South Korea’s Watergate Moment: How a Media Coalition Brought Down the Park Geun-hye Government

Abstract

ABSTRACT South Korea had a Watergate moment in 2016, when a corruption scandal led to an impeachment of the president. Two media outlets in particular, the progressive newspaper Hankyoreh and JTBC, a TV station with roots in Samsung, first broke and then sensationalized the scandal that motivated the candlelight protests. Using textual analysis and oral history interviews, this article critically examines news institutions and journalistic culture to derive three main findings. First, the democracy movement of the 1980s provided institutional and cultural foundations. Second, commercial desires facilitated higher-quality journalism, rather than undermining it. The economic liberalization and the precarity of the economy as a whole influenced both the media industry at large and the specific business strategies that motivated JTBC. Third, there is an Americanization of journalistic norms and culture. While the two outlets were outnumbered by better-funded pro-government outlets, the duo ultimately prevailed with an irreverent culture of truth-seeking.