ENTERTAINMENT MEDIA AND KOREAN MILITARY CULTURE

Abstract

The study of “Entertainment Media and Korean Military Culture” aims to analyze the relationship between Entertainment media and Korean State’s ideology including analyzed how Korean military culture it is constructed and reproduced through the entertainment media. The ideas of Cultural Reproduction, Social Construction of Reality, Hegemony and Representation were guideline theories in this study. The researcher also selected three types of entertainment media which portray the image of Korean soldier and had been broadcasted since 2000-Present (2014) that are 1).Films 2).Reality Show 3).Sitcom to study and analyze. The finding reveals that the entertainment media can be categorized into 2 types that are Fiction and Non-fiction. These entertainment media are related to Korean State’s ideology as it is utilized as a tool to reproduce the state’s ideology which is different in each period. It is divided into three significant periods; “Conservative Administration and Military Authoritarianism” (1961-1993), “Liberal Administration and the Sunshine Policy” (1998-2008) and “The Coming back of Conservative administration under the democracy” (2008 – Present). The ideological reproductions in these three periods are different in term of its methods which are depending on the change of social contexts. In the first period of military regime, the entertainment media was utilized to propagate the state’s ideology that had a main purpose of National formation including its power maintenance. North Korean characters were represented as a national enemy. In the second period, the entertainment media was affected from the Sunshine Policy including the influence of Korean Wave. The significant change was the North Korean characters that were more humanized and represented as a friend. The main purpose of the entertainment media in this period was the antagonism. The third period is focusing on the importance of military as seen in the entertainment media that reproduces Korean Military Culture in two positive aspects of military values and military life in the barracks due to the tense situation between North and South Korea.