Structural and Cultural Aspects of the Regulation of Television Broadcasting in East Asia

Abstract

Based on the comparison of the degree of constraints upon television broadcasters in Hong Kong, Japan and South Korea, this article argues that the relationship between the state and television broadcasters in the three countries studied has been maintained not in an open, but in an enforced or limited fashion. This is because the relationship has been bound mainly by legal constraints (Hong Kong) or indirectly enforced or limited by moral and structural constraints (Japan and Korea). It also argues that the dominant common cultural factor in the three countries, that is, Confucian values, has been reflected in the practice of regulating television broadcasting.