Viewing Indonesian Cultural Identity Through Korean Vlogs

It is interesting that many Koreans talk about Indonesia, which is the reason that some Koreans create vlogs about Indonesian culture. The growing number of Korean youtubers that talk about Indonesia is the reason for this research, which aims to analyze: 1). How Korean youtubers describe Indonesian cultural identity through Korean’s point of view, against Western’s stereotypes about Eastern; and 2). How those youtubers participate in preventing the spread of Covid-19 through their vlogs. Self-orientalism is applied as the main theory, where Eastern placed themselves as ‘the other’ in seeing other Eastern, which purpose is to earn a place in a system dominated by Western. It could also be used to construct one’s cultural identity, claiming cultural authenticity by using Western’s stereotype which is already familiar for others. This research is a qualitative descriptive research, analyzing the narrations, comments, and dialogues found in the vlogs about the description of Indonesian cultures as data. Discussion focused on how Koreans see Indonesian cultures through their point of view. It also aims to see how those youtubers play an important role in preventing the spread of Covid-19 by applying Fiske’s vertical intertextuality in analyzing the vlogs and the comments by the audiences.