The struggle of Class in Korean Media

Introduction

In the past, Korea had a long history of system, the King being always on top and then the Yangban society who were the aristocracies of Korea. In today’s Korean modern society, Jaebeols, the big rich companies are on the top in means of power. In this essay, I will argue the way Korean contemporary media is portraying Korean class system in their stories, either by supporting or challenging it. The essence of the class system in contemporary Korean Society has been preserved. I will argue is the dynamics between the upper-class and lower class using the spoon theory by Kim Hyejin. Using the Korean Drama Manager Kim (김과장), I will present how the writers expose the problems of the class system and how Gim Seongryong (principal character), plays a role defying the normal order. The second point is how the popular Korean drama Boys over Flowers support the idea of different classes. Then I will talk more about how the Korean Media sends mixed signals about the acceptance or the refusal of inequality.

Background

In the past, Korea had a class system that put Yangban at first in the chain. The yangbans were the most influential people in that past, they exercised a degree of influence over the state and society that sometimes surpassed the power of Kings. The aristocrats of Korea were controlling what was happening in the country and usually they usually had all the power in their ands. “In traditional Korea, most notably in Joseon[1], passing of the civil service examination was the most important and imperative goal for the yangban class.” (Yang 2011, 58). Passing the civil service examination was the goal for the yangban class because it is how they kept their special status and will receive social recognition. (Yang 2011). Even if lower class people were able to take the civil service examination, it was nearly impossible for them to pass it because of the price of the books, tuition, schooling was too great for commoners to invests. Therefore, it was only the yangban[2] members that were able to pass the exam and have social advancement in the society.

In today’s South Korean (hereafter Korea) contemporary society, the relationship with those classes did not changes. I argue that classes still exist in Korean contemporary society as upper-class people who have all the power and lower-class people still struggles to live. I say that Yangban society is the same as Jaebeol[3], and the lower classes are the rest of the people who are trying to move up in the social ladder.

There was a lot of clash between the classes and society, in the modern Korean society, people feel like there is no need to have the class differences. Hence, people are fighting against classes and the benefits that usually come after being in the upper-class class.

Korean class in today’s society

The system of classifying people by spoons (Kim HJ 2015) is a theory that explain the different classes in Korean society. The gold spoons, are the wealthiest of all, the silver spoons are the middle and the bronze spoons are the lowest. “The logic here is that gold spoons are not expected to work or try to achieve anything through their effort” (Kim HJ 2017, 844). Being from a gold spoons family, will give you more benefits; hence not be expected to work or not achieve anything by their effort. This make that having a good background will help you to achieve anything and having a wealthy family will provide you with social advancement in the society that “normal” family will not able to provide for you. “rather, inherited privilege is as justified as any individual merit for helping someone advance.” (Kim HJ 2017, 842). Therefore, people need to find a new way to move up and that is when education become more important, graduating from a good school will give you more chance than graduating from an unknown school. “The education system is the foundation of a stratification system that allows for social mobility.” (Kim HJ 2015: 848). Social mobility is becoming more and more important in the Korean society and it is usually accompanied with having a good schooling background will help the person to go higher up.

Manager Kim

At first, the drama Manager Kim[4] (2017. KBS2. I Jaehun and Choe Yunseok) has a lot of themes that go against Korean system, the characters all seems to go against the big company and even changes rules for other characters. The most primal example is how, Gim Seongryong challenges the already established orders that exist in the company. The first episode is already a great example about how Gim Seongryong challenges the rules in the company, he gets accepted in the prestigious company even when he does not have any good scholar background with him. This challenges an immense unspoken rule in Korean society, because usually school is an important step to do and it helps you to have a good job; “schools play a critical role in providing local positions as well-defined setting in which social relations emerge” (Kim DH and Kim JH 2012, 35). Basically, if you are from a well-known university, you will have higher chance to have a good job, Seongryong broke the myth by entering a well-known company (in the drama) without have a good university name in his resume.[5]Throughout the whole drama, Gim Seongryong was always against the big bad CEO (which represent Jaebeol in reality), he was not scared to be an outsider if that means to fight for the good. Manager Kim[6] can be seen as a message to the viewers to fight against the already place classes in the society, to not let the people with higher ranks, money controlled them. Like said earlier Gim Seongryong did not follow the rules, one scene was when he learned that some elevators were only for the higher ups, he could not believe it and he tried to use it anyway (Ep 2). Seongryong did not see why there was a need to have different elevator for different people. At first usually people outcast Gim Seongryong because he was not “conform” to the rules in the company, he was a character that make to much noise and people did not like it.

