As a country where collectivism is dominant, television broadcasting has been at the forefront of mass media and popular culture. While radio broadcasting, newspaper, and numerous media have risen and fallen, television broadcasting still lasts as the core of Korean popular culture as one of the most accessible and attractive ways to have fun, gather information, and even study something.
It was the mid-1950s when television broadcasting was first launched in Korea although television as an electronic device was not popular due to its expensive price. The first broadcasting station, HLKZ-TV (as known as Dae-han bang-song 대한방송), did not last longer than 1961, handing over channel 9 to KBS, a well-known terrestrial broadcasting station that is still on air these days. Before the start of the 1970’s when television became popular among people, MBC, also one of the channels still on air, was launched, and many other channels followed.
One interesting fact about Korean television broadcasting is that EBS(Educational Broadcasting System), originated from the educational radio program that was broadcasted during the Korean War, has been loved by many Korean people because many people could not pay for additional resources or even school tuition while watching EBS is nearly free. Now that Korea became much richer than 20th century, EBS plays its role as an additional resource besides public education and supports the governmental policy of reducing overflowing private education, which is a well-known issue in the Korean education system.
There is fascinating background that Korea has a world record for having the longest live broadcasting, which happened in 1983. “Finding Dispersed Families(이산가족을 찾습니다)” was a live broadcast to help people find their lost families in South Korea, on air from Jul 30th, 1983 to Nov 14th, 1983, lasting 138 days, non-stop. The number of people who lost their families, estimated by the police department, was more than 10 million among 40 million of the South Korean population. Although the live broadcast did not involve North Korean people, there were very many South Korean people who participated in it because it was nothing impossible that they could not reach out to each other even though they both happened to live in South Korea. It was such a big national event that the number of workers if including part-timers was about 10 million (recall the fact that the population was 40 million), ended after succeeding 10 thousand cases of people finding their lost families.
With the advent of modern technology media such as YouTube, Netflix, etc., Korean broadcasting is required to adapt itself to the new era of overflowing content. With the help of accessibility of the contents, improved better than ever by the help of the internet, Korean drama (so-called K-drama) contents have become extremely popular all over the globe as opposed to past days when only Koreans consumed Korean dramas. Also, content-making has now become reserved not only for those professionals but also for amateurs, making YouTube the biggest video-sharing platform with as creative and entertaining content as broadcasting has been making.
Replies