4.2. Korea’s Democratization and Media
4.2.6. Citizen’s boycott of government control broadcasting :
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The trigger of the Great June Struggle was one Korean college student’s death, Park Jong-chul of Seoul National University. In January, 1987, Korean national police agency was arrest and tortured Park. During a harsh torture, he dead, and police agency was cover up this accident.
The events surrounding Park Jong-chul's death was suppressed at first. However, the Catholic Priests Association for Justice (CPAJ), revealed the truth to the public on May 18, further inflaming public sentiment. CPAJ planned a June 10th demonstration in his honor. And after, the JoongAng ilbo’s one reporter was disclosure torture and death of Park. This news report was trigger of the great struggle(Kang 2002).
4.2.6.Citizen’s boycott of government control broadcasting : The KBS-TV reception fee boycott movement
As the demand for democracy grew, so did the importance of the media for facilitating the process of societal democratization. Accordingly, democratic forces in society came to realize that societal democratization could be achieved through the democratization of the media. In other words, it was understood that democratization of the media could contribute to social change. Thus, understanding that broadcasting is a major terrain of struggle over democratization of society in general, citizens’
groups began to establish media watchdog organs under their umbrella.
Following the tremendous shifts in the media environment in the early 1980s, the Korean media came under the control of the government. Thus, it came as no surprise that the media in the early 1980s were widely discredited by their audiences. The
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audience’s mistrust of the media is well reflected in a 1993 survey of freedom of the press, which found that respondents gave the 5th Republic the lowest mark of 30 points out of 100 whereas the 6th Republic.
Government earned 45 and 69 respectively (Korean Press Institute, 1993: 21).
The subordination of the media to government influence inevitably caused civil protests against the media in general, and against the public service broadcaster KBS in particular. Clearly, in the early 1980s there existed public discontent with the KBS, which neglected to fulfill its commitment to public service.
In the 1st couple of years in the 1980s, we can hardly find any organized broadcasting audience movements. During this period witnessed growing discontent among television viewers about news bulletins biased in favor of the unpopular military government. In particular, there existed a widespread conviction in rural communities that the media had failed to portray farmers’ economic situation faithfully. Despite farmers’ economic hardships, the media repeatedly conveyed government propaganda by telling viewers that the standard of living had improved remarkably. It is noteworthy that the movement started in a rural area. In 1983, farmers in Wanju County, North Cholla Province, infuriated by the misleading reports, voiced strong displeasure with the KBS, and in turn refused to pay the television reception fee. This incident, though it has been assessed as the starting point of the movement, was not enough to serve as a catalyst for an immediate spread of the campaign on a nationwide scale.
Two years later, however, the movement became revitalized. It was the general election, held on 12 February 1985, that served as a decisive factor for the explosion
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of the dormant public discontent. As the election approached, television news coverage became extremely biased in favor of the ruling party candidates. Not surprisingly, television stations were put under pressure to help the ruling party win the election. This became possible partly because pro-government figures were appointed as heads of the broadcasters. The tight collusion between politics and broadcasting was such that the Catholic Farmers’ Association in Wanju issued a statement on 28 April 1985, titled ‘KBS-TV reception fee should be collected only from the ruling Democratic Justice Party and the government!’ Among 30-odd statements issued during the three years of the campaign, it is recorded as the first one (K.T. Kim, 1994: 381). Thus, politically biased news coverage can be listed as the main cause of the reception fee boycott campaign. However, closer examination of the causes of the movement reveals that other aspects have also contributed to its rise.
Together with the problem of fairness in reporting, KBS’s excessive dependence on advertising for its budget came under attack. As viewers consistently raised questions about the validity of advertising on public service television, the KBS suffered an identity crisis. Audience groups asserted that excessive advertising on public television is against the idea of public service. Accordingly, television viewers sympathized with this reasoning to provide their support for the collective movement.
