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248 Sunny Yoon

Hanguerae and Dong-A. It constitutes 22% of 215 reports on
Hanguerae and 16% of the total 538 articles on Dong-A. (Simple in-
formational reports also contain a great deal of business-oriented in-
formation.) Dong-A has slightly more reports on domestic business
than foreign business, whereas Hanguerae has three times more re-
ports on foreign Internet business than domestic business. Dong-A
tends to introduce more domestic business activities than
Hanguerae, which has more critiques of Internet business. The lat-
ter, for example, criticizes media conglomerates, potential invasion
of privacy, and over-competition among the domestic media industry.
Overall, Korean journalism addresses Internet business more fre-
quently than any other categories.
Policy-related news regarding the Internet is the third-most fre-
quently reported issue. On Hanguerae, 13% of the total consists of
policy issues, while policy issues make up only 9% of Dong-A’s re-
porting. These newspapers also address Internet regulation and se-
curity problems.
Compared to economic and policy interests, cultural aspects
and grassroots citizens’ movements are less frequently reported.
Regarding cultural and social movement issues, Dong-A has 4% of
4
the total, and Hanguerae has 2%. This directly contradicts the
optimistic theoretical arguments regarding the Internet as a de-
mocratizing medium (see Tehranian 1990). According to these ar-
guments, the Internet organizes citizens’ or “netizens” (“Net
citizens”) movements on the global scale by providing a participa-
tory and non-discriminatory mechanism of communication. How-
ever, discourse concerning the Internet in Korean newspapers
represents the Internet as primarily business-oriented. Further
contradicting the theoretical vision of teledemocracy, the Internet is
also not politically mobilized: policymakers are interested only in
regulation and surveillance issues, instead of developing it as a
channel of democratic communication.
As a single agenda, indecency is one of the most frequently
cited problems. Dong-A has more articles on indecency compared to
Hanguerae. Although indecency on the Internet is an important
issue, the way that journalism represents indecency is problem-
atic. While criticizing indecency, some articles ironically show in-
decent materials and their URLs (Dong-A, April 15, 1996). They
stimulate readers’ curiosity instead of providing thoughtful criti-
cism. This practice amounts to simple sensationalism in Korean
journalism—a sensationalism that is also rooted in prevailing com-
mercial interests.