Marriage Migrants‘ representation in Korean Cinema

Marriage Migrants‘ representation in Korean Cinema

This paper studies how marriage migrants are being depicted in Korean Cinema. In the recent years, the foreign population in South Korea has been increasing and so has done the presence of migrant minorities in media, including cinema. This study discusses that korean cinema shows dominant ideologies of power in Korean society where marriage migrants are located at the bottom. Five films were analyzed and from this analysis five frames were extracted. Marriage migrants are frequently depicted as subordinated or powerless, they are usually women in the role of wives, mothers, and daughters-in-law, they are treated as ethnic others, sexualized others or commodities. Consequently, their relationships with Korean nationals are formed by power relations. Moreover, Korean national who do establish some sort of intimate relationship with the marriage migrants are represented as people in the margins of Korean society. In this way, it is reinforced the social position of marriage migrants as outsiders in the Korean society.