What the media miss about Korea!

A word of warning.  This is a long post with no graphics.
As a U.S. citizen who has long resided and worked in South Korea and as a long term student of the role of television and the media in international affairs and foreign policy, I can no longer stay silent about mainstream media coverage of affairs on the Korean peninsula.  The media, including television, the press, digital and social media have presented a picture of Korea that centers around North Korea’s nuclear and missile tests, the military confrontation on the peninsula, and the trading of insults via North Korean propaganda and the Twitter posts of President Donald Trump.
Looking back over recent decades at the U.S. Korea relationship, it is clear that there has been a failure of both the press and policy.  A long line of U.S. presidents, starting with Dwight Eisenhower, who was elected in 1952 on a pledge to end the Korean War have failed to achieve a peace treaty that would formally end that war here.  It is no exaggeration to suggest that the failure to address Korea’s division and the tense ceasefire and confrontation at the DMZ is one of the great policy failures of the 20th century, blame for which might be apportioned to the two Koreas and the surrounding big powers, China, Russia, Japan and the U.S.
The mainstream press has also failed.  My own research and that of others in the latter part of the 20th century documented a pattern of intermittent coverage of Korea by television and other mainstream media, focusing on the Korean peninsula mainly at times of crisis.   The picture or image of Korea that results tends to be superficial and seriously lacking in historical, political and cultural context.  In today’s hyper connected, digital era, this pattern appears to be only exacerbated.
To be specific, three topics deserve a great deal more attention when leaders and citizens around the world consider Korea today.   First, in just over four months, the Winter Olympics are scheduled to be held in Pyeongchang, a city in Gangweon Do, the only province in South Korea that is divided by the DMZ.  The legendary Diamond Mountain, site of North-South family reunions in years past, is in the northern half of the province.  Pyeongchang itself is only about 40 miles south of the DMZ.  Not coincidentally, some of the world’s most dense and advanced digital networks have been constructed in Pyeongchang and nearby venues as part of Korea’s plan to showcase next generation 5G networks along with some of the features of its nationwide Public Safety LTE network, schedule for completion by the end of 2018.   In another move that could hardly be sheer coincidence, North Korea’s young leader Kim Jong Un ordered construction of a “world class” ski resort near Masik Pass in the northern half of Gangweon Province.  In historical context, the Pyeongchang Winter Olympics will take place almost exactly three decades following the 1988 Seoul Olympics.  The Seoul Games were used very effectively to support the “Nordpolitik” of the South Korean government under President Roh Tae Woo.  China, the Soviet Union, Eastern European countries and Vietnam all participated, nearly signaling an end to South Korea’s long Cold War isolation from those nations.   The IOC and the South Korean government made strenuous efforts to involve North Korea, but to no avail.
Today, the government of President Moon Jae-In is working with the IOC in an effort to have North Korea participate in the Pyeongchang Winter Olympics, against the backdrop of global media attention to the nuclear, missile and military threat on the peninsula.  As this is written the sports minister of France publicly suggested that her country might skip the 2018 Winter Games if the security risk is too great.  With just over four months to go before the games, other nations are no doubt considering their options.
A second topic that receives scant attention in the mainstream media coverage of Korea these days is the impact that war on the peninsula might have on the global economy.  Following President Trump’s “fire and fury” comment about North Korea in August of this year, Fortune magazine and much of the business press took note that war in Korea could spark a global depression.  This possibility deserves more attention and in depth treatment, especially considering South Korea’s dominant position in global markets for semiconductors, displays of all types and sizes, and smart phones, key components of the emerging digital network ecosystem.
Finally, the division of Korea can only be understood if it is placed in historical context. Korea can rightly claim a history stretching for thousands of years as a unified nation state.  Consequently, the division after World War II which has lasted less than seven decades is clearly an aberration.  The vast majority of Koreans, South and North, most especially those many members of divided families, yearn for unification.  Here in the South, and I suspect in the North as well, most hope that unification will come peacefully.  During the ancient Olympic Games in Greece, a truce was announced before and during the games to ensure that the host city was not attacked and so that athletes and spectators could safely attend the games.  Perhaps the impending Pyeongchang Winter Olympics might provide an opportunity for an “Olympic truce” during which the heated media rhetoric might give way to solving the regional and indeed global crisis on the Korean peninsula.

More thoughts on growth engines: Military Technology

An article appeared in the English Chosun Ilbo today with the headline "Soldiers to get High Tech Combat Uniforms." If ever there was need for a reminder that the mainstream media around the globe have mis-placed their emphasis, this is it. The mainstream media would have us believe that North Korea's nuclear development and the associates Six-Party Talks are the major problem here. All the while, these same media report only in passing that South Korea has now become a technology and innovation driven, advanced economy, with military technology that far exceeds any capabilities in the North.

