It is a common sentiment that the internet age has brought on rapid and radical changes to the world in almost every aspect – creating new and commonly used methods of communication, information exchange, industry, and so on. Despite all of this, the spatial dynamics and history of the internet age remains woefully understudied in an academic context. In this short blog post, I wish to make the case for ‘virtual spaces’, or perhaps more accurately, spaces adjacent to the virtual as being worthy of dedicated study, and as being important in modern cultural history. In my opinion, South Korea offers some particularly rich examples that are worthy of academic attention.
While the PC Cafe exists as a concept and space in western culture, it is often associated with negative images. The PC Cafe is often conceived as being grimy, worn down, outdated and in general far from an appealing space – something that stands in stark contrast to the South Korean ‘PC방’ or ‘PC Bang’. The PC Bang is defined as a space that is appealing and unique from a PC Cafe, despite the fact that at the most basic level, both spaces offer similar services.[1] This is a space that is obviously and unambiguously associated with the virtual – PC Bangs seen primarily as a place where people can play specifically online competitive video games, many of which involve teamwork and communication – an example being the ever popular League of Legends. While it would be a mistake to overemphasize the importance of these spaces in South Korean culture, their rise to prominence in the late 1990s and 2000s – long before video games, especially in a competitive context, would enter the ‘mainstream’ – and their alleged prominence amongst the younger generations in South Korea suggests that there is potentially unique spatial dynamics at play.[2]
The PC Bang is also closely associated with another spatial construction relatively unique to South Korea – that of the esports ‘event’ – a broad analogue to a sports event, where organized leagues test the skills and abilities of the best players of a specific video game. The two key factors that in my opinion make these events worth analyzing from a spatial construction is their notable level of popularity and complexity. In the case of the latter, esports events and leagues in South Korea have been historically able to construct elaborate studios and stages to facilitate themselves. An example can be found in that of the permanent studio utilized by the Global Starcraft II League, or GSL – which is covered in lights and displays, seating for spectators, live commentators in both English and Korean, and an atmosphere that is analogous to that of a baseball stadium, but still unique.[3] Regarding the point of popularity, esports events in South Korea have demonstrated the ability to draw in significant live crowds – one example can be found in the 2005 ProLeague finals, which saw over 100,000 people arriving live to watch two teams compete in Starcraft: Brood War.[4] While esports events in the 2000s in the west mostly consisted of grass roots, community driven events, esports events in South Korea were considered popular enough to warrant the investment of large businesses such as SK Telecom and the KT Corporation, respectively responsible the successful and roughly two decades old esports teams known as T1 and KT Rolster.
While the examples discussed in this short post are based in South Korea, there are similar cases of unique and influential virtual spaces across East Asia as a whole, which only further emphasizes the unmined potential in this area of research. Virtual spaces are also interesting in my opinion due to their very modern origins and fast rate of development. While this does pose challenges in terms of research, with an overload of available information making separating the useful information from noise difficult, the entrenchment of the internet in modern life means that is almost certainly going to be a problem that historians will have to deal with at some point.
[1] Tae-gyu, Kim. ‘`PC Bang’ Emerges as New Way of Promotion’. The Korea Times, 23 July 2007.
[2] Tae-gyu, Kim. ‘`PC Bang’ Emerges as New Way of Promotion’.
[3] Olsen, Creighton. ‘GSL Studio: The Heart And Seoul Of Starcraft’, 13 January 2020.
[4] Erzberger, Tyler. ‘Beaches of Busan Awash in Esports History’. ESPN.Com, 28 July 2017.