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Begin New Search Topic Mass Media Journal International Journal of Korean Studies

1. The U.S. Adaptation of Korea’s Unscripted Format in the New Korean Wave Era: A Case Study of Grandpas Over Flowers

Author:
Dal Yong Jin and Ju Oak Kim
Publication Date:
10-2018
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
International Journal of Korean Studies
Institution:
International Council on Korean Studies
Abstract:
The Korean unscripted format has recently reshaped media flows and practices on a global scale. This article, based upon a comparative analysis of Grandpas Over Flowers (tvN) and Better Late Than Never (NBC), explores how the Korean broadcasting industry has attracted Western broadcasting providers with its travel-based reality format, and how an American television network has produced its own version, negotiating the local specificity that the original series contained. Certainly, cultural differences in media production between the two societies are largely embedded in the localizing process. While Grandpas Over Flowers was dependent upon the long-standing friendship between veteran actors and their public images as fathers and grandfathers within society, Better Late Than Never employs veteran entertainers’ professional successes as the driving force for adventuring into exotic cultures in East Asia. This article claims that the Grandpas Over Flowers case evokes a new phase of the Korean Wave phenomenon, revealing a non-Western media player’s attempt at challenging the domination of United States and United Kingdom television formats in the global media industries.
Topic:
Mass Media, Culture, Media, and popular culture
Political Geography:
Asia, South Korea, North America, and United States of America

2. The Abductions Issue in Japan and South Korea: Ten Years after Pyongyang's Admission

Author:
Celeste Arrington
Publication Date:
11-2013
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
International Journal of Korean Studies
Institution:
International Council on Korean Studies
Abstract:
Nearly all foreign nationals allegedly abducted by North Korea (DPRK) were Japanese or South Korean citizens. Suspected abductees' families mobilized in Japan and South Korea in the late 1990s to raise awareness of the abductions, seek information about their loved ones, and hold their own governments responsible for not having protected citizens. But public and political concern for abductee and their families has differed greatly in Japan and South Korea (ROK). The abductions have dominated Japanese public consciousness and policymakers' decisions regarding North Korea for the past decade, since the late Kim Jong-il admitted North Korean involvement in the abductions of thirteen Japanese nationals. Although more than five hundred South Korean abductees remain detained in North Korea, the abductions issue has received less attention in South Korea. What accounts for such variation in the trajectories of the abductions issue and related activism in Japan and South Korea? This article posits that the divergence in the efficacy of families' activism in Japan and South Korea is the product of families' interactions with each country's distinctive media and activist spheres. Thus, this article elucidates key features of the Japanese and Korean public spheres that affect each country's North Korea policy.
Topic:
Mass Media and Political Activism
Political Geography:
Japan and Korea