Let’s not abandon Arirang TV

Shim Young-sub

The author is an adjunct professor of media studies at Kyung Hee Cyber University.

The war in Ukraine, which started with Russia’s invasion in February 2023, has hit the global economy hard. As supplies of natural gas from Russia and agricultural products from Ukraine got cut off, power shortages and food crises spread throughout the global community. The war in Ukraine turned into an ideological warfare between the democratic bloc and the authoritarian bloc. Caught in the middle of the global competition are the international broadcasters fighting a fierce information war. Russia’s RT and China’s CGTN are on the one side, while Germany’s DW, the U.S.’s VOA, the UK’s BBC and France’s F24 are on the other side.

Even if a country is not directly involved in the war, it is forced to pick a side due to the conflict in ideology. If international broadcasting was a means of promoting the superiority of the cultural and political system of the West in the 20th century, it is the window for boosting national favorability and economic and cultural exchanges in the international community in the 21st century.

Since launching in 1996, Arirang TV has been promoting Korea to the rest of the world. Since the late 2000s, the state-run broadcaster has become a K-content hub to promote Korean culture, tourism and Korean companies abroad, deviating from its initial role of promoting Korea’s national image. It was the first Korean platform to introduce BTS, the trailblazer of K-pop, to the world. Thanks to its efforts, K-pop has become a global music genre.

As the international community strengthened the system rivalry, BBC, DW, F24, and VOA pivoted their strategy from the role of publicizing their countries’ cultural superiority to the direction of programming to promote the superiority of the democratic system through news. But Arirang TV has chosen to go against the international trend.

North Korean leader Kim Jong-un visited Russia on Sept. 13 and met with Putin at the cutting-edge spaceport in Russia’s Far East. As North Korea does not have its own satellite, it has relied on a Thai telecommunications company to transmit the signals of its Korean Central TV, citing security reasons. If the North gets its own satellite with Russia’s technological support, the two Koreas will engage in a full-fledged international broadcasting competition, not to mention an intelligence war through satellites.

The programs transmitted by Arirang TV provide political, economic and cultural content with Korean perspectives to Northeast Asia and the world at large. The international broadcaster has adopted a strategy of specifically targeting viewers in their twenties and thirties overseas, the main consumers of Korean content who have lower cultural barriers than other generations.

And yet, Arirang TV still has legal vulnerability as it is under the jurisdiction of the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism as it was established under civil, not public law. Under such unfavorable conditions, large investments to reinvent the broadcaster as an online and mobile-focused platform beyond mere satellite transmission is impossible due to unstable funding for new projects.

In any country, international broadcasting is not an institution that generates profits, but an entity that provides public services aimed at strengthening national competitiveness. Nevertheless, Arirang TV has difficulty even securing its basic operating expenses due to differences over the supervisory authority among government agencies particularly during the annual budget review process in the National Assembly.

The Ministry of Economy and Finance has submitted its budget plan to the legislature, but it mandated a labor cost cut for Arirang TV by a whopping 50% from the previous year. It practically means that the budget is intended to abolish the function of international broadcasting completely. As even a basic budget cannot be secured on a stable basis, capable broadcasting staffers cannot but leave the company one after another.

The average annual salary of section leader-level employees at Arirang TV is half that of other public broadcasters. I agree with the argument that a slack management of public broadcasters calls for restructuring. But it is not fair to apply the same standards to Arirang TV, which has already been operating with insufficient funding. It may be inevitable to cut public agencies’ budgets when the national economy is in trouble. But some budgets should be maintained. International broadcasting is one of the most efficient means of making public Korea’s competitiveness. It is time to choose whether to support the quality asset we have developed or waste it.

Translation by the Korea JoongAng Daily staff.