Media Bills Generate Controversy in National Assembly

The Joongang Daily today carried an article with the headline "Controversial Media Bills Advance" and a sub-head indicating that the T.V. unions were planning a general strike over the measures to ease rules on ownership.  The controversy erupted again when the chairman of the National Assembly's Culture and Broadcasting Committee introduced the media bills at a committee session yesterday despite pleas from the opposition not to do so.  The action takes the disputed bill one step closer to a final vote at the Assembly's main session.  The media bills were sent to the committee almost six months ago.  To protest the committee chairman's action the National Union of Media Workers said it would start a general strike at 6:00 A.M. today.

Media Preferences of South Korea's Teenagers

The Korea Times today reports on a survey of middle and high school students by the Korea Press Foundation in September.  The survey showed that Korean teenagers prefer internet portal sites to newspapers for getting news, and trust them more than conventional print media.
When asked which media they are likely to use the most when they become adults, 46 percent selected Internet portals, while 25 percent picked terrestrial television, 12 percent internet news, 7 percent free newspapers distributed at subway stations, and only 5 percent newspapers. When asked to rate the credibility of 30 private and public media organizations, MBC, KBS, Portal Sites and Hangyoreh daily ranked first, second, fourth and fifth respectively.  Netizens ranked third on the measure of reliability, while the Joongang, Chosun and Donga Ilbo newspapers ranked 22nd, 24th and 25th.
Internet portals, online communities, and friends or family dominated the teenagers reported sources of information about this year's candlelight vigils.

Korea in Cyberspace: National and Brand Images

The current political uproar in South Korea and the flood of images it has released are important politically, economically and culturally. The images emanating from South Korea these days help to create the image of this nation in North America, Europe an other parts of the world, as well as here on the peninsula. Use of the term "flood" to describe the flow of images is appropriate insofar as the internet and modern digital communications accelerate the diffusion of political information. Here in South Korea, former President Kim Dae Jung and others have observed that the country is experimenting with "Direct Democracy." Without doing a quantitative empirical study, I would hazard a guess that the current political activity in South Korea, centered as it is around the internet and new digital media, is having an effect on Korea's national image in the world. According to an article in the Korea Herald, South Korea's embassy in Washington D.C. surveyed 136 U.S.-based experts on July 12-13. The survey found that 60.2 percent of the respondents believed the anti-U.S. beef rallies and candlelight vigils would damage Korea's image among Americans, while 27.2 percent said that they would not.

Candlelight vigils in the Spring are an ideal place to exploit the new media. Think how easy it is to snap photographs or record videos with your cellphone, and then share these with netizens. By definition, sharing such images with netizens means that they are available to anyone in the world. In other words, they help to define Korea's national image and its place in cyberspace. The point of this post is simply to note that South Korea is building its national image, or its place in cyberspace. Once constructed, national images cannot easily be altered or torn down, for the simple reason that the digital images stay there in cyberspace. Some elements of the emerging image also seem clear: candlelight vigils, labor demonstrations and anti-government protests, anti-Americanism, genuine fear of American beef, gullibility to rumors about Mad Cow Disease, and so forth. These elements are mixing with South Korea's existing national image which includes such aspects as being an "IT Powerhouse," "Broadband Leader," and a country which places a high priority on education, science and technology generally.