Talking Hospitality and Televising Ethno-national Boundaries in Contemporary Korea: Considering Korean TV Shows Featuring Foreigners

What is it about?

This essay examines Korean television shows that feature foreigners encountering Korean society. A recent example, Non Summit (JTBC, 2014- ), presents a series of formal “summits,” borrowing the format of an international strategic meeting. The show enables Koreans to consider issues involving cultural differences, racial discrimination, and national hospitality, particularly related to immigrants. Indeed, Korean TV shows that focus on foreigners living in Korea are increasingly popular, which surely reflects changes in the Korean racial imagination along with the increased number of immigrants entering Korea in recent years. Nevertheless, despite their stated purpose of encouraging Korea to be a more harmonious multicultural society, programs like Non Summit seem to reproduce racialized colonialism in the context of contemporary global capitalism, particularly through their selections of participants and their efforts to paper over revealed cultural tensions.

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