Abstract

Performances of hungry children are omnipresent in Korean charities’ fundraising advertisements. The children’s state of misery in the videos is often dramatized enormously to maximize donations. Thus, hungry children are likely to be misrepresented, leading to their double victimization. This study analyzes the performance of hungry Korean children in four fundraising advertising videos of two representative Korean charities: Korean Food for the Hungry International and Good Neighbors. Doing a detailed performance analysis of the advertisements, I explore the patterns that emerge across the cases, asking the following questions: How are hungry children represented in the advertisements? How are hunger and children paired in them? How does the pair affect the meaning-making process of the advertisements? How do the child ideologies relate to Korean dominant child ideologies? Through the analysis, I reveal that culturally powerful child ideologies, hidden beneath the performance of hungry children, play a crucial role in naturalizing the performance of hungry children as helpless victims. The idea of the innocent child, the idea of the precious child, the idea of the child without agency, and the idea of the child organically bound to the family all support the final message of the advertisements that hungry children unquestionably must be saved through donation. This study deconstructs the process of victimizing children in the Korean charities’ advertisements and sets a stage for the meaningful discourse to problematize the misrepresentation of hungry children in the videos. This interdisciplinary study contributes to the field of Theatre for Youth and Childhood Studies.