Early Childhood and Media Representation: How does South Korean Animation Pororo the Little Penguin Reproduce Patriarchal Family Ideology?

Gender role stereotypes and visibility

Pororo shows stereotypical gender representation both in characters’ appearances, such as voices, color, clothes, accessories, and their roles and personality features. In Season 1, where characters don’t wear clothes, most characters identify by the color of the animal they represent: Crong is a green crocodile; Eddy is a yellow-brown fox; Poby is a white bear. However, Loopy is pink, which has no relation to a beaver’s identity but symbolically represents femininity. In Season 2, characters wear clothes and males wear blue, while Loopy and Petty wear pink. Furthermore, Tongtong wears a bow tie; Loopy wears a pink dress, and a pink hairpin, and Petty wears a purple dress, purple hat, and gloves.

Loopy is represented as unscientific (S1 E46), highly involved with her appearance (S2 E9, S3 E11), relationship oriented (S1 E32), and emotional (S1 E4). Episode 46 of Season 1 shows Loopy telling her friends that she can tell their fortunes by reading flower petals but her friends ridicule her. Although the episode ends with Loopy correctly predicting Poby’s success at fishing, the narration ends with, ‘Do you really think Loopy’s petal fortune-telling is correct?’ Loopy’s unscientific disposition is magnified when it is contrasted with that of Eddy the inventor. The episode’s ending suggests that viewers should be doubtful about Loopy’s petal fortune telling. Loopy fails to build confidence among her friends or with the audience. In all the episodes we analyze, Loopy is the only one to cry (S1 E4) or to get upset over her friends not recognizing her change of hairpin (S2 E9). Investigating other male characters’ personalities and tendencies can shed even more light on the gender stereotypes of Pororo. In episodes that center around male characters, the contrast is stark between male and female characters. Pororo is goal-oriented, competitive (S1 E8, S2 E10), adventurous, and mischievous (S1 E20, S1 E2). Eddy, Pororo’s constant rival, easily gets sullen and full of pride since he is good at inventing things (S1 E3). Even though over 40 years have passed, Pororo animation still represents gender stereotypes in the manner that Linda Jean Busby pointed out in her study in 1974. Men are portrayed as competitive, full of knowledge, active, aggressive, and strong. Women are portrayed as kind, sensitive, romantic, passive, and emotional.

Petty, who loves sports and is active, entered the series to overcome the stereotypical representation of a female (Kim, 2009; Kim and Kim, 2012). However, we argue that how Petty is represented still reifies deeply rooted stereotypes of gender difference; Petty is described as having ‘easy-going characteristics despite being cute and pretty’ in the official homepage which indicates an uncritical assumption that pretty women would be demanding. In Season 2, Episode 1, as soon as the male friends encounter Petty they are surprised by her beauty. Loopy in contrast gets depressed after meeting Petty, saying, ‘Everybody seems to be weird.’ When Eddy kisses Petty in gratitude for her building a house, Petty’s other male friends ask her to kiss them also. This irritates Loopy (S2 E2). Also, Petty wants to cook well like Loopy (S3 E14) and is scared of spiders (S2 E14). In Episode 11 of Season 3 titled ‘Loopy princess’, Petty even gets angry when she hears that Loopy princess is prettier than Petty princess. In this episode, the one who brings the most expensive, interesting gift can marry Loopy princess. Such a premise explicitly reflects the patriarchal society’s distorted perception of marriage: that women are passive products that can be possessed by men and that female appearance satisfying male fantasies has been regarded as a woman’s asset (Elder, 1969). Pororo emphasizes a preoccupation with appearance by expressing that he wants to marry Petty, who is deemed prettier than Loopy. These episodes show how male friends are kinder to prettier female friends and how women are pitted against one another as rivals to earn more attention and love from male friends. The series reifies that the most important standard for estimating women is their external appearance.

Moreover, in terms of leading roles, Pororo reveals imbalance. A preceding study has analyzed 30 episodes of Pororo, Season 1, finding that male characters led 19 episodes and female characters led 11 episodes (Kim and Kim, 2012). They also analyzed the settings of the episode, finding that 79 percent of male-led episodes happened outside while 73 percent of female-led episodes occurred inside. Likewise, our study ⁷ which looked at all of the episodes from Seasons 1 to 3 (156 episodes in total) shows that the percentage of females appearing as the leading role is 12.8 percent which is even lower than the sex ratio of the characters which is 20 percent.