The lack of balanced, quality programming was also criticized: viewers blamed the public service broadcaster’s ruthless pursuit of commercial interests, seeing it as a dereliction of public service. There also persisted public outcry over the declining quality of children’s programmes. In addition, viewers in mountainous areas refused to pay the fee on the grounds that they were not able to receive a clear picture. Poor reception areas thus provided an essentially reasonable and fair argument. These dissatisfactions with the KBS had been lying dormant until they erupted in 1986,
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when the full-scale movement started.
Since the Pan-Christian National Movement Headquarters was established under the National Council of Churches (NCC) on 20 January 1986, the movement was placed on the track of progress in a more organized way. On 14 February, the Headquarters handed out 50,000 adhesive labels and 10,000 leaflets to people, which said: ‘We Do Not Watch KBS-TV’ (K.T. Kim, 1994: 382). Catholic churches also added force to the Headquarters by issuing a similar statement. The Catholic Committee for the Promotion of Justice and Peace, which was renowned for its outright antigovernment stance, officially staged a popular campaign for the reception fee boycott. A year later, on 25 June 1987, Buddhists, who initially had reservations, finally joined the movement. Thus, all major religious groups in Korea made a tremendous contribution to the development of the campaign. Given that, unlike other social organizations, religious groups had enjoyed relative autonomy from politics, the prompt and active participation of Christians and Catholics in the movement can be taken for granted.
Meanwhile, women’s organizations went one step further by arguing that the reception fee was something that should be abolished rather than boycotted. On 25 April 1986, the Association of Women’s Organizations adopted a resolution supporting the cause of the movement, which was echoed by the Seoul YMCA. These two groups have a significance in that, even though they took part in the movement later than the religious groups, they stayed in at the final stage to wrap things up. The other social groups had left the movement in 1987 to concentrate on the upcoming presidential election in December. It should also be noted that the experience of being in an organized movement provided a valuable opportunity for women to take a
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leading part in the following viewers’ campaigns in the 1990s.
The movement, which showed no sign of abating, had to face a new dimension in the second half of 1987. In June 1987, Korea experienced political turmoil resulting from the nomination of Roh Tae-woo, President Chun’s classmate at the Korean Military Academy, as presidential candidate of the ruling party. College students and citizens as well as dissident politicians took to the streets, demanding sweeping democratic reforms including direct presidential elections and revision of the existing constitution.
The political crisis was resolved by Roh’s surprise announcement of democratic principles on 29 June, which in turn marked a turning point in the broadcasting audience movement as well as in other social movements (Kim et al., 1994: 144).
This government counter-attack took the steam out of the popular campaign. Not surprisingly, as civic groups gradually pulled out of the strategic alliance with audience groups, the movement, which reached its peak of influence in 1986 and the first half of 1987, followed a downhill path until it petered out in early 1989.
One cannot successfully see the characteristics of the movement without a clear understanding of its political context. Scrutiny of the political implications of the movement would lead us to conclude that, strictly speaking, the campaign began as political resistance rather than as an audience movement in the true sense of the word.
As the movement originally aimed to correct biased news reports from the public service broadcaster, it was pursued as a means of political struggle to facilitate democratization of the society (D.K. Kim, 1996: 445). In other words, the boycott of the reception fee was not an ultimate goal of the movement. Rather, it was pursued as
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an efficient surface means to its final aim of social democratization. Though the movement aimed to attain the democratization of society through the democratization of broadcasting, it had dealt a serious blow to the KBS. As the movement gathered popular support, the KBS came under increasing public criticism. The loss of credibility as a public service broadcaster was such that Lee Chul, a member of the National Assembly, denounced the KBS as a ‘public enemy’ in the National Assembly (Koo, 1992: 43). The public distrust of the KBS also led to a sharp decline in the morale of KBS employees. Indeed, as Chang, president of KBPA stated, throughout the 1980s ‘the independence of broadcasting from governmental intervention was the greatest aim of journalists and producers’. Low morale had been latent, but it surfaced in April 1990, when KBS workers collectively challenged the government decision to appoint SeoKi-won, president of the pro-government Seoul Daily, as head of the broadcaster. On 12 April, the government responded to the resistance by arresting 171 employees who took part in the demonstration. Protesting against this coercive measure by the government, the KBS Union staged an unprecedented strike which included refusal of program production. On 30 April, the government answered the strike repressively again by sending riot police into the broadcaster to arrest all 333 workers who participated in the sit-in.
