University of Southern California Dissertations and Theses

Running characters: how the character-centered world of the South Korean real-variety show Running Man collapses textual boundaries between the real and the fictional

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Running characters: how the character-centered world of the South Korean real-variety show Running Man collapses textual boundaries between the real and the fictional

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Content Running Characters:
How the Character-Centered World of the South Korean Real-Variety Show Running Man
Collapses Textual Boundaries Between the Real and the Fictional
By
Ursula Collins-Laine
A Thesis Presented to the
FACULTY OF THE USC DORNSIFE COLLEGE OF LETTERS, ARTS, AND
SCIENCES UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA
In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree
MASTER OF ARTS
(EAST ASIAN AREA STUDIES)
May 2022
Copyright 2022 Ursula Collins-Laine

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Table of Contents

Abstract ..........................................................................................................................................iii

Introduction......................................................................................................................................1
Reality Television and Celebrity.........................................................................................3
Reality Television in South Korea.......................................................................................5
What is Running Man? ........................................................................................................8

Chapter 1: Running Man’s Characters and Their Flexible Roles..................................................10
Understanding the Role of the Running Man Cast Members............................................12
Building Running Man’s Characters..................................................................................20
Running Man’s Cast as Novelistic Characters...................................................................27
Running Characters............................................................................................................34

Chapter 2: The Vast Intertextual Narrative of Running Man .......................................................37
A Vast Narrative…............................................................................................................39
Crossover Between Fiction and Reality.............................................................................45
Beyond Textual Boundaries…...........................................................................................47
An Intimate Universe.........................................................................................................53

Chapter 3: Intimacy in Running Man: Reality, Fiction, and Celebrity..........................................55
Spontaneous Reacting and Exaggerated Overacting.........................................................58
Filmed Setting and Film Set..............................................................................................61
Mediatized Cast and Unknown Crew................................................................................66
Crew During Postproduction.............................................................................................71

Conclusion: Running Characters and Authorship...........................................................................75

Works Cited..................................................................................................................................79

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Abstract
The on-screen personas in the long-running Korean real-variety show Running Man
reveal a character-driven televisual system which collapses distinctions between fiction and
reality. While Running Man’s games, guests, prizes, and punishments play important roles in
creating an engaging show, the interactions between and history revolving around the same
regular cast of MCs create an anchor which provides the meaning and narrative to all of the
show’s other components. As running characters that consistently and recognizably exist across
different media over an extended period of time, the Running Man cast members blur the
boundaries between reality and fiction. Through their appearances across many programs, many
episodes, and many years, the cast members’ characters embody eclectic pieces of information
that create the complexity which allows each episode to contribute to an overarching vast
narrative. Ultimately, Running Man’s characters’ complex intertextuality posits a shared universe
comprised of both fiction and reality. The show’s transparent depiction of the fusion between the
real and the unreal through acting, setting and production results in an acknowledgement of the
show’s own contrivance and a playful inclusion of the viewers’ believing game. The show’s
running characters create a semi-real, semi-fictional, intertextual, self-reflexive universe which
provides new avenues for viewer engagement.

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Introduction
In the introduction to his book, Television Personalities: Stardom and the Small Screen,
James Bennett proposes the idea that “the television personality system [is] intrinsically
international (3).” Yet English language scholarship on television personalities and unscripted
television narratives has failed to engage with the hugely successful celebrity-based reality-
variety shows circulated throughout East Asia. As formats originating outside of Euro-American
television networks gain traction within the global television format trade, it has become
apparent that understanding how these programs’ on-screen personalities impact the overall
narrative, structure, and success of the show must be taken into consideration in response to the
universalist theories of television personalities.
I will argue that Korean entertainers in unscripted reality-variety shows claim an aspect
of ownership over their on-screen personalities that create a transfictional narrative reliant on
self-reflexive intertextuality. Under this argument I will address the following questions: What
role does a celebrity entertainer’s onscreen character play in the formation of a reality-variety
program’s narrative? Can the movement of an unscripted entertainer’s onscreen persona across
multiple media texts justify classifying the persona itself as a transfictional narrative? How does
the reality program’s claim to reality and the celebrity entertainer’s self-reflexivity inform the
persona’s transfictional narratives and differentiate their intertextuality?
The South Korean real-variety show Running Man and its cast members provide an ideal
case study to begin to address these questions. Since 2010, Running Man has aired every Sunday
on SBS (Seoul Broadcasting Station) with roughly the same core cast of six to eight members.
The show’s longevity with a mixed cast of established entertainers and those new to reality-
variety shows demonstrates the evolution and creation of the cast’s onscreen personas

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established through the show’s content. With the cast members participating on different
programs together and separately, both before and during Running Man, they provide a rich
subject to understand transfictional narratives in real-variety entertainers’ personas.
In Chapter One, I establish the centrality of cast members’ on-screen characters to the
Running Man’s over-all narrative cohesiveness. The cast members’ personas and interpersonal
relationships provide connections and story arcs across stand-alone episodes as their characters
change over the decade-long show. The show’s production simultaneously informs aspects of the
on-screen personalities and is informed by the characters as they develop. Throughout individual
episodes, the cast takes on the roles of presenter, participant, actor, and audience as an ensemble.
This complicates the analysis of their television personalities, but also opens up the chance for a
broader analysis of the development of unscripted characters.
In addition to the characters’ development internal to Running Man, the individual
characters and their relationships build off of their participation and interactions in other media.
Chapter Two suggests the movement of Running Man cast members across different media
demonstrates how unscripted television personalities operate in an intertextual universe as
transmedia texts. Each cast member’s recognizable character over different networks and
decades of televised appearances presents an option to view their celebrity persona beyond one
show, production team, or talent management. As the cast members’ personas feed back into
Running Man’s narrative, they situate the show within a broader narrative formed by the South
Korean media landscape.
This interaction of the cast members across various shows outside of Running Man and
its effect on the narrative begins to reveal the show’s inherent and unavoidable connection to
reality. Chapter Three analyzes how Running Man pushes its claim to reality, not through the

