US alternative media is awash with stories on Israel and Gaza, Ukraine and Russia, and now Iran and Venezuela.

There’s influence operations, assassinations, drug imports, illegal killings, imminent nuclear war and the collapse of NATO, the EU, the UN and even the US. But where’s the Korean Peninsula? Where’s the fire ‘n’ fury? Why is Korea missing from US alternative media?

Think about it. When was the last time you heard anyone talk about South Korea on the “non-mainstream” or alternative media circuit?  Tucker Carlson,  Jimmy Dore,  Candace Owens,  Glenn Greenwald,  Alex Jones — the loudest megaphones of the populist wave — never mention it. Even when mentioned by highly intelligent guests on the slightly depressing, doom-scroller delight of the Judge Napolitano show, it is in passing, and often with a highly nuanced perspective (and routinely misunderstood from a Korean policy perspective).

It seems Korea doesn’t currently fit the narrative machinery. There’s no moral panic, no globalist conspiracy, no race war, no easy villain. In the recent American imagination, Korea exists in two registers: the Samsung factory floor and the North Korean missile launch. Everything in between barely registers. Here lies the problem.

In the next crisis on the Korean Peninsula, Seoul’s voice will be silent. It will be drowned out by a bevy of monotonous regulars with little to add, while others with very little knowledge of Korea and the region spin their views on what should be done.

The problem – Seoul’s outreach runs on an old public diplomacy script: influence government and shape public opinion.

To influence government, Seoul hires lobbyists, funds think-tank programs, sponsors op-eds, sends exchange students, and hope the people at every think-tank you paid off say something nice. Sometimes it went a little too far, but on the whole, it worked. It was a Beltway ritual — civilised, expensive, but increasingly irrelevant.

Winning arguments in seminar rooms with large-forearmed ex-CIA stalwarts and snivelling, sycophantic scholars pushing policy for Korea Foundation pennies no longer cuts the mustard. The audiences that once shaped Washington’s foreign policy consensus have splintered, and influence now flows through fragmented digital networks rather than the Georgetown circuit.

To shape public opinion, Seoul promotes cultural exchange, student programs, K-pop concerts, pushes glossy tourism ads, supports food festivals and film weeks. It builds goodwill, not arguments. The goal isn’t to persuade but to charm – to make South Korea seem familiar, safe and worth listening to. It’s soft, elegant, and slow – exactly the opposite of how influence now spreads.

Unfortunately, soft power — BTS, Squid Game, kimchi gastrodiplomacy, K-beauty — isn’t political power. It makes people hum your songs and eat your food, but not defend your interests. Seoul’s diplomats are confusing admiration for influence.

Influencing government decisions and shaping public opinion are usually seen as separate goals. But alternative media now sits between them.

Podcasts, YouTube shows and online influencers translate elite policy debates into everyday language, while also pushing popular emotions back into politics. It is the bridge between policy and perception – less formal than lobbying, more immediate than soft power. Those who understand this middle ground don’t just spread messages; they shape how both governments and publics see the world.

It was the alternative media that gave Donald Trump the election. The end result was shaped far away from the think-tanks and the lobbyists. The end result was shaped in podcasts recorded from suburban basements; on channels that soar with two researchers, two techies, and a “camera guy” but reach ten million viewers a night; or on tried and true, one-on-one reliable and engaging conversations like 1950s talk radio with a digital spin. These are the digital back alleys and information super-highways where alternate media influence happens.

The irony is rich: every South Korean knows how influential alternative media policy channels can be – probably influential enough to convince a sitting president to undertake a coup! It’s a curious mismatch: a country that conquered Gen-Z culture through K-pop and has peaceful subways because everyone is watching some schlepper talk on YouTube, somehow hasn’t learned to weaponise attention.

There are reasons for Seoul’s restraint, of course. Korean bureaucrats are cautious by training and allergic to controversy.

The phrase “media influencer” still triggers visions of national embarrassment rather than strategic leverage. Seoul fears the taint of manipulation – and it should. But the US today is a media jungle, not a rules-based ecosystem. The genteel approach – white papers, policy dialogues, and photo-ops, no longer works.

It will also get worse. The Foreign Agents Registration Act has been hollowed out (or at least applied loosely when so desired). The Department of Justice has narrowed its focus to “adversary states". South Korea is an ally, which should make it less visible. Israel knows this. So do the Gulf states. They buy influence not just in think-tanks but also in  influencer networks and  the platforms they inhabit. They shape the margins where official scrutiny doesn’t reach.

Now, Korea doesn’t need to imitate Israel’s over-the-top influencer campaigns, but it needs to understand the principle: influence now operates through personality, not policy. If you can’t brief them, befriend them.

That means cultivating Korean-American podcasters, military veterans and diaspora pundits who can talk the language of populist grievance without sounding like bureaucrats. It means funding independent-looking YouTube channels that unpack Asian geopolitics in the idiom of contrarian media – fast cuts, suspicion of elites, emotional hooks. It means buying airtime, sponsoring segments, and planting storylines that travel through the shadow ecosystem where political moods are born.

Does that sound manipulative? It is. That’s what everyone else is doing.

If mishandled, such strategies risk producing dissonance or confusion. Yet, in an attention-driven information environment, even dissonance implies visibility.

Seoul’s persistent concern with misinterpretation obscures a deeper vulnerability: invisibility. Contemporary media logic privileges performative boldness rather than factual precision. States that project assertively shape discourse; those that communicate cautiously are confined to the margins.

The US, and in particular Trump, run on media attention. The gatekeepers have changed, but the stakes haven’t. In that marketplace, Korea can either remain the quiet ally everyone forgets and has no voice, when global attention does turn to a crisis-prone peninsula – or learn to play the algorithm like everyone else.

The next season of Tucker, Dore, Jones or Owens should be filmed live from the blue huts of the DMZ. Then, perhaps, when those huts are really needed for peace talks, Seoul’s voice in Washington will be louder.

Republished from  Junotane, 11 October 2025

The views expressed in this article may or may not reflect those of Pearls and Irritations.