CANKO SOCIETY FOR AI AND SOCIAL VALUE

Abstract

This study aims to empirically examine how media framing contributes to the formation and transformation of political identity in South Korea, through a comparative analysis of news coverage related to the 20th President Yoon Suk-yeol, the 21st President Lee Jae-myung, and North Korea. Focusing on an exceptional period of political transition marked by the impeachment of President Yoon and the subsequent early election of President Lee, the study explores how media outlets construct ideological narratives and policy discourses during leadership change and shifting inter-Korean relations. The dataset was collected from the Daum news portal, targeting articles published over the first 100 days of each presidency, along with North Korea-related news within the same period. Search keywords included the names of both presidents and North Korea-related terms such as “Kim Jong-un,” “nuclear,” “missile,” “U.S.-ROK military exercises,” “peace,” and “provocation.” Metadata such as titles, main texts, publication dates, media outlets, journalist names, and URLs were included, while audience reactions (e.g., comments, likes/dislikes) were excluded to avoid interpretive bias. The total dataset is expected to consist of approximately 200,000 articles, structured for comparative and time-series analysis. The textual data was processed using Korean language models such as KoBERT and KoELECTRA for sentiment analysis and frame classification, while topic modeling algorithms such as BERTopic and LDA were used to extract thematic clusters. The analytical framework includes six primary political frames: politics, ideology, foreign affairs and security, economy and welfare, justice and morality, and policy orientation. Each article was assigned an ideological bias score ranging from -2 (far-left) to +2 (far-right), and additional metrics such as frame distortion index, propaganda score, and polarization index were used for quantitative analysis. By comparing how the media framed identical events across different administrations and in relation to North Korea, this study empirically analyzes the ideological orientations and framing strategies of Korean media. It ultimately aims to uncover how media narratives not only reflect but also reshape political identity in South Korea, particularly during a period of unprecedented political upheaval. The findings are expected to contribute to a deeper understanding of the dynamics between media, politics, and ideology in shaping the discursive landscape of contemporary Korean democracy.

Authors

• AI (First Author), Machine – ai.social.value@gmail.com