One of the shared features of studies about media’s gender representation, not only commercial programs but also educational programs, is that in terms of main characters the ratio of male to female is higher (Baker and Raney, 2007). Pororo is no exception; it only features two female characters, Loopy and Petty, throughout all the seasons. Moreover, while Loopy and Petty are described as ‘girl’ in the character description, the other nine characters are not elucidated as ‘boys’ at all. This is problematic because it shows that women exist only when they are designated as such; men are the ‘default’ gender.

Such an imbalance in media visibility reduces female characters’ roles or lines, perhaps causing children who watch these programs to feel that women are a marginal group. Scholars using various theoretical approaches have argued that the presence, absence, or type of portrayal of social group matter. For instance, ethnolinguistic vitality theory contends that groups who appear more often on television are more vital and enjoy more status and power in daily life (Harwood and Anderson, 2002). Cultivation theory (Gerbner et al., 2002) suggests that media representation systematically shapes audiences’ worldview to match that of the symbolic one on TV. Also, social identity theory states that groups look for representations of themselves and then compare those representations with those of other groups (Tajfel, 1978). Although we admit the limitation of textual analysis which does not consider the actual reception and interaction of its audiences, we believe that young girls who watch Pororo could feel that they are relatively unimportant and powerless.

Korean socio-cultural values: Collectivistic culture and the importance of Nunchi

Previous studies have examined Pororo animation as an educational text that delivers personality education through the main characters’ conflict resolution and narration (Kong, 2013). According to Jung and Bang’s study of Pororo, the program focuses on the virtues of personality, an understanding of others, respect, and cooperation, which was promoted by the ‘2007 revised preschool education course’ and the ‘national childcare curriculum’ (Jung and Bang, 2012: 175–177). We acknowledge that the goal of young children’s education is to foster competent people for a society. In order to fulfill this goal, children’s animation suggests specific virtues that the sociocultural context regards as important. After analyzing 50 episodes, we found that Pororo included many features that were closely related to the socio-cultural context of South Korea. Some studies have argued that because it makes for global content, Pororo represents rather Western-oriented views in terms of what the characters wear and eat (Kim and Lim, 2010). However, our analysis suggests that Pororo’s representations are interconnected with Korean socio-cultural values and beliefs about children and early childhood.

Firstly, many episodes emphasize cooperation as the most important virtue for toddlers. Rather than introducing creativity or independency through coping with a problem on one’s own, Pororo often show friends cooperating. This finding is in line with previous studies suggesting Pororo highlights interdependency and teamwork (Jung et al., 2010; L Lee, 2012). For instance, when Pipi and Popo make Loopy’s house a mess, other friends naturally cooperate to clean the house without any question (S3 E2). Also, in cases where characters are trying to escape an external crisis, all the friends work together to carry out the plan. Season 2 Episode 10 is a story about making a big snowman through cooperation. While Pororo, Crong, Eddy, and Harry work together to make a snowman, Loopy, Petty, and Poby are proud of them for cooperating. This episode not only shows how Korean society places value in cooperation but also reflects how adults encourage and praise the educative value of cooperation.

According to the ‘3 to 5-year-old Nuri Curriculum guidelines’ ⁸ established in 2013, ‘making harmony with other people’ and ‘caring for others’ are the most important abilities for children in this age to become the future democratic citizens in a multicultural society. ⁹ Considering other Western cultures where individualistic values such as independence and autonomy are important (Wise and Da Silva, 2007), this strong emphasis on cooperation reveals how much South Koreans are generally more group-oriented and collectivist. According to the study in Geert Hofstede Cultural Dimensions, the Individualism Index (IDV) of South Korea, with a score of 18, is much lower than that of the United States, with a score of 91 (Sama and Papamarcos, 2000). This means that Korean society, as a collectivist society like many other Asian countries, requires ‘loyalty’ and ‘harmony’ in sustaining the close long-term commitment to the member ‘group’, whether a family, extended family, or extended relationships (CY Lee, 2012: 187–188). Moreover, as South Korea has gone through rapid economic development, modernization, and globalization, the society has identified serious moral crises such as absence of a sense of community and individualism (Lee and McMullen, 2006). As defining childhood is contingent upon the society, it seems that these changes in the Korean society have fed into the educational animation. We argue that Pororo not only reflects South Korean society’s emphasis on the ‘regaining of morality and group life in early childhood education’ (p. 120) but also shows the strong perspective of adults embedded in Pororo.