Boys Over Flowers

In contrast to Manager Kim, Boys Over Flowers (2009. KBS2. Jeon Gisang) was all for the class system. Let me explain, Manager Kim was used in a way to go against the social classes that the Korean modern society is used to see in other dramas but Boys Over Flowers is the prime example of what people are expecting in a drama about rich people; “that the drama is the natural product of economic depression, as it opted to focus on fantasies of escape rather than expose sobering reality” (Kim SK 2013, 95). This drama shows the advantages of being in a higher social class, like Gu Junpyo and his friends are in a different class than their peers and they have a better class environment too.[7]The lower class are stuck with the others and they need to battle to be able to stay in class or to stay in favour of the F4 (that is the nickname Gun Junpyo and his friends have). A lot of other students have this image of the F4 and how it will be so great to be in their group. Even the group enters the room, there is a white light behind them, this is a way to romanticizing the upper class, hence Gun Junpyo and his friends. The female character, Geum Jandi, is the embodiment of the lower class, she does not have a lot of money, and she is working to help her family to survive, she got accepted to the school with a scholarship. At first, she struggles to fit it and she is severely punished by the other students. In the contrary, like said earlier Gun Junpyo is the embodiment of the upper class, the director of the school has a connection with him, his family owned multiples companies throughout the whole country and he does bad things but get always excused. In this drama, there is a lot of issues that were raised; “significant issues are raised – the apparent class struggle and the moral imperative as a foundational component of a proper class background” (Kim SK 2013, 96). There is an apparent class struggles that appears in the drama, and a lot of other issues that Korea has, like school bullying and teen suicide. [8]The last point I wanted to talk in this section is the class clashes and the final acceptance of the lower class for the upper class. Geum Jandi was against all romantic approaches from Gun Junpyo, she did not want anything that is from him, which brought her misfortunes during the drama. There is a swift in the drama, that even if Jandi does not want the attention, she finally accepts the romantic feelings of Junpyo which bring all the benefits from him to her. She indirectly received the same benefits that Gun Junpyo has. The message that can be interpreted in this, is that even if you want to fight against a higher class, you will always finish by accepting it and reaps the benefits.

The struggle between acceptance and refusal of class with mediazation

In those two dramas, we see a struggle of class between the lower and upper class. Although the message that they both send is quite different. Manager Kim is more about the fight of the lower class against the upper class and how at the end they were able to defeat the “evil” upper class (corruption in the company) and all is well. “Within the larger society there is little genuine respect or affection toward the chaebǒl, and public criticism of the conglomerates is becoming increasingly vocal and severe.” (Eckert 1990, 130), this is the exact message that the drama is trying to convey to the Korean public who can understand the struggles to work in huge conglomerates. Boys Over Flowers is more about the romanticize of what is upper class and how people can try to go up the social ladder and be able to live like Gun Junpyo. It is all about the lower class trying to discredit the upper class but at the end Jandi accept her fate and continue to perpetuate the social class in the history. Like that the lower class cannot escape from the upper class; “from the moment they wake up to the moment they go to bed, it is nearly impossible to escape chaebol’s influence in one way or another” (Kim SK 2013, 96). The media plays a tremendous role to conveys soft message to the audience. The two different dramas and time periods shows how much the media changed from having accepted the class to fighting against the same classes and Korean Media plays a lot around important issues in society and they were successful to explain those messages. [9]

