Rhetorical Analysis of a Political Satire Podcast, Naneun Ggomsuda

In December 2012, much attention was paid by the public to the presidential election in South Korea because the political podcast, Naneun Ggomsuda, (Naggomsu) engaged young people in political activities. The podcast gained enormous popularity by revealing the corruption and immoral behaviors of the Korean President Lee and his associates to the public. It was a kind of social phenomena and played an important role not only in encouraging the public to become interested in politics, but also in spreading the podcast media in South Korea. In the sense that its popularity proved its persuasive power, the podcast raised a number of rhetorical issues. In this respect, I identify four rhetorical devices—hangout talk, role play, satire, and deliberate bias—that motivate the audience to listen to the podcast by analyzing its narrative. Through a fantasy theme analysis derived from Ernest G. Bormann, I discover that the “David and Goliath” fantasy theme is constructed and the audience experiences the rhetorical vision of “resistance,” which functions as the audience’s motivation for public action. In addition, by exploring a podcast’s characteristics as a new media platform, I show that they are an important factor of the podcast’s success as well as a technical strategy planned by the podcast’s producer.