Globalization in Culture: the Screen Quotas System in Korea

In traditional approach, globalization seems like to be criticized as to be “Americanization” the rest of the world. Like many postmodernist theorists argued, however, globalization is more than the ‘homogenization’. It is more likely to be adapted to the local culture and being “hybrided”. For example, as we see the case of “Sony” company through the reading of Sinclair this week, this Japanese company acquired the American companies and even it brings together the “software: media field” and “hardware: industrial manufacturing” together. There is other example of “hybrided” globalization in the movie industry. It is more than “Americanized”.
The movie industry of Korea can be another example of the globalization that is more than homogenization to the Western culture.

Screen Quotas System in Korea.
In January, 2006 the Korean government decided to reduce the Korean screen quota from 146 days to 73 days. This is one of the trials of Korean government to conclude the FTA agreement with the US government. This decision, however, brought huge protests from the Korean movie industry including directors, actors, actresses and other relevant field workers. People who against this decreased quota argued that the Hollywood movies which are mostly believed to guarantee a box office hit will eat away not only the current Korean movie industries but also the potentials of Korean movie market in the future.

It was believed somehow that the screen quotas protect the cultural diversities under the convention of UNESCO, Protection and Promotion of the Diversity of Cultural Expressions. However, it is not that figured how exactly this convention would be applied in the multilateral trade agreements, for instance, WTO agreements.

Korean movie industry has been dramatically developed. Until 1990s, the Korean movie seemed like it has not that bright future. People unintentionally (I believe) ignore the potentials of Korean movies. Because comparing to the Hollywood movies, it was not that interesting and people think it is waste of money for seeing the Korean movies in the movie theatre. However, the Korean movie industries and technology has been developed adopting the partial of Hollywood technology and succeeded to catch up the Hollywood movies from 2000. In year of 2003, two Korean movies even win the popularity of Hollywood blockbuster, the Road of the Ring. And this Korean movies’ success brought the Korean Screen Quotas system to be decreased (with the pressure of America).

Now, Korean movies are pointing to the world market and it is quite successful in the South East market with the Hallyu boom. This is interesting because Korea is turning to the world market under the concept of globalization. We are not only accepting the other culture into our country but also export our culture to others. However, in order to develop our own culture the protective system, like Screen Quotas system is inevitable.

On the other hand, it is interesting to think how other developing countries would develop their cultural industries against to multiple incoming foreign cultures including Hollywood movies and Korean movies under the globalization. I personally hope that in cultural context, globalization is not being the tool every culture to be ‘homogenized’ but to be ‘heterogenized’ with more diversity. Like America’s multi-cultural term has been changed from melting pot to salad bowl.

Global travelers, not citizens

Globalization is one of the buzzwords of my generation. We are traveling more than ever. We make friends abroad and stay in touch on Facebook. These experiences teach us about other parts of the world, and then we consider ourselves experts. We are cosmopolitan.

Or so I thought.

I thought so until this summer. On Friday, July 22, Anders Behring Breivik carried out a bombing and a shooting massacre in Norway. The story took over CNN from the morning until late that night. I was working that night, but around 4:00 p.m. I updated my status on Facebook to “thoughts and prayers go out to Norway.” As the day went on I was surprised to see that none of my Facebook friends had done the same. As someone who has studied and worked in journalism, many of my friends keep up with the news.

The next day, July 23, my Facebook news feed filled up with expressions of sadness over English singer Amy Winehouse’s death. This continues to puzzle me. American youth react to the death of a divisive musician but not to the deaths of more than 90 Norwegians. What does this say about cosmopolitanism’s chances?  

I don’t really want to analyze why Amy Winehouse’s death received more attention online. But I do think it speaks to the culture of the nation state. Although Winehouse was English, her music was popular in the states. She resonated with Americans. Norway doesn’t stand out.