Moreover, the way Pororo characters communicate to each other reveals a Korean cultural concept called Nunchi. In collectivist society, people tend to do things in consideration of others’ opinions and feelings and thus, knowing others’ feeling and maintaining harmony with others is very important (Southerton, 2008). Because South Korea is a high-context society where communication between people relies more on silent language and other nonverbal signals ¹⁰ (Wang, 2016), the ability to read implied meaning from people’s non-verbal or body languages is paramount. This ability to determine another person’s feelings or actual meaning through eye contact is called Nunchi. In order to ‘have’ Nunchi, you need to pay attention to others’ non-verbal and body languages, as well as the tones, to understand the real meaning of what people say (CY Lee, 2012). A famous example of Nunchi is when a Korean says ‘are you hungry?’ – this is not a question but an expression of the fact that he or she is hungry. So the right answer would not be ‘yes’ or ‘no’, but rather to ask what he or she would like to eat (Southerton, 2008). Our analysis suggests that Pororo disciplines young children to learn the ability of Nunchi through showing that ‘having’ Nunchi will maintain a good relationship with friends. In terms of Nunchi, we analyzed three forms that Pororo represented through its episodes: ‘seeking’ Nunchi, ‘having’ fast Nunchi, and ‘not having’ Nunchi (see Heo et al., 2012: 558–559). ¹¹

Wise and Da Silva (2007) have noted that collectivist societies, compared to individualistic societies, ‘tend to emphasize emotional control, or the expression of only positive emotion, so that group dynamics are not disrupted’. In this regard, Koreans often think that it is not polite to disturb or hurt other’s feelings. We found that Pororo’s characters are active about their positive emotions but they are reluctant to express negative emotions because those negative emotions could make others uncomfortable. This kind of attitude can be defined as ‘seeking’ Nunchi of others. For example, Loopy is saddened by the fact that nobody recognizes her hairpin but she does not express that; she just waits for others to recognize it (S2 E9). Poby does not express his frustration when his friends break his camera or when Harry irritates him (S2 E7, E8). When Harry, who doesn’t sing well, continuously sings, everybody seems annoyed but still can’t tell him to stop (S2 E8). Similarly, when Petty, who is not good at cooking, bakes cookies, everybody tells white lies, saying (as they eat all of them) that they are delicious (S3 E14). These episodes are closely related to Korean culture where people often avoid saying ‘no’ because they assume that this negative answer would ignore the other’s favor and thus threaten the wellbeing of the community.

However, Harry is the exception in seeking others’ Nunchi and seems to ‘not have’ Nunchi at all. Harry speaks out about his negative emotions and doesn’t really care about how other people might think or feel. For instance, in many episodes, Harry sings regardless of his friends not liking it and snaps at Poby often (S2 E7, S2 E8). These episodes show that this kind of personality often makes friends uncomfortable or leads to trouble. These aspects effectively demonstrate and reiterate Korean societal values about caring for others more than oneself. At the same time, however, whereas ‘not having’ Nunchi would be considered as selfish behavior, Pororo reveals that early childhood can be the only exception where it is acceptable to not have Nunchi. We argue that this acceptance of not having Nunchi directly connects to the discourse of protecting childhood innocence.

