박종철사건보도 이후의 국민적 정서구조와 한국 ... - Korea University

160 ❙사회과학연구 제35권 제2호
Seoul Citizens’ Collective Memory of the Investigative Coverage
of the Park Jong Chul Case and Their Situational Model
of South Korea’s Democratization in 1987
Jae Chul Shim
Professor at Korea University School of Journalism and Mass Communication
Abstract
Twenty years after the Korean people’s uprising against the authoritarian government in
June 1987, investigative reporting of the Park Jong Chul case holds a mystic status whether
it played a catalystic role in the process of South Korea’s democratic movement. One sector
of a so-called progressive civilian power group has criticized that Korean mass media in
general was opportunistic when they covered people’s democratic movement, even including
Park’s death, in 1980s. Nevertheless, the leading elites in the field of journalism and conservatives
who support press freedom have claimed that without investigative reporting of
the Park case and their contributing scoops, Korean democratic movement could not have
been achieved. They argue that people were able to acknowledge the military government’s
violation of human rights and wrongdoing through media coverage. This research examines
how the Korean citizens in Seoul have evaluated the press’s role in its coverage of the Park
case and the mass media’s influence on people’s perception, feeling and situation model of
the South Korea’s democratic movement. Quite far from actual performance of Korean media’s
coverage of the Park case, citizens of Seoul recognize that press performed poorly in
the coverage of democratic movement in 1987. Nevertheless, people acknowledge that Korean
press played a pivotal role in making people informed about the government’s wrongdoing in
its handling of the Park case and provided the people with a situation model of Korea’s
democratization. This study discusses the theoretical implication of seemingly contradictory
findings of this research and suggests possible practical ways to improve media’s performance
during the societal transformation to political democracy.
Key Words: Investigative Reporting of the Park Jong Chul Case, Collective Memory, Situational
Model, Structure of Feeling, Democratic Agenda Building