am-
bivalent regarding this new technology: using the Internet may mean