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Hacking the City—The Spatial Practice of Resistance in Hyuk-Joo Kwon’s Webtoon XINK3R and Ji-don Jeong’s Novel The Diary of a Night guard

  • Journal of Popular Narrative
  • 2022, 28(2), pp.329-352
  • DOI : 10.18856/jpn.2022.28.2.010
  • Publisher : The Association of Popular Narrative
  • Research Area : Interdisciplinary Studies > Interdisciplinary Research
  • Received : May 13, 2022
  • Accepted : June 15, 2022
  • Published : June 30, 2022

Yu Inhyeok 1

1서울시립대학교 도시인문학연구소

Accredited

ABSTRACT

The purpose of this study is to explain the representation of ‘city hacking’ in the webtoon XINK3R by Hyuk-joo Kwon and the novel The Diary of a Night Guard by Ji-don Jeong as a concrete example of ‘spatial practice of resistance’. In other words, I tried to reconstruct the pattern in which hacking as the practice of deviant technology appears as a social practice that changes the meaning of a specific place or space. In Chapter 2, webtoon XINK3R is examined. In XINK3R, Pi, the protagonist, is a practitioner of hacking and parkour. He appeared as a kind of cyborg fused with a supercomputer, with a body disrupting the city’s network. On the other hand, as a parkour practitioner, Pi is a person who does not follow the regulations of urban space and pioneers his own path. In other words, Pi was being reproduced as a resisting subject that penetrated technical and spatial security through hacking and parkour and violated social rules. In Chapter 3, The Diary of a Night Guard is examined. The main character of this novel, ‘George (Hoon)’, is an accomplice of city hacking. Here, city hacking refers to the act of infiltrating into an urban space where passage is prohibited due to security. At this time, hacking is not limited to the application of computer technology, but has extended meaning as piracy infiltrating prohibited areas. In this context, The Diary of a Night Guard can be understood as expressing the rebellious desire to break through the city’s regulations. In these texts, the countercultural practice of hacking appears to expand or restore the way we experience urban space. These narratives are valuable in that they are symbolic forms of expressing utopian aspirations and fantasies for an alternative world.

Citation status

* References for papers published after 2023 are currently being built.

This paper was written with support from the National Research Foundation of Korea.