By Yoon In-jin (Korea University)

1. Preface

Up until now, “diaspora” has been translated as the “separation of an ethnic group,” pointing to the migration and community of a single ethnic group who have been dispersed overseas due to tragic circumstances of in the home country, living with the desire to return home. Most prominently, the term has been used to refer to the forced migration of the Jews after they were taken captive to Babylon as the Jewish Kingdom was destroyed, and then scattered all over the world after the Roman Empire to over Jerusalem. The Jewish Diaspora starts with a capital letter “D” and is written as “Diaspora,” and is described in the Oxford English Dictionary as “the dispersion of the Jews beyond Palestine following the Babylonian captivity” or “the dispersion of the Jews in Palestine or modern Israel” (Choi, 2003: 10). As the Jewish experience has been imprinted as the Diaspora, diaspora has been recognized as a tragic experience of immigration and settlement, symbolized by forced migration, national division, oppression and return. One of the most extreme examples of this diaspora was the massacre of six million Jews in World War II under Nazi rule, when the Auschwitz concentration camp was the representation of Jewish persecution and ethnic cleansing. The Jewish Diaspora ended on May 14, 1948, when Israel was established. However, history is ironic and paradoxical in that due to this, over six million Palestinian refugees have been dispersed abroad, spawning new diasporas.

Diaspora did not necessarily refer to an involuntary, tragic experience from the start. Etymologically, diaspora is derived from the Greek preposition dia ("over" in English, “over [something]” in Korean) and the verb spero ("to sow" in English, “to scatter” in Korean). The ancient Greeks conquered and colonized Asia Minor and the Mediterranean coast by force, and then expanded their forces by migrating their own people there. At this time, the diaspora had an active, positive meaning of immigration and colonial construction. Since Greece was not a suitable land for agriculture and was located on the coast, it developed its economy through maritime trade from the get-go and expanded its territory by building colonies in the areas near the Mediterranean (Niesbett, 2003). The Mediterranean, like a super highway, contributed to the exchange of European civilizations and the expansion of supremacist forces. If we return to the "original" meaning of diaspora, a diaspora does not only refer to involuntary, tragic and passive events and phenomena, but the voluntary, active and productive movement of humans.

Overseas Colonies of Ancient Greece

As countries with a large number of overseas Koreans abroad (i.e. China, Israel, Italy, Greece, India and Mexico) incorporate overseas Koreans into their economic, security and globalization strategies, diaspora no longer has the meaning of separation, but rather, of a transnational network. The Korean Community theory has been raised in academia because the claim that Korea should utilize the 7 million overseas Koreans dispersed throughout 170 countries is receiving public support.

As a means of developing the Korean Community, Seong Gyeong-ryung and Lee Jae-yeol (1998) proposed the “Korean Community Network Community” concept as a way to connect and integrate overseas Koreans around the world by utilizing the rapidly developing information and communication technology. This concept refers to the idea that "Korean people living on the Korean Peninsula and various parts of the world have formed a wide range of people-to-people and information networks based on the ancestry and commonality of the Korean people (language, tradition, history, customs) that promotes cultural and economic exchanges and that through this, the survival, well-being, development and welfare of the Korean community can be promoted as well. Im Chae-wan and Jeon Hyung-kwon (2006) also claimed that the Korean diaspora formed a transnational network between Koreans at home and abroad, forming social capital that could benefit each other, and that in the era of globalization, the conditions of the Korean Community did not present a similarity in space and lineage, but rather, a psychological identity based on network and ethnicity. Yoon In-jin (2009) proposed that the mutually beneficial relationship between overseas Koreans and their home country is a "global Korean network" from the perspective of transnationalism, and defined this as "the people-to-people, material and information network formed by Koreans living in the Korean Peninsula and various parts of the world based on the lineage of the Korean people, cultural commonality and ethnic identity."

2. Korean Diaspora as a Platform

 I would like to take one step further from the concept of network and propose the vision of Korean Diaspora as a platform. In day-to-day life, a platform refers to a place where a train and passengers meet, such as a platform at a train station. However, with the development of Internet and IT, the significance of a platform is infinitely expanding to search engines such as Google and Naver; social media platforms such as Facebook; Internet encyclopedias such as Wikipedia; and video sharing sites like YouTube. A more systematic definition of a platform is “an environment in which various groups such as suppliers and consumers can participate and exchange values ​​that each group desires to obtain through fair transactions, and as the interaction between platform participants occurs, an ecosystem of mutual benefits is formed, creating new values and benefits” (Yoon Sang-jin, 2015). Recently, the success of the platform business is owing to the large number of various entities that are seeking mutual benefits and providing new and diverse contents and services to satisfy the diverse needs of consumers. The reason that Internet-based media such as YouTube and Netflix have grown rapidly to surpass that of public broadcasting is because of the constant creation and consumption of diverse content among the large number of suppliers and consumers within the Internet space. Therefore, platform business can be considered to be the requirement for success in the information and knowledge-based economy, also known as the fourth industrial revolution.