Pororo illustrates how ‘having’ Nunchi functions as a good skill for relationship building and conflict resolution since people would rather solve conflict through avoidance or concession than confrontation in collectivist society (Triandis, 1989). In Season 1 Episode 2, Poby hides his negative feelings when his camera is broken, but friends know that Poby is upset through Nunchi and soothe him by fixing the camera and surprising him. Also, when Loopy gets upset because nobody recognizes her new hair pin, Petty ‘has the Nunchi’ to realize Loopy’s feelings and say that it is pretty (S2 E9). Loopy is the character who has the fastest Nunchi to prevent conflicts or unpleasant feelings between others. For example, in many episodes, Harry starts to sing regardless of others’ not liking it, and Loopy is the one who tries to indirectly distract Harry from his interest in singing and thus make other friends feel comfortable. For example, Loopy says: ‘Aren’t you guys hungry? Let’s eat cake/cookie!’ when she recognizes that her friends are not happy with Harry singing (S2 E8, S3 E2). Also, when her other friends feel hungry, Loopy is the one who instantly recognizes it and asks them to eat at her house (S3 E1). Before Petty gets upset, Loopy senses it first and reaches out to correct her mistake (S3 E11). In all of the episodes when Loopy ‘has’ fast Nunchi, it influences the Pororo community in a positive way.

However, we argue that ‘seeking’ and ‘having’ Nunchi, and thus being reluctant to express one’s own negative feelings, may not result in healthy relationships since understanding and expressing one’s emotions sufficiently in early childhood is one of the keys for forming friendships (Kwak, 2005). Moreover, since this kind of Nunchi culture encourages people to show their opinions and feelings ambiguously rather than directly, it often leads to miscommunication. It is no coincidence that much of the conflicts occurring in Pororo are due to miscommunication, and among the various categories of conflict, misunderstanding was approached as something positive (Jung et al., 2010). Pororo does not teach young children how to realize their own negative feelings and communicate them, but only educates them about understanding others and coping with others’ feelings. We believe that these representations in Pororo may be a mediation of Korean adults’ high-stress society.

Confucian patriarchy and ‘famililistic gender regime’

We argue that overall Pororo reifies the patriarchal ‘famililistic ¹² gender regime’ (Lee, 2007) of South Korea and also that the socio-cultural issue of Nunchi is a gendered one. Many previous studies have insisted that Pororo focuses on the everyday life of friendship and that there are no parents or adults who intervene in these friends’ relationships (Jung et al., 2010). Similarly, industrial analysis argues that Pororo underscores young children’s own process of problem solving by purposefully avoiding any adult authority figures (Cha, 2011). However, we argue that Porong Porong village reflects a patriarchal extended family including a mother (Loopy), a father (Poby), an aunt (Petty) and several children (Pororo, Eddy, Crong). Here we question whether Pororo is free from parental or adult perspectives.

The characters who are always getting into trouble or causing conflict in the story are Pororo, Crong, and Eddy. Loopy, Poby, and Petty are the ones who bear with them, who advise them, and who set a good example. Among the 50 episodes we analyzed, it was hard to find one that had Loopy, Poby, and Petty being mischievous, naïve, and reckless young children. It was quite easy to find representations of young boys (Pororo, Crong, Eddy, and others) being angry, jealous, and occasionally selfish. However, Loopy and Petty are always mature, mild, and well-disciplined characters. This is even more problematic when we realize that Loopy and Petty are the only female characters in Pororo.

In addition, Loopy and Petty are rarely included in the productive work of making things or serious competitions. In Season 2 Episode 2, when male friends are working to build a house for Petty, Loopy feels isolated. Four male characters – Pororo, Eddy, Poby, and Crong – are working hard with a hammer and a shovel, but Loopy wasn’t even informed about this activity. There are no episodes where male characters and female characters are competing against each other. Season 3 Episode 45 shows Loopy and Petty cheer and act as referees when other male characters compete at snow racing. Few episodes pit Loopy and Petty against each other, but when they do, it concerns their appearance and not other skills or abilities (S2 E1, S3 E11). As such, female characters are marginalized as supporters or bystanders when male characters seriously compete against each other or produce something through hard work. The only area where female characters are in charge is cooking (Loopy) or cleaning (Petty).

