58th Meeting - Media and Media Industry in South Korea

Place: Zoom

Participants: Matthew, Sneha, Vivien, Rocky, Aditi, Christina & 100 선생

We started with two conflicting images of Korean journalists - an activist who led the democratisation movement in 1987 (as depicted in the movie '1987') and a corrupt elite who distorts the fact to serve the interest of big business and elite politicians. It seems that the image of an activist has eroded over time unfortunately.

Korean news media in general is in crisis - in term of losing the public's trust as well as becoming a declining industry.

This double-crisis is inter-related and we traced the history of the Korean mainstream press since the 1920s. From the colonial period to the military government in the 1970s and the 1980s, the press had to give in to the government's pressure. However, a reputation such as a 'government's mouth' brought readers' criticism and loss of subscribers to competitors. Therefore, the press had to respond to the calls of the public.

<자료: 거북이 미디어 연구소 https://gobooki.net/>

Since the 1990s, with the rapid growth in internet access, fewer and fewer people paid for the news, and the press came to rely more and more on the advertisement revenues, and therefore, came to represent the interest of big business.

<2019년 기준, 자료 https://www.vop.co.kr/A00001497946.html>

Now the question is how we can make the press work for the best interest of the whole society rather than its own private interest. Some media reforms are going on in the National Assembly of Korea, and we will see whether the politicians can make the media democratically accountable. <100>