The Afternoon Show with JD: Diverse, Inclusive, Representative, Multicultural, and Multilingual with the Best in Pop and Pop Culture from Around the World

By JD.

The Afternoon Show with JD is a multilingual and multicultural show that airs daily at 12:10–2:00 p.m. on weekdays and at 12:00–2:00 p.m. on weekends on GFN, aiming to edutain listeners with pertinent information vital to their lives here in South Korea. The show is hosted and produced by JD, a media graduate and specialist. The show offers services mainly in English, Korean, and Russian and has recently added Tagalog to its weekly segments. Our podcast services also offer information in over 20 languages and have close to 300,000 views so far.

Since the inception of the show, the aim has been to make it as widely accessible as possible to everyone in the Gwangju and Jeollanam-do community, and we have constantly been working to improve and deliver on this.

Our slogan is “Diverse, Inclusive, Representative, Multicultural, and Multilingual with the Best in Pop and Pop Culture from Around the World.”

From the music we play on the show to the culturally diverse guests and contents that we create daily, the most important factor is that it has to emphasize and highlight the globalized, multicultural world that we live in.

Prior to The Afternoon Show (TAS), I was the host and segment producer of Kpopular, GFN’s Hallyu show. This show focused mainly on Korean pop-culture content and played only K-pop. However, once we evolved into TAS, it was important for me to create a show that heightened representation and inclusivity as well. Not only did we start playing pop music from around the world, but we also ensured that the content was multilingual so that local and international audiences could better understand the messages that we aimed to deliver. We have segments including English and Korean language learning, demystifying the news, inspirational quotes, recipes, and just fun chats to get listeners through lunchtime with energizing music.

I also aimed to make the show more socially conscious in that we not only focused on pop culture and music but also on how these could be used as a way to tackle issues within society that are either not being addressed or have been sidelined. Thus, I prioritized edutainment: education and entertainment with pop culture as the cultural diplomacy vehicle.

When you listen to the show, you will hear not only the best variety of music; I also tailor each show to be a reflection of what is happening in society at that moment. We create and facilitate conversations and highlight how important engaging with issues is in creating a globally aware society that is diverse, more open-minded, and promoting of mutual understanding.

I have also placed a huge emphasis on the show being multilingual. Gwangju has a large foreign community, and since contents were mainly provided in English and Korean, during the conception of the show in 2016, I decided to broaden it even more. I have always believed that access to multilingual information is imperative, especially for delivering emergency and disaster management messages. Thus, after being invited as speaker at a global multilingual conference in 2019 with UNESCO, I adopted some of my findings there to the show. This all came to fruition in 2020 with the COVID-19 pandemic and lack of multilingual resources within South Korea.

I started a social impact campaign on the show with crowdsourcing help from the amazing Gwangju community. With information from the KDCA (Korea Disease Control and Prevention Agency), we started the Let’s Keep Gwangju Safe Together Campaign with preventative guidelines and information in over 20 different languages in order to inform and help protect the community. You might recall that emergency information at that point was (and to some extent still is) only available in Korean. The campaign was hugely successful and is one of the most viewed on our audio-on-demand (AOD) service. Adding onto this, I branched out and also did multilingual info packets on other disaster management and emergency information, including typhoon and flood warnings and heat waves, in addition to producing numerous long-form documentary projects like a global COVID-19 time capsule project with responses from over 60 countries, a World Aids Day informational documentary, and numerous other projects surrounding Hallyu around the world.

Thus, if you are looking for an energetic edutainment experience, you can tune in any day of the week and not only brush up on what is happening around you but also enjoy some fantastic global pop hits. We are also always looking to help improve understanding and increase safety within our community, and therefore, we are reaching out and asking that if anyone would like to volunteer to help record emergency services in their native language, they should get in contact with us so that we can improve our service to the community. You can contact us at gfnafternoonshow@gmail.com.

Photographs by JD and courtesy of GFN.

The Afternoon Show with JD
Let’s Keep Gwangju Safe, Together Campaign
Website: http://www.gfn.or.kr/radio_intro.php?menu_id=302
Facebook: theafternoonshowithJD Instagram: @gfntaswithjd

The Author
JD holds multiple degrees in media, film, and management policy. He is also a cultural diplomacy specialist. Stay safe and protected, and check out our multilingual audio on demand podcast on our website www.gfn.or.kr. JD can be found at Instagram @gfntaswithjd