Political and cultural contexts and child protection: A cross-national study of print media representations of child abuse and neglect in South Korea and NSW

Abstract

This thesis explores social, political and cultural contexts affecting the development and implementation of child protection policies in South Korea and the Australian state of New South Wales. The research examines child abuse issues presented in the print media from 2001 to 2008. Based on critical feminist perspectives and a political cultural approach, news articles were selected through a multistage sampling strategy and analysed through a qualitative media content analysis. The findings of this study demonstrate that South Korea and NSW, which have similar child protection policies and systems, have faced very different challenges in the implementation of child protection policy. In South Korea, cultural and political factors have led to the structural inequality and exclusion of children and women from the political domain. The cultural and political factors include hierarchical and patriarchal family structures influenced by Confucianism and a high priority on capital development policy over civil society movements by military authoritarian regimes for several decades. These factors have also contributed to the delay in the development of child protection policies and the recognition of children’s rights in Korean society. In NSW, despite the influence of a strong women’s movement in the 1970s, overwhelming neoliberalism since the 1980s has propelled social policy toward market-oriented approaches rather than counterbalancing inequality produced by competitive markets. Neoliberal approaches to welfare have undermined the potential capacity of the state to reduce the overall challenges that the NSW child protection system has faced since the extension of mandatory notification in 1998. The findings underline the need to develop strategies that overcome the challenges in both contexts. The possibilities of developing a culturally appropriate child protection model based upon the Korean cultural context and the new social policy direction towards a universal support model are discussed as a way forward in future efforts to address child protection issues in South Korea. A public health model, emphasising the underlying determinants of child abuse as they affect whole populations, is also discussed as a way to overcome the challenges and problems of the NSW child protection system.