My classmate Erica gave a similar example in another class. The date September 11 is not only significant for the attacks on America in 2001. Chileans remember the date for the bloody overthrow of socialist leader Salvador Allende in 1973. Not that that connection was ever made during the American coverage of 9/11.

The Norway and Chile events are two contrasting examples when it comes to the media. The media covered the Norway massacre extensively. Any unawareness can’t be blamed on the New York Times or CNN. But many Americans like myself are ignorant of the Chilean 9/11 precisely because we have had no exposure to it. (Perhaps because the U.S. supported the coup.)

Waisbord talks about how the media have eliminated distance, thereby advancing cosmopolitanism. But he mentions a key problem. Where does a global citizen’s loyalty belong to? Her hometown, her favorite town, her college town? If all of us were global citizens, we wouldn’t have emotional ties to certain places.  As we saw with Norway, media coverage brought us the story but it evoked little emotional response from the American public. The idea that something “hits close to home” remains true. We are a long way from being global citizens.

Personal Reflections on Diaspora and US National Promotion

I am a Washington DC transplant. I was taken from the cornfields, white steeple churches and covered bridges of New England and placed into the capital of the United States of America. In the days before my departure I thought to myself, “This is the face of our nation; where everything that it is to be truly ‘American’ is represented to the fullest extent, right?”

The answer is both completely wrong and correct. I have indeed encountered what makes Washington DC the face of our nation, but my interpretations of American nationalism and local culture were completely off. We are, in the truest sense of the phrase, a melting pot. Whether it be the architecture of Chinatown; the Latin, Korean, Japanese and African eating establishments right outside my door or my roommate who speaks Mandarin to his friends back home on Skype, I cannot escape how global this national capital truly is.

I would like to employ the work of Karim H. Karim’s “Reviewing the ‘National’ in ‘International Communication Through the Lens of Diaspora” to provide some context to my personal findings.

Karim claims ethnically diverse and multi-national citizens are now being celebrated by many countries via national promotion. One example that comes to mind is South Africa, which prides itself on being the “Rainbow Nation”. It follows through on that notion by having 11 national languages, a plethora of political parties and other inklings of diversity.

But do multi-nationals, transnationals or diasporics (pick your favorite term) living in Washington DC or the US at large even feel like Americans? Looking at this topic from a communications and media standpoint, it would seem doubtful.

With the advent of worldwide technological innovations (Facebook, Skype, mobile phones, etc) that enable diasporic populations to remain tied to their native countries, there is less of a need to assimilate into “American culture”. I want to resist using this terminology, because what can we really define as American culture when there are so many subsets, many of them growing numbers of citizens who identify as multi-nationals?

This gets to a central argument of Karim and other readings from Manuel Castells and Silvio Waisbord – how is the validity of the nation-state changing in the modern day? I believe the US is the case study for how this may pan out. The external communications and information system of the US (Voice of America, etc) has depicted US life and foreign policy to the outside world for a number of years, ultimately being supported by the Smith Mundt Act of 1948. However, one stipulation of this law is that these government broadcasts and programs are not to be distributed domestically, therefore no one in the US is able to have access to how the country is being portrayed abroad by the government. The original reason for this caveat was to protect US citizens from potentially Communist-related material that may be leaked into the State Department’s programming.

Global conditions and the US population have definitely changed since this period, as Matt Armstrong of World Politics Review has pointed out in his contest of the Smith Mundt Act. Many multi-nationals living in the US are choosing to remain connected with the media in their own countries and are ignoring the events taking place in the nation in which they reside. In order to remedy this situation, the US could amend the Smith Mundt Act and allow its own citizens to be exposed to what many foreign countries hear regarding the nation.

This could very well resonate with diasporic populations that have grown accustomed to media sources like VOA and bolster nationalistic feelings within the US. On the current path, it seems there is an increasingly isolationist movement of diasporic populations, and as these populations grow, the more disillusioned the US will become with its own sense of nationalism.