The article includes the following passage: "Soldiers of the future operating in winter will wear cold-weather clothing equipped with temperature-adjusting mechanisms. Their color-shifting uniforms will use digital camouflage patterns that mimic their surroundings, be it rocks or trees. Their bulletproof helmets will be outfitted with global positioning systems (GPS), image-transmitting devices and long-distance communications equipment. Previously imaginable only in sci-fi movies, this kind of high-tech gear will be supplied to South Korea's servicemen by 2020. "

Given South Korea's track record in high technology, this is a reasonable goal and will probably be realized. Contrast that with the state of nuclear weapons technology in the North.

The very thought of military technology as an export growth engine makes me think of my father, who was a great fan of President Dwight Eisenhower. In the 1952 U.S. presidential campaign, Eisenhower campaigned by saying "I will go to Korea," to end an unpopular war here. Near the end of his two-term presidency, he gave a now-famous speech warning against the unchecked growth of the "military-industrial" complex. President Eisenhower said:

"This conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry is new in the American experience. The total influence -- economic, political, even spiritual -- is felt in every city, every State house, every office of the Federal government. We recognize the imperative need for this development. Yet we must not fail to comprehend its grave implications. Our toil, resources and livelihood are all involved; so is the very structure of our society. In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the militaryindustrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist. "

Today, the pressing issue in Korea is the digital divide, which can also be characterized as a technology gap. This needs to be addressed and solved so that the country, so tragically divided after World War II, can be reunited and move ahead. Technologically and economically speaking, there are many growth engines other than military technology and one might hope that the two Koreas will agree on future emphases other than the military one.

World Attention in the Information Age: Korea's National Image

In 1941 Harold Laswell, one of the social scientists whose work led to the creation of communication research as a field of study, wrote a thought-provoking article titled "World Attention Survey." Laswell's research tried to map attention patterns around the world by analyzing the content of newspapers, in particular the countries and issues mentioned in newspaper articles. My first book, Television's Window on the World, was based on my doctoral dissertation and attempted to do something similar with U.S. network television in the 1970s. Today, thanks to the internet and some new Google services, it is possible to do a "World Attention Survey," with much less manual effort than when Laswell was conducting his research or when I laboriously, with the help of research assistants, hand-coded television content for analysis in my dissertation. To illustrate the possibilities, I will show in this post how Google Insight, its brand-new service, can be used to shed empirical light on the question of Korea's national or brand image. In an earlier post, I showed how searches of Google News could be used to help analyze Korea's national image. Google Insight provides an important new piece of the puzzle about national image because it shows patterns of search activity on the internet by people around the world. If you doubt this, take a look at the results of the following global, unfiltered set of searches on Google Insights for Search. Just click on the links to see the results of worldwide search activity, from 2004 to the present, for each of the following terms.

• Korea
• Samsung
• LG
• Hyundai

If you took time to look at each of the results pages by clicking on each of the four links above and scrolling through the results page, you'll agree with me that several definite patterns show up.

• First, searches for Korea tend to turn up news of North Korea's nuclear test and related political problems. Not surprisingly, the topics covered by the 4,000 plus media sources in Google News and the search patterns shown by Insights for Search, tend to be highly correlated. Mainstream media coverage and global search patterns are both part of "World Attention" in this information era.
• Second, searches for Samsung and LG tend to center around information and communication technologies, notably television sets and mobile phones.
• Third, searches for Hyundai make it clear that Hyundai is viewed around the world as an automobile manufacturer, first and foremost.
• Fourth, the results for regional distribution of search behavior around the world show clearly that Korea's corporations have effectively established a presence in developing countries as well as those of the former Soviet Union and Eastern Europe.

These preliminary observations are based on a simple, unfiltered search for several terms. Obviously, much more could be learned by comparing search patterns across different countries or regions. However, I do think the results are intriguing. I assume that a majority of Google searchers around the world may NOT be aware that Samsung, Hyundai and LG are Korean companies, so that complicates the question of their contribution to Korea's national image. It also seems that the major mainstream media and their consistent focus on political problems or crises--currently North Korea's nuclear progam and the six-party talks--form a part of South Korea's image. This part of the image, however negative it may be, will be hard to escape short of reconciliation and eventually reunification on the Korean peninsula.

