Creating harmony in crisis periods: Exporting cultural values through Yin-Yang mythology

Europe is currently living through some of the repercussions of the financial crisis from 2007/2008, and its seriousness now is apparent. Yet in 2007 it was much less obvious what the outcomes would be, and broadcasted and printed media struggled to communicate the importance of what was happening. This was even more so in South Korea, which was and is peripheral to the financial institutions that propagated the crisis and had endured a more visible crisis in its recent history. The cultural values in Korean everyday life are strongly linked to the principles as Yin-Yang mythology, which are assumed to have created the world, keep the world in balance, and guided people into a specific way of life. These principles can be found in financial crisis media coverage, and impact people’s reactions to specific events and the future. This paper examines how the financial crisis was represented on front covers of printed media in Korea, specifically using Yin-Yang mythology that permeates Korean life, and how this representation affects the view of people towards the crisis.