1. Introduction
Since 1963, official diplomatic ties established between Europe (from the European Economic Community to the European Union) and South Korea have developed and continued to expand throughout the past half century. The mutual economic dependence between the European Union (EU) and South Korea has become more visible since the successful implementation of the free trade deal in 2011. As of 2018, South Korea is the EU’s eighth largest export market and the EU is South Korea’s third largest export destination [
1]. Moreover, politically speaking, the bilateral relationship has evolved into a strategic partnership. as the Korean government officially recognised the EU as a “strategic partner” in 2010. Accordingly, such a noticeable evolution has led to the enhancement of the EU’s visibility in the eyes of the South Korean news media.
As evidenced by the previous related research, perceptions of the EU in South Korean news media have become more salient over time in terms of volume and topics. Related studies include Chaban et al. (2004) [
2], Chaban and Chung (2009) [
3], Yoon, Chaban and Chung (2010) [
4], Yoon and Lai (2015) [
5], Public Policy and Management Institute (PPMI) et al. (2015) [
6], and more recently Yoon (2020) [
7]. These have commonly concluded that EU news coverage has become more frequent and diversified and the Korean audience has come to perceive the EU as not only an “economic giant” but also a “growing and highly expected global power” in normative fields.
Here, this paper presents comprehensive analysis of South Korean media perceptions concerning the EU. This is a “comprehensive” study in two respects: first, the data collection time period is comprehensive. Data collected for the ten years from July 2010 to June 2020 encompasses most EU-related news reports in conventional newspaper outlets. Second, the study analysed six representative newspapers,
The Chosun Ilbo, The Dong-A Ilbo, JoongAng Daily, Hankook Ilbo, The Hankyoreh, and
Kyunghyang Shinmun, due to their political parallelism. Three newspapers (
The Chosun Ilbo, The Dong-A Ilbo, and
JoongAng Daily) are typically classified as “conservative” newspapers and the other three (
Hankook Ilbo, The Hankyoreh, and
Kyunghyang Shinmun) are considered “liberal” [
8]. Such political parallelism is considered one of the important dimensions of the media system [
9,
10]. By analysing news stories from both the conservative and progressive media, it is possible to investigate comprehensively how the EU has been represented by South Korean news media over the past decade and whether different political orientations in the media have affected the image of the EU.
South Koreans rely heavily on online sources for their news. As of 2020, 83% access news from online news portals [
11] (p. 6, p. 102) such as Naver (62%) and Daum (32%), which are referred to in particular as preferred news sources [
11] (p. 102). Additionally, these online news items are also shared through different social media platforms such as Facebook, YouTube, and so on. In particular, most online media producers own YouTube accounts to disseminate their messages to wider audiences in Korea. All the conventional newspaper companies run online news sites; however, South Koreans prefer visiting online portals where they can see all the news from different news outlets at once. Since these portals receive news articles from the media and upload them without changes, the news displayed on the portals is identical to the news in the respective online news sites. Access to the massive collection of EU-related news in South Korea would enable an analysis of the way that the image of the EU has been shaped and disseminated for the past decade, as well as how such image creation has affected South Korean perceptions of the EU.
Behind the sound development of the EU-Korea relations, the EU has faced multiple crises, such as the Eurozone crisis; the refugee crisis; Brexit; the surge of the far right in other member states; and, most recently, the COVID-19 pandemic. EU images in South Korean media have turned negative from the mid-2010s [
12]. This phenomenon was spotted from the results of the project named “Analysis of the perception of the EU and of EU’s policies abroad” [
13] supported by the European Commission. In this project, South Korean media analysis results were reflected. Park and Chung implied that the Korean media started to communicate with their audiences about the EU regarding its crises rather than the beneficial potential of EU-Korea cooperation [
12]. Such a topic change in communication between the media and the public informs us that South Korean media employed the crisis communication mode in covering EU affairs. Especially after the Brexit referendum in 2016, think-tanks and other experts presented research papers on the prospects of Brexit’s possible impact on the South Korean economy and EU-Korea relations [
12]. Hence, as a starting point for investigating crisis communication through social media, looking into the EU coverage in the South Korean legacy media, which is one of the major sources of information on social media, can be helpful.
