Eurocentrism and whiteness in Korean Media.

In one of the lectures, I remember Sue saying something about in Japanese media, white people are not being portrayed according to western media. This got me thinking whether the Eurocentrism is also applied to contemporary Korean Media. My argument is that Eurocentrism in media has left a huge implication to Eastern society. As a Korean myself, when I lived there, I had seen a lot of things becoming westernized. For example, people started to mix up Korean words with English, so called “Konglish” like ‘office + hotel =Officetel’, more often. Although they say people in the 21^st century should get out of the imagined community called nations, it is no doubt that certain groups of race are looking up or should I say, “sucking up” to the Western Culture too much. This is clearly shown in Korean media. Dying hair colours that are more natural to white has become common in K-pop artists in the past 20 years to look ‘prettier’ and ‘extraordinary’. Since they are the leading trend of fashion in Korea, the consumers of media tend to imitate the things they do. As a result of this, it has now become a stereotype that Koreans, even the guys, dye their hair. This is seen as the form of accepting Richard Dyer’s “Whiteness”, which he argues that whites have the dominant image in media thus becoming idealized, naturalised and universal. However, in my opinion, Koreans should be aware the fact that by accepting the whiteness, they are actually degrading themselves because they are neglecting their heritage and accepting the other’s heritage in them, thus, losing their own identity as Koreans.

A Korean super star Rain (Bi) dies his hair to look more westernised

Another way Eurocentrism is evident in Korean media is through advertisements. Take a look at this advertisement for a cosmetic brand called ‘Isa Knox’ starring a Korean Superstar Hyori Lee and Jessica Alba.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Owhgz1f7WLo&feature=player_embedded

When I watched this advert, I wondered why they had to use such Westernised background, white males and Jessica Alba, when this advert is clearly written by a Korean and targeted to Korean consumers. The advert certainly portrays the notion of Whiteness as the creators probably thought that westernised background is more appealing and luxurious and white males are more suitable for these glamorous women.

In addition, Jessica Alba is portrayed ‘white’ although she is quite tanned. This indicates that the color white symbolizes beauty.

Although her colour of the skin is edited to be white in the ad, she is not white!

The use of white models in advert is quite common in Korea.

A mountain wear advert showing white male and female.

and

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TVYEIy8qQLE

An advert for Galaxy S in Korea

These two adverts suggest that if you use this product, you could appear fancy and ‘cool’ like the white people in this advertisement. Giving the idea that although they cannot BE white, they can do things that white people do. This, I think is ‘sucking up’ to whites.

However, despite the portrayal of white people as ‘superior’ in Korean media, Western Media only use the stereotypes of Korean and other Asian in their advertisement.

Here, Beijing Olympic Spanish basketball team is making their eyes slanted (too look like Asians) for some Spanish courier company.

In this famous Hell pizza advertisement, they used the stereotype of Thailand that Thai women are generally masseuse

In conclusion, the implication of having Eurocentric media left Asians to strive to be like whites, whereas, whites look down on them. This directly sets up superior and inferior relationship between them in terms of the race.