Digital natives and the dominance of social media in Korea

I'm teaching an undergraduate course this spring semester at SUNY Korea on the topic of Information and Communications Technologies for Development (ICT4D).   On Monday I asked the class how many of them had heard about typhoon Pam, which devastated the island nation of Vanuatu and was heavily covered over the weekend by CNN, the BBC and all the mainstream media here in Korea.  Only one out of six students was aware of the disaster.   This result did not surprise me, because I've asked similar questions in class before.  Today's generation of "digital natives," for the most part, do not follow mainstream news media, choosing instead to rely on their social networks for information about what's going on in the world around them.
This reality has not been lost on Korea's politicians, who are using digital and social media this year in the run up to the April by-elections for the national assembly.  The Arirang TV video embedded here offers an interesting update.

Twitter is not a social network: or is it?

I've posted earlier on the inherent problems in trying to define "social media."  (here and here in case you're interested)  Take for example Twitter, which most observers consider to be part of the social media environment.  In 2010 one of Twitter's vice presidents took pains to explain that the micro-blogging network was not a social network service, but instead was all about news, content and information.  That same year a team of researchers at KAIST reported findings of an extensive study that showed empirically that Twitter was more of a news medium than a social network.  Among their findings was that unlike most social networks, "following" on Twitter is not mutual.

Twitter has been likened to a news headline service and my own experience suggests that is an accurate characterization.  The 140 character limit itself suggests a headline, rather than even a short article.  Furthermore, the enforced brevity of Twitter messages is ideally suited to quick messages disseminated over mobile devices while a person is going about the daily affairs of life.  Likewise, Twitter's recent venture into short videos is more likely to make it some sort of video headline service than a direct competitor to the likes of YouTube.

My personal interest in news led me to make it the focus of my doctoral dissertation and first book, Television's Window on the World.   Since that research was conducted back in the heyday of the industrial mass media era, I have always been interested in the dissemination of news, most especially via television and the newer digital media.   Although the following observation is anecdotal, I have a sense that it would be shared by many other observers.  The mainstream media, including major television news organizations like BBC, CNN and others were very quick to embrace Twitter, both as a means to measure audience sentiment and opinion by following their tweets and as a means to promote their own particular brand of news.

I suspect that my first reaction to Twitter, after its launch in 2006, was similar to that of many who read this post.   I first thought of a bunch of chirping, or "twittering" birds and then associated the name with meaningless or idle conversation, much like that at a cocktail party.  One industry website has, in fact likened Twitter to one giant dinner party, with countless conversations going on.

Twitter has also been described as an SMS service for the internet.  In fact, the name Twitter came out of a day long brainstorming session at a podcasting company.  As described by Wikipedia, those who named Twitter were inspired by SMS services.  For a fascinating account of how Twitter was originally conceived and named, see this article in The Los Angeles Times.  The following excerpt is especially revealing: "We wanted to capture that in the name -- we wanted to capture that feeling: the physical sensation that you’re buzzing your friend’s pocket. It’s like buzzing all over the world. So we did a bunch of name-storming, and we came up with the word "twitch," because the phone kind of vibrates when it moves. But "twitch" is not a good product name because it doesn’t bring up the right imagery. So we looked in the dictionary for words around it, and we came across the word "twitter," and it was just perfect. The definition was "a short burst of inconsequential information," and "chirps from birds." And that’s exactly what the product was."

Korea's Image Problem

A headline in the Joongang Daily caught my attention: "Korea Aiming to Refine Image Abroad." The article which followed the headline dealt with efforts of the Lee Myung Bak administration to improve the nation's brand image in the world. President Lee has convened a Presidential Council on National Branding. Lee Chan-buom, now the Director General of Korea's Presidential Council on National Branding, noted the adverse impact on Korea's image of news media coverage of the anti-US beef import candlelight vigils in early 2008. Those demonstrations were visually colorful, prolonged and mysterious to most western and international television viewers and internet users. Rightly or wrongly so, they created an image that South Korea is unstable, flighty and tends toward anti-Americanism. The article notes that nation-branding may be a difficult task in a country that has seen numerous street protests, corruption and frequent confrontation with its neighbor, North Korea. I'll say!
I've long been interested in the effects of mainstream media coverage, especially television, on public opinion and U.S. foreign policy toward other countries. (see, for example, my article on "Quiet Diplomacy in a Television Era Use the link and you can read the full text, PDF.). That was back in 1990. However, despite the explosive growth of the internet, (see my monograph, The Internet and Foreign Policy) the pattern continues. Korea's new President Council on National Branding will have to deal with television and the internet, most especially since convergence means that television (IPTV) is now part of the internet. In this new media environment, coverage by CNN, BBC World or The New York Times are a fact of life. Anti-beef import protests, stories about the sexual adventures of North Korea's Kim Jong-Il, and almost any topic, will be fair game for the world's media. The internet, television and the media (roughly in that order) are today significant determinants of corporate, national and even individual images. In this context, how should Korea proceed to improve its national image?
I have a couple of thoughts. First, news coverage of North Korea, and news coverage of demonstrations in South Korea are not going to go away. Furthermore, they are not under the control of the South Korean government. The only real solution to the problem that North Korea poses for South Korea's national image is to make real progress toward reunification, and the sooner the better. Second, any efforts to brand Korea should stay away from quick-fix advertising gimmicks like "Korea Sparkling" or even "Dynamic Korea" and should build from long-standing realities. For example, Hangul is the Korean alphabet and that is not likely to change. Kimchi is eaten by Koreans and that, too, is unlikely to change anytime soon. It is an interesting challenge. I don't have any further insights at the moment, but will likely comment in future posts.