This study aims to probe the evolution of the EU’s representation in South Korean news media by focusing on framing evolution. The data set consists of EU-related articles published in major newspapers as sources of crisis communication through social media over the past ten years (July 2010 to June 2020). Data collection was achieved by researchers employing the Korean Government’s Big Data Platform (BigKinds) and data collecting software (UiPath). Subsequently, the data were analysed and visualised using text mining software (NodeXL). Based on the results, this study illuminates the evolution of framing changes throughout the research period. The qualitative framing analytic model by Semetko and Valkenburg is employed to allow more in-depth discussion [
14].
2. Theoretical Background
In considering EU global media representation, image theory, suggested by Silverstein and Flamenbaum (1989) in an international relations context [
15], is helpful in understanding “a complex mix of international actors’ perceived intension, capabilities and cultural and political status” [
16] (p. 9). Image theory in international relations was established in order to guarantee a suitable analytical framework for measuring how global actors perceive each other. Silverstein and Flamenbaum exemplified this theory in the case of the US-USSR conflict during the Cold War [
15]. During the period, both the US and the USSR did not have sufficient information, so the political elites, the media, and the general public had biased images, leading to conflicts and further changes in international relations [
15]. After the Cold War, this theory has been updated to explore the case of the War on Terror [
17] and to examine national security policy [
18]. Mišík suggested that there are three main dimensions of images and perceptions of a particular state: (1)
relative power, (2)
goal compatibility, and (3)
cultural distance [
19]. These dimensions provide a useful conceptual framework to discuss some beneficial questions about Korean perceptions of the EU. For
relative power, we could explore whether the Korean media describes the EU’s relative power status on the global stage. For
goal compatibility, the South Korean media representations of the EU indicate the mutual interests between the EU and South Korea. Such compatibility would also help draw helpful suggestions for the development of EU-Korea bilateral relations. For
cultural distance, we can address what could be potential barriers between the two parties. Examples can be found from these parties’ historical pasts (such as wars, conflicts, or colonial experiences).
The EU images projected in South Korean media have been researched since the mid-2000s. The representative research examples can be found in Chaban et al.’s work (2006) [
2] and Chaban, Yoon, and Chung’s study (2010) [
4]. Recently, from the end of the 2010s, Chung looked into EU images in social media [
20,
21,
22]. Chung specifically gave attention to exploring how images of the EU are formed on social media, especially focusing on YouTube in terms of information dissemination [
20] and the semantic structure of YouTube postings using analytic software [
21,
22]. In terms of methodology, different from past research Chung employed analytic software to analysed unstructured data on the internet space to explore Korea’s perceptions of the EU. In contrast to the methodological and research innovation, the results were not satisfactory because there an insufficient amount of EU-related YouTube videos were filmed in Korean languages. Additionally, Chung pointed out that South Korean viewers did not pay much attention to the EU, so their number of viewers of EU-related videos was not high enough [
20]. This study pays attention to news agencies’ portrayal of the EU as a prominent source of EU images on social media. After the analysis, this study’s results section discusses South Korea’s social media crisis communication mode regarding the EU’s multiple crises.
In exploring EU images or representations in the global media, it is helpful to consider the agenda-setting theory. This theory covers the news media’s impact in forming the public agenda—public awareness and concern regarding salient issues generated by the news media [
23]. McCombs and Shaw of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill established the “agenda-setting theory”, which looks at how the media shapes the political reality within the general public’s understanding or perception [
24]. Based on this theoretical viewpoint, other scholars such as Hastie and Park [
25], Iyeanger and Kinder [
26], Iyeanger [
27], and Scheufele and Tewksbury [
28] suggested that people tend to think or make judgments based on the availability of data or information provided from the news media. Based on this theoretical perspective, the results present the salient issues arising from the coverage of the EU in the Korean media from 2010 to 2020. Subsequently, the data will be discussed together with the public opinion survey results to make an argument about effects of the media on public awareness about the European Union. In considering this overview of media representation, framing theory would be useful. However, as Price and Tewksbury argued [
29], it would not be useful to consider media framing (applicability) and agenda-setting (accessibility) together. To resolve this issue, we are going to restrictively address media framing as a unit of analysis and explain this more in the framing analysis section (
Section 3.2.2).
