K-Drama as Ecocinema - A Multimodal Analysis of Climate Change Representation in 60 Globally Popular Korean TV Dramas

Aug 21, 2026

This study examines climate change themes in 60 globally popular South Korean dramas from 2019–2024 using network, sentiment, and framing analyses. Results indicate climate change topics occupy only 0.36% (4 hours) of 1,135 total viewing hours, with 26 dramas featuring related content mainly focused on recycling and eco-friendly practices. The research offers a first systematic investigation of climate change narratives in Korean TV drama and proposes a replicable computational, longitudinal framework. It argues that integrating ecocinema into Hallyu expands thematic scope and supports environmental awareness via serialized storytelling.

LanguageEnglish

CategoryResearch & Report

FormatPDF

Pages24

Reading Time1 h 0 min

AccessFree to download

Introduction

Background and Rationale

Methods and Analytical Framework

Results

Discussion and Implications

K-Drama as Ecocinema? A Multimodal Analysis of Climate Change Representation in 60 Globally Popular Korean TV Dramas CRISTIANE MELCHIOR LUT University, Finland HANNELE SEECK LUT University, Finland The London School of Economics and Political Science, UK RATNA AINI HADI LUT University, Finland This study examines climate change themes in 60 globally popular South Korean dramas (2019–2024) using network, sentiment, and framing analyses and drawing on ecocinema . The results show that climate change topics represented only 0.36%(4 hours) of 1,135 total viewing hours . Despite Korea’s environmental challenges, only 26 dramas included climate-related content, primarily addressing recycling and eco-friendly practices . Our study provides the first systematic investigation of climate change narratives in Korean TV dramas . It highlights their potential to shape environmental awareness and introducesa replicable methodological framework integrating computational and longitudinal analyses. Integrating ecocinema into Hallyu studies is crucial as it (1) expands Hallyu’s thematic scope beyond family, history, gender, and class to include underexplored environmental issues; (2) leverages K-dramas’ global reach to enhance climate change awareness through serialized storytelling; and (3) addresses the dominance of Western media in ecocinema studies by incorporating East Asian television narratives . Keywords: climate change, computational social science methods, ecocinema, framing, Hallyu, TV dramas Scripted entertainment, including cinema and television, powerfully mirrors and addresses global and local social issues (Manning & Suarez Lopez, 2023) . A recent U.S. audience survey revealed that 77% of respondents learned about social issues at least occasionally through these forms of entertainment (Giaccardi et al., 2022) . Film and TV narratives inform audiences’understanding and inspire them to act Cristiane Melchior: [cristiane. melchior@lut.fi](cristiane. melchior@lut.fi) Hannele Seeck: [hannele.seeck@lut.fi](hannele.seeck@lut.fi) Ratna Aini Hadi: [aini.hadi@lut.fi](aini.hadi@lut.fi) [Date submitted: 2025-02-25](Date submitted: 2025-02-25) Copyright © 2025 (Cristiane Melchior, Hannele Seeck, and Ratna Aini Hadi) . Licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution Non-commercial No Derivatives (by-nc-nd). Available at [https://ijoc.org](https://ijoc.org). International Journal of Communication 19(2025) K-Drama as Ecocinema: Climate Change Stories 3469 (Giaccardi et al., 2022) . The report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC, 2023) underscored the severe risks posed by rising temperatures, called for a comprehensive research agenda to address catastrophic climate scenarios, and emphasized the importance of integrating climate change discussions into media content. In Western contexts, climate communication in film and television often emphasizes large-scale political conflict, apocalyptic futures, and individual activism (Schneider-Mayersonet al., 2024) . By contrast, Korean narratives frequently foreground collective well-being, social harmony, and everyday practices (Kim, 2019a; Yoon & Jin, 2023) . Despite these pressing calls, climate change is rarely featured in scripted TV dramas, films, or popular music . Recent research from the Norman Lear Center, at the USC Annenberg School for Communication & Journalism, analyzing 37,453 scripted TV episodes and films, mainly from the United States, from 2016 to 2020, found that only 2.8% incorporated climate change–related words (Giaccardi et al., 2022) . By comparison, the word “dog” appeared 13 times more frequently than all climate change keywords combined. Mainstream Western entertainment continues to sideline environmental issues, privileging spectacle or romance over systemic critique (Bond et al., 2017; Johns-Putra, 2016; SchneiderMayerson, 2019) . In their climate change study, Schneider-Mayerson et al. (2024) applied a “climate r

FAQs

How much screen time do climate change topics receive across the 60 K-dramas studied?

Climate change topics account for only 0.36% of total viewing time, corresponding to 4 hours out of 1,135 hours.

What kinds of climate-related themes appear most often in the dramas that include them?

Among the 26 dramas with climate-related content, the study finds an emphasis on recycling and eco-friendly everyday practices.

What is the proposed methodological contribution of the study?

The study introduces a replicable framework that integrates computational techniques with longitudinal analysis to systematically examine climate change narratives in Korean TV dramas.

Aug 21, 2026

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