DC Inside

DC Inside

Type of site	Internet forum
Owner	Kim Yusik
Created by	Kim Yusik
Website	dcinside.com
Alexa rank	956 (June 2016)[1]
Commercial	Yes (partly)
Registration	Optional
Launched	October 1999
Current status	Active

DC Inside (Korean: 디시인사이드), frequently noted under the initialism DC, is a South Korean internet forum. Initially established as a community dedicated to digital cameras and photography, it has met broad notoriety in Korea due to its unique nature. Among Western media, it is analogous to the English-language website Reddit for its image and influence upon Korean internet culture.^[2]

Overview

DC Inside was opened in October 1999 by Kim Yusik as a community of interest towards discussion specifically pertaining to digital cameras and photography, hosting only a few categorized image boards. In fact, "DC" of its name is from "Digital Camera." The nascent website was primarily populated by early adopters of electronic devices, but later expanded contiguously to the propagation of additional image boards. Presently, it hosts over 500 active boards, and Kim anticipates the count to multiply to over 1000 by the latter half of 2007.^[3] In 2009, DC inside stopped providing information about Digital Camera since it has transformed to general imageboard website.

DC Inside does not depart from popular bulletin board systems used in Korea, operating a free-to-use script called "Zeroboard". Due to security vulnerabilities and bandwidth issues surrounding Zeroboard, many have publicly expressed their frustration recently in regards to the matter.^[3]

Board topics range from generic categories such as socio-politics, science and sports to particular subjects such as those committed to individual celebrities. New galleries with other topics are acknowledged and created if deemed appropriate by the site administrator.

Culture

Like similar web-based public-manipulating communities, it is difficult to define this growing community, for general totalitarian atmosphere differ tackily about the variety of a board. The Japanese internet forum 2channel is often likened to as its counterpart, serving similar purpose and sharing its chaotic nature and large size.

Members of DC Inside identify themselves as a "galler" (갤러), meaning "an inhabitant of a gallery". This term is used as a suffix to be tied to the name of a gallery, coining a new term such as "makjang galler"(an inhabitant of the makjang gallery). Although the topic of each gallery varies, the majority of members espouse a cultural foundation unique to DC Inside, sharing thoughts in "DC slang" and "DC mentality" (a.k.a. leftistism).

In accordance to its status as an image board, during the entirety of its subsistence, DC Inside has produced a large quantity of internet phenomena existing in South Korea today. The immensity of significance in Korea has led to the creation of the term "surrogate website", often referred to rival communities in order to bolster its image.

Anonymous Posting

Like the Japanese website 2channel, the freedom to post anonymously is one of the distinctive features of DC Inside which shapes its unique culture. When posting something in a gallery or adding comments to other members’ post, one may identify himself as anything he wants; a formal registration or log in process is optional. This encourages users not only to communicate with one another more casually and expressively, but often to insult and abuse one another more readily.^[4]

Parody and Neologisms

DC Inside is known to be responsible for generating and circulating most of the popular jokes, buzzwords, and neologisms in Korea. Many of its users eagerly create and share composite photos, sounds, or video on the site which parody or satirize a variety of controversial social and political phenomenon and public figures. They enjoy using words or phrases out of their original contexts as another way to satirize or criticize controversial issues or figures. Most of the “DC Slangs” are quickly spread to other online communities, offline mass media, and eventually into the Korean people’s everyday lives. Ying-Yar (originally meaning surplus or remainder but alternatively meaning a person who is incompetent and useless in society) is one of the most popular neologisms created on DC Inside.^[5]

An Alternative Medium for Producing and Spreading News

There are many cases in Korea in which political, social, and cultural problems, as well as news and gossip, are first pointed out as controversies on DC Inside rather than by traditional media such as TV news or newspapers. The traditional media then pick up the news and disseminate it to offline viewers. For instance, in 2005, the famous fraudulent stem cell research of Korean veterinarian Hwang Woo-suk was first investigated in the ‘Science Gallery’ section of the site. Later, the case was picked up by PD Su-cheop, a Korean TV investigative reporting show, and went on to become a national controversy.^[6]

References