This is an interdisciplinary study in which the fields of media studies, religion, and political economy are integrated from the perspective of cultural studies.
This study explores how shamanism, the indigenous belief system in Korea, has been revived as the dynamics of shamanic inheritance with the advancement of cybercultures in Korea.
Cyber memorial zones, as an apparatus of Korean cybercultures, testify to the rebirth of shamanism in the form of digital spirituality.
With the historical consideration of Korean shamanism, which has been oppressed and marginalized by the ruling classes, this study attempts to understand the rebirth of shamanism as the empowerment of the Korean populace.
The notion of digital spirituality is significant as an instrumental tool to better understand the relations of Korean cybercultures and other cultural contexts.
By examining the construction of digital spirituality in various cyber memorial zones, this study articulates the different power tensions lying within socio-political and cultural contexts in Korea.
Cultural studies was adopted as the methodology of this research for contextualizing cyber memorial zones in the different contexts and articulating their power relations, especially between Korean cybercultures and the new culture of death.
By doing so, this study explores the relations of technologies of the Korean people’s self and those of government domination.
Textual analysis, online and in-depth interviews, and participant observation were selected as the methods and were used circumstantially.
This research finds that cyber memorial zones are the outgrowth of the combination of the government-driven information policy and the rebirth of shamanism as inherited dynamics.
Cyber memorial zones have multiple facets that reflect not only the technologies of the empowered Korean populace’s self but also the power of capital flow that deterritorializes the rite of death.
Cyber memorial zones also mirror technologies of government domination that enhance capital flow.
Technologies of the Korean populace’s self, although empowered through the cyber cultural contexts, do not seem to be counter-technologies in response to the power of capital flow and the technologies of government domination.