Even though they function as adult characters together, Loopy and Poby differentiate between themselves in how they solve problems, and the kinds of problems in which they choose to intervene. Loopy normally mediates between friends in conflict situations through dialogue or by having Nunchi (S1 E32, S2 E10): she encourages friends who do wrong to realize the error of their actions (S2 E28) or she elicits promises from friends about not repeating the mistake again (S1 E35, E36). However, Poby uses action to resolve difficulties. For instance, Poby helps evade a crisis by acting with ropes to make friends cross the cliff (S1 E23), suggests friends make a dinosaur figure to console the depressed Crong (S2 E5), and personally leads the plan to correct bad friends (S1 E14). These differences in representing Loopy (femininity) and Poby (masculinity) reify the Confucian patriarchy in the South Korean family. Gender dynamics are equally revealing in terms of further thinking through how we define the mother and father differently and how we understand their different roles.

Loopy is illustrated as the ‘manager mother figure of the neoliberal Korean society’ (Park, 2006) which expects mothers to have the managerial ability to educate their children and therefore make them succeed in the competitive world. Loopy takes care of other characters’ schedules. For example, she tells Pororo to prepare for his birthday party (S1 E40) or wakes Poby and Harry up when it is an important day (S3 E1). She disciplines other characters when they make problems (S1 E32; S2 E10/E28; S3 E7/E13) or even manipulates other characters to realize what they have done wrong and to do what is right (S2 E7; S3 E11/E13/E45). The way that Loopy does this fulfills the image of the ‘good wife and wise mother’ discourse which is deeply embedded in the Confucian patriarchy of South Korea (Cho, 1996). She rarely shouts or gets angry, but always endures, remains polite, and offers, indirectly, moral guidance to others. As an expression of this indirect, polite, and therefore ‘wise’ communication, Loopy must have fast Nunchi. It is the case that Nunchi is required for Loopy since she acts as one of the adult characters; however, we also argue that women are unfairly expected to have more or faster Nunchi than men and this is reflected in Pororo. Although Poby seems to be the adult figure in Pororo too, we rarely found Poby having fast Nunchi throughout the episodes whereas Petty was another character to have quick Nunchi.

Moreover, most of the time, Loopy wears a pink apron as she prepares food for other friends and always invites friends to her house for a meal with a welcoming warm smile suggesting a maternal, motherly presence. While she was not often the main (lead) character, Loopy seems to know everything about the other friends and is always highly involved; she is the one who first realizes Eddy is lying (S1 E6), and friends often tell Loopy about their mistakes (S1 E32). Petty, along with Loopy, has never been at the center of trouble but mostly mediates between those who are in conflict. As we have stated in this analysis, Petty is portrayed as a pretty woman rather than a friend to Pororo, Crong, and Eddy. Petty seems to exist in the Pororo village as a woman other than a mother and who is not a young girl.

On the other hand, while Poby seems to play the role of the reliable father (S1 E14; S2 E22; S3 E10) in Pororo, he often tends to be excluded or have low authority in the Porong Porong village. Tending to hide his emotions, Poby never gets angry with friends even when they irritate him. For instance, when friends break something of his, Poby says: ‘It’s okay’ (S1 E2). When Harry snaps at him, Poby just smiles, understands, and instead says sorry (S2 E7/E8). Poby observes in silence all the troubles his friends cause (S1 E3), neither rebuking nor disciplining them (S1 E2), but helps them when they are over-burdened (S1 E52). These scenes show, on the one hand, a friend-like father character but, on the other hand, reflect the position of the father in the South Korean family. Some scholars have pointed out that in a family-centered culture such as in East Asian countries, the mother’s moral authority has been highly respected and that mothers have secured their position within a patriarchal family system through connecting their children to them and rather excluding the father (Cho, 1996; Tanaka, 1981).

Furthermore, we argue that the relationship between Pororo and Crong does not represent friendship but rather brotherhood. Pororo always takes care of Crong no matter what Crong does (S1 E10/E29; S2 E11) and feels responsible for him (S1 E10; S2 E11). Crong always follows and imitates Pororo (S1 E28; S3 E7) and does not differentiate between what is right and wrong (S1 E10/E29/E50; S2 E11/E50). Moreover, Pororo and other friends often try hard not to discourage Crong’s fantasies and beliefs (S1 E12/E17). This is an odd situation if we consider that this animation is supposedly illustrating the friendships between a peer group. We suggest that this effort to protect Crong’s purity involves the perspective of adults and parents on the normativity of childhood: the discourse of protecting childhood innocence.