Media that reflect Korean and German mediatic contexts

Film and television dramas are widely popular and culturally influential forms of media in Korea. Among them, Ode to My Father (original title: Gukjesijang) is a film that illustrates several characteristics often associated with Korean popular media. The movie attracted over ten million viewers upon its release, reflecting how strongly the film resonated with audiences through its historical and emotional themes.

The protagonist of Ode to My Father can be read as symbolizing the experiences of many men and family providers of his generation, rather than the generation as a whole. Through his life experiences—escaping during the Korean War, being dispatched as a miner to Germany—the film reveals the hardships of Korea’s modern history marked by war and turmoil.

The story also reflects aspects of Confucian heritage that have historically shaped Korean social values, particularly ideals of familial loyalty and sacrifice. The protagonist continually sacrifices himself for his family and supports them as a way of keeping the promise he made to his late father. This illustrates the Korean emphasis on family and jeong , jeong, an affective concept often described as a deep emotional bond that develops through long-term relationships. In this sense, it is fitting that the English title shifts from the original setting of Gukjesijang (international market) to Ode to My Father, emphasizing the central theme of filial devotion.

The film also incorporates a strong shinpa (melodramatic) sentiment, one of the key elements of Korean popular culture. Its emotionally charged scenes, often designed to elicit strong affective responses, are frequently discussed as a characteristic feature of Korean popular media. Although such melodrama can sometimes divide audiences—especially when it appears disconnected from the overall narrative—it remains an essential and enduring feature of Korean popular culture.

Ultimately, Ode to My Father brings together several elements often associated with Korean popular media, including historical consciousness, family-centered values influenced by Confucian thought, and a strong melodramatic sensibility.

### Arte

What is Arte?

- Association Relative à la Télévision Européenne „Zusammenschluss bezüglich des europäischen Fernsehens“

- public broadcasting service

- german-french cooperation

Public vs. Private broadcasters

In Germany, broadcasting is divided into public service broadcasters and private broadcasters:

- Public service broadcasters (öffentlich-rechtliche Rundfunkanstalten)

    - These include ARD, ZDF, and Deutschlandradio

    - They are funded mainly through broadcasting fees paid by households, not advertising revenue

    - Their main task is to provide balanced, independent, and high-quality content that serves the public interest: news, culture, education, entertainment, and minority programming

    - They must remain politically and commercially independent.

- Private broadcasters (private Rundfunkanstalten)

    - These include channels like RTL or ProSieben.

    - They are financed mostly through advertising and operate on a commercial basis.

    - Their main goal is to attract viewers and generate profit, which often means focusing on entertainment formats, series, movies, and popular shows, though they also provide news and information.

The first Interstate Broadcasting Treaty (Rundfunkstaatsvertrag) was agreed upon by the German federal states in 1987 and came into force in 1988.

What is my connection to Arte?

- two channels that I like to watch

    - "Arte" https://www.youtube.com/@artede

    - "Irgendwas mit Arte und Kultur" https://www.youtube.com/@artekulturkanal

- very well researched, high quality documentaries

- different topics from science, politics, social, global topics, history

What is Arte known for?

- high quality productions is something Arte is known for

Some programs that I like:

- "Mit offenen Karten": videos informing about geopolitical content, zB [Spannungen im Japanischen Meer](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5J9FsogUFXI&t=432s)

- Arte:RE, Dokuformat von 30Minuten, das verschiedene Themen beleuchtet. Gives inside in other people's lives

- Arte Tracks

A Compressed Growth Society

Originally released in South Korea in 2003, MapleStory rapidly achieved mass popularity, ultimately solidifying its status as a cultural icon within the nation’s online gaming landscape. At its peak, nearly 20 million Koreans—spanning multiple generations and social strata—had engaged with the game. This extraordinary level of participation suggests that MapleStory functioned not merely as a source of entertainment but as a significant cultural medium that helped shape the social imagination of contemporary Korean society.

South Korea’s remarkable economic trajectory during the latter half of the 20th century, often referred to as “compressed growth,” was characterized by rapid industrialization and modernization within a highly condensed timeframe. While this process yielded impressive national development, it also entailed profound human costs: prolonged working hours, intensive educational pressures, and an ingrained ethos of relentless self-optimization. During what is often called the “Miracle on the Han River,” Korea was frequently described as among the most extreme cases globally in terms of labor and study time. Within this broader sociocultural framework, MapleStory’s game design logic can be read as a mediated reflection—if not an extension—of Korea’s labor-oriented, performance- driven social order.

