The tension underlying interactive television (TV) systems stems from the clash between interactivity as a communication model and TV as an organizing platform. Conventional TV is a communication system with an information-producing-and-distributing center and an information-receiving periphery. Interactive communication, on the other hand, is a catalyst for a power shift away from the center as the media are reorganized into two-way communication systems. The telecommunications firms, however, organize interactive TV following the conventional TV model because it is a historically familiar and successful economic model and an exemplary control mechanism for the production, distribution, and consumption of information. Thereby interactivity in interactive TV is reduced to mechanical query-response/request-delivery processes. Since interactive TV does not unleash the new liberties of communicative action offered by new technologies, the supposedly new medium is not really a new medium.

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The spectacular growth of the Internet in Korea has propelled her to the very top of the international rankings based on technology peneration statistics. The resulting international attention and national pride have fostered the notion of "Korea-a strong Internet nation." The ready embrace of this idea by officials and the public at large has made a critical evaluation almost an anathema. This article reviews the published critiques, which have been rare and scattered, and opens up the "what next" question for an unbounded discussion.

The building process of a technology system involves more than a mechanical combination of technical components. It follows particular organizing ideas and principles—the organizing ideology—of technology. This organizing ideology guides firms in their use of technology and in its manufacturing and marketing. Since the 1970s, telecommunications firms have conducted a great number of technical and commercial interactive TV trials. Interactive TV was believed to be a revolutionary new medium. Contrary to such rhetoric, the organizing ideology of interactive TV varied little from that of traditional TV. It was effectively a return to the concept of the conventional model of TV mass media. This mass media ideology was then inscribed onto the interactive TV system, actually determining its design, how it was built, and its strategies of technical deployment. This conceptual and institutional inertia was a main factor in the development of biases in the technological, institutional, and cultural structure of interactive TV.

Interactive TV is a medium providing the users with hundreds of video channels, on-demand delivery of programs, information services, on-line shopping, telebanking, etc. It is a seed-version of a comprehensive home communication medium. It is also a concrete, actual case of media convergence using developing information communication technology. It could also be a reference point to discuss the issue of telecommunications convergence. Interactive TV shows us how the telecommunications industry tries to expropriate information communication technologies according to their corporate visions. A large body of research measures interactive TV a failuresuccess frame, particularly in economic and technological terms. However, the failure-success of interactive TV is only half the story. Interactive TV is certainly a failed technology in terms of technology and business. But the question is more than just wrong technology, wrong business plans, or wrong timing. The problematic of interactive TV should go deeper than that. It should be reframed in the historical notion of cultural and political clashes between the lateral mode and the vertical mode in organising information communication technology in America. In short, the vertical mode of organising relates to a corporate-commercial move, whereas the lateral mode organising relates to an alternative-public move. The history of communication networks, whether broadcasting, telephone, cable, or even the Internet, in the US attests that it is a site of struggle between these two polarising ideals.