Globalization and (auto-)orientalism: The structure of Koreanovelas and the Filipino subjects in signs and mythologies

• Main Author: Marasigan, Neri B.
• Format: text
• Language: English
• Published: Animo Repository 2009
• Subjects: Koreans—Philippines; Korean drama—Philippines; Mass media and globalization; Cultural appropriation—Philippines; Arts and Humanities; Social and Behavioral Sciences
• Online Access: https://animorepository.dlsu.edu.ph/etd_masteral/6144; https://animorepository.dlsu.edu.ph/context/etd_masteral/article/12958/viewcontent/CDTG004510_P.pdf
• Institution: De La Salle University

With the influx of Korean nationals in the Philippines also came the phenomenal rise in popularity of the Tagalog-dubbed Korean dramas or Koreanoveals, and the number of Filipinos employed in jobs with a service-oriented nature. Indeed, globalization has dissolved strict national boundaries and subtly yet expediently facilitated the transfer of bodies, cultural products, and ideologies that perpetuate inequality. Investigating the reasons behind the passivity and tolerability of the Filipinos to the service-provider roles they take while serving as hosts to these foreign nationals, the study examined two Koreanovelas Jewel in the Palace (2003) and Full House (2004) as representative texts in a structuralist reading of the Korean cultural artifacts widely consumed by the Filipinos. Rendered a semiological demythologizing reading with focus on binary oppositions and narratological pattern, the Koreanovelas yielded a structure which supports a “grammar” of servitude which positions the Filipino subject to invisibly render itself as the other in the Korean-Filipino relation imaginary. The Koreanovelas, with all its romantic conventions, helped facilitate the Filipinos’ creation of their own hegemonic reality masked in a global service-economy with invisibility and acceptability. With this, the study explored on an interestingly new concept that it exposed – a self-othering, or auto-Orientalism which the Korean presence in the Philippines foregrounds.