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ordinariness and authenticity of the cast members, but through continual references to the filmed
nature of the performers’ environment. As the production and the cast members exhibit self-
reflexive intertextuality, the events occurring in the world external to Running Man get
incorporated into the show’s mediated landscape. The show’s inherent marriage to the real world
and the depth of references it provides differentiates the unscripted television personas from
scripted characters.
Because the Running Man cast members create on-screen characters who exist across
various media texts and are continually informed by real life events, the performers irrefutably
exhibit a degree of agency and ownership over their on-screen characters and, by extension, the
show’s narrative. While other factors such as the production team, talent agencies, management,
and public press undoubtedly play a role in the creation of television personalities, the reliance
on the character’s spontaneous reactions, movements across multiple texts, and the interwoven
connection to reality places a style of ownership unique to unscripted media squarely on the
performer.
Reality Television and Celebrity
Colloquially, reality television encompasses everything from game shows to docusoaps
to tabloid news segments. As a result, scholars struggle to agree on a definition for the fluid,
incongruous cultural product known as reality television. Beyond its definition, the diverse range
of programming which falls under the umbrella of reality television complicates its
categorizations as a genre, aesthetic, mode of production, or ideology. In their authoritative
anthology, Susan Murray and Laurie Ouellette define reality television as “an unabashedly
commercial genre united less by aesthetic rules or certainties than by the fusion of popular
entertainment with the self-conscious claim to the discourse of the real (3).” With the programs’

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self-stated claims to portraying reality and highlighting “ordinary” citizens, scholarship on reality
television naturally gravitated toward using reality programs as vehicles through which cultural
shifts, socio-political relationships, and current economic structures could be analyzed.
Even when the narrative, aesthetics, performance, or formal qualities are analyzed, it is
often through the lens of how reality television articulates its claim to the real. An early piece of
scholarship on reality television comes from Richard Killborn’s theorization of reality television
programming and what formal qualities were needed for persuading audiences they were
watching “real life.” Scholars have theorized reality television’s discourse on the real is by
focusing on non-actors as reality television’s primary tool.
Even as reality television scholarship primarily remains rooted in American and British
programming, there have begun to be attempts to address the television style’s impressive global
reach (Oren and Shahaf). The prevalence of formats – reproduceable frameworks created
through a set of rules, modes of production, and aesthetics – resulted in a television style easy to
globalize and localize. The advent of cable networks along with the rising budget of scripted
shows created a proliferation of unscripted television content and importing of international
formats. As Chad Raphael states in his article, “The Political Economic Origins of Reality TV,”
reality television programs “that appear to be products of rapid American innovation when
glimpsed from the national perspective were actually the result of an increased international
circulation and recirculation of products through globalized markets.” Local media networks
unable to compete with the American media’s high-budget high-technology output now rely on
their knowledge of low budget production to compete in the globally booming style. While many
famous programs originated in Europe, such as Survivor, Big Brother, and The Voice, non-
European countries have begun to gain prominence in the reality television format market.

5
Among them, South Korea has established a significant global foothold through its export-led
media strategy. It has successfully exported reality television formats across the globe from
Vietnam to Denmark to the United States, including hit shows like Running Man, Masked
Singer, I Can See Your Voice, and Grandpas Over Flowers. Unscripted Korean formats reveal
the need for Western academic scholarship to expand beyond its current understandings and
theorizations of reality television.
Reality Television in South Korea
As the style of reality television gained global prominence in the early 2000s, South
Korean television stations began to both import formats and create original shows. In her
dissertation “Dynamics of a Periphery TV Industry: Birth and Evolution of Korean Reality Show
Formats,” Soo-Keung Jung maps out the progression of reality television in South Korea from
public service entertainment shows under Park Chung-hee’s dictatorship through to Korea’s
current globally competitive post-cable reality television industry. As she details, the booming
need for cheap content that fueled the global expansion of reality television, as well as the
introduction of new cable networks and the 1997 Asian Financial Crisis, drove implementation
of reality television formats in South Korea. Unlike the cable networks, the three major terrestrial
networks, publicly owned KBS, semi-private MBC, and privately-owned SBS, cater to the
general public with content that appeals across demographics and is held to higher standards for
civic duty and public responsibility (149). As a result, the cable networks imported more foreign
and sensationalist reality television formats, while the terrestrial networks had to figure out ways
to incorporate these new format styles into their original content.
The result of the terrestrial networks incorporating elements of reality television into their
programming resulted in the creation of the real-variety (레알-버라이어티) show. These shows