At the heart of MapleStory lies a progression system in which players achieve character development through the accumulation of experience points. This process, achieved by grinding monsters and completing quests, necessitates extensive time investment and high tolerance for repetitive tasks. Within the player community, such gameplay has been colloquially referred to as nogada—a Korean slang term originally denoting menial or physically exhausting labor. 

The use of this term within the context of gameplay is telling: it exemplifies how MapleStory blurs the boundaries between play and work, projecting industrial labor values into the digital leisure sphere. Particularly during its early years, MapleStory was notorious for its labor-intensive mechanics and steep leveling curve, often requiring years of persistent grinding to reach maximum levels. Even as the game evolved, successive updates introduced new content and ever-higher ceilings, effectively locking players into a perpetual growth imperative. 

In this way, the game operates as a microcosm of South Korea’s competitive society, immersing users in continuous pressure to perform, improve, and endure. Beneath the surface of play lies a system of repetitive digital labor that, while framed as enjoyable,often generates fatigue and affective exhaustion. As such, MapleStory may be seen as reproducing, and at times reinforcing, aspects of Korea’s broader culture of overwork and meritocratic competition. 

From a personal standpoint, growing up with MapleStory led me, personally, to normalize the idea that long-term, repetitive labor was not only necessary but virtuous. Tasks that demanded monotony and time—whether in-game or in real life—came to feel expected and even desirable, particularly when tied to notions of visible achievement.

This mindset, deeply resonant with cultural ideals in Korea that have historically valorized endurance and competitiveness, shaped how I viewed success and self-worth. For some, the game’s internal reward structure reinforced beliefs such as “effort never betrays.” For others, the game’s aggressive monetization and endless competitive loop may have induced disillusionment, prompting a more critical view of the similarly ruthless structures in real life.

In either case, MapleStory emerges not as a neutral form of entertainment, but as a complex cultural artifact—one that has left both affirming and unsettling imprints on how users experience labor, leisure, and identity.

Between M and Z, a way to locate a hybrid, singular homeland: becoming media

Before introducing a specific piece of media that could represent Korea, I find myself pausing. I sit between the Millennial and Gen Z boundary, carrying the confusion that comes with living in that in-between space. Even within the same country, experiences of “representation” vary widely, and I am aware that my own reference points may not feel immediately familiar to others. At the same time, I don’t quite belong to any particular fandom lineage either. I’m simply a person shaped by a hybrid era—an era that has already softened the borders between national identity and personal taste.

I tend to remember a country not through a specific work of media but through a certain feeling. When that feeling becomes necessary, I look for the content that embodies it. Perhaps the feeling itself is a kind of media. 

There are moments when Korea feels fast, intense, and overflowing with a bright, almost feverish energy. And when I want to experience a slight detachment from that pace—something that feels more aligned with the distance my generation often senses—I find myself turning to webtoons more easily than to video-based formats. The long downward movement of a scroll on a phone screen, where the transition between scenes is measured not by time but by length, creates a rhythm that helps recalibrate the balance between myself and the country I live in. 

The vertical scroll is not a simple convenience but a reading practice reshaped for mobile life. Full-color illustrations, weekly updates, and platforms built specifically around this form—Naver Webtoon, Daum, KakaoPage—together created a self-sustaining ecosystem. Webtoons are not merely “Korean-style comics”; they represent a digital media structure that first took shape within Korea’s particular technological and cultural conditions.

Comment culture, fan communities, waves of derivative works, and the rapid adaptation of webtoons into dramas and films have turned the form into something more than storytelling. It has become a social apparatus. Interestingly, this structure no longer belongs only to Korea. The term “webtoon” is now used as-is in the United States and Europe, and vertical-scroll comic platforms continue to spread. Even in countries with long-established comic traditions—like France—webtoons are emerging as a distinct genre. 

Watching this happen, I realize that “Korean media” cannot be treated simply as a category of national content. My generation grew up at a moment when the local and the global coexisted within the same small screen. The hybrid nature of that time was inescapable. From this perspective, what defines Korean media for me is not national identity itself, but its capacity to generate new forms. Certain social and technological conditions fostered a media experience that has now become global. Webtoons thus represent not only a popular cultural product, but one structural contribution Korea has made to the contemporary media ecosystem. 

Many of us grew up within the rhythm of the scroll—looking downward into a screen, allowing text and image to accumulate within a single vertical flow, moving through stories at a fast and steady pace. This is the experience formed where Korean locality meets the digital world, and it is the most direct way I can speak about Korean media. Webtoons are not only a matter of taste; they capture both the structure of Korean media and the sensibility of the generation that grew up inside it.

