- Overview
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The winner of the 3rd Jeju 4.3 Peace Literary Award Team Aleph tells the story of people who try to manipulate public opinion by posting malicious comments on the left-wing website after the 2012 presidential election and to disable the website.
- Book Intro
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Jang Kangmyeong’s novel follows an interview between Chattatkat, a member of Team Aleph which manipulate public opinion and a journalist from a progressive newspaper and describes how Team Aleph do their work in reality. The three main members of Team Aleph are all in their twenties and actively involved in a right-wing website Ilbe Community which call every female “kimchi woman (kimchi nyeo)” to express their hatred, while spending their money on illegal massage parlors, bars and clubs.
While making pocket money by making up fake reviews on products, they receive a call from a PR firm who requests them to spread bad reviews about a recently released movie dealing with a worker employed by W Electronics who is dying from Leukemia and is made to criticize the working conditions of the company. Samgung, who is the cleverest of the three, judges that such a strategy would not be effective and makes a counter offer of spreading vicious rumors about the film company that it has exploited their employees. W Electronics refuses his offer, yet a mysterious group called Happoheo hires Team Aleph and makes them execute the strategy. It succeeds in appealing to public sentiment, and the film falls flat. Afterward, the members of Team Aleph feel proud of themselves, believing that they can change the world though they seem like nobody. For them, Happoheo is not just a client who requests projects and pays but the one and only entity that trusts them though they are being secluded from society.
Later, Team Aleph receives an order from Lee Cheolsu and the old man from Namsan both of whom lead Happoheo to disable an Internet community website that serves as a base for resistance and spread a new Internet culture among the teens that denounces the 386 Generation.
Team Aleph vividly portrays how power is formed and exercised within the so-called “Progressive” Internet community and how its members stab each other in the back, starkly criticizing false consciousness and the ugly side they have. While maintaining tension within the story with multiple twists, it also poses an interesting question about the boundaries between online and offline realms, fiction and reality.
- About the Author