ZONAS DE ESPECIAL SIGNIFICANCIA AMBIENTAL

The next program Let’s Give Praise, following the basic concept of Conscience Refrigerator, was planned under the IMF management system on the Korean economy. The social mood during the financial crisis, in which warm-hearted family dramas and documentaries containing overcoming-hardship stories were welcomed by Korean viewers, provided Korean

entertainment producers an opportunity to rethink the social roles and functions of television entertainment. The precipitous drop in advertising profits caused by Asian financial crisis was an issue calling for serious consideration for the producers. That is, Korean entertainment producers were forced to create funny, and at the same time, touching contents at a low cost. Launching Let’s Give Praise in April 1998, the producer of the show said that, “I designed it to comfort people with common people’s moving story and laughter and encourage people to overcome the national crisis” (Bae K. , 1999).

The narrative structure of the series is to discover a hidden hero helping the poor and weak and introduce his/her impressive story, and then to have the selected hero recommend another good person as the hero of next episode like a relay race. The program promoted a social atmosphere that encourages good deeds through active praise and created a huge social sensation which led to the spread of “praise syndrome” in schools, companies and government offices. At first, the campaign started from a subsection of a variety show The Committee of the 21st _century

carrying the banner for informational entertainment, but soon gained great reputation and popularity, and thus eventually becoming a separate, independent show.

At that time, the financial crisis dampened the social passion for industrialization. Koreans began to pay attention to the fair distribution of wealth and democratic management of national economy. Television programs were needed to penetrate the demands of the civil society. Actually, the producer initially sought for fun rather than social messages when planning the show. However, the empathetic producer saw through the actual feelings and demands of the Korean public, and after all, succeeded to comfort the people with the program. Embracing the social atmosphere, Korean entertainment shows could be more than just entertainment. - SJ

When Let’s Give Praise was planned, a charitable campaign to collect gold was taking place nationwide in South Korea. The movement started to the effect that ordinary people could help reviving the national economy by collecting gold they possessed, because exchanging the collected gold into dollars would easily increase the nation’s foreign currency reserves. Since the foreign exchange crisis was often described as “one of the toughest challenges in Korean

history” in press, many Korean people with the historical experience and memory of Japanese colonization and Korean War voluntarily participated in the campaign. It was reported that 3.51 million people around the nation collected 227 tons of gold which was equivalent to $2.1 billion in value at that time and over 20 times the amounts of the existing nation’s gold stock during the year-long campaign (Shim S. , 2017). The scene that numerous people lined up to present their gold was a great sight itself. In addition, lots of surprising stories were collected with gold during the special television campaign. The protagonists of the story include an Olympic gold medalist, old gentleman who donated a golden key as a retirement gift from his company, aunt who donated her treasured wedding band and necklace her bereaved husband gave, mothers who presented their kids’ first-birthday rings, priests who gave gold crucifix, and so on. These stories were the key narrative of the campaign show.

Despite being a non-regular television program, a special live campaign show was a frequently seen genre in the 1980s and 1990s. A special live campaign show was an effective tool to mobilize massive human and financial resources for the purpose of national harmony and unity. By taking advantages of governmental authorities, television as a national medium

deployed a large group of people and high equipment to national events like international sporting or great natural disasters caused by typhoon, earthquake, drought, etc. With striking

images and dramatic narratives, special campaign shows usually inspired people’s patriotism and communal spirits and encouraged their active engagement in the national events or disasters.

As one of the most successful live campaign shows in Korea, the search campaign for families separated due to Korean War and division of territory broadcast through KBS in 1983 contributed to forming the narrative conventions of the genre. The live campaign show entitled Looking for the Separated Family was planned at first as a 2-hour night show on the end of June 1983 to commemorate the 30th anniversary of the end of the Korean War. However, as soon as the show was aired, applications for searching lost family members on air poured during the airtime. KBS prolonged immediately the show time two more hours, and then over 30 families were dramatically reunited on that night. Since thousands of people visited directly the KBS studio to apply for their appearance on TV in the next morning, KBS resumed the live show from 10pm to the next morning 7am. During the second night, 71 families met again after over 30 years of separation. Afterward, the live show was broadcast over 450 hours for about four months by breaking the regular programing schedules from time to time. Throughout the campaign, over 10,000 people were reunited (Hong D. , 1997, p. 634).

It was narrative that led the live show for such a long period. Every story that the guests experienced when they were separated from the family while fleeing to avoid the war touched the heart of Korean people. The moment when those who were supposed to be in the same family identified each other through multiple relay transmission from various studios of the home and overseas excited people together all over the nation. Focusing on the greatest pain that Korean people had in mind, the show became an enormous outlet to vent people’s emotional energy such as tears, resentment, sorrow, effervescence, delight, etc. Because the reality the show demonstrated was more dramatic and moving than fiction, the show itself was “the most

shocking and touching human drama” and “a monumental achievement in Korean television history,” and suggested “the biggest goal that public service broadcasting should pursue” (Kim Y. , 1983).

The massive narrative and spectacles in special television campaigns were often adopted in television entertainment even after the end of the IMF management system for South Korea in 2001. Particularly, a touching story of the cast, regardless of celebrities or ordinary people, became an important source in Korean entertainment shows. This became one of the

characteristics of Korean television entertainment with a long tradition of public television. Heartwarming entertainment shows tend to gain influence in our country. Regardless of any particular format or compositional device, Korean viewers are likely to prefer the programs that make them feel touched and care about the stories and characters. In a western reality show, ordinary people with violent, shocking, or controversial story or personality are likely to be the center of the program. But Korean television does not allow such a story or personality. The moral standards of the medium are very strict in Korea. There are also many social taboos that dominate Korean television culture.

Because Korean television is strongly tied to such morals, most of the ordinary people on television have touching stories. – LH

Korean variety shows target all age groups. The principle of including both subsections for teenagers and subsections aimed at the elderly together in one program has never changed since the beginning of weekend variety shows. This makes the contents of our variety shows sound and moral. - SJ

The combination of touching story and variety show generated a new subgenre so-called “public interest variety.” Based on the successes of Here He Goes, Kyoung-kyu Lee, Conscience

Refrigerator, and Let’s Give Praise, MBC launched many public interest entertainment programs with makeover formulae as a subsection of its weekend variety show, such as Grand Opening (2001) that helps remodeling failed small restaurants, Love House (2002) that repairs the old house of the poor, Sweet Rain (2009) that promotes overseas volunteering, etc. With the popular boom of public interest entertainment in the early 2000s, MBC created a variety show !:

Exclamation Mark in which all sections were classified as public interest entertainment. Though not as popular as the MBC’s shows, KBS and SBS also broadcast several public interest

entertainment programs by inheriting the conventions of MBC’s ones. The public interest

programs include Nocturnal Activity (2010, KBS) that encourages those people who work late at night, On Your Command, Sir! (KBS, 2011) in which celebrities do the serve for the public’s welfare, Good Neighbors (KBS, 2016) that helps improving the relations between neighbors, Heartbeat (SBS, 2013) where celebrities experience actual fire service.