The Study on the Political-socio Properties
of the
Korean Hacker Communities
Yoon, Yeo-Sang
Department of Sociology
Graduate
School
Pusan National University
ABSTRACT
This is the study on the Korean hacker communities.
The term hacker is originated from MIT and other universities
in USA, and meant computer mania. Nowadays, it means
unauthorized computer system intruder rather than computer
mania, and most studies on hackers are conducted in
criminal sociological perspective. But hacker communities
have shown political-socio properties since one of the
first hacker communities was formed at MIT Artificial
Intelligence Laboratory. Political-socio properties
of hacker communities are becoming important in these
days. So this study pays attention to political-socio
properties of the hacker communities in Korea.
The purposes of this study are as follows
:
First, the term 'hacker' has contradictory meanings
from software programmer to computer system intruder.
This study will examine the reason of the contradiction.
Second, this study will examine the political-socio
properties of the hacker communities. These properties
are used as a reference to examine political-socio properties
of the hacker communities in Korea.
Third, this
study will examine the political-socio properties of
the hacker communities in Korea..
Methodologically, this study depends on the
papers, articles, and home pages of hacker communities
to study the hacker communities in Europe and USA. To
study the Korean hacker community, survey is also used
with the methods used to study hacker communities in
Europe and USA.
The results of the study are as follows:
First, hacker as a software programmer was originated
from MIT and other universities in USA. And hacker as
a computer system intruder(network hacker) originated
from phone phreaking.
Second, hacker
communities following MIT hacker community have a trend
of anti-commercialism. And network hacker communities
have a trend of anti-nationalism.
Third, leaders of Korean linux communities
and those who participate in GNU Korea(Korean network
of GNU/FSF) show a trend of anti-commercialism. But
some linuxers support commercialization of linux and
linux supporting application software. On the contrary,
network hacker communities show pro-commercialism strongly.
Leaders of linux communities and the participators of
GNU Korea strongly support free software movement also.
But the result of survey shows that both linuxers and
network hackers have a trend of nationalism. Stallman's
copyleft movement is based on anarchism. But in Korea,
copyleft was adapted as an anti-capitalism movement
in progressive leftist movement camp.
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