Return to search

Riding the Wave: How the Media Shapes South Korean Concepts of Beauty

This thesis features a qualitative analysis of eight Korean media products — both fiction and nonfiction. For many years, South Korea (hereafter also called Korea) has been called the "world's plastic surgery capital" by many publications, such as Business Insider and The New Yorker. Although Business Insider considers the United States the "vainest country in the world," the numbers of cosmetic surgeries, percentage wise, per person in Korea still outnumber those in the United States, with 20 procedures per 1,000 persons. In this thesis, I argue by using the cultivation theory that Korean television, such as K-Dramas, talk shows and films, which celebrate transformations and feature makeovers and thus normalize cosmetic surgery, create a fantastic space for viewers where the viewers are compelled to act on a media-generated desire to undergo cosmetic surgery in the belief that doing so will also transform or better their lives in the same way it does for the characters in these Korean television productions.

Identiferoai:union.ndltd.org:unt.edu/info:ark/67531/metadc1157645
Date05 1900
CreatorsStreng, Catherine Ann
ContributorsEverbach, Tracy, Nisbett, Gwen, Ignatow, Gabe
PublisherUniversity of North Texas
Source SetsUniversity of North Texas
LanguageEnglish
Detected LanguageEnglish
TypeThesis or Dissertation
Formativ, 60 pages, Text
CoverageSouth Korea
RightsPublic, Streng, Catherine Ann, Copyright, Copyright is held by the author, unless otherwise noted. All rights Reserved.

Page generated in 0.0026 seconds