Students! Stay Away from Politics : South Korean Student Movement in The Korea Times in 1971–1975

Abstract

My master’s thesis focuses on the image of the South Korean student movement in the newspaper The Korea Times during the authoritarian years 1971–1975. The Korea Times was privately owned English language newspaper with an intellectual and cosmopolitan audience. For decades the influential South Korean student movement opposed the authoritarian rule and the students rallied for democracy, intellectual autonomy, and rights for all people. Therefore, my analysis focuses on how the dissidence of the student movement was portrayed to an intellectual Korean and foreign audience of The Korea Times in an authoritarian state where the newspaper industry was highly censored.

I use content analysis as the main method alongside with context analysis, the comparison of the source and source criticism. The analysis is based on 500 articles from The Korea Times which are analysed with quantitative and qualitative approaches throughout the thesis. I have approached the material with the questions of whose voice was the most prominent in The Korea Times and whether and how the paper commented on the student movement.

Overall, The Korea Times’ reporting on the student movement changed depending on the politics, the activities of the movement and changes towards the newspaper industry. The paper did not take an obvious stance in the conflict and it followed newspaper standards of supplying the readers with different approaches to news stories. During the Yushin Constitution, the paper leaned towards the authoritarian propaganda, but it was able to publish other relevant narratives regarding the student movement. For the most part, The Korea Times considered the students as young intellectuals who should focus more on academics rather than in politics.