The broadcasting audience movement in Korea

Abstract

In liberal democracies, recent decades have witnessed citizens organizing watchdog bodies to make broadcasting more responsible. While citizens' efforts to reform Korean broadcasting are still in their infancy, we can identify dynamic developments of, and future potential for, media reforms. This article examines the broadcasting audience movements in Korea for the past two decades by addressing a nation-wide campaign for a television reception fee boycott in the 1980s, and a collective boycott of television watching and institutional reform campaigns in the 1990s. Through the exploration of the background, the characteristics and the influence of these audience campaigns, this essay attempts to show that notwithstanding political constraints and business filters, television audiences in Korea have endeavoured to produce an open, audience-friendly and publicly accountable broadcasting system.