The Cultural Other and National Identity in the Taiwanese and South Korean Media

Abstract

This article analyzes how images of the `Other' are created in the Taiwanese and South Korean media. Focusing on the representation of national identity in four news organizations, this study argues that the Taiwanese and South Korean media construct their national identities by means of discourses of exclusion. An intensive textual analysis of news coverage from those media shows that the construction of an essential national Self relies upon the process of differentiation from the Other - in this case, China and North Korea. But while the news media have played an important role in allowing the Taiwanese and South Korean governments to create a rhetoric that posits a national cohesion that does not exist, the concluding remarks propose going beyond the concept of the Other and instead examining the large variety of discourses in the nation's internal and external politics.