Media imperialism, also known as cultural imperialism is a phenomenon where the ownership, structure, and content of a nation's media is taken over, or influenced by another country.
Famous examples of this are the 'K-pop idol survival' programs in South Korea. Most widely known as 'Produce 101', this format of competitive K-pop trainee audition programs has been a significant part of South Korea's media. While many believe this content originated from South Korea's world-famous K-pop culture, in fact, this form of media content started in 1970s Japan. Another case of South Korea being impacted by media imperialism is the Netflix series 'Single's Inferno'. Quite noticeably, this series was influenced by the American dating show 'Too Hot to Handle'.
Nowadays, media imperialism doesn't just mean the media content or culture being the target of influence. In many non-western countries, media platforms are also prey to media imperialism. Many social media platforms such as TikTok, YouTube, Instagram, etc are held proprietary by Western firms. Due to this, non-western countries are defined as 'users' of these platforms, which naturally lets Western firms or countries take over their media markets.
Although media imperialism sounds like something that the Western Countries are responsible for, South Korea can now be seen as an active player in this phenomenon. Looking at the K-pop industry, it is now commonplace to find many foreigners joining the industry. K-pop idol auditions targeted at foreign applicants are being held such as NCT Hollywood, and K-pop entertainment companies are creating K-pop groups outside of Korea. So in this sense, Korea might be the one causing media imperialism.
However, for Korean culture or media not to become the criminals of media imperialism, there needs to be a change in attitude. When sharing our culture and spreading our media to other countries, tolerance should be kept in mind, and we should not undermine the existing culture of different countries. That way, harmony between various cultures around the world and South Korea's culture and media can be provoked, which will overall create a better outcome.
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