Information Highways: Korea's Broadband Networks

Anyone with an interest in Korea's telecommunications development and its current status as a world-leader in broadband infrastructure, will want to consult the OECD's broadband portal. This portal makes available data for all of the OECD countries and a variety of studies that help to make sense of the information revolution around the world. South Korea has been an active participant in these new OECD studies.

In an earlier post, I commented on the tendency of mainstream media reports to lag or misrepresent actual developments in South Korea. The OECD data on broadband internet penetration from 2001 through mid-2007 help us to understand why. In terms of this particular measure, South Korea was number one in the world until 2005, when some small Scandinavian and European countries caught up. The "suddenness" of South Korea's rise as a broadband internet power is probably what threw the mainstream media off course. It simply didn't fit within the story line used to report about that nattion.

There is much more information to digest on the OECD broadband portal, quite a bit of which relates to the South Korean experience. I plan to comment on it in future posts.

My Interest in Korea's Information Society: II

In his classic 1950s study of American perceptions of China and India Scratches on our Minds, Harold Isaacs noted that "Vagueness about Asia has been until now the natural condition even of the educated American." His study was motivated by the apparent tendency of Americans, including policymakers, to view the world with emphasis on Europe, despite the obvious importance of Asia in America's emergence as a major world power. As I have written elsewhere, Korea illustrates the persistence of such tendencies. After living in Korea for two years as a young (early twenties) Peace Corps Volunteer, the lack of attention to Korea by the mainstream U.S. media became a matter of concern. When I began researching television coverage of international affairs for my doctoral dissertation at Stanford in the late 1970s it became clear that Korea's status in the American media was similar to that of many other developing nations. It appeared in the news only when there was a crisis to discuss. Other than that it was hardly covered at all. These empirical findings are all documented in my book, Television's Window on the World. Even in May of 1980, when the Kwangju uprising shook Korean politics to its core, the American television networks and other mass media devoted only a minimal amount of attention to Korea. (See my "Quiet Diplomacy in a Television Era: The Media and U.S. Policy Toward The Republic of Korea") They were preoccupied, as was the U.S. government, with the long, drawn out Iran hostage crisis. The Kwangju story never led a network television newscast. The State Department in Washington and the White House under Jimmy Carter never held a press conference. As a result, the television networks and the other major media didn't have the incentive of a press briefing in Washington D.C. to cover the Kwangju uprising. Over a decade later, in the early 1990's, I began to conduct research on the remarkable changes in Korean telecommunications during the 1980s. They constituted a truly amazing transformation, yet they did not attract the international attention they deserved until much later, after Korea itself had become an active member of both the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) and the International Telecommunications Union (ITU). Even in the late 1990s and the early years of this century, the media seemed to have great difficulty in reporting South Korea's world leadership in broadband internet infrastructure and usage. I attribute this lag in international recognition of South Korea's accomplishments to the general patterns of coverage that were well-established over the years in television and the mainstream press. Although South Korea is now receiving well-deserved press attention, much of that is because of North Korea's nuclear weapons development, the six-party talks and related topics. The information revolution and the new information society evolving on the Korean peninsula, although attracting attention, are hardly given their due. Nor, for that matter, is the importance of the digital divide in Korea. The Korean peninsula, which was divided as a vestige of the Cold War, is now the world's most poignant and extreme example of a digital and communications divide. Vagueness and misunderstanding of Korea persist in the United States and other parts of the world. One purpose of this blog will be to call attention to that phenomenon and to add context and clarity whenever possible.