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fall under the category of yeneung (예능) or entertainment program and combine elements of the
popular Korean variety show formats with new styles from the imported reality formats. Real-
variety shows are a hybrid format that combine elements of talk shows, sketch comedy, game
shows, survival shows, and documentaries (Jung 150). While real-variety shows traverse a range
of styles and genres, they all operate without a fixed format, meaning that the games, settings,
guests, and challenges change over each episode. Even as episodes within a show differ, the
shows continually emphasize family-friendly humor and strive to facilitate laughter. Jung along
with Kim and Li point out that real-variety shows’ games and challenges approach competition
with an emphasis on teamwork and growing relationships rather than the emphasis on
elimination and winning seen in many other international formats. Instead of casting unknown
non-actors, real-variety shows draw from the variety show tradition of casting celebrity
entertainers. The programs draw from a pool of celebrity personalities to act as themselves as
hosts and guests, closely linking the shows’ production to the broader South Korean
entertainment system.
In 2005, MBC began airing Infinity Challenge (MBC, 2005-2018), the show credited for
the creation of real-variety format. Over its thirteen-year-long run, Infinity Challenge solidified
the real-variety style and aesthetics as well as modified the local production practices for
unscripted primetime shows. On the show, an ensemble of hosts completed different games,
challenges, and skits from preparing a music festival with all-original songs to acting in the
recurring long-form skit of the Munhwa Company. The show’s director, Kim Tae-ho, also
recognized the need to shift from relying solely on missions to engage viewers to supplementing
the show’s challenges with the hosts’ personalities and relationships. The show pioneered an
extensive multi-camera, staff-intensive production. With cameras following each cast member

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and guest, in addition to cameras that capture the full setting, the amount of footage allowed the
show to maintain the cast member’s spontaneous performances.
Infinity Challenge aired on Saturday nights as one of MBC’s weekend variety shows. The
weekend variety shows play a key role in the South Korean television industry. Real-variety
shows fill the majority of the three terrestrial channel’s prime time weekend slots and fiercely
compete against each other for the highest ratings. The Sunday evening prime time slots present
especially tight competition, often within one percent of each other, as the ratings directly
affected each station’s advertising revenue and overall status (Jung 128). As a result, these
weekend shows often have the high production values and cast top stars to attract viewers. These
time slots were so important that the line-ups of shows from each network on Sunday evening
got their own distinctions and names with Happy Sunday (KBS, 2004-present), Sunday Night
(MBC, 1981-present), and Good Sunday (SBS, 2004-2017). The tight competition drove
innovation and perfection in real-variety programs.
As Korean popular culture gained international popularity, these real-variety shows
gained audiences outside of South Korea and drew the attention of format buyers. South Korean
real-variety shows and other reality television formats have successfully been exported to China,
Japan, the United States, France, Turkey, Thailand and more (Jung 321). With the huge success
of The Masked Singer in the United States, an infamously challenging market for foreign
exports, and the sheer number of successful adaptions of Korean reality show formats in China,
the Korean reality television industry has gained global prominence. One of these successes is
the real-variety show Running Man.

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What is Running Man?
The comedy real-variety show, Running Man, has aired as part of SBS’s Good Sunday
line-up almost every week since July 2010. In the summer of 2021, Running Man surpassed
Infinite Challenge for longest running Korean real-variety show ever, based on the number of
overall episodes. The 80-minute episodes portray the core cast members interacting with guests
as they complete humorous missions at various locations. Since Running Man started airing in
South Korea, the program’s popularity has expanded its fan base across Asia and resulted in
successful format adaptions in China and Vietnam.
While originally marketed as an “urban variety show” that relied on guest appearances
and its infamous name-tag elimination game, over its decade-long run Running Man transitioned
from a focus on games and guests to member interactions and chemistry. During Episode 562,
where the only mission the whole episode was to constantly talk and the cast members would be
penalized for long stretches of silence, the cast commented on the episode theme and that what
viewers want and expect from the show now rests on the members interactions. Likewise, after
member Lee Kwang-soo left in May 2021, the current main producer, Choi Bo-pil, emphasized
in an interview that rather than adding a new member to fill his spot or feature more guests he
plans on showcasing the remaining cast members’ chemistry and stories (Narin Lee).
Running Man’s format comprises of stand-alone episodes structured to accommodate
different guests and concepts each week. Episodes start with the members and guests arriving
and chatting during an opening, participating in a number of games or challenges, and then
concluding with the distribution of a prize or penalty based on the games’ outcome. As a result,
most episodes form a self-contained narrative with a beginning, middle, and end. Occasionally
an episode will be split across two weeks or the cast will participate in a group of thematically

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connected episodes under a series title such as “The Global Project” and “Member’s Specials,”
but even these cases contain stand-alone story arcs. However, within this self-contained seriality,
the show’s cast and production team form an overarching narrative centered around the
members’ characters and interactions that grow over the course of the show. This structure
enables a casual viewer’s enjoyment, while still rewarding the loyal viewer with a plethora of
references to previous episodes and pay-offs structured through the members’ characters.
The show’s recurring cast of professional comedians, actors, singers and hosts currently
consists of Yoo Jae-suk, Kim Jong-kook, HaHa, Ji Suk-jin, Jeon So-min, and Yang Se-chan. Yoo
Jae-suk, considered the show’s lead host, first gained national recognition as part of the Infinite
Challenge’s original cast. He has since starred in dozens of other variety and reality shows with
continued high profile successes, resulting in him being dubbed Nation’s MC. Kim Jong-kook
originally debuted as part of Turbo, a famous pop-duo in the mid-1990s, before achieving
prominence as a reality show entertainer and capable host by the late 2000s. HaHa, like Yoo Jae-
suk, starred in Infinite Challenge, which cemented his position as an entertainer although he also
dabbles in acting and singing roles. The oldest cast member, Ji Suk-jin, is known for his roles as
a talk show host on television and radio since the 1990s. Song Ji-hyo’s role in Running Man
diverges from her primary work as a scripted film and television actress. The youngest cast
members Jeon So-min, an actress, and Yang Se-chan, a comedian, joined the original cast in
2016. Former members of the original cast who left the show are Lee Kwang-soo, an actor and
model who left in 2021 due to an ankle injury, and Kang Gary, a rapper and songwriter from the
Leessang duo who left in 2016. The roles and interactions between these celebrity cast members
form the core structure of Running Man’s long-term appeal and engagement for viewers.

