Essays on Korean online game communities: A sense of place: Media and motivation in Korea by the Wang-tta effect; Order and chaos in an ethnography of Korean online game communities

Essay 1 : This paper presents an ethnographic analysis of the different ways Korean game players establish community. I look at Korean PC game rooms as "third places,", and peer relations associated with online video gaming activities. A synthesis of the Korean concept "Wang-tta" and application of the TEDA Ethos protocol provides extra insight into the motivations to excel at digital games and one of the strong drivers of such community membership. Essay 2: This paper explores the dichotomy of order and chaos within the realm of play. Among the topics under discussion are the binary models of Western thought including Nietzsche's Apollo and Dionysus as it relates to works in ludology, the study of play. I look at the notions of order and chaos in an empirical setting of Korea, while looking at the symbiotic relationship between the rhetoric of play as progress and frivolity