For addressing the crisis communication mode of EU representation in Korean media, it is useful to consider Coombs’ categories of crisis management within the vast area of crisis communication theory. As mentioned above, the Korean media began to talk about the EU’s crises with their audiences in the mid-2010s. Coombs explained that crisis management is about recognising reputational capital [
30]. Extending Fombrun and van Riel’s account [
31], crisis management is similar to keeping the reputational capital of a certain organisation. It is a metaphorical expression of a reputation as assets in a bank account [
32,
33]. Coombs further explains that “a favourable prior (pre-crisis) reputation is a buffer against the reputational capital lost during a crisis” [
30] (p. 165). Coombs suggested that there are three phases of crisis communication:
pre-crisis (preparatory and preventive communication phase ahead of time for crisis management),
crisis responses (responses to an actual crisis), and
post-crisis (communication occurs after the crisis has been resolved) [
30]. Based on this point, this paper attempted to further explain the stage of crisis communication and to examine whether the EU had a favourable reputation in the past.
4. Results
The first part of the data set consists of the top ten words and word groups with the greatest weight values measured by the analytic software (NodeXL). The weight of the words indicates the degree of association links between nodes [
54]. Associations with higher values refer to their salience—“a measure of how often the word occurs compared to other words” within the discourse [
54] (p. 93). Lehmann exemplified the case of the Richard Nixon metaphor: “Richard Nixon is the submarine of foreign policy” [
55] (p. 28). From this metaphor, the descriptions of Nixon will become salient by utilising the persuasive power of metaphors to trigger the audience’s cognition about certain objects. From NodeXL, this study calculated the salient weights of words and word-pairs.
Table 3 shows the top 10 words according to their weight values.
Throughout the whole period, the data yielded similar results for both conservative and liberal newspapers. During Period 1, keywords related to the economy (such as FTA, Eurozone, economy, and bailout) and significant global counterparts (such as the US, China, and Iran) were salient for the EU and South Korea. During Period 2, crisis-related keywords such as Brexit, Greece, and Germany gained visibility in the South Korean media discourse, alongside keywords related to the major global actors for both parties. During Period 3, crisis-related keywords related to the EU’s internal and external challenges (such as Brexit, UK, Trump, US, and China) became dominant in the media discourse. From the results shown in
Table 3, the EU’s image has shifted from being a global economic powerhouse to that of a global actor facing multiple challenges saturated with crises.
Table 4 indicates the top 10 word-pairs according to their weight values.
In the first period, the most salient word-pairs depict Korea’s FTA and its processes with the EU and other global partners. In liberal newspapers, the word-pairs regarding Eurozone issues (such as crisis and bailout) gained visibility in the texts. During the second period, the salient word-pairs of conservative and liberal newspapers turned out to be different. In the conservative newspapers, salient word-pairs mainly addressed Brexit. In the liberal newspapers, the salient word-pairs related to the EU’s multiple internal conflicts (such as the post-Brexit effect, the Greece-bailout, and Mediterranean refugees) and external challenges (such as the US-Russia and Iran nuclear negotiations). In the final period, the most salient word-pairs refer to Brexit in both liberal and conservative newspapers.
Figure 4,
Figure 5 and
Figure 6 visualise the networks for the keywords as a form of semantic network analysis. This study attempts to show the framing evolutions over the three periods.
Figure 4 indicates the semantic networks for Korean conservative and liberal newspapers.
In
Figure 4, the framings in both conservative and liberal newspapers were either
economic consequences or
conflict frames. Conservative newspapers mainly contained economic
consequences frames (such as the EU-Korea FTA and the G20), while conflict frames such as the 2012 Nuclear Security Summit were the main framings likely to emphasise the achievements of the Korean government and its ruling (conservative) party during the first period (July 2010 to June 2013). The conservative media used more
economic consequences frames to attract readers’ attention. Among the liberal media, the EU-Korea FTA was also the main
economic consequences frame and the Eurozone crisis was the main conflict framing. The liberal media also introduced a more diverse range of
conflict frames by introducing regional issues (such as the Libya Civil War, Iran, and Somalian pirates), and global issues (such as North Korea and greenhouse gas reduction). The liberal media were inclined to use
conflict frames to capture audiences’ interest. Moving on to the second period (July 2013 to June 2016), both types of news media presented more diversified sets of framings, and the results are summarised in
Figure 5 below.
