National patterns of inequality coverage: Japanese and South Korean newspapers, 1990–2021

This article examines how newspaper coverage of inequality differs in Japan and South Korea, countries with comparable levels and nature of income inequality, but whose citizens maintain different attitudes toward it. Analyzing 18,630 articles in six major newspapers from 1990 to 2021, our analysis found (1) Japanese and South Korean newspapers report surprisingly little about inequality even in a period of growing inequality; (2) while South Korean newspapers significantly increased their coverage of within-country inequality in the 2010s, such a trend is not found in Japan; (3) progressive newspapers largely drive the increase in the coverage of inequality in South Korea. We also look closely into the four major topics within inequality coverage – income, employment, generation, and gender – to elaborate on qualitative differences in the ways inequality is discussed in newspapers in both societies. Our findings suggest that there exist nationally specific patterns of inequality coverage and offer important implications for the ongoing discussion about economic inequality in East Asia, as well as the literature on subjective inequality.