Talking Hospitality and Televising Ethno-national Boundaries in Contemporary Korea (original) (raw)
Related papers
Television & New Media, 2017
This essay examines Korean television shows that feature foreigners encountering Korean society. A recent example, Non Summit, presents a series of formal “summits,” borrowing the format of an international strategic meeting. The show enables Koreans to consider issues involving cultural differences, racial discrimination, and national hospitality, particularly related to immigrants. Indeed, Korean TV shows that focus on foreigners living in Korea are increasingly popular, which surely reflects changes in the Korean racial imagination along with the increased number of immigrants entering Korea in recent years. Nevertheless, despite their stated purpose of encouraging Korea to be a more harmonious multicultural society, programs like Non Summit seem to reproduce racialized colonialism in the context of contemporary global capitalism, particularly through their selections of participants and their efforts to paper over revealed cultural tensions.
Different Takes: Migrant World Television and Multiculturalism in South Korea
The geography of multiculturalism has expanded beyond western settler societies and post-colonial Europe, the traditional focus of most research on the topic. South Korea, once one of the most ethnically homogenous nations in the world, has recently adopted multiculturalism as official policy in order to manage a still small but rapidly growing population of foreigners. While real and substantial steps have been taken, this paper focuses on the tensions and contradictions that exist by examining the emergence of a unique experiment in multi-ethnic media called Migrant World Television (MWTV). MWTV’s origins in the militant migrant worker movement and its development into one of the most vocal grassroots organizations involved in defining the meaning of multiculturalism in South Korea are detailed through a description of its programs and activism. Yet, as the South Korean government works to align its institutions with the reality of a more heterogeneous society, it continues to marginalize model organizations such as MWTV. This paper reveals a more dynamic, everyday form of multiculturalism that has taken root as different ethnic groups come together to practice multiculturalism by deciding what counts as news and entertainment for (im)migrants in South Korea.
Television & New Media, 2020
Airing on Joongang Tongyang Broadcasting Company (JTBC), a South Korean television network, Non Summit represents multiculturalism on the small screen through light-hearted, loosely structured debates between eleven men from different nations that is moderated by three Korean hosts. This study approaches the show's representation of multinational, homosocial masculine friendship and commentary as a text that advances the goals of damunhwa, a locally specific articulation of multiculturalism. Non Summit does this by constructing a normative ideal of a cosmopolitan citizen who espouses liberal progressive values and appreciation for superficial multicultural difference. The ideal, which the show associates with the West, is occasionally ruptured through fleeting moments when non-Western members challenge Western superiority and Koreanness, however, the ruptures are patched through the show's policing of difference through shared, heteronormative masculinity and homosocial friendship.
“Happy Seoul for Foreigners”: Scenes from Multicultural Life in South Korea
Inter-Asia Cultural Studies
Since the mid-2000s, multiculturalism has become a prominent buzzword in South Korea as the nation, which was founded on the myth of a single bloodline, tries to come to terms with its growing foreign population. This article looks at the figure of the industrial migrant worker who, despite being ignored by the mainstream media, has appeared in a handful of independently produced Korean films, including three-Bandhobi (2009), Hello, Stranger , Where Is Ronny? (2008)-that will be discussed here in detail. These films, as I will show, not only provide an alternative perspective on immigrant life in Seoul and other parts of the country, which is more often than not represented through the privileged world of the Western "expat," but also reveal the underlying tensions and contradictions in Korea's approach to multiculturalism as it tries to regulate diversity through the fiat of legislative policy while ignoring the moral and political choices confronting its citizens as they decide whether or not to befriend the other.
The Turn to " Bad Koreans " : Transforming Televisual Ethnicity
This article examines the production and negotiation of Korean American televisual images in U.S. reality and travel food programs. We explore two different representations of Korean Americanness, the first in CNN's Parts Unknown and the second in Bravo TV's Top Chef, to identify the demand for ethnic transformation that Korean Americans face and examine how these trials reanimate the role of Korean Americans on television. We argue that the iconoclastic figure of the " Bad Korean " highlighted in Parts Unknown challenges stereotypical portrayals of Korean Americans by positioning cast members as active and disruptive cultural producers. In our analysis of Top Chef, we focus on the emergence of the " Shifting Korean " to highlight the transformative process demanded by the reality television genre. We conclude by querying the representational possibilities for Korean Americans, asking what claims the " Bad Korean " and " Shifting Korean " can make on cultural authenticity.
In this paper, we ask how Now on My Way to Meet You is to be understood within the contexts of South Korean society, its evolving media culture, and developments in South Korean popular representations of North Koreans. We offer close readings of segments from Ije mannareo gamnida in order to elicit motifs that recur as it pursues its stated goal of humanizing North Korea for a South Korean audience and giving defectors a voice amidst the general populace. Given that the show’s very title intimates that a genuine encounter is about to take place, one might reasonably ask how successfully Ije mannareo gamnida establishes a meeting point for South Koreans with these recent arrivals from North Korea: in other words, does the show fulfill its stated aim of breaking down prejudices against North Korean refugees and supplying them with a vehicle that allows self-expression?3 Or, alternatively, does it reinforce, even if unintentionally, pre-existing regimes of knowledge and actually impede understanding of North Korea and its people? As we will argue, given the broader sociopolitical context, the show’s desire to reinforce elements of commonality between North and South while illuminating life in North Korea leads to a double bind: viewers are encouraged to recognize homogeneity with the newcomers based on a shared ethnic and cultural identity, even as the conversations and editing techniques applied to the material often represent the Northern panelists as Others.