The serious impact of the boycott campaign on the KBS was the drastic fall in television reception fee collection. The collection, which amounted to 119.6 billion won in 1985, declined to 78 billion won in 1988. This can be construed to mean that 31 percent of viewers who had previously paid the fee participated in the movement (Koo, 1992: 42). Threatened by the collective boycott, the KBS came to depend increasingly on advertising for its finance. As Table 1 indicates, the reception fee, which had provided the bigger part of the KBS budget until 1983, yielded itsplace to
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advertising in 1984. Since then, the reversal has accelerated, especially since 1986, when viewers collectively sympathized with the cause of the boycott.
The movement has also changed the way in which viewers see the relationship between broadcasting and themselves. Indeed, the boycott campaign of the 1980s marked a watershed as far as public consciousness about broadcasting was concerned.
As Ju-on Woo of the Christian Ethics Movement of Korea observes, one of the legacies of the campaign is ‘the understanding of possibilities of exerting impacts and influences on broadcasters through the collective power of the audiences when broadcasters failed to full-fill democratic responsibilities’. Until the popular resistance, viewers had existed only in name without any experience of exercising collective influence on broadcasters. It should also be noted that the experience of the campaign spawned many audience representative groups, which have activated broadcasting audience movements in the new broadcasting environment of the 1990s.
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5.Conclusion
Democracy still remains rare in Asia despite the optimism of 1990. Thus, the experiences of Korea and Taiwan, the only two Asian countries "third-wave"
democracies, have much to teach us.
Both had important Japanese colonial periods during the first half of the twentieth century that led to some economic development and higher educational standards among the populations, though both suffered considerable violence from the Japanese colonial authorities. But Japanese imperial government’s rule in Korea and Taiwan was quietly different, so the peoples of two countries memory of Japanese colonial era also not same. After Japanese colonial era, both countries then suffered under strong authoritarian regimes that further stimulated economic growth.
For more than a decade, these two new democracies have regularly held free and competitive elections at all levels of their respective governments. Both nationally and locally, citizens choose the heads of the executive branches and the members of the legislatures thorough regularly scheduled electoral contests. Unlike many countries in the region, moreover, the two countries have peacefully transferred power to opposition parties, the Millennium Democratic Party(Former president Kim Dae-jung’s party) in Korea(1997) and the Democratic Progressive Party in Taiwan (2000).
Accordingly, there is little doubt that the political regimes of Korea and Taiwan fully meet the democratic principle of popular sovereignty featuring free and fair
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elections, universal adult suffrage, and multiparty competition.
Related to 1st Research Question,(two countries’ same but different developing process) In this study, I have compared a number of aspects of the Taiwanese and Korean authoritarian regimes and their democratization processes in order to elucidate more clearly the developments that have taken place in the evolution of democracy in Taiwan in particular. The picture that emerges shows that the controlling regime in Taiwan was more preemptive than the Korean regime in its attempt to maintain political stability, and the democratization processes in Taiwan was slower and more faltering than in Korea.
The actual democratization processes differed in the two countries, but both shared at least seven factors that facilitated their democratic transitions including development under Japanese colonial rule, educational development, experience with authoritarian elections, increasing prosperity, important links between "reformers" in governmentand" moderates" in opposition, U.S. government pressure, and uncertainty following the fall of President Marcos. However, the democratic transitions of Korea and Taiwan also differed in at least three respects. Taiwan had numerous "liberals" in its authoritarian government, a non violent opposition, and substantial popular association activity, factors not apparent in Korea.
Since democratization, both Taiwan and South Korea have had very divided polities. Both also have highly politicized media that convey an even greater image of division. Yet, and this is the crucial point, virtually no one neither society wants to return to authoritarian rule. Thus, the prospects for these two East Asian "third wave"
democracies to continue to mature remain great.
