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Article Excerpt
Abstract
Vancouver is not only the second most diverse city in Canada, but it is also the site of major ethnic specialty services. It is home to one of the four multilingual television stations in Canada and more than one hundred ethnic media outlets. Together they serve approximately twenty-three language groups. Among British Columbia's top three "mother tongue and home language" groups--Chinese, Punjabi, and Korean--the Korean community offers the largest number of media services. There are nearly thirty outlets for approximately thirty thousand people of Korean origin. That proportion becomes even more impressive when one considers that more than three hundred thousand people of Chinese origin rely on a similar number of outlets. What is the driving force behind this growth? With the increasing demographic changes within the Korean community, mainly as a result of the Business Immigration Programme enacted in 1986, the Korean media have become new business ventures to serve demographically diverse consumers. The intensified competition, however, limits what may be called "social responsibility" on the part of the media. The lack of financial and human capital in the media market further leads to reliance on homebound news and limits a balanced information feed. A hollow in national and provincial civic space and the subsequent development of a skewed sense of belonging to "home," rather than "here," has an impact on the formation of a functioning cultural citizenship.
Resume
Vancouver n'est pas seulement la deuxieme ville la plus diverse au Canada, mais c'est aussi le centre des principaux services ethniquement specialises. Elle abrite une des quatre stations de television multilingues du pays et plus d'une centaine de fournisseurs de medias ethniques. A eux tous, ils desservent environ trente-trois groupes linguistiques. Parmi les trois plus importants > en Colombie britannique--chinois, punjabi et coreen--la communaute coreenne offre le plus grand nombre de services mediatiques. Ils sont pres de trois cents a desservir une trentaine de milliers de personnes d'origine coreenne. Cette proportion est d'autant plus impressive si on considere qu'il y en a a peu pres le meme nombre pour trois cent mille chinois de souche. Que pourrait etre le moteur de cette augmentation? Les changements demographiques a la hausse de la communaute coreenne, dus principalement au Programme d'immigration de gens d'affaires en vigueur depuis 1986, font que les medias coreens sont devenus de nouvelles entreprises commerciales visant des consommateurs demographiquement divers. Cependant, la competition s'est intensifiee et a limite le role que l'on pourrait appeler la > dans les medias. Le manque de capital financier et humain dans le marche mediatique a d'autant plus provoque un repli sur les nouvelles journalistiques venues du pays d'origine et limite la possibilite de donner une information equilibree. L'absence de couverture de l'espace civique national et provincial a conduit a developper un sens d'appartenance biaise en faveur de > plutot que d' >, ce qui affecte la formation d'une citoyennete culturellement fonctionnelle.
INTRODUCTION
Vancouver is not only the second most diverse city in Canada, but it is also a major hub for ethnic media. (1) It is home to more than one hundred ethnic media outlets, which serve nearly twenty-three language groups, other than English and French. Nine nationally available ethnic media outlets are headquartered here (Apna Roots, China Journal, Fairchild Radio, Fairchild TV, Talentvision, Global Chinese Press, Herald Monthly, Paivand, and Popular Lifestyle & Entertainment), and Vancouver has one of four multilingual conventional television channels, Channel M, which was recently bought by Rogers. Among the top three "mother tongue and home languages" of ethnic minorities in British Columbia--Chinese, Punjabi, and Korean--(British Columbia Statistics 2001a), Korean media are growing the fastest. There are nearly thirty media outlets for some thirty thousand people of Korean origin compared to a similar number of outlets for more than three hundred thousand people of Chinese origin (Statistics Canada, 2001 Census). Given this rate of growth and high per capita availability of Korean language media, it is surprising that little academic attention has been paid to Korean television, radio, and newspapers and the implications they may have for mediating cultural citizenship.
Data from a study of ethnic media in British Columbia, Cultural Diversity and Ethnic Media in British Columbia (Murray et al. 2007), (2) suggests that Korean media are business ventures with a mandate to serve demographically diverse consumers, and that they focus more heavily on news from the country of origin than do other third-language media. The central argument put forward to explain this tendency is that the increasing demographic changes within the Korean community make the Korean media market in Canada more volatile than ever before. Arguably, this trend can be attributed to the Business Immigration Programmme (enacted in Canada in 1986), which doubled the country's economic immigrants, from 35,839 to 74,099, and almost doubled the Korean total, from 1,143 to 2,276 (Citizenship and Immigration Canada [CIC] 1990, 2006). (3) Murray et al.'s study (ibid. 150-51) suggests that prior to 1986, the community had only two newspapers, the Korean Canadian News (1983) and the Vancouver Chosun (1986). After 1986, the Korean community saw a dramatic growth in the number of media outlets with the launch of the Korea Times (1992), KC TV (1995), TV Korea (1997), Kyocharo (1997), and Byurookshijang (1997), which were joined by an additional twenty-one outlets in the 2000s. The ensuing increased competition may limit the "social responsibility" of these media in the emerging Korean-Canadian civic or public sphere. The tensions may have been heightened by neo-liberal immigration policies which promote free-market principles and idealize "model citizens"--self-sufficient, independent and "highly skilled, well-educated, English- or French-speaking, upper-class male immigrants" (Abu-Laban and Gabriel 2002, 97). As a result, the ethnic community media are at least partially run by neo-liberal immigrants under the business immigration program, whose life aspirations in the new country continue to center on "upward mobility" (Park 2005). Furthermore, the apparent lack of financial and human capital in the market may lead to further reliance on less costly reproduction of news items from "home," thus further limiting the market's exposure to a good deal of local, provincial, and national news.
