Similarities between KaTalk and Wash Place

How the idea of wash place can be applied to the research project of Smart Ajumma? Wash place is rather relevant to link to the concept of mobile communication in Kakao Talk group chat rooms by ajummas through the usage of smartphones. A space of wash place is regarded as the equals of Kakao Talk group chat room. And both village women before the 1960s and ajummas in 2015 take the same duty of various houseworks for their family such as washing clothes. In addition, several similarities were found between village women of wash place before 1960s and ajummas of Kakao Talk group chat room in 2015.

Here are 6 similar points that were discovered.

1. Tranformation: transformable spaces depending on the purpose.

2. Keep in touch: to keep their relationship through continuous communication

3. Women’s place

4. A notice board: Information intersection

5. A bridge: pre-meeting to post-meeting

6. Pop-up communication: they don’t have an appointment for the meetings but they know they can meet with each other in the wash place and Kakao Talk’s group chat rooms.

1.Transformation

Wash Place in the 1960s

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Kakao Talk’s Group Chat room in 2015

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The other five similarities between Kakao Talk’s group chat room and the wash place were mentioned many times in previous posts. So I don’t mention about the other five similarities between Kakao Talk’s group chat room and the wash place in this post.

Kakao Talk and Ajumma (1)

Have you heard about Kakao Talk? For me and Koreans Kakao Talk is an inextricable mobile communication app today. Kakao Talk is an application for smartphones which allow people to have instant mobile chatting without having barriers of time and space. If there is wifi connection with your smartphones, you can have message chatting, voice chatting, video chatting and sending various types of files (e.g. photos) in your chatting rooms. Kakao Talk is similar to WhatsApp , but Kakao Talk has more functions than WhatsApp. For example, Kakao Talk has Kakao Shop (buy gifticon), Kakao Pay, Kakao Style, Kakao TV, Kakao Taxi (you can call taxi through your Kakao Talk app whenever you need to take a taxi) and etc.

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File 11-02-2016, 1 06 56 PMVarious brands of ice cream shops you can choose and send gifticon through using Kakao Talk to your friends or family.

Gifticon has a diverse selection to choose from such as a range of clothes, accessories, foods, e-coupons for cafes or restaurants etc. People who receive gifticon from their friends through Kakao Talk, can simply show the e-code of those gifticon to the counter of the shops when they want to use them.

Kakao Talk is a one of apps for mobile communication on smartphones.  Kakao talk allows people to have constant mobile communication whenever they need and wherever they want to communicate with their contacts. It becomes a huge mobile communicative tool for Koreans. Group chat rooms are good example to explain how Kakao talk became a major mobile communicative application for Koreans. For example, companies have mobile meetings on their group chat rooms, family discusses their next meeting on their group chat rooms and especially ajummas love group chat rooms! Through using group chat rooms in Kakao Talk, people can do ‘group chatting’ with their friends or colleagues easily. They don’t have to send the same messages to each person one by one.

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Y Kim: 

Yes, Kakao Talk’s group chat room is so convenient to organise meetings with friends.

J Han:

All I need to do is just create a group chat room. And then it is very easy to send a message to everyone at once! It’s so easy!

Interviewees responses of a question about using group chat room of Kakao Talk

According to the interview above, the main reason to use group chat room of Kakao Talk was for sending messages to several friends at once and organising meetings as well. As it is easier to send the messages to everyone who are in the same group chat room, it is convenient to organise meetings without hassle rather than send the same messages to each person separately. Besides, people in the group chat room can discuss or manage together to set a place and time for a meeting with ease. This means that, everyone can see the content of conversation at one view and even though they might miss the conversation, people can come back to read those conversations at any time with their smartphones. The advantages of using Kakao Talk’s group chat room attracts ajummas who used to call to each friend to organise the regular meetings.

The beginning of every month, my mom’s smartphone gets busy because of Kakao Talk’s alarming sound. Her friends send Kakao Talk messages endlessly to organise their regular meeting. My mom wasn’t familiar with using her smartphone and Kakao Talk before. But now she is an expert of Kakao Talk! She purchased another cute emoticon for Kakao Talk few days ago. She told me that her friends got so many emoticons so my mom also want to buy another new released emoticon to send her friends in the group chat room. How cute she is! And how cute our ajummas are!