COMMUNICATIONS AND MEDIA

Broadcast Media in South Korea

Broadcast Media in South Korea

Introduction

South Korea is a country where limited groups of broadcast and print media dominate the industry. In South Korea, public broadcasting is a government company that most of the stocks held by the government, for the possible erosion of private capital. The broadcast industry of South Korea has to face considerable competition because it is under multimedia and multichannel situations. In this paper the media competition in South Korea, control of government over it and cross-media ownership in South Korea is discussed.

The Media Competition

The broadcast media marketplace in South Korea has been going through changes. The reasons behind these changes are different broad cast service such as digital DMB, DSB, IPTV, terrestrial DMB and Wibro. The broadcast industry of South Korea has to face considerable competition because it is under multimedia and multichannel situations. According to Hwang (2001) cable television of industry of South Korea cannot be guaranteed to survive in this multimedia and multichannel age, owing to the fact that the media market place of South Africa is very limited (Lee & Joe, 2000, pp. 131-149). According to two South Korean scholars Youn and Kim (2006) the absolute winner regarding media in South Korea is cable television industry (Parsons, 2008, pp. n.d). It is due to their vertical integration of distribution and production of programming on the whole competition. Their findings suggest that the concentration of their cable industry do not easily allow new entrants in broadcast media (Lee, Kim & Koh, 1999, 12-27).

Dominance of Public Broadcasters

In 1990, South Korea's broadcasting industry has conducted a "limited open-style structural adjustment (Shim, 2002, pp.337 - 350). Since then, the Korean broadcasting industry has been growth in the dual structure of the coexistence of public and private. South Korea has been to allow the public broadcaster to broadcast advertising; however, South Korea has set up a special company called Korea broadcast advertising-commune (Jo, 2004, pp. 1-11). This is a unique place of the public broadcasting system in Korea, is also a key point of it is different from other public broadcasting system. The public broadcasting system in Korea is under constant criticism due to having monopolies in the market. In fact, as some South Korean scholars said, kind of trying to ensure that radio and television public view to the monopoly of the operation of the public domain, and understanding of the era of the airwaves shortage in today's multi-channel competition, all spectrum resources as public resources the material basis no longer exists, would hinder the development of radio and television diversification stick to this view, nor help to activate competition, improve efficiency. In accordance with the media economists Owen and Wildman (1992, pp. 3-20) suggest the competitive market tends to be efficient and tertiary control market tends to be inefficient; inefficient market is one of the reasons that there is a "limit from government to encourage the media with implementation of the restrictions, banning certain products or business transactions, ...