K-Content News

On the surface, it appears to simply be another slime video—which is all the rage these days—but in actuality, it is a video that explains the Korean Constitution. To express the idea that there are various discourses within the Constitution, the video’s producer takes slime embedded with beads and stretches it out. To explain the many issues and discourses surrounding Constitutional amendments, he cuts and tears slime and even re-shapes it using plastic figures.

The video, titled ‘I Didn’t Think I Could Feel So Smart After Watching a Slime Video,’ produced by .FACE, has had 2.5 million views on Facebook and over 450,000 views on YouTube as of the end of June. Viewers have showered the video and its producer with unending praise, posting things like, “This is so easy to understand,” “I loved this completely new presentation,” and “the producer of this video deserves a raise.”

FACE is a media startup established 3 years ago under the slogan, ‘We create a new reality for the millennial generation.’ The startup was created by a group of young people who felt keenly aware of the limitations of traditional media and wanted to plan and create a platform where their voices could be heard.

Even though there are many young journalists in the media today, their views often get softened or removed at the editing desk. Their fresh take on life gets reprocessed through the eyes of the older generation, and the edited content is what gets presented to the public. Although the editing process is not what is wrong, it is still a fact that what is presented at the end of the day is different from the viewpoints expressed by the younger generation. There are many cases in which young people aren’t able to express what they truly want to say.

Another obstacle is that traditional media has to cover every subject, from politics and the economy to culture and the arts—it doesn’t miss a single sector. However, while the range of subjects is wide, platforms for coverage are limited, and there is a constant lack of personnel. If there are 100 subjects and only 70 can be covered, the remaining 30 are deemed ‘not as important’ and simply disappear. Debating a story’s importance is unavoidable and in the end, metadiscourses on national concerns and problems, such as those involving large companies, are the ones that get coverage. The reality is that the minority can’t help but be ignored.

.FACE tackles stories from the point of view of the younger generation, especially those in the minority. .FACE usually tackles areas often neglected by mainstream media, such as sexual minorities, feminism, and animal rights. Even when covering the same issues as traditional media, .FACE takes on the role of supplementing stories that lack factual or relational explanations.

.FACE initially made itself known by covering issues related to feminism and sexual minorities. It set itself apart by putting stories on its front page that couldn’t be found in mainstream media.

.FACE producer Lee Sun-wook says, “Even now, we always ask ourselves when we decide on a subject, “What will it mean and how will it help our friends’ generation if we tell this story?” Lee added, “We never forget to ask ourselves this question when we discuss a matter.”

In its early days, .FACE produced videos that were only 1 minute, 30 seconds long and used Facebook as its main platform of exposure, since shorter videos had a higher frequency of exposure. As time went on, video channel trends completely shifted to YouTube, and videos themselves started to change. On YouTube, video length is virtually unlimited, but many viewers still don’t have a long attention span. Through the process of trial and error, .FACE established a method of squeezing all of its main points into a 10- to 15-minute video.

As .FACE grew in influence, its video coverage began to lead to societal change. While tackling the issue of the nation’s worsening find dust situation, .FACE pointed out that the Korean government’s standards were looser than those of the OECD, which led the Korean Ministry of Environment to revise its fine dust standards. Last fall, .FACE took on the issue of abortion, and Korea’s anti-abortion law was subsequently ruled unconstitutional.

The revenue structure of .FACE is largely divided into branded content and funding. First, branded content is produced and provided by .FACE to companies, the government, and institutions to promote their policies and/or products. However, .FACE doesn’t simply accept all branded content to meet their huge production budget. They always select and produce branded content that reflects .FACE values. They even recently set a policy that provides its own membership service through branded content.

Funding is also used to produce content. .FACE used to utilize external websites like Tumblbug but recently got selected for Google funding. The content funding platform provided by Google has helped .FACE create a new media revenue model. .FACE and Maeil Business Newspaper were the only two companies based in Korea that were selected for Google funding.

In addition, .FACE was selected in the New Media Category of Korea Creative Content Agency (KOCCA)’s Broadcasting Support Program to receive funding. The New Media Category is comprised of web documentary and web entertainment domains. .FACE considered itself part of the web documentary domain and thus applied for support.

Producer Lee Sun-wook explained, “We needed a lot of manpower and production funding for the Soul Food Project.” Lee added, “We wanted to produce a sequel to the Soul Food Project and, while figuring out how to obtain funding, decided to apply to KOCCA’s program.”

Producer Lee said, “We were able to successfully produce the content with the support of KOCCA. There wouldn’t be a Soul Food special without their support.”

The term “soul food” originates from the food African-Americans used to eat in their hometowns and has the connotation of being unforgettable food that is infused with memories of the past. The Soul Food Project sheds light and explains the soul food of a class of people experiencing alienation. Each episode has garnered 200,000–500,000 views and caused quite a stir.

Producer Lee elaborated, saying that the KOCCA’s support program helped a lot because it not only provided production funding, but consultation during the production process as well.

He explained, “We didn’t have a lot of experience or expertise, which made things difficult, but we gained a lot of knowledge through the consultations provided by KOCCA during production. Our method of production changed a lot during this program. The down side of a startup like .FACE is that there is no one with seniority that can offer guidance, but the support we received from KOCCA helped compensate for this weakness.”