In
Figure 5, both conservative and liberal newspapers present similar semantic network maps in terms of the frames identified (
conflict,
economic consequences, and
human interest). For the
conflict frames, conservative newspapers covered issues concerning the EU’s crises (Eurozone issues and Brexit) and regional security issues for both the EU (EU-Russia conflict over Ukraine) and South Korea (North Korea’s missile test). Liberal newspapers introduced more diversified frames introducing the EU’s crises (Brexit and refugee crisis), its regional challenges for both the EU (EU-Russia conflict over Ukraine, Iran’s nuclear talks) and South Korea (nuclear talk with North Korea), and global challenges (the US tapping of French and German governments). The
economic consequences frames in conservative newspapers mainly addressed the EU’s performance in the global economy (such as greenhouse gas emissions, trading systems, and EU-Google anti-trust), and the post-Brexit consequences (such as the UK’s participation in the Trans-Pacific Partnership after Brexit), which implies that the Brexit frame can also be one of the
global economic consequences frames. Liberal newspapers addressed the main themes about the EU’s domestic issues such as the Greek bailout crisis, the union’s global economic contributions (EU-Google antitrust conflict), and its further global impacts (Korea’s FTA with China and the US). The
human interest frames in both conservative and liberal newspapers presented President Park Geun-hye’s visits to Europe as their common framing. Apart from this frame, the conservative media were inclined toward addressing security issues of the EU member states (the revitalisation of Swedish conscription) and the liberal media were more inclined to address the EU’s political main event (European Parliament elections in 2014).
Figure 6 illustrates the frame mapping for conservative and liberal media during the third period.
In
Figure 6, both conservative and liberal media projected three frames:
conflict,
economic consequences, and
human interests. However, both types of media featured slightly different elements in these frames. For the
conflict frames, both covered Brexit negotiations as a main theme and COVID-19 as a common theme with great timeliness. The conservative media’s conflict frames addressed the disruptions in Germany (Germany-Russia diplomatic row) and the liberal media’s conflict frames addressed the EU’s regional challenges (Turkey’s EU accession, Iran’s nuclear talks, and the EU’s sanctions over Russia) and global disruption (the EU’s role over North Korean nuclear weapons and human rights promotion). For the
economic consequences frames, both types of media covered the effect of the EU-Korea trade issue over International Labour Organisation (ILO) ratification and the “Trump” factor on global trade (the EU’s position in Trump’s trade war with China) as major frames. In the
human interest frames, both media types commonly addressed President Moon’s visits to Europe; however, the liberal newspapers focussed more on Korea’s new president after the impeachment of President Park in March 2017. They also presented events that happened in the EU, such as Helmut Kohl’s death and funeral in the conservative media and the French Presidential election for the liberal media.
Over the last ten years, both types of newspapers addressed three main framings for conflict, economic consequences, and human interest. Although there were some changes in their subordinate themes under these framings, there were no notable differences between conservative and liberal newspapers in reporting EU issues. In the conflict frame, Brexit was clearly the predominant theme in the news texts collected. In the economic consequences frame, Eurozone issues was the first predominant theme during Period 1, although there was a shift toward EU-Korea trade issues after the implementation of the EU-Korea FTA. In light of the “Trump” factors, Korea’s trade with the EU gained visibility in the news media. In the human interest frames, both newspapers were inclined toward covering EU-Korean bilateral interactions (such as the Korean president’s visits to Europe) and events within the EU (elections and leadership change). In addressing the EU issues, this study could not find any responsibility or moral frames. It seems to be possible to say that the news reporters from both camps did not consider that the EU issues would influence Korean domestic politics and that these issues would therefore not be of interest to the Korean general public.