Koreans and Foreigners: Public Discourse on Nation and Ethnicity in South Korea
This article explores how public discourse in South Korea, expressed through academic publications, mainstream media, and social media, is reimagining relations between Koreans and different nationalities and ethnic groups. Since the country's independence (1948), the paradigmatic image is one of Koreans unified and righteous in their relations with often-morally problematic foreigners: this is commonly termed the 'ethnic-nationalist' model. A more recent, 'multicultural' model of public discourse does not challenge the stereotype of virtuous Koreans, but re-imagines foreigners and migrants, from less-developed countries, as socially vulnerable and deserving the support of native Koreans at home and abroad. This elite narrative of the 'pitiful foreigner' is fiercely contested by non-elite, nationalist-minded publics, and, interestingly, critiqued by some academic and media elites and even migrants. The 'ethnic-nationalist' discourse of righteous Koreans is challenged by some scholars, activists, and writers, who discuss the nation's complex past and present. We reveal that this evolving debate challenges fixed stereotypes of 'Koreans' and 'foreigners,' promoting more complex portraits of these groups. We also consider whether the debate contributes to a 'Korean liberalism' model of public discourse, which imagines people as complex individuals with equal rights and duties.
Branding Korea: Food, Cosmopolitanism, and Nationalism on Korean Television
Situations: Cultural Studies in the Asian Context, 2021
Due to the significance of national images in global politics and trade, nations have implemented various methods to brand themselves in positive ways. Korea has used media to brand itself as aspirational and cosmopolitan. Consequently, there has been a proliferation of Korean television programs featuring foreign nationals engaging with and praising Korean culture. I analyze a popular television program entitled Mom's Touch to examine the intersections of nation-branding, cosmopolitanism, and nationalism. I argue that the program adapts discourses of cosmopolitanism to brand Korea as aspirational and cosmopolitan. The nationalist agenda that touts "Korean-ness" as an aspirational value, and the cosmopolitan ideology of global community-building may appear antithetical. However, these seemingly contradictory agendas converge to promote "Brand Korea." I suggest that cosmopolitanism, when co-opted into nation-branding strategies, become the discourse through which to discriminate against foreign nationals who are deemed as detriments to the nation's brand.
Diasporic Koreanness in Kim’s Convenience
Here Comes the Flood: Perspectives of Gender, Sexuality, and Stereotype in the Korean Wave, 2022
Kim’s Convenience has been one of the most successful Canadian TV programs in recent years. The show’s storytelling of people of color and immigrants may contribute to the diversification of and questions about what actually constitutes “Canadian content.” However, the discontinuation of the show after the remarkably successful five seasons reveals that Canadian media industries’ infrastructure is still too limited to sustainably embrace the stories of Asians. The praises for Kim’s Convenience may be largely derived from audiences’ desires for cultural diversity and inclusion, which the North American media has severely lacked. Meanwhile, the show may serve to question what the discourse of the Korean Wave (Hallyu) is missing—that is, the voices of diasporic Koreans and Asians. Regarding the increasing importance of the diasporic flows of Korean popular culture, Yoon (2020) has proposed further studies, which he tentatively called “Hallyu diaspora studies.” This approach addresses “how the Korean diaspora affects Hallyu’s production and circulation and/or how the phenomenon affects Korean diasporic identity” (Yoon 2020, 155). Diasporic Koreans are not only consumers of recent Korean pop cultural content but also producers and mediators of Hallyu. In this regard, it is important to explore how diasporic storytelling of Kim’s Convenience is integrated into the recent global waves of Korean pop culture. By examining the ways in which the cultural stereotypes are identified, questioned, and negotiated in the popular TV show, created and performed by Asian Canadians, this chapter questions how colorblindness of Western mainstream media industries can be questioned. Moreover, the chapter suggests that Kim’s Convenience offers a potential antidote to clichés and stereotypes observed in mainstream Korean pop culture and its global flows. A book chapter to be included in Tanter, Marcy and Park, Moisés (Eds).(forthcoming). Here Comes the Flood: Perspectives of Gender, Sexuality, and Stereotype in the Korean Wave. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books. Please contact the author for a pre-proof version of the chapter.
Race, Ethnicity, and Nation in Selected Contemporary South Korean Television Genres
The Oxford Encyclopedia of Race, Ethnicity, and Communication, 2022
The myth of a "single ethnic nation" has long held sway in South Korean society. A recent trend of global migration since the 1980s, however, has caused this powerful myth to become outdated, with a shift toward imagining a new national identity as a global and multicultural Korea. This shift has been largely associated with Korean media culture, which is fitting because media do not simply reflect but, rather, simultaneously construct and reproduce reality.