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When the Netflix reality show Single’s Inferno was criticised for its sexism and colourism, when several male contestants voiced their preference for fair skin, the comeback was that Korea’s preference for light skin goes back centuries and has nothing to do with racism. Credit: Netflix
Opinion
Arian Khameneh
Arian Khameneh

Spotlight on Korean culture is also exposing its underbelly of racism and ethnic nationalism

  • As much as BTS, Squid Game and Parasite are celebrated, any criticism or perceived slights of Korean culture tend to trigger a defensiveness from the people that is at odds with the global reach of Korean media today
Korea’s cultural visibility in the spheres of music, television and film has been ubiquitous recently through globally recognised brands such as BTS, Squid Game and Parasite.

Its success as a “cultural juggernaut”, in the words of The New York Times, has unquestionably raised the nation’s soft power, prestige and attractiveness. These achievements have been reported and hyped far and wide by American media outlets.

However, a less-noted phenomenon is the tension between the conservative, Confucian values that occasionally creep into Korean content and the socially progressive ideology of many Western consumers.

Entertainment implicitly promotes certain values, lifestyles and a general world view, whether it intends to or not. In the case of Korea, it’s not merely about what the content contains, but perhaps more what is omitted. LGBT+, diversity in body types and awareness of colourism are often absent in Korean media.

Given that Korea remains one of the few OECD countries without an anti-discrimination law, this is hardly surprising.

More surprising perhaps is how Korean productions have successfully avoided having this implicit conservatism interfere with the virality of their content. Yet, as Korean culture has increasingly gone global, the chasm between Korean and Western norms intermittently comes to the fore.

A recent example of such tension is the furore among Western audiences on social media over colourism and sexism on the hit Netflix reality show, Single’s Inferno. Several male contestants favoured one of the female contestants because she was pale and “looked pure”.

Foreign audience concerns were duly repelled with references to how Korea’s preference for light skin goes back centuries and has nothing to do with racism.

An advertising panel seen at a convenience store in Seoul in 2013 for “This Africa”, a brand of cigarettes by South Korea’s biggest tobacco company KT&G, that was later withdrawn. South Korea has struggled to rid itself of a reputation for casual discrimination and overbearing ethnic nationalism. Photo: AFP

Another, perhaps more malignant, example is the case of the Ghanaian television star Sam Okyere, who in 2020 publicly shared his experiences of racism in Korea and condemned one instance of high school students’ use of blackface.

Bafflingly, Okyere faced a fierce counteroffensive from Korean viewers, who dug up old material to besmirch his credibility and reframe the narrative. Many Koreans viewed his comments as an attempt to humiliate the country in front of an international audience. Okyere had to eventually apologise for “having caused trouble” and resigned from the TV show he was starring in.

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The lesson here is not hard to miss. Foreigners, and particularly people of colour, are welcome to become famous and popular in the country, but only if they avoid rocking the boat and lecturing audiences.

Some experts argue that such defensiveness and pride is rooted in an “us and them” mentality of ethnic nationalism, which causes Koreans to huddle together and dismiss outside criticism as neocolonial disrespect.

Perhaps no case is more symptomatic of the fierceness Koreans display in defending their cultural boundaries than the recent row with China during the Winter Olympics, in which Koreans accused China of trying to appropriate elements of Korean culture, such as the hanbok, as their own.
A performer, second from right, clad in a traditional Korean dress waves during the opening ceremony of the 2022 Winter Olympics in Beijing, China, on February 4. Major South Korean presidential candidates accused China of laying claim to their culture. Photo: Yonhap via AP

However historically and geopolitically justified it may seem, this defensiveness is in stark contrast to a cosmopolitan notion of culture as something that is always in flux, rather than being divided into “ours and theirs”.

More problematically, an aggressive commitment to defending Korean culture at any cost can quickly turn ugly, especially when the criticism is valid. The Korean media, it appears, want to have global impact but are largely uninterested in being global citizens.

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One of the most popular comments about the China controversy on a Korean news site said: “We need to continue spreading our culture around the world with our webtoons, K-pop, K-dramas, movies, hanbok, Dokdo, kimchi, etc, and let it be known that all of it belongs to us.”

Such views encapsulate a widespread notion of the Korean wave as a means of propping up nationalism and soft power, rather than intercultural reflection and flexibility. If this is the case, the Korean wave is nothing more than a successful marketing project that the Western media is happy to go along with.

A continual deference to cultural relativism and demographic homogeneity is hardly satisfactory for a media landscape that has made a pointed commitment to socially progressive values. Why do Korean cultural products continue to get a pass?

Arian Khameneh is a writer and sociologist, currently based in Seoul

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