Suchergebnisse

This study aimed to demonstrate how South Korean news media routinized and sensationalized the face mask amid two recent public health crises: the fine-dust crisis and the COVID-19 epidemic. News media appropriated the mythologized meaning of the face mask as a symbol of individual safety during the two crises. This study analyses news articles to answer three questions: (1) How was wearing the face mask mythologized as a routinized practice in days of uncertain risk? (2) How was the face mask politicized as a mythologized sign indicating China as an external threat? and (3) How was the face mask politicized as a symbolic code of the government's responsibility for the crisis? Once signified as the primary means of individual protection in the context of Korean risk society, the face mask became politicized amid the shortage of the face mask. Placed in the context of the recent disastrous crises in Korea, China was identified as the culprit not only in the epidemic but also in the shortage of the face mask. The meaning of China as an external threat was continuously strengthened when the South Korean government opted out of the entry ban on Chinese citizens. The last analytic part presents how news media politicized the epidemic by associating the face mask crisis with the Korean government.

This study aimed to demonstrate how South Korean news media routinized and sensationalized the face mask amid two recent public health crises: the fine-dust crisis and the COVID-19 epidemic. News media appropriated the mythologized meaning of the face mask as a symbol of individual safety during the two crises. This study analyses news articles to answer three questions: (1) How was wearing the face mask mythologized as a routinized practice in days of uncertain risk? (2) How was the face mask politicized as a mythologized sign indicating China as an external threat? and (3) How was the face mask politicized as a symbolic code of the government's responsibility for the crisis? Once signified as the primary means of individual protection in the context of Korean risk society, the face mask became politicized amid the shortage of the face mask. Placed in the context of the recent disastrous crises in Korea, China was identified as the culprit not only in the epidemic but also in the shortage of the face mask. The meaning of China as an external threat was continuously strengthened when the South Korean government opted out of the entry ban on Chinese citizens. The last analytic part presents how news media politicized the epidemic by associating the face mask crisis with the Korean government.

Based on a study of unaccompanied Korean student migrants, this article investigates how transnational communication helped the students continue their transnational journey for educational success. Although suffering perennial loneliness, the students continued with their studies because they still believed acquiring education in the United States would be advantageous in securing their success. They became actively involved in transnational communication to cope with stresses and to gain emotional support. Transnational communication played an important role in mediating between their pursuit of education and desired cultural capital on the one hand, and the loneliness and isolation as migrants on their own on the other.

Recognizing the lack of comprehensive academic study concerning the life experiences of unaccompanied Korean adolescents overseas, this study inquired into many aspects of the daily life of the young sojourners. In order to achieve a comprehensive understanding of their living experiences, the present study set broad research questions: What do unaccompanied adolescents experience in host homes, schools, and communities in the United States? How do they build personal relationships with people in the United States? How do they deal with new experiences in different sociocultural environments? A total of 31 Korean students in Oklahoma City, Boston, and Dallas participated in in-depth interviews which were analyzed under the methodological guidelines of the grounded-theory method. The analysis of the data revealed two main themes, "unstable personal relationships" and "strange sociocultural environments," which shed light on how the young students in the study were both psychologically and socially isolated from people and communities in the United States. Each theme was supplemented by several subthemes that characterize the detailed experiences of the participants. As a consequence of those living conditions, they spent a large amount of time in their own rooms by themselves and tended to romanticize their past experiences and relationships in Korea. This study also found that this context was closely associated with their exclusive pattern of mediated communication with people in Korea.