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The mass media constitute the backbone of democracy. The media are supplying the political information that voters base their decisions on. They are also the watchdogs that we rely on for uncovering errors and wrongdoings by those who have power. It is therefore reasonable to require that the media perform to certain standards with respect to these functions, and our democratic society rests on the assumption that they do (Venturelli 1998; Kellner 2004; McQuail 1993; Skogerbø 1996). The most important democratic functions that we can expect the media to serve are listed in an often-cited article by Gurevitch and Blumler (1990). These functions include surveillance of sociopolitical developments, identifying the most relevant issues, providing a platform for debate across a diverse range of views, holding officials to account for the way they exercise power, provide incentives for citizens to learn, choose, and become involved in the political process, and resist efforts of forces outside the media to subvert their independence.
The relationship between the media and democratization is an important and mysterious issue. The media is not the only factor in explaining the current contentious state of Taiwan's democracy and politics, but it plays a key role.
In Taiwan during the 38-year martial law era(1949~87), the KMT practiced authoritarian rule. suppressing dissidents, dominating all resources, and setting the norms of morality. It deprived people of the right to participate in politics and silenced the critical voice of the media. This was the background behind the rise and development of Taiwan’s guerrilla media.
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Taiwan’s press has played an integral role in the transition of the island from authoritarianism to democracy. Taiwan’s media played a key role in the “emncipatory politics” campaign on the island in pursuit of transition to democracy. From 1949 to 1987, Taiwan was under martial law that was imposed by the KMT political party under the leadership of President Chiang Kai-shek. The KMT, which had lost power to the communists on mainland China in 1949 in a civil war, established a provisional government on the island of Taiwan to continue its campaign against communism.
The imposition of martial law resulted in strict controls on mass media, although certain segments of them were not deterred from speaking out for reforms. The opposition voices initially came from underground publications and video productions of controversial events by dissidents in order to expose the excesses of the martial-law regime. Pirate radio stations also emerged to break the KMT’s broadcast monopoly and to promote political reform and democratization.
The alternative media played an important role in the history of Taiwan's democratization, ultimately breaking the ban on new newspapers and publicly challenging authority. The liberalization of the media has not improved the industry’s performance, and has not benefitted Taiwan’s democratic consolidation.
Taiwan’s media became unprincipled and untrustworthy because of its involvement in political struggles and the fierce competition in the marketplace, and effective and respected oversight mechanisms are not in place. The public interest became the main loser.
In a normal democratic environment, the media should be a self-disciplined body without outside intervention. But past experiences tell us that when professional norms collide with commercial demands, the latter usually wins out. To achieve
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self-discipline, the media requires institutionalized complementary control measures.
Carefully designed rules to inform the public of the role of the media must be established so that players can follow the rules and compete fairly with each other in the market, yet also conform to the public interest and serve democracy.
Taiwan’s Dangwai had launched the 1st pirate station. A number of the other alternative media had become active in 1970s and 1980s in advocating political reform and democratization, including the Independent Evening Post, the Capital Morning News, the Eighties. And the Formosa Magazine In Specially, after marital- law era, The Independence Morning Post began to openly support Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), formed illegally by the Dangwai movement in 1986. In this era, although there were international pressures on Taiwan to lift martial law, domestic pressures, especially campaigns by the opposition media, played a central role in the transition of Taiwan to democracy. Just over a decade after the legalization of the DPP, the opposition political party’s candidate came to power in Taiwan in the March 2000 presidential election and was reelected in
Taiwan’s Dangwai had launched the 1st pirate station. A number of the other alternative media had become active in 1970s and 1980s in advocating political reform and democratization, including the Independent Evening Post, the Capital Morning News, the Eighties. And the Formosa Magazine In Specially, after marital- law era, The Independence Morning Post began to openly support Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), formed illegally by the Dangwai movement in 1986. In this era, although there were international pressures on Taiwan to lift martial law, domestic pressures, especially campaigns by the opposition media, played a central role in the transition of Taiwan to democracy. Just over a decade after the legalization of the DPP, the opposition political party’s candidate came to power in Taiwan in the March 2000 presidential election and was reelected in