Regarding print media, most national dailies are available either in a single issue or by subscription around the country. Subscription is more common than newsstand purchases, and newspaper distribution centres handle 93.9 per cent of newspaper deliveries, while 5.3 per cent of the deliveries are made by the postal service (Korea Press Foundation, 2019c). Delivery by mail is usually offered for areas where distribution centres are unable to deliver due to transportation or cost issues, at an extra or no cost for the subscriber depending on the newspaper. While national general daily newspapers are still readily available in most parts of the country, recent changes in news media usage have added to the pressure on print news media. As a result of continued decreases in newspaper subscriptions and readership, the average time of newspaper use has become 4.2 minutes, and the household subscription rate hit an all-time low of 6.4 per cent (Korea Press Foundation, 2019b). The net income of the print news media continues to decrease (Korea Press Foundation, 2019d), leading to cut-backs in the number of local distribution centres. However, all major national daily newspapers are also available online on the official newspaper websites or portals like Naver and Daum, and access to news content is fairly easy. The free newspapers are distributed at major subway stations, bus terminals, and community or district offices.
The television landscape in South Korea consists of terrestrial, general cable, satellite channels, and cable channels, and television news is available on four public television channels, eleven commercial channels, and six general cable channels. KBS, MBC, andEducational Broadcasting System operate the four public television channels and are available nationwide. KBSis the national public broadcasting company of South Korea and operates two generalist television channels, KBS 1TV and KBS 2TV. The former presents news programmes, current affairs, culture programmes, and sports programmes, while the latter is more geared toward educational programmes, television dramas, and variety shows. KBS News 9 has been the prime-time news programme on KBS 1TV since 1964. Its rival news programme, MBC Newsdesk, is aired by MBC, a generalist public broadcasting company funded by a public organisation that is often considered a commercial broadcaster, since it operates on advertising. Finally, the Educational Broadcasting System runs a single public television channel specialising in educational programmes.
As the biggest commercial broadcaster, Seoul Broadcasting System (SBS) offers a wide variety of programmes, ranging from newscasts and investigative programmes to television dramas on its channel, and offers SBS 8 News as its prime-time news programme. KBS, MBC, and SBS long dominated the television industry as the three major rival national terrestrial television networks. In 2019, news programmes took up 29.2 per cent and 8.4 per cent of the airtime on KBS 1TV and KBS 2TV, respectively, while MBC designated 18.6 per cent of its airtime to news programmes. All three broadcasters have local broadcast stations around the country addressing the audience outside the metropolitan area of Seoul, Incheon, and Gyeonggido. KBS and MBC each have more than 18 regional broadcast stations and SBS partners with nine local commercial channels to serve audiences in different regions.
JTBC, TV Chosun, Channel A, Maeil Broadcasting Network, Yonhap News TV, and YTN launched as general cable channels in the wake of a major media law revision in 2009, and since then have gained the upper hand on the three major terrestrial channels. JTBC, TV Chosun, Channel A, and MBN are generalist channels, and Yonhap News TV and YTN are 24-hour news channels. These channels are available on cable, Internet protocol television (IPTV), or satellite service subscriptions. Television news channels from other countries like CNN, BBC World, Al Jazeera, CCTV4, and CNBC, are also available in select subscription plans.
Infrastructure plays an important role in ensuring access to news broadcasts, and South Korea, like many other countries, has shifted to digital television. In December 2012, terrestrial analogue television services were terminated as a part of the 14-year–long national project for the “digital turn” planned by government agencies in 1999. With this transition, either a digital television or a converter for an analogue television became required to receive any television channel. Cable channels are still available on analogue television, but the gradual rise in digital television ownership shows that the transition is more or less complete. In 2018, 96.5 per cent of households were estimated to have one or more television, and 90.3 per cent were estimated to have at least one digital television, with only 9.4 per cent of households owning an analogue television. In 2018, 93.2 per cent of households were estimated to be customers of subscription services.
The radio landscape in South Korea consists of 18 radio stations, of which KBS operates three, and MBC and SBS operates a station each. Except for YTN News FM, which specialises in news broadcasts, and Traffic Broadcasting System, which offers a news bulletin every other hour, only KBS 1Radio and MBC FM carry news bulletins around the clock. Other channels offer two to three news bulletins throughout the day. Radio signals are transmitted to analogue radios, but KBS, MBC, SBS, YTN, and Traffic Broadcasting System radio stations are also all available online or on smartphone applications.
In terms of online access and news, South Korea is known to be one of the best-connected countries in the world. In 2018, the Internet penetration rate was 95.9 per cent (OECD, 2018a), and the household Internet access rate was 99.5 per cent. South Korea has consistently ranked at the top in Internet connections in the past few years and had the greatest percentage of fibre connections in total fixed broadband in 2018, boasting one of the fastest Internet speeds in the world (see Figure 1). In terms of the urban and rural digital divide, broadband is unavailable in some rural areas, and mobile Internet use is lower in county-level cities (74.5%) than in metropolitan cities (89.9%). Despite these limitations, government-initiated policies and programmes for digital infrastructure have promoted nationwide adoption of broadband Internet, and South Korea has the second-most connected rural areas among the OECD members.
The number of online newspapers and news services has grown exponentially since 2005, when the Act on the Promotion of Newspapers was revised to include online news providers. In 2018, 2,900 companies were publishing 3,573 online newspapers, 966 of which were based offline and 2,571 were based online.
Online portal services are widely influential in South Korea, and they are the most popular news source after television. Naver and Kakao’s Daum are the two most-used portals, dominating online traffic. They provide a wide array of content and services like a search engine, e-mail, blog, and social media, as well as news articles from many different media outlets in their news sections. As influential as these Internet portals are, their status in the news media industry is still very much undefined. Though making news more accessible online by distributing news from a wide range of partnered news media, these portals were recently criticised for discriminating against regional newspapers by eliminating them from their partnered news media list after an update of the news search algorithm.
The digital turn has further added to the variety of platforms that not only help access information and news, but also invite audience participation. Not only do the major television news channels operate their own YouTube channels, where television reports and live news can be streamed at any time, but individual and business channels create and upload commentaries, interviews, and videos on a wide range of topics. Podcasts are another medium that provide new ways of consuming news, by allowing listeners to stream regular radio or television programmes on-demand and subscribe to or run their own channels.
The Broadcasting Law (Chapter V, Article 69) stipulates that any broadcasting business provide Korean sign language, closed-caption subtitles, screen commentaries, and so forth, to assist people with disabilities in viewing broadcasts. By law, the Korea Communications Commission subsidises broadcasters with the expenses incurred in providing these services, or supplies receivers purchased by the Broad Communications Development Fund for people with disabilities.
Standards and procedures for selecting operators of public access channels or “public-interest channels”, as defined by law, are prescribed by a Presidential Decree, and the operators are chosen from the cable television broadcasting and satellite broadcasting businesses every other year. In 2019, there were a total of eleven public access channels in three different categories: social welfare, science and culture, and education and local channels.
