Thrift Television in South Korea: The Long Recession and the Financial Makeover of Female Consumers in Homo Economicus (EBS)

Abstract

This article explores South Korean “thrift” television by examining Homo Economicus (EBS), a reality TV show that challenged participants to save ten thousand dollars in six months with guidance from financial advisors. Situating thrift television within the broader sociohistorical context of the long recession after the 1997 Asian financial crisis, I show how Homo Economicus suggested frugality as a way of life in a time of precarity and economic polarization by providing techniques of compulsory thrift and turning participants into aspirational savers. Gendered narratives of consumption played a pivotal role in the process and the program took millennial women as its main target of intervention. Gendered thrift television exemplifies the ways media culture problematizes women’s consumption while failing to address structural gender inequality. I also discuss the close relation between thrift television and online financial communities that served as a crucial space where thrift television found its financial experts.