Abstract
Culture represents forms of life appeared in various dimensions. Advertisements which represent these forms of life show the most important social and cultural phenomenon. The necessity of research on the cultural characteristics of society has been raised because the effectiveness of advertisement could have been varied depending on the cultural value. Moreover, within a society, values reflected by advertisements tend to vary in different eras. Thus, this study aims to clarify the differences between cultural values from different eras through an analysis of cultural characteristics and symptoms with consideration of the time flow. This study also examines the meanings of cultural characteristics highlighted by the study. For the investigation, two Korean women's magazines were selected, from 1955 to 2008. Data were analyzed using chi-squared test which was conducted with Crosstab using the PASW statistics 17.0 Program. The results were as follows: there were changing aspects from traditional values to modern values by years. Additionally, each period was described using several keywords. The keywords were divided by decade: in the '50s keywords were 'lifestyle change', 'material value increase' and the 'challenge to traditional values', in the '60s keywords were 'American culture acceptance', 'material success', in the '70s keywords were 'the rise of nonmaterial value', 'rationalism' and 'egalitarianism', in the '80s 'individualism', 'Life style and culture group differentiation', 'conspicuous consumption', in the '90s 'globalization', 'emphasis on personality sensitivity', 'health-oriented', 'improve the quality of life', while in the '00s keywords were 'spread of digital life', 'rational consumption patterns', 'the 3rd distribution'. Through the research, important changes in the cultural characteristics of Korea were observed. Furthermore, we may be able to think of the most effective way of advertising by identification of the cultural characteristics of the society.