Racism lurks beneath entertainment industry

By Kim Jae-heun

The entertainment industry needs to hire more foreigners to make hallyu or the Korean Wave sustainable and more appealing to fans abroad.

One major element lacking in the Korean entertainment and fashion fields is ethnic diversity, industry officials say.

They are reluctant to cast those from ethnic minorities but also create negative stereotypes on them.

Foreign actors ― particularly black people or Southeast Asians ― hardly assume a leading role in TV shows here.

Investors would not put their money in a drama that casts foreigners as it tends to record low viewership, said Yoon, a CEO of an entertainment agency, declining to disclose his full name.

“Foreign actors have rarely entered stardom here until Korean-American actor Daniel Henney appeared in the Korean entertainment scene. I think Henney helped change Koreas’ view on foreign actors in a more positive way,” said Yoon.

Henney is an American actor and model born to a Korean-American mother and an Irish-American father. He gained popularity from the Korean viewers by starring in the dramas “My Lovely Sam Soon” in 2005 and “Spring Waltz” in 2006.

Popular black TV personalities, like Samuel Okyere who appeared on cable TV show “Non-Summit,” have never made it to the TV dramas.

“Their popularity tends to be short-lived. Some foreign entertainers come and go like a seasonal product. For instance, Japanese TV personality Sayuri had enjoyed a high popularity, but she rarely appears in TV programs these days,” Yoon said.

TV stations prefer white people and discriminate against the rest. At the same time, if white people want to appear in a Korean drama series, they must speak Korean fluently and still, they end up assuming supporting roles.

Fashion industry not exception

Racism stands out more vividely in the local fashion scene. No black or Southeast Asian model walks down the catwalk at Seoul Fashion Week shows, the country’s biggest fashion festival held every twice a year. Only a handful of white models were seen, shooting look-books and advertisements.

Marina Lee, a 27-year-old Korean model who has been modeling for seven years here said she only saw a black model once on the Korean fashion runway.

“She was very fluent in Korean and she lived here for a long time, but it was the first and the last time I saw a black person in the Korean fashion scene. I have never seen a Southeast Asian model while working in Korea either,” Lee said.

Yoon agreed that Korean fashion designers and the entertainment industry officials prefer white models and do not see a point in hiring black models.

“If a black model is hired, that is never for high-end brands here,” he said.

Yoon and other industry officials say that the market should and will change in the near future as social network services (SNS), such as Instagram and Facebook, will be unveiling more and more about the unnoticed side fashion fields abroad, where black models are active on international stages like in Milan, New York and Paris.

“Until five years ago, we consumed fashion through magazine editors who did not show what he or she think is unpopular here,” Yoon said. “Thus, we would never realize how popular black models are overseas. Now, Korean models working abroad upload live footages of the back stage scenes at fashion shows or shooting spots instantly on their SNS accounts.

This will allow SNS followers to see different fashion scenes from what they’ve imagined by only consuming Korean fashion outlet, he said.

“Both consumers and fashion insiders will eventually realize the potential of black models in the Korean market,” Yoon said.

Culture critic Bae Kook-nam attributes racism in the local entertainment field to the media and content producers.

“The most important thing is how media shows foreigners through the small screen, be it a drama series, news or an entertainment show. In most cases, they depict black people or Southeast Asians as poor immigrants working in the factory. It creates a stereotype,” Bae said. “People naturally think them as subjects of sympathy.”

“White people working at a university as professor are also immigrant workers, but nobody here sees them with sympathetic feeling. Content providers have to stop making distorted perspective through TV programs that creates stereotype on race, which eventually leads to the racism in the industry,” said Bae.

The critic also said that viewers have to change their perception on foreigners appearing on TV.

He believes the Korean media’s reluctance to cast black or Southeast Asian talent is due to the result of low TV viewers’ ratings.

“There are some million foreigners living in Korea now. We have to adopt more diverse and globalized materials for TV shows and make changes in portraying a certain race through one distorted image,” Bae said. “We say the U.S. has racism issues still, but there is no country like Korea that has serious racism problem.”

He said TV producers other crew should be more careful about the way they depict foreigners in TV programs.

“What’s important now is not whether foreign entertainers play a big or small role but how they are seen and described in the scene. The first step to root out prejudices is the removal of racist elements,” Bae said.