The dissertation has an interdisciplinary scope and assumes a minority horizon. It offers a set of qualitative readings of representations in South Korean cinema (1997-2013) and TV dramas (2005-2010). The readings centre on a phenomenon that I have dubbed “the multicultural turn,” as referring to a saturation of multicultural family representation in the South Korean mediascape since the 1997 Asian Financial Crisis and particularly with the official declaration of the New Multicultural Korea in 2006.
I question how ideologies of Koreanness and Otherness are articulated in the material particularly against ethnonationalism and pureblood ideology that dominated notions of Koreanness through most of the postcolonial era. Overall, the readings suggest that the multicultural turn is part of a neoliberal capitalist and ethnocultural turn that indicate a departure from ethnonationalism and pureblood ideology as a leading paradigm for Koreanness.