A study on the cultural characterstics appeared in advertisement of the Korean woman magazine

Chung, Sung Ho(Dept. of Journalism Graduate School Chung-Ang University)

Advertising is thought to be as one of commercial strategies to sell products. However, in the long term, advertising has great influence over social value and faith by advocating its own value. Advertising is a mutual communication between the consumers and their surrounding culture.

This study is based on the premise of what modern Korean woman magazine advertisement contain based on the correlation between importance of advertising and the culture of the advertisements and analyzes cultural function of advertising in detail.

1. What are the cultural contents of Korean woman magazine advertisements?

2. How did the cultural contents change in relation to periodical circumstances?

3. How did the cultural contents change in relation to types of advertised products?

In order to analyze the Korean woman magazine advertisements, cultural value scale categories are analyzed : ① male-female role ② male-female comparative superiority ③ type of personality ④ type of family ⑤ social class ⑥ ethnocentrism 5179 advertisements in the 72 sample woman magazines between January of 1972 to November of 1989 are analyzed.

The result from male-female role category is that woman's non-traditional role is being more reduced compared to man's role, This reflects intrinsic traditional value rather than just extrinsic phenomenon. In the male-female comparative superiority category, equality between sexes is gradually increasing. However from the structural aspect, there was a strong tendency of male superiority. In the type of personality, inner-directed appeal increases periodically in contrast to other-directed appeal. This is due to the fact that society has become diversified and individualized. As a consequence, the society is appealing more to intrinsic and inner-directed phenomenon in contrast to collective phenomenon. In the type of family category, most western oriented phenomenon. In the type of family category, most western oriented life style is reflected because most advertisements were nuclear family oriented. It can be said that advertisements accelerate the increase of nuclear families. The social class mostly reflect middle and upper classes. This show that modern Koreans are centralized in the middle class and can lead the current culture. In the ethnocentrism category, foreign-word usage is foreign preference are more frequent. This shows that advertisements without nationality appear in order to avoid strong consumer consciousness. However as the society become more westernized, phenomenon of foreign preference increased in the advertisements.

As seen above, advertisements reflect culture that is influenced by periodical circumstances. Morover, the changes and traditional ethical consciousness of Korean minds are reflected. This varies periodic situation to another. If the society is stable, the society becomes western-oriented; on the other hand, if it is unstable, changes lead to stagnate.

In other words, advertising of certain period of time depends on the overall cultural phenomenon of that time as the culture changes. Korean woman magazine advertisements are western-oriented on the external perspective, but they are very much influenced by social changes.

One can see from this study that even though advertising is unable to directly change social cultural phenomenon, it is able to diffuse culture.