The clearest definition of a platform in the ITC sector is the union of components and rules required for “transactions between users” (Eisenmann, Parker and Alstyne 2008) (requoted by Choi, Chang-hyun, 2017). Here, the component includes hardware, software and service modules, and the rules refer to guidelines that regulate or coordinate network participants. For the platform to be viable, it is necessary to have a standard, promised protocol of information exchange, policy to support user behavior and experience, as well as an organic network that encompasses the rights and responsibilities of stakeholders involved in the network.

Choi Chang-hyun (2017) gives an example of a matchmaking club, explaining that it is a platform in the form of "venue," allowing men and women to make contact with one another and form relationships, providing a venue to facilitate interaction. Creating value added by connecting various groups is at the core of the platform strategy. In order for such a strategy to be possible, the following five prerequisites are necessary: 1) a connection function (providing a "venue" for facilitating the exchange between various groups and connecting them), 2) cost reduction function (with the platform providing certain items instead of the groups to save them time and costs), 3) a search cost reduction function (guaranteeing a certain level of service quality by providing a type of relief and trust to the brand provided by the platform), 4) network effect based on community formation (mutual communication of information formed between participating groups), and a 5) triangular prism function (connecting two or more groups that seem to have no direct interaction at first).

Accessing the Korean diaspora from a platform perspective can be seen as a great leap forward like a “quantum leap” from the existing research and policies on overseas Koreans. The transition from the concept of separation to the concept of network is a big change, but now, a transition from network to platform will require creative imagination and planning. Therefore, before designing the Korean diaspora as a platform, it is necessary to discuss the definition of the concept, direction and requirements of what this actually means.

As a platform, the Korean diaspora can be defined as "a co-prosperous Korean community in which overseas Koreans around the globe form a transnational network and interact with each other to provide new opportunities and benefits to one another." For the Korean diaspora to execute such functions, conditions including many participants, mutual benefits, fair trade, openness, environment and infrastructure, and a coordinator, which can be generally referred to as platform conditions, are prerequisites. More specifically, there must first be a large number of participants with no limits to expansion. Participants with diverse backgrounds, abilities, and preferences should be able to participate in the platform and create a synergy effect to achieve collective intelligence. Second, they must be able to pursue mutual benefits and be motivated to participate in the platform consistently so that individual members can be assured of the adequate and fair distribution of profits. Third, the distribution of participation and profit should be operated under fair rules. Fourth, hardware, software and service modules (the components mentioned above) must be provided to enable the platform to operate. Fifth, a coordinator is needed to coordinate the interactions among participants and to intervene and resolve problems when they arise so that the platform can function as normal.

Looking at the current Korean diaspora under these conditions, there is potential and possibility, but this is not sufficient enough to develop into a functional platform. The Korean diaspora is comprised of over seven million overseas Koreans in more than 170 countries around the world, forming a network between overseas Koreans and their home country, but it has limitations in creating new values ​​and benefits through a synergy effect. The first limitation is that the global Korean network is mainly a one-sided relationship between the overseas Koreans of one country and their home country, and has not developed into a dual-sided relationship among overseas Koreans living in different countries. Due to the differences in political economy, language, culture, ideology, generation and hierarchy, overseas Koreans in different countries have limitations in terms of communication and exchange. The second limitation is that the global Korean network is still government-led, which restricts the variety of contents and services that users want. For example, “Korean Net” (www.korean.net) which is operated by the Overseas Koreans Foundation is an online network where over seven million overseas Koreans transcend the limitations of time and space to interact with each other. The Korean Network is a comprehensive network of information covering fields including politics, economy, society, education, culture, medical, law, agriculture, and etc., aiming to be a portal (Meta Portal) for mutual benefits and prosperity as an "integrated online Korean Community network" through providing necessary content, people and a collective DB. However, when one visits Korean Net and searches for information and services within the site, it becomes evident that the size and variety of the information are very limited. This brings up the question of whether this can attract overseas Koreans with various backgrounds and desires when it is difficult to escape the idea that it is a website operated by the government. The third limitation is that there is little motivation and interest (profit) for overseas Koreans to participate and interact with others in the global Korea network. It is the participants’ interests that will transform the network into a platform, but currently, the network can not evolve into the platform because the benefits that can be attained by participating in the global Korean network are unclear. The fourth limitation is that it is critical for the platform to link the demand and supply between the participants, but the search function for contents and services required by both suppliers and consumers within the global Korean network such as Korean Net and World Korean Business Convention are weak.

To overcome such issues and limitations, the following remedial measures are necessary. First, the government should concentrate on forming a platform infrastructure and the role of a coordinator, and the operation of the actual platform should be divided up into roles in which individual participants and private organizations are responsible. In this aspect, the World Korean Business Convention run by the Overseas Koreans Foundation and the World OKTA Convention run by the World Federation of Overseas Korean Traders Associations, which are criticized for being too similar, should be combined, and World OKTA, which is a private entity, should operate the World Korean Business Convention. Second, it is necessary to create an open environment in which many players participate in the platform to produce, supply and consume various contents and services. In addition, multilingual services should be improved to enable overseas Koreans to communicate effectively, overcoming language barriers. Third, real profits from participating in the platform must be ensured. In this regard, YouTube’s principle of distributing the benefits of viewing content should be benchmarked, so that the Korean diaspora platform is equipped with a system that distributes fair profits as it provides information, knowledge, media contents and other services.

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