SOAS Research Online

Abstract

For years Japanese media, and in particular television, was ‘self-sufficient’. Local productions took up most of the broadcasting schedule on open channels, and foreign content was limited in amount and mainly broadcast on cable and satellite. The introduction and success of the Korean television dramas in the early 2000s, first on satellite channels and then on open terrestrial ones, gave rise to a mix of reactions spanning from fascination of the neighbouring country’s content to a sense of competition and subsequently a fear of the influence of this close-but-other rising media giant. This led to the reduction of Korean dramas on the main open channels and gave rise to a new phenomenon: Japanese remakes of Korean dramas. Applying textual and discursive analysis to seven pairs of Korean original dramas and their Japanese remakes, this research looks at the way in which Japanese television drama remakes of Korean originals negotiate the influence of Korean dramas and Korean Wave in Japan. Through the process of remake, Japanese television industry, and in particular the commercial channels adapt the Korean stories to Japanese context, conventions, and local myths. This in turn, highlights what Japan sees as ‘Japanese’ vis a vis ‘Korean’, strengthening Japanese national identity myths in face of the influx of ‘proximate-but-different’ media content. In that way, it problematises the cultural proximity argument of the success of Korean dramas in Japan and presents a limit to the possibility of culture and cultural exchange to bring the people and the countries closer. The research’s original contribution is two-fold: one, the addition of a research on inter-Asian television remakes and transnational television flows. Second, presenting a complex picture of influence and resistance, adoption, and adaptation alongside masking the foreign and strengthening the local in Japan and South Korea context.