Consuming Commodified Cultural Hybridity: A Study of Korean Media Consumption By Vietnamese in the Czech Republic

As part of a larger research project on Vietnamese migrants in the Czech Republic, this study focuses on the sociocultural context of transnational cultural practices.  

In the process of catching up with the Western media, the Korean media industry has blended Western and Asian values in its products. The Korean industry has been studied as a typical case of cultural hybridity that demonstrates local appropriation of global cultures in which deeper cultural-hegemonic relationships are embedded, and this hybridity typically reflects Korea’s late, yet rapid, entrance into the global media flow. Korea has indigenized modes of Western media production while developing its own local tastes that reflect traditional values.

The ingredients composing products of Korean cultural hybridity are greatly appreciated by the Vietnamese in the Czech Republic. Participants commonly identify shared cultural values and modern-urban style as main reasons they consume Korean media. This study finds that they nurture their own cultural hybridity by discursively reflecting their marginalized cultural life and by idealizing the path of Asian modernization. They express “shared-cultural-value taste” by contrasting Korean media to Western media. On the other hand, although “modern-urban-style taste” reflects Western cultural hegemony, the young migrants stress that the stylish products are made in an Asian country, which is often referred to as “more developed” than their host, the Czech  Republic. Many participants believe that Korea and Korean media have successfully navigated the path of Asian modernization, which Vietnam has only recently joined.

The media practices of Vietnamese migrants might merely indicate consumption that reflects the regional media industry and trends. However, they give meaning to their consumption by projecting their hybrid identity, which reflects both regional (traditional) and developmentalist identities. Finally, this study argues that transnational media practices could shape a standardized cultural hybridity of commercial media products in a given context.