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Chapter One: Running Man’s Characters and Their Flexible Roles
In their article “Running Man: The Korean Television Variety Program on the
Transnational, Affective Run,” Kyung Hyun Kim and Tian Li pose the question “what ‘return for
loyalty’ does Running Man […] promise—other than a new episode every week with the same
regular-cast MCs—for both domestic and overseas audiences?” (Kim et al 168). However, I
would argue that the promise alone of seeing the same regular-cast MCs interact like a family
every week represents Running Man’s primary return for loyalty. While Running Man’s games,
guests, prizes, and punishments play important roles in creating an engaging show, the
interactions between and history revolving around the same regular cast of MCs create an anchor
which provides the meaning and narrative to all the show’s other components.
During an interview in honor of the show’s 400
th
episode, Jung Chul-min, Running
Man’s main director at the time, likened the show to a coming-of-age drama where he was able
to see the cast members grow together (Yonhap). The coming-of-age genre centers around the
growth of a protagonist (or protagonists) over a period of time, and their character development
drives the story’s arc more so than dramatic structures or narrative plot points. Comparing a real-
variety show structured around games to a coming-of-age drama reveals the cast members’
characters’ importance in holding the show’s episodes together. As they compete in missions,
host guests, and joke around with each other, the Running Man cast builds and performs on-
screen characters that represent the core of the show.
While the fact that reality or non-scripted shows rely on the on-screen individuals’
characters may seem like an obvious statement, understanding what these individuals contribute
to the show through their characters rather than their format-defined roles remains an
understudied element in reality television research, especially in shows rooted in games or

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missions. The need for examining this phenomenon appears most glaringly in shows using a
celebrity cast. As Richard Dyer pointed out in his groundbreaking book Stars, celebrities are
understood theoretically as “constructed personages” who operate as characters within media and
the public sphere (109). Because celebrities already carry connotations of a character before
appearing on a reality show, the show’s content will unavoidably have to engage with that
individual as a character, and the viewer’s engagement with the show will be informed by the
celebrity’s character as much as any of the show’s other components. This leads to the question:
how does a celebrity entertainer’s onscreen personality contribute to a show constructed around
games or missions as a narrative character?
South Korean real-variety shows specifically have been singled out for their reliance on
characters and their interactions (Lee, Jo, Mira Kim). The importance of the cast members’
characters is well documented in real-variety shows. However, how these characters contribute
to the program and how they are constructed in relation to the usual designations in game shows
remains unexplored. The South Korean real-variety show, Running Man, its celebrity cast, its
position within the South Korean media landscape, and its international popularity presents a
unique case study to illustrate the contribution of celebrity cast members’ characters to a show’s
narrative and its over-all appeal to viewers. Running Man’s longevity over the course of 10
years, its game-centered stand-alone episodes structured without a format-based long-term
narrative, and its continued popularity creates an opportunity to see how characters via onscreen
personas drive the program’s over-arching narrative. This analysis of the Korean real-variety
show Running Man attempts to contribute to the global scholarship on the function of narrative
and character in reality television, as well as proposing a closer look at the importance of the on-
screen personas in their contributions to that narrative.

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Understanding the Role of the Running Man Cast Members
Reality programs assign roles to frame the individuals appearing on the shows, which
alters their possible and perceived contributions to the show’s content. In her article “It’s a
Jungle Out There: Playing the game of fame in celebrity reality TV,” Su Holmes attributes the
success of the celebrity-based reality show I’m a Celebrity Get Me Out of Here to how the well-
known television show presenters Ant and Dec maintained a distance from the celebrity
participants through their ironic commentary throughout the episodes (50). Although Ant and
Dec are celebrities like the show’s participants, their function as hosts allows them “efface their
own celebrity status (50)” and act as narrators speaking directly to the show’s audience.
Meanwhile, the celebrity participants, lacking the host’s direct address to the audience, instead
get positioned in the show through their “journey” and authentic “self-revelation.” In articulating
the success of the show through the hosts’ ability to frame the participants’ journey on the show,
Holmes reveals the different narrative expectations for hosts and participants. However, unlike
Ant, Dec, and the participants on I’m a Celebrity, the Running Man cast members transverse the
different roles creating a new real-variety category of character and narrative expectations.
To understand how the cast, and by extension their characters, contribute to the show’s
narrative, they must first be situated in relation to the delineated roles of host, participant, and
audience. Because Running Man is a real-variety show which combines elements of game
shows, talk shows, survival shows, and documentary, the cast members’ function fails to fit
neatly into roles currently created for understanding television personalities. The program’s
structure positions the entertainers outside the binary between confined host and unknown
contestant. Throughout individual episodes, the cast takes on each of the roles of participant,

