When one goes to the Internet every Sunday, he or she can easily find articles, or video clips of “Saturday Night Live Korea (SNL Korea)”, which broadcasts the night before. Full of sexual commentaries and innuendos, SNL Korea well represents one aspect of the today’s media. The famous sexual innuendo of SNL Korea, “I truly favor it and I will eat it,” received fervent responses and is now applied in all contexts. As this phenomenon shows, nowadays the media broadcasts sexual contents more frequently and its influence seems to be very significant.

As well as cable TV channels, public TV channels with relatively high accessibility are now also at the center of the controversy over sexuality suggestive contents. Celebrities now dare to make sexual commentaries, which were once considered as inappropriate on air, and show quite a provocative choreography that emphasizes particular body parts. Indeed, not only is openness toward sexuality limited to the cable TV channels that relatively few people watch, but this trend is also continued on almost every channel; even KBS (Korea Broadcasting System), MBC (Munhwa Broadcasting Corporation), and SBS (Seoul Broadcasting System) are sometimes no exception.

Of course, it has been long time for visual media to use a sexual device as a tool for drawing as much of viewers’ attention as possible, but these days it seems more difficult for TV program producers to suppress such temptation than the past. The fundamental reason is that it is much easier and even more efficient to gain high ratings. Once the program becomes a hot issue on the Internet due to sexual contents, people go to sit in front of televisions on its original airing time with an expectation to see more. Moreover, as the society gets accustomed to the certain level of sexuality, people are not stimulated by the low-level of sexual commentary or actions. Thus, producers seek for more lascivious contents and, as a result, what is shown on the TV screen gets much closer to the level of teenager–restricted.

For the entertaining programs like SNL Korea whose intention is to give laughter to viewers, using a sexual device can be accepted as a reply for the social demand. Nonetheless, it appears that producers do not distinguish the programs that they can apply this means from the other programs that they should not. Even some newscasts which have to provide information faithfully focus on stimulating factors that help in rising ratings, failing to deliver the most important part.

Likewise, when the media senselessly use the sexual device without certain standards and direction, people who watch the news are supposed to have a critical mind toward it. Nevertheless, people respond to these kinds of provocative news reports with high ratings which reflect a viewers’ attitude of “It is interesting, so I just see it.”

Taken all together, our society does not seem to be completely ready for use of a sexual device in the media. This does not just suggest that our society is still conservative to those contents. It means more of that the media, a provider of such contents, and the viewers, consumers, have not seriously considered the issue. Therefore, both of them are not prepared to discretely utilize the sexual device and critically accept it. To be truly open to the sexual device on television, there needs to be consideration about sexually suggestive contents from both of producers and viewers