5. Discussion
Based on the previous analysis, we would like to address two key points. First, EU news volumes have fluctuated over different periods. While more than 12,000 news articles were reported in Period 1, this volume reduced to approximately 9300 in Period 2. It then increased again to 15,000 in the final period. In Periods 1 and 2, liberal newspapers were more active in reporting EU news (see
Table 2), and in Period 3 conservative newspapers delivered more EU news than liberal ones (see
Table 2). It seems that this fluctuation reflects the Korean media’s attention to EU affairs. Recalling the results from
Table 4, during Period 1 the salient word-pairs show that Korean newspapers paid significant attention to Korea’s expectation from having an FTA with the EU and possible synergy with other global powers (such as the US and China). In the subsequent period, the Korean media’s attention diminished during the initial stage of the EU’s multiple crises. During Period 3, Korean newspaper attention shifted focus onto Brexit. The results show that Korean journalists and news editors perceive Brexit as the most significant crisis of the union. Coombs pointed out that a crisis can create threats implying potential damage to the organisation [
56]. Subsequently, he suggested that there are three types of threats that can emerge from the crisis: public safety, financial loss, and reputation loss [
56]. The Korean news media coverage of Brexit has been undertaken because of the risk of potential economic impacts on the Korean economy in terms of potential challenges to the EU-Korea FTA [
21]. Coombs suggested that there are three stages of crisis communication [
56]. First, the pre-crisis stage mainly focuses on prevention and possible preparation for the crisis [
56]. The second, the crisis response stage, is concerned with warnings about prompt and appropriate responses to the crises raised [
21]. Finally, the post-crisis stage refers to seeking effective measures to deal with subsequent crises and possible commitments to providing follow-up information [
56]. These results imply that Korean newspapers are at the first stage of crisis communication (the pre-crisis phase).
Second, despite the fluctuation in volume over periods, liberal newspapers tended to report EU news with more variety in themes. Liberal newspapers presented more issues that were not covered by conservative ones. Some examples included the Libyan civil war and Somalian pirates (Period 1), the Syrian refugee influx to Europe (Period 2), the postponement of Turkey’s EU accession negotiation, the emergence of far-right populism in Italy, and the French presidential election in 2017 (Period 3). Such diversification can be observed in
Figure 4,
Figure 5 and
Figure 6. What was commonly observed from both conservative and liberal newspapers, however, was the fact that South Korean newspapers are likely to focus on the “crisis” in the EU per se in dealing with EU news. Such tendency resulted in a “lack” of morality and responsibility frames in South Korea’s EU news of the five experimental framing conditions suggested by Semetko and Valkenburg [
14]. This implies that Korean newspapers tended to select news based on the “fact” rather than the “value”.
This was reflected among Korean public perceptions. In this regard, the authors commissioned the Embrain Research Company to conduct public opinion survey for the period 19–24 August 2020. According to the results, 1063 Korean respondents across the nation replied they have a neutral perception of the EU-Korea relationship. To the question “which of the following best describes South Korea’s relationship with the EU?”, almost two thirds of respondents (59.1%) replied “
Neither good nor bad”. The second choice was “
Rather good” (26.5%), and as many as 6.5% answered “
Rather bad”. The dominant perception of the bilateral relationship was “
Neither good nor bad” (
Figure 7). It seems that the South Korean public perceive that the EU’s crises are not likely to worsen the bilateral relations.
To the next question: “Do you think you know the EU well?”, almost half of the respondents (48.1%) said “
No, and I want to know more”. Slightly less than a quarter (23.1%) said “
Yes, but I want to know more”. It thus seems that the EU is still prominent in the minds of the Korean public (
Figure 8). This implies that the EU provokes the Korean public’s curiosity. However, there are not enough good sources of information for the Korean public to enhance their understanding of the EU.
Recalling three major theories—image theory, agenda-setting theory, and stages of crisis communications—and the results from this study, we might be able to contribute in testing some elements of these theoretical aspects. In considering Mišík’s three dimensions of perceptions, (1)
relative power, (2)
goal compatibility, and (3)
cultural distance, the salient framings found from the results can be useful references. In assessing the EU’s
relative power to South Korea, the
economic consequences frames in the Korean media imply that the EU’s economic and trade power is equivalent to that of the US or China (such as FTA and Trump’s trade war with other global actors). For the second dimension,
goal compatibility, the same as the first dimension,
economic consequences frames (such as EU-Korea trade or the ILO agreement), also hinted that both the EU and South Korea commonly seek a sound bilateral relations for drawing win–win results. For the last dimension,
cultural distance, we could not find any possible relevant frames (
responsibility or
moral frames). This finding indicates that the EU and South Korea had no unpleasant historical past which might hinder the sound development of their bilateral relations. It also means that they can be sound partners when they have beneficial momentum (such as win-win situation after successful trade co-operations like FTA) for all. Recalling the results from the “Analysis of the perception of the EU and of EU’s policies abroad” [
6], the South Korean media still predominantly report on EU trade-related issues and project the EU’s image created by its economic power to viewers [
6] (p. 12). This point implies that Mišík’s first dimension (
relative power) is a key determining factor in shaping Korean perceptions of the EU. Hence, both the EU and South Korea are expected to establish mutually beneficial relations in the future, but ones limited to economic and trade relations.