In conclusion

This explains that the class system of Old Korea is the same as Modern Korea, it was renamed to fit the times, but the essence stayed the same. There is the upper-class who has the money and power to stay up, “The main target of the myǒngp’um[10] market was the new rich, those whose economic status was substantially higher than the majority of the middle class and therefore desired to distinguish themselves from the ordinary middle-class people.” (Koo 2007, 9).There is still this thought that you need to look different to stay up in the class, looking different means that you need to spend a lot of money to show your class “It has been widely recognized among scholars that consumption in modern capitalist societies played a crucial role in class distinction and class identity formation” (Koo 2007, 8). This was the message of Boys Over Flowers, there was a lot of spending and how the students differentiated the upper class from the lower class was by seeing the brand of clothes, watch and even cars; those are the pointers that someone is well-off. It was the same for Manager Kim, the watcher can see clearly who upper class is and who is lower class. There is a struggle of class that is represented in those dramas and the message is quite different, one is about to fight the system and became more equal, the upper-class does not have all the power. The second one is to still fight the system but still at the end the is an acceptance that the upper-class is better and the goal is to converge with the upper class and live a “better” life than staying in the lower class. The struggle right now, is that there is a mix message in the media about class system in Korea and there is a lot of fights about upper class versus lower classes. It is an intricate issue in Korean modern society and there still a long way to fight it.

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Bibliography

Autor, David H, “Skills, Education, and the Rise of earnings Inequality among the ‘Other 99 Percent’,” The Science Inequality, 344, no.6186 (2014): 843-850.

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Eckert, Carter J, “The South Korean Bourgeoisie: A Class in Search of Hegemony,” Journal of Korean Studies, 7, (1990): 115-148.

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Kim, Doo Wan and Ji Hye Kim, “Emerging High-Status in South Korea: Social Capital Formation in the Social Contexts of Foreign Language and General High Schools,” The Asia-Pacific Education Researcher, 22, no.1 (2013): 33-44

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Kim, Suk-Young, “For the Eyes of North Koreans? Politics of Money and Class in Boys Over Flowers,” In The Korean Wave: Korean Media Go Global, edited by Youna Kim. 93-105. London and New York: University of Westminster, 2013.

Koo, Hagen, “The Changing Faces of Inequality in South Korea in the Age of Globalization,” Korean Studies, 31, (2007):1-16.

Koo, Hagen, “Inequality in South Korea,” East Asia Forum: Economics, politics and Public Policy in East Asian and the Pacific, 2014, Accessed November 14, 2018, http://www.eastasiaforum.org/2014/07/01/inequality-in-south-korea/.

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Footnotes

[1] This author chose to use the Revised Romanisation of Korean for this word which is Joseon. In Korean it is 조선. But for some people they use the McCune-Reischauer Romanization which then is writing as Chosǒn.

[2] Fun fact (not really): There was Yangban, then commoners, then there was a lower class (slaves and butchers), butchers were lower than slaves. In this class system, there was no way to move up.

[3] For Jaebeol, I am using the Revised Romanisation of Korean, the original is 재벌. In fact, all the names in this paper will be Romanised by the Revised Romanisation system.

[4] I choose to Manager Kim instead of Good Manager for the English version of 김과장 because it was the one that I use in my blog and the one I am the most familiar with.

[5] Actually, it was harsher than that, in the drama they didn’t want Gim Seongryong to enter the company even if he was able to do well on the exams. He basically told a story and almost begged until he got accepted.

[6] I do not use the Revised romanization for the title (Manager Kim) because it is the one that was widely used in the media for the English translation. Only for the title of the drama that I will use the McCune-Reischauer Romanization.

[7] If you are looking in a drama that represents class system in modern Korea, I think it is a good one to watch and be very sceptical about it. I mean it shows a great class struggle but there is a lot of romanticization of what a relation and upper class is.

[8] I believe those issue was talked in the first episode but Geum Jandi suffers from extreme(school) bullying for the first half of the drama.

[9] A lot of Korean drama have themes and depends on the time period and the trend it can be interesting to see what people are willing to see. There was a couple of drama I was surprised to see was, Kill Me, Heal Me (2015. MBC. Gim Jinman and Gim Daejin) and Hyde Jekyll, I (2015. SBS. Jo Yeonggwang). They were both three years ago, but both talked about mental illness, one type exactly Dissociative Identity Disorder). So, I think that drama can help to talk about issue that usually people do not talk about and it bring an open discussion about it.

[10] Myǒngp’um refers to prestigious or distinguished goods or more simply brand-name products. (Koo 2007: 8)