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host, and audience as an ensemble. This raises the question: how does the framework of a
television personality’s role influence the character and narrative creation in a real-variety show?
Reality television participants are intrinsically tied to the idea of the ordinary or the real,
whether this is through the depiction of ordinary people or of celebrities performing the ordinary.
Graeme Turner and Sue Collins both emphasize the ordinariness of the on-screen performers and
the contributions of reality television to briefly making celebrities out of regular people. Mark
Andrejevic went as far as saying non-actor participants are one of the only links reality programs
have to the portrayal of reality. Similarly, Nick Couldry points to the transformation of an
“unknown, ordinary person” into a “media person” as a defining ritual fundamental to reality
television, specifically game shows. Even when celebrities appear as participants, they appear
under the guise of “an ordinary, supposedly knowable person.” Alternatively, as Hugh Curnutt
claims and Couldry alludes to, rather than inherently being “ordinary” people, the reality
television participants instead perform ordinariness and need to act as if they were off camera
within a filmed environment.
In line with the understanding of reality television participants, Running Man presents the
cast members as playing themselves, puts them in embarrassing situations, has them play
common children’s games, and includes clips of cast members revealing personal information.
As Holmes mentions, the challenges on I’m a Celebrity are meant to create visceral shock that
emphasizes the idea that the participants’ reactions must be real (53). Likewise, in Running Man
there are challenges like bungee jumping, feeding alligators, and drinking vinegar that are meant
to showcase the real emotions the cast are feeling. In these examples, the cast appropriates the
role of a participant who has been provided the chance to give the viewers a glimpse of their
“real self” through their understandable and authentic reactions. On the other end of the

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spectrum, when the cast plays well-known drinking games, traditional games like yutnori and
ddakji, or children’s games like hide-and-seek or red-light green-light, the viewer can relate
because they have played these games before. As Kim and Li note, playing children’s games in
everyday spaces loosens connection between the cast members and their celebrity status (167).
This also provides the audience with the ability to play along and put themselves in the place of
the participating cast members.
When celebrities appear on television as participants or guests there is often the
assumption that they trade promotion or visibility for self-revelation. The celebrity participants
fulfill their required role on the programs by appealing to the ordinariness of their everyday lives
and revealing private information. Even when non-celebrities appear as participants, they are
expected to divulge a certain level of personal details to situate the show within the regular, real
everyday. The Running Man cast members do provide details about their personal life, such as
Jeon So-min revealing aspects of her love life, or Kim Jong-kook talking about his workout
routine. However, the most common form of sharing on Running Man stems from shared
experiences or information among the cast members rather than the cast members talking
explicitly about themselves. For example, Ji Suk-jin or Yoo Jae-suk sharing what the other was
like in college, or Lee Kwang-soo and Yang Se-chan revealing Jeon So-min’s drunk behaviors.
On the show this information works as sharing personal details situating the show as ordinary,
but it also works to highlight the real friendships between the cast members. These tactics are
meant to help viewers relate to the cast and see the celebrities as ordinary people.
However even as the Running Man cast members perform many similar on-screen actions
to reality television participants, they do not attempt to distance or distinguish themselves from
their celebrity and they openly and admittedly perform for the filmed space. In addition to the

15
examples of self-revelation mentioned above, Lee Kwang-soo gained a reputation for falsely
framing other cast members by supposedly “revealing” negatively perceived behaviors such as
Song Ji-hyo being a heavy smoker. Similarly, the cast members would occasionally team up on-
screen to “reveal” or at least question romantic feelings between two cast members. These
actions make a farce of the celebrities’ self-revelation and shifts the cast’s position from that of a
participant to something else.
Biressi and Nunn claim reality television offers its audience “access to real experience,
joy, or suffering rather than dramatized emotion” (8). However, the Running Man cast frequently
exaggerates and dramatizes their emotions. While what might be considered real or exaggerated
can be challenging to distinguish, the cast members will express disappointment in both each
other’s excessive actions and failure to provide a satisfying reaction. While it is not uncommon
for participants on reality television shows to accuse each other of acting for the cameras, these
accusations are usually met with anger, rebuke, and an insistence that they were completely
“being themselves.” Meanwhile, on Running Man it is not uncommon for members to tease Ji
Suk-jin for failing to react in a funny manner after receiving a punishment or rhetorically ask one
another what was wrong with their reaction. The cast members’ comfortability both carrying out
dramatized actions and acknowledging their artifice again separates them from the framework a
participant usually operates within.
The structure of a constant cast who return every week removes the built-in access to
emotions stemming from elimination or survival shows. The change in framing from missions,
games, or challenges as necessary obstacles for continued appearance on the show to spaces for
play and comedy alters the perceived reward of authentic emotion that comes from the games.
As Kim and Li note, a member who loses a game early on remains just as important within the

16
show as the ones who still compete (177). The “real” being portrayed by the cast stops being one
tied to who the celebrity cast members truly and authentically claim to be, and instead becomes
one performed for the enjoyment of the viewer. Their continual appearances over years of
filming strongly situates them as television personalities.
A closely linked role to that of participants in many games shows is that of a studio
audience. In addition to acting as a pool of possible contestants, a studio audience provides cues
for the how the viewer should react and, as James Bennet argues, reinforces the sense of the
television personality’s ordinariness (129). The Running Man cast does not perform for a studio
audience. Indeed, when there is an audience comprised of members of the public, it often
enforces the celebrity/star aspect of their filmed personality with shouting fans and overwhelmed
individuals whom they ask to participate in games. Given the outdoor, multilocation settings and
the active nature of many of the challenges, having a public audience gets in the way of filming
more often than not. So, instead the cast members perform for each other. As Kim and Li note,
the background laugh track from a recorded or live audience are noticeably absent from Running
Man and other Korean variety shows (163).