The second theoretical perspective, the agenda-setting theory, mainly addresses the news media’s impact in forming public awareness. In contrast to the Korean media representation of the EU, the Korean general public’s awareness of the EU was not sufficiently established in this regard. Most the respondents (71%) from the public opinion survey answered that they do not know the EU well (
Figure 8). For extending Scheufele and Tewksbury’s argument [
28], at least
economic consequences,
human interests, and
conflict frames would not be influential in forming the public judgment of the global actor. Possibly,
responsibility or
moral frames might be influential rhetorical devices in forming public awareness, but this awaits further investigation.
The last theoretical perspective, three phases of crisis communication, is useful to assess the stage of crisis communication between South Korea and the EU. Extending Coombs’ explanation on the relationship between pre-crisis reputation (when favourable) and reputational capital [
30], this study found that the EU did not lose its economic reputational capital in spite of its economic crises (Eurozone or Greek bailout). Recalling the three phases, the South Korean media was reactive only to the EU’s economic crises. During the
pre-crisis phase, the South Korean media was inclined to assess the possible impact of the union’s crisis on the South Korean economy. Such media attitude extends to the
crisis responses phase. Interestingly, in the
post-crisis stage the South Korean media did not pay attention, since South Korea could not detect substantial impact on its economy. This perspective also implies that
responsibility or
moral frames emerge when the bilateral relations or cooperation yield negative results.
6. Conclusions
This paper aimed to address how the EU has been reported on in South Korean newspapers over the last decade (2010–2020). After collecting EU-related news from the six most representative newspapers for the ten years, this study analysed and visualised them using NodeXL. Semetko and Valkenburg’s five experimental framing conditions were adopted as an analytic model [
14]. The analysis results can be summarised in two points: First, the degree of the EU’s exposure in South Korean media mainly depends on the news’ direct influence or relevance to South Korea. Right after the signing and implementation of the free trade deal between the two parties, the EU attracted a great deal of attention of South Korean media in Period 1. Meanwhile, “pure” EU’s regional issues such as the Syrian immigrant influx and Greece’s referendum on bailout did not equally catch their attention (Period 2). Then again, in Period 3 the South Korean media were busy with predicting the consequences and impact of Brexit on the Korean economy.
Second, not much difference was found between conservative and liberal newspapers in their framing of EU news, but the latter dealt with the EU in a more diverse range of topics. This reflects the analysis results of EU news based on Semetko and Valkenburg’s five experimental framings. Interestingly, out of the five frames―the conflict frame, human interest frame, economic consequences frame, morality frame, and responsibility frame—the EU news the Korean media reported was found to lack the morality and responsibility frames.
Such a tendency of Korean media seems to influence the Korean public’s perception of the EU. As shown in
Figure 7, the majority of the Korean respondents had the stance of “Neither good nor bad” toward the EU, although the bilateral relationship between the EU and Korea had evolved to be strategic partnership. As the Korean media report on the EU superficially, the Korean public seem to have a limited perception of the EU. As in
Figure 8, a substantial number of Korean people think that they do not know much about the EU and want to know more about it. Even those who think they know the EU well still say they want to know more about it.
To address this perceptual disruption, both should pay more attention to enhancing accurate perceptions of the EU in South Korea. Korean news media could cover more diverse themes about the EU with multiple perspectives to establish a sound common understanding about the union. On the contrary, such attitudes should be found in the case of the South Korean media coverage of other countries, which needs further academic attention. Consequently, media practitioners such as editors and journalists need to cover international affairs based on thorough investigation in advance. Finally, this study suggests that South Korea should explore possible helpful grounds for further constructive cooperation with the EU. On this matter, the union’s effort is also essential. With regard to this point, the EU delegation to the Republic of Korea could provide some helpful information outlets to boost the perceptions of the general public about the EU. The delegation could devise effective public diplomacy strategies with the aim of increasing Korean public awareness of the EU. When they show an active willingness to address their crisis, hopefully both sides can be closer partners despite their physical distance.