Who are (not) Koreans? Practices employed by Korean news media for covering Korean-American individuals’ success stories

Abstract

This qualitative analysis of the coverage of Korean-Americans in Korean media analyzes 325 and 663 articles about Korean-American individuals’ success stories published in 2006 and 2013, respectively. Through an analysis of the scope of coverage, we categorize Korean-American news subjects into five fields: education, politics, economy, entertainment, and sports. We analyze news articles from each field published in the two years. Then, we discuss how Korean media prioritizes educational success as the most important human capital of Korean-Americans. While Korean media stresses Korean-American individuals’ success in mainstream US society using symbolic meanings, they highlight the individuals’ ethnic ties with Korea by emphasizing their close relationships with Korean families and communities. Although we found little meaningful differences between news practices in these two years, increased transnational interactions between Koreans and Korean-Americans might have led media to pay greater attention to Korean-Americans’ citizenship.

Keywords:

• Korean-American
• flexible citizenship
• ethnic nationalism
• Korean news media
• human capital

Funding

This Paper was supported by the KU Research Professor Program of Konkuk University.

Notes

1. In Korean, ‘a nation’ is usually translated to ‘guk-gah, nah-rah’ meaning ‘a nation state,’ and ‘min-jok,’ which literally means ‘a nation’ is more like a ‘ethnic(ity)’ including North Korean and overseas Koreans. On the other hand, ‘nationalism’ is translated to ‘min-jok-joo-eui’ which confusedly means ‘statism’ or ‘ethnic nationalism.’

2. http://news.naver.com/main/read.nhn?mode=LSD&mid=sec&sid1=001&oid=009&aid=0000529969.

3. http://news.naver.com/main/read.nhn?mode=LSD&mid=sec&sid1=001&oid=020&aid=0000366330.

4. http://news.naver.com/main/read.nhn?mode=LSD&mid=sec&sid1=001&oid=005&aid=0000262043.

5. http://news.naver.com/main/read.nhn?mode=LSD&mid=sec&sid1=001&oid=143&aid=0000043674.

6. http://news.naver.com/main/read.nhn?mode=LSD&mid=sec&sid1=001&oid=214&aid=0000023110.

7. http://news.naver.com/main/read.nhn?mode=LSD&mid=sec&sid1=001&oid=011&aid=0000133744.

8. http://news.naver.com/main/read.nhn?mode=LSD&mid=sec&sid1=001&oid=011&aid=0000133744.

9. http://news.naver.com/main/read.nhn?mode=LSD&mid=sec&sid1=103&oid=144&aid=0000034008.

10. http://news.naver.com/main/read.nhn?mode=LSD&mid=sec&sid1=001&oid=079&aid=0000075906.

11. http://news.naver.com/main/read.nhn?mode=LSD&mid=sec&sid1=102&oid=020&aid=0000337684.

12. http://news.naver.com/main/read.nhn?mode=LSD&mid=sec&sid1=001&oid=008&aid=0003064088.

13. http://news.naver.com/main/read.nhn?mode=LSD&mid=sec&sid1=100&oid=001&aid=0006671359.

14. http://news.naver.com/main/read.nhn?mode=LSD&mid=sec&sid1=001&oid=001&aid=0006290410.

15. http://news.naver.com/main/read.nhn?mode=LSD&mid=sec&sid1=001&oid=021&aid=0002170279.

16. http://sports.news.naver.com/sports/index.nhn?category=golf&ctg=news&mod=read&office_id=112&article_id=0002398894.

17. http://news.naver.com/main/read.nhn?mode=LSD&mid=sec&sid1=102&oid=001&aid=0006125610.

18. http://news.naver.com/main/read.nhn?mode=LSD&mid=sec&sid1=104&oid=422&aid=0000002149.

http://news.naver.com/main/read.nhn?mode=LSD&mid=sec&sid1=100&oid=032&aid=0002335933.