As a result, the viewer does not receive cues about
how to react to the action on screen from a real or imagined public audience. Instead during
games and interactions, the cast members are tasked with providing reactions to the other cast
and guests’ actions. These reactions function in the same ways a studio audience does in guiding
the viewer’s responses to the show’s content. As well-known celebrities who actively engage
with the filmed aspects of their environment, the Running Man cast members also seem to take
on roles akin to host or television personality.
Even though Running Man situates the cast as ordinary people who fulfill the
expectations of participants and studio audience, they also fit within the framework for television

17
hosts or presenters. As Frances Bonner lays out in Ordinary Television, a presenter greets
viewers at the beginning of a program, says farewell at the end, and facilitates the transitions in
between. During the opening and closing segments of the show, the Running Man cast frames
the episode as they greet each other and at the end reflect on the episode. These opening and
closing segments of the show most reflect the cast’s roles as hosts when there are additional
guests. The members facilitate the space to introduce the guest or guests to the audience and
incorporate them into the show with brief introductions and interviews. At the end of the
episode, guests are often asked to reflect on their time on the show and do any final self-
promotion. In these moments, the cast acts as a guide and a frame for the show as is expected of
a host’s role.
However, in between these opening and closing moments, the cast relinquishes their role
of controlling the episode’s flow. During Running Man’s missions, the celebrity guests and the
cast hosts fluidly mix within the same teams or individual competitions. The role of the hosts
associated with game shows and variety shows is to minimize risk while controlling and guiding
the behaviors of the contestants. Because the Running Man cast act as participants in the same
games they host, they do not appear within full control of the situation. In fact, they often get
caught off guard with unexpected games or hidden roles during missions. As a key feature of the
real-variety genre, the cast’s spontaneity and unscripted reactions necessitate them not knowing
or rehearsing what will happen during filming. These actions complicate the presenter’s role in
speaking for the program as a whole including the production team.
Bonner claims presenters “are embodiments of the program’s ethos and are permitted to
speak as the authority which determines its shape and direction” (66). However in addition to not
knowing the direction of any given episode, the members openly act in an unruly manner

18
questioning why they must go this far for a game and arguing or negotiating with the producers
about game rules. This reveals a formerly hidden relationship between hosts and production crew
that undercuts the role of hosts’ authority within the show. However, it also demonstrates a level
of access and power in relation to the production team that participants on reality television
shows do not possess.
Kim and Li point out that Running Man’s flexible distinctions between guest and host
“destabilize” television’s “traditional roles” of host, contestant, and crew (171). In many ways
the production team assumes the role of host both during filming and in post-production
decisions. The on-site producer takes on the host function of presenting games to the members
and their guests. The close relationship and level of trust between the recurring cast members and
the production team creates a casual atmosphere that allows the members to act in ways that
would not be possible within a structure that uses non-professional entertainers or a constantly
changing cast who are unfamiliar with the production team.
Because real-variety shows rely on the cast responding in the moment and do not have
rehearsals, the transitions between games or segments usually facilitated by the on-screen
presenters instead are conveyed through post-production graphics and subtitles. These
omnipresent layered graphics relay necessary information, provide context, and add commentary
to the cast members' actions (Myung-seok Kim 234). Usually, each of these functions fall under
the responsibilities of an on-screen host. Using constant text-based narrations to relieve the cast
members of these duties allows a narrative to get constructed with text rather than through an
external host inserted into the show’s action.
Bonner also highlights the lack of scholarship on presenters who perform onscreen with
other television personalities. He extends this scholarship to the work of some well-known

19
television personality duos, but the Running Man cast inherently operates as an ensemble of six
to eight people. In interviews, directors, producers, and members point to the cast’s chemistry as
the key to Running Man’s extended success. The cast members’ ability to construct characters
and the show’s narrative relies on the fact that there are multiple personas interacting with each
other. Although Yoo Jae-suk takes on the role of main MC, the hierarchy between the members
is not reinforced, and segments frequently require members to be in different locations,
necessitating sharing roles between them. The whole show’s format, and that of real-variety
shows’ formats overall, is predicated on multiple cast members in these mixed roles.
In Kim and Li’s analysis of the breakdown of distinctions between host, participants,
guests, and crew, they claim the mixing of roles gives the viewers a better point of access to the
on-screen celebrities by allowing for a more “demystified and intimate bond” (171). By
showcasing fluid transitions between roles that primarily function as bridges between the content
and viewers, and roles that emphasize everyday ordinariness and authenticity, Running Man
presents the cast as approachable and relatable, while also having a direct connection with the
viewer at home. This style of presentation creates the “coming-of-age” dynamic Jung Chul-min
referenced in his interview. Because the cast performs on equal footing with each other, their
guests, and the crew in a space mediated through text, they present themselves not through their
function within the show but as novelistic characters. These differences between Running Man
and current scholarship on television personalities complicates the analysis of their on-screen
personas, but also opens up the chance for a broader analysis of the development of unscripted
characters. This analysis of Running Man demonstrates the ability for reality television programs
to rely more on the fluid construction of characters to frame its content rather than falling back
on the distinct functions of host and contestant. This brings us back to our original question: how

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does a celebrity entertainer’s onscreen personality contribute to a show constructed around
games or missions as a narrative character?
Building Running Man’s Characters
According to John Langer, television programs center around a persona or personae,
“each of whom appears to be essential to the program’s unfolding action, pace, and thematic
directions as well as providing his/her ‘on-air personality’ as a crucial aspect of the program’s
televisual identity” (353). Additionally, across television genres, characters play a key role in
connecting the form’s seriality and creating its narrative. In the case of Running Man, the cast
members’ personalities operate within a show structured around games. These characters use the
flexible fictionality created by missions and games to build their characters; however, they also
use the gaps around games to create cohesiveness and continuity across episodes through other
character-building moments.
Games and missions are a fundamental aspect of Running Man, yet as Kim and Li point
out, the show does not emphasize winning and losing in its narrative. In fact, members will
occasionally make intentional choices or actions that result in an immediate loss of a game. Most
infamous is Lee Kwang-soo’s character as a betrayer. Betrayal became such a central element of
his on-screen persona that he would backstab his own team even if it meant going down with
them. For example, in Episode 84 as the Running Man cast members are competing against the
K-pop group, Big Bang, Kwang-soo rips off fellow cast member Kim Jong-kook’s name tag,
eliminating the strongest Running Man member from the game. When viewed from a strategic
standpoint this move makes no logical sense and would confuse first-time viewers.
A popular YouTube channel, Korean Englishman, features a video where British people
watch different Running Man missions for the first time. While the British spectators clearly