This paper explores the context for the emergence of the Korean media in British Columbia. It begins with a short history of the socio-economic structure of the community. Ethnic media are, after all, a by-product of the historic formation and trajectories of communities. Next, it explores the Korean community organizations which are emerging as the backbone of the Korean community in Vancouver. Such organizations are important not only for their function in "societal culture," (4) as Kymlicka (1995, 76) has termed it, but also for their potential in consolidating a collective voice to be heard by the government and media. Referring to Presthus's "elite accommodation," which describes significant features of the Canadian political process, Thorburn (1991, 25-26) argues that the government is more likely to respond when the voice comes from institutionalized bodies which aggregate and synthesize interests, rather than from case-by-case issue groups. Another important part of the "societal culture" is language-friendly ethnic community media. According to Sandra Ball-Rokeach et al. (2001, 2), these two together are a critical part of what they termed the "communication infrastructure" mediating between micro-level neighborhood communication and macro-level national and international communication for individual communities.
The paper concludes with a discussion of how to improve ethnic media in general in order that it be able to function as a useful part of the public sphere that works toward social cohesion. In doing this, the paper explores the notion of "translocality" in intercultural studies and looks for ways in which translocal citizens can achieve a balanced sense of belonging to both Canada and their country of origin. Such a comprehensive approach may help to understand how growing economic imperatives and the social obligations of ethnic media interact, and, amid such dynamic interaction, how they might work to build healthy multicultural citizenship and social cohesion.
THE KOREAN COMMUNITY IN BRITISH COLUMBIA
Koreans constitute the seventh largest non-European ethnic group in Canada. According to Collin Lindsay's special report to Statistics Canada, The Korean Community in Canada (2007), there are more than one hundred thousand people of Korean origin in Canada, accounting for 4% of the total population, with 70% being foreign-born. The number of Koreans has grown significantly in two different time periods: first, in the period from 1986 to 1989 (from 1,146 to 2,820), immediately after the introduction of the Business Immigration Programme in Canada in 1986, and, second, in the period from 1997 to 2001 (from 4,001 to 9,608), as a result of Korea's economic crisis and the IMF bailout in 1997 (CIC 1990, 2006). In the second wave, Korean business immigrants exceeded those from Hong Kong: 1,034 (5%) versus 7,678 (40%) in the period from 1986 and 2000 compared to 2,657 (14%) versus 652 (3%) in the period from 2000 to 2005 (principal applicants only) (CIC 2000, 2005). This trend may be explained by the massive migration from Hong Kong preceding Hong Kong's return to Mainland China in 1997 and by migration from Korea following the country's economic crisis in 1997 (mentioned above). In addition, as of 2006, there were 27,411 overseas Korean students in Canada as compared to 36,041 Chinese students; the former doubled since 1997 (from 11,503, CIC 2006). The report further shows that Canadians of Korean origin are relatively younger than the test of the population, with young adults aged between fifteen and twenty-four accounting for 20% as compared to 13% for the rest of the country. Koreans are also likely to be more educated; 37% of Koreans over fifteen years of age have a university degree, as compared to 15% of the overall population. Yet a relatively higher proportion is unemployed and earns less per annum. This is especially true when looking at the annual income of Canadians fifteen years and older; Canadians of Korean origin earn 20,000 dollars per annum as opposed to 30,000 dollars for the rest of the population. This gap doubles in the fifteen to twenty-four age bracket (ibid.). Geographically, like other immigrants, Koreans are concentrated in two of Canada's major provinces, Ontario and British Columbia (CIC 2001a). (5)
According to British Columbia Statistics for 2001, Koreans are now the third largest "mother tongue and home language" group in British Columbia, followed by the Chinese and Punjabi communities. Officially, there are approximately thirty thousand people of Korean origin in British Columbia. Unofficially, the number is estimated to be well over fifty thousand, including new immigrants since the last census and foreign students or temporary residents who are in Canada for English-language training and their families (CIC 2001b). (6) Koreans are usually admitted under the skilled workers or business class. Since 1999, they have been the top source of entrepreneurial immigrants (32% of the British Columbia total in 2001), surpassing immigrants from Hong Kong and Taiwan (British Columbia Statistics 2001b). There are no cumulative data available on the total amount of investment made by Korean entrepreneurs in British Columbia. However, in 2005 alone, entrepreneurial immigrants to British Columbia invested 25,649,973 Canadian dollars (39% of the Canadian total that year) and created 171 full-time and 175 part-time jobs (CIC 2005).
Koreans may...
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