In recent years Korea has been rapidly evolving into a multi-cultural society with a foreign resident population of one million. Accordingly, discussion on multi-culturalism has been prolific within the Korean government, academia, and media. This stu...
In recent years Korea has been rapidly evolving into a multi-cultural society with a foreign resident population of one million. Accordingly, discussion on multi-culturalism has been prolific within the Korean government, academia, and media. This study specifically focuses on multi-cultural discourse within the media and analyzes how television documentaries represent the reality from a constructivist view point.
Extant studies on multi-culturalism within the media have focused on media's treatment--that is similiarization, objectification and othering--of interracial marriages migrant women/workers, and children of interracial marriages. This study further extends the research focus to provide a comprehensive analysis of multi-culturalism and looks at the development of multi-cultural discourse in Korea.
Based on these theoretical premises, this study analyzes the narrative structure of six television documentaries broadcasted from 2005 to 2007 and explores the following questions. First, how do television documentaries structure their narratives on multi-culturalism? Second, what are the characteristics of the representation method revealed by analyzing each program's narrative structure? Third, what is the implication of these narrative structures? More specifically, the study examines the plot structure (i.e., plot development, categorization of the protagonists, binary opposition structure) as well as special effects, editing, and graphics (i.e., narration, subtitles and facial/voice disguises).
The responses to the previous questions are the following. First, the narrations follow the conventional narrative structure: they progress from introduction, development, turn and conclusion; emphasize the story of the main protagonists; and end with a superficial conclusion. As a result, the documentaries' initial objective of critically addressing problems arising from multi-culturalism and discrimination against minority groups is undermined and the documentaries merely become interesting stories. The second way in which the TV represents the multi-cultural reality is through stereotypication. As a result, the protagonists of the text were represented identically within a few categories and furthermore stigmatized or idolized. Third, the documentaries constantly differentiated the viewers from the protagonists in the plot, creating a us versus them paradigm. Lastly, the text justified the multi-cultural reality by using appropriate mechanisms such as voice-over-narration, subtitles, facial/voice disguise, background music, cross cutting and other data and graphics.
Based on the aformentioned analysis this paper seeks the paradoxical implication of the multi-cultural reality the TV documentaries represent. First, the most notable characteristic of the text is the othering view with which it observes the protagonists. The text continuously divides 'us' vs. 'them' and therefore fails to stay true to the program's original objective of admitting the 'differences' as is, and accepting those who are different into our society. In addition, these programs conflate multi-culturalism and assimilationism. The definition of multi-culturalism is not clear and assimilationism is considered analogous to multi-culturalism. This paper also reveals that when the text points out discrimination within the Korean society it actually reproduces racial hierarchy by over-emphasizing, and therefore strengthening the 'differences' between nations and races. Finally, the text points to economic and national development as reasons to promote multi-culturalism. Migrant women through marriages, migrant workers and racially mixed children have been represented as mere 'tools' of economic growth and development as opposed to 'people' that should be respected on their own right.
Despite the novelty of the issue at hand, television documentaries continue to apply conventional narrative structure when discussing multi-culturalism. Moreover, the documentaries seem to urge the Korean society, which has believed itself to be homogenous for centuries, to quickly accept the reality of a multi-ethnic society. Multi-culturalism is not a transitory phenomenon. A multi-cultural society is built upon people of varying lifestyles, culture, values and ethnicities respecting and overcoming each others' differences. The media needs to be aware of these facts and continuously strive to help build an equal and multi-cultural society.