21
understand the appeal of the games and generally enjoy watching the show, they express
confusion as Lee Kwang-soo sabotages his own team during a food eating relay. These actions
only make sense within the context of the cast member’s characters built up over the course of
the program. An active viewer who is well-versed in Running Man would watch that same clip
of Lee Kwang-soo’s betrayal during the relay and be reminded of the previous betrayals and
slights between Kwang-soo and Kim Jong-kook. Through actions like Kwang-soo’s betrayal, the
importance of comedy and advancing character traits supersedes the apparent function of a game
in the show. If winning and losing do not drive the programs narrative, which instead relies on
the characters’ interactions, what does the program gain from a game-focused structure?
On the surface level, the show’s games provide clear ways for the cast members to form
recognizable and easily understood characters through simple distinction such as lucky (Song Ji-
hyo) and unlucky (Lee Kwang-soo, Yoo Jae-suk, Ji Suk-jin, and Jeon Soo-min), smart (Yoo Jae-
suk, Ji Suk-jin) or ignorant (basically everyone else), trustworthy team members (Kim Jong-
kook, Song Ji-hyo, Gary) and betrayers (Lee Kwang-soo, Haha, Jeon Soo-min). These basic
game distinctions allow the cast members to play up certain attributes regardless of the current
game’s outcome. These easily understood characteristics develop and morph over the hundreds
of episodes. After establishing a character, when the unanticipated happens it acts as an exciting
and unexpected development in the game. But if the expected outcome occurs, it simply
reinforces the character built up over previous episodes. The viewer’s knowledge of the cast’s
characteristics adds a depth to members’ actions by emphasizing both their predictability and
unpredictability. As a result, each game creates a space to foster the development of each cast
member’s persona.

22
However, games and missions play an even more important function through how they
blur the distinction between reality and fiction while encouraging play amongst the cast
members. As Choong-Keun Son suggests in his analysis of Infinite Challenge, games on real-
variety shows blend the fiction created by the special space of the game’s rules and the reality
created by the cast members portraying themselves. The games allow the cast members to act out
skits and immerse themselves in new roles and situations even as they remain inextricably linked
to their real life personas. In the same way that improv comedy uses “improv games” with
certain constraints or rules to facilitate comedians’ actions within made-up scenarios, the
missions on Running Man allow the cast members to interact with each other within a space
beyond just everyday reality. Again, like improv games, the show’s missions acknowledge and
separate the artificial constraints from the “real” world, even as those playing accept and interact
with the game’s fictional world around them.
Unlike survival shows or other styles of game shows, Running Man’s missions attempt to
create a space that extends the already special space of the program into an even more fictional
setting. One week the members can be in an episode with missions that portray them as high
schoolers, the next week Joseon dynasty nobles, the next superheroes. The cast members often
act out short skits in these settings that connect to their established persona on screen to facilitate
laughter while also engaging the episode’s theme. Because real-variety shows like Running Man
operate without a defined format for each episode, the range of games allows the cast members
to play within a wide variety of settings and scenarios. This results in layers of reality and fiction
within the show. Real-variety shows present games that emphasize the character’s play within a
reality television format that blends the real with the fiction created within the game space.

23
This magical space created by the games allows Running Man to raise the stakes and
tension of the program. In horror themed episodes, the tension comes from the cast members
acting as though the game setting were real with zombies, ghosts or monsters stalking the
abandoned school, hospital, or factory. Likewise, the frequent hidden roles of spies or thieves
create fun and exciting scenarios that do not depend on the game’s outcome, but instead depicts a
compelling storyline featuring the familiar characters of the cast’s on-screen personas. In other
styles of game shows or reality shows, the host or participants do not play in a game space that is
knowingly separated from the reality also depicted on the show. Because the Running Man cast
members interact in the missions by taking the set-up and fictional aspects seriously, they
emphasize dramatic elements while de-emphasizing the actual competition. In this way the
games become a fundamental part of the show even as the show downplays who wins or loses.
Within the game space, the cast members can act in ways that defy everyday reality.
During episode 74, the first psychic powers episode, HaHa received the power of Time
Controller. He needs to recite the phrase “The one who turns back time” and then the production
team will reset what just happened in the mission as if HaHa could reverse time. The power to
control and reverse time does not exist as an element of realism; however, the unique affordances
provided by the game world allowed HaHa to adopt this power. This style of action in the show
takes the desires of make-believe games and makes them more real. When children play at
having magical or extraordinary powers, they use their imagination to make those effects real
around them. Running Man takes the essence of those games, the desire to be a superhero or a
spy or control time, and through the production abilities and the game’s affordances adds actual
tangible effects of those powers.