South to North Information Flows

The role of the media in ethnic communities has changed in immense ways. Karim Karim talks about diaspora communities and the results of globalization for them. Because the world is expanding and linking in so many new ways, and most importantly because of technological advances, displaced communities are able to stay connected to their home nations.

One of the things Karim mentions is that most media and communication follows a North to South flow, meaning that media from developed nations like the U.S. and Western Europe reaches developing nations. But news from the South reaches the North in much smaller numbers. I personally think it’s interesting though that Karim talks a lot about diaspora media, but he doesn’t alter or change his statement that information flows are mostly North to South. I think the whole concept of diaspora media proves that information flows can also be South to North, even if it is on a smaller scale. For instance, when news from Brazil reaches a diaspora community in the U.S., that is South to North flow.

This reminds me so much of my home in Arizona. I’m not sure if this qualifies as a diaspora, but it is the ultimate short South to North trip. I’m talking about the Mexican- American community in Arizona. In some places, you can hardly consider it a displaced community. In Nogales, Arizona, you can see Nogales, Mexico from many peoples’ backyards. But they are still a people who have left their home country and live together in communities. Often, they keep their Spanish language and Mexican food, customs, holidays and religious traditions. Because this diaspora community is so close to its original home, the information flow is large and influential. There are Spanish language newspapers, many Spanish language TV stations, Spanish billboards and advertising and phone plans offering cheap international communication between the U.S. and Mexico.  I think this shows that South to North flows can and do exist.

I actually learned about a similar example that is closer to D.C. just today. There is a theater in Adams Morgan called the Ontario. It started as a high-end movie theater in the 1950s, but when the neighborhood started changing and was affected by the riots after the death of MLK Jr., its patrons stopped coming. For a while, it failed, but eventually they started playing Spanish language films there and it filled up again. This is another example of South to North diaspora media flow.

I am quite possibly understanding it wrong, but I feel like two of Karim’s theses are contradicting. He discusses the abundance of diaspora media, but still believes that media flow is almost exclusively North to South. 

Global Media as of Public Sphere

The word "Democracy" origins from Greek "dempkratia', a comfound word of demos(people) and kratos(control). Democracy is, as its origin of meaning, the system which is ruled by the people. In this regards, the public sphere seems to be the core value that supports the democracy. As Castells argued, public sphere is the space where citizens share their opinions together and express to the society. Then, what is the public sphere in this industrialized society?

John Thompson (2000, recited from Castells) suggested, in industrial society, media has played the significant role as the major component of the public sphere. Through media, the interaction between civil society and states can be more activated by influencing each other. In terms of "grass-root" politics, public sphere, especially through the media, upholds the civil society as a democracy. As the globalization has been expanded to all over the world, the emergency of global media is getting to be more responsible as a public sphere. The global media brings more attention to the global civil society. In respect to this, NGOs the major player in global civil society as well as other forms of global civil society use the media for transmitting their campaigns to the world (especially to the states).

Then, what is the form of global media in this globalized world? Castells tells a diversified media system that "Internet and wireless communiation: a global, horizontal network of communiation". I agreed Castells view on the social media that it enables people to be citizen journalists and their stories will reach to all over the world. Actually, sometimes it is becoming more effective and influensive tool for global citizens to reach out comparing the other major media companies such as CNN, BBC and so on which has been criticized for its western view.

Rather than following the CNN, BBC broadcast, people tend to turn on the You Tube or Face Book in order to seek the prompt and exact news from people who are in the real situation. In my case, when there were some tensions between South Korea and North Korea, for instance, many of my friends who were in foreign country asked me whether the tensions is that serious like CNN was broadcasting through Face Book.

While it is obvious that the SNS becomes to provide the public sphere expanding the democratic environment to the world, it is still needed to examine whether this effect is pro-to support the public or not. Some people argues that these SNS also cannot avoid the biased view point and sometimes put the society in confusion with too much information. For the region where the internet access is not availale, is also cannot be covered as a public sphere of global citizen.