Faced with the task of introducing a piece of Korean media, I find myself returning not to a particular film or television program, but to the familiar gesture of scrolling downward. In that small movement lies the trajectory of Korea’s digital culture, and the sensibilities of a generation shaped by its flow.

A Salient Mediatic Symptom in Contemporary South Korea

The most closely observed phenomenon in contemporary Korean media experience is the one-person live streaming culture, particularly the lineage that began with ‘AfreecaTV’ and continued through ‘YouTube’. This form encompasses significance beyond mere entertainment content.

Intrinsically interwoven with Korea's structural conditions, it functions as an original media format that reflects affective conditions and perceived life prospects shared by many within our generation.

The origins of the Korean one-person broadcasting model trace back to the AfreecaTV platform, which launched in 2005. This platform inaugurated an era where anyone in Korea could conduct live broadcasts, predating comparable large-scale live streaming platforms such as Justin.tv and YouTube Live in the United States.

AfreecaTV's originality resides not merely in technological streaming, but in institutionalizing the identity of the 'BJ (Broadcast Jockey)' and the 'Byeol-pung-seon' (Star balloon in Korean) sponsorship system. 

This established a new ecosystem where participants could not only stream but also engage in real- time interaction and simultaneously exchange economic rewards.

The formats that originated here, such as mukbang (eating broadcasts), gambang (gaming broadcasts), and talkbang(daily talk show), became the archetypes for the culture subsequently spread globally by Twitch and YouTube. In essence, Korean one-person broadcasting did not simply adopt a global trend; it contributed a model that later informed global streaming cultures by introducing specific formats and revenue structures. This model is characterized by the combination of an 'amateur-to-star structure' with 'real-time two-way communication and monetization.'

To understand this medium, it is essential to examine the socio-economic context of contemporary Korean youth. Many in their parents’ generation (often associated with Boomer and Gen X cohorts) accumulated assets during Korea’s period of rapid economic growth, including through real estate investment in the 1980s and 90s, experiencing a structure where self-made success was feasible.

However, the subsequent, disproportionate surge in real estate prices resulted in the Generation-Z growing up under the equation:

perceptions such as “homeownership feels increasingly unattainable”

and

'Becoming rich = born rich.'

This structural inequality transcends mere economic constraint, defining the generational psyche. In a society where upward mobility through stable employment and homeownership is blocked, our generation shares a fundamental sense of cynicism and resignation. Within this context of perceived structural stagnation, personal broadcasting emerged as a potential alternative pathway.

Firstly, it dismantled entry barriers; anyone with a smartphone could broadcast without the need for capital or network support. Secondly, real-time interaction and sponsorship led to immediate economic returns and fame. This process disrupted the existing system where becoming a 'star' required passing through broadcasting companies or talent agencies, blurring the line between celebrities and non-celebrities, and shifting participation towards networked collectives rather than established broadcasters.

Consequently, personal broadcasting became a symbolic space that momentarily subverted the cynical reality experienced by our generation, representing what was often perceived as a possible form of social mobility in the digital age.' Within this generation, the phrase "You should at least have your own YouTube channel" is no longer a simple joke, but has become one of the contemporary survival paths and a default expectation within the media environment.

However, while offering new social mobility, personal broadcasting also exposes an ambivalent nature. The fact that everyone becomes a broadcaster and every room becomes a broadcasting station implies freedom from the censorship and verification typically carried out by traditional broadcasting networks. While the liberty established by the early BJ culture allowed for explosive expression, the direct influence of ratings and rankings on revenue instigated a competition for sensationalism among streamers.

This sensationalism is represented by the lineage of controversial broadcasting, exemplified by figures like BJ Cheolgu and BJ Shintaeil. Content involving staged performances that referenced sexual violence, as well as cases involving verified criminal histories—including sexual offenses, domestic violence, and substance abuse—circulated alongside public attention and financial sponsorship. The fact that a large audience consumed and enjoyed such scenes translated into massive profits for the BJs. 

Through incomes comparable to, or exceeding, those of celebrities, the influence of these figures expanded from the periphery to the mainstream and to younger generations, a dynamic that appears to have been passed down to the current generation of streamers.

In summary, Korean personal broadcasting has been both a pathway offering new social mobility to a cynical generation and a medium characterized by ambivalence, having simultaneously expanded through structures that, at times, relied on misogynistic tropes and violent sensationalism. This ambivalence clearly demonstrates that personal broadcasting is not merely an escape mechanism but a contemporary sign that demands critical reflection.