24
The magic of the game space only works to its fullest extent outside of an exclusively
competitive context. While the Time Controller power did not aid HaHa much during the
episode, he would refer back to this power over the course of the following year during unrelated
challenges outside of the stated parameters of that particular episode. In a later episode, he
admits that he was stuck in the Time Controller character for about a year on the show. For
example, when HaHa failed a high-jump mission in a different episode he shouted out the magic
phrase and then performed his actions in reverse in an attempt to redo the mission. HaHa’s use of
the time controller power demonstrates both how the cast members take control and extend the
prompts given by the production crew in the games. More importantly though, his fellow cast
members and the production team played along, allowing him to redo his high jump attempt. The
magical powers and dramatic roles would not be effective in the show if the cast did not accept
their consequences in the world around them. And if the cast’s only goal was to win, then they
would have no incentive to play along and accept the expansion of the magical game space. The
cast and production crew’s cooperation by inhabiting the game’s world even as it extends beyond
the expected parameters invites the viewer to join in the suspension of disbelief and in the cast
members’ play.
The game space and ability to play also reveals itself in the creation and continuation of
specific characters that form alter-egos for the casts’ on-screen characters. The production team
builds these characters as central elements of a mission or challenge during an episode. The most
frequently reoccurring example is Yoo Jae-suk as Yoo-ames Bond. In episodes with Yoo-ames
Bond, Yoo Jae-suk must secretly eliminate members by shooting their name tags with a water
gun. By relating the challenge to a well-known media character, James Bond, Yoo Jae-suk was
able to adapt some of the famous Bond iconography into his approach to the mission. Since the

25
first episode with Yoo-ames Bond in 2011, the character has appeared in seven additional
episodes with slight variations each time. Even when Yoo-ames bond was not explicitly
referenced as character within a game, Yoo Jae-suk expresses an affinity for water guns and
references other aspects of the Yoo-ames Bond character in unrelated episodes, firmly cementing
the character as an aspect of his on-screen persona. The specific character created by a game for
a cast member to play then gets incorporated into their continuing on-screen persona.
In episode 196, the show revisited past characters, but with a twist. In this episode, the
cast travels back in time and redoes previous missions but different members are cast in those
roles. For example, instead of Yoo Jae-suk as Yoo-ames Bond, Kim Jong-kook receives the
mission to eliminate members via water guns. Because of his previously established character,
Kim Jong-kook approaches the same mission and role differently. Instead of stealthily ousting
people, he capitalizes on his strength by capturing members and wrestling them to shoot their
name tags. The members protest that this is not how Yoo-ames Bond does the mission causing
the captions to dub Kim Jong-kook as Kook-minator because he approaches the mission like
Terminator rather than James Bond. The difference between Kook-minator and Yoo-ames Bond
demonstrates the difference the cast members’ personas have on how they play within the game
space created by Running Man’s production. While the games help create the dramatic situations
and provide prompts for the cast members, the strength of the on-screen cast members’
characters supersedes that of any given role in a game or mission. Because Yoo Jae-suk and Kim
Jong-kook built different on-screen personas, they ultimately approach the same mission very
differently.
Games and missions alone do not account for the full extent of character building that
occurs on Running Man. Because episode themes and games change each week, the character

26
work that occurs outside of those direct missions creates the anchor that ties the show together
and gives meaning to actions within the semi-fictional game space. As mentioned earlier, based
off of viewers’ online comments that they would watch the cast chat all day because of their
good chemistry, a recent episode’s entire challenge was that the cast members could not
collectively be silent for more than 10 seconds. Beyond a couple of minigames, the entire
episode was simply the cast talking amongst each other about various mundane topics. The
challenge proved to be easy for the cast and the episode was so well received that the production
team released extra scenes from their chatter in a later episode. The success of the episode
reveals the importance of and the cast member’s ability to build characters that can stand up
outside of a structured game setting. The cast members’ personas and interpersonal relationships
provide through lines across stand-alone episodes as their characters change over the decade long
show.
A clear example of these characters outside of explicit game roles are the faux romantic
relationships between Ji-hyo and Gary (the Monday Couple), Se-chan and Soo-min, and more
recently, Ji-hyo and Jong-kook. Over the course of the show, the female cast members often play
at being romantically involved with one (or more) of the male cast members. Although the cast
members often joke about the possibility that their feelings are genuine and exist outside of the
filmed space, these faux romantic relationships exist to codify the relationships between the
cast’s onscreen personas. This is seen in Song Ji-hyo and Kang Gary’s couple name being the
“Monday Couple.” Running Man usually films on Mondays, thus leading Song Ji-hyo and Gary
to claim they are in a relationship only on Mondays. This will occasionally come up during
episodes that happen to be filmed on a different day of the week with the two members claiming
they no longer feel any sense of loyalty towards each other on those days. These relationships

27
did not stem from any role specifically provided by the show’s structure, but they do impact the
cast members’ actions during games or missions.
In episode 537 the Running Man members are tasked with updating the show’s website.
As part of the task they get the chance to write new bios for each member. As they talk, present
and joke about what they would write for each bio, their construction of their characters gets
foregrounded. Even as they are performing as their characters in the current episode, the directed
nature of the conversation causes the cast members to synthesize their current perceptions of the
other members’ characters as well as how their character relates. As a result, in addition to
highlighting key aspects of their characters, the cast members use the mission as a chance to
highlight the connections between members by writing the bios in the form of personal journal
entries.
The cast members seamlessly interweave their characters across episodes both within
games and outside of games. The characters built up through the special space of games combine
with the cast members’ celebrity personas based in the world external to that of the show. As a
result, they become extraordinary and ordinary, capable of achieving and doing things
impossible in normal reality even as they themselves exist in the same reality as the viewers. The
Running Man members straddle the distinctions between fictional and real by layering further
elements of make believe into an already separate mediatized space. By blurring these
boundaries, the cast members borrow aspects of fiction.
Running Man Cast as Novelistic Characters
In her comparison of reality television dating shows and 18
th
century novels, Elizabeth
Johnston connects the similarities between the programs’ and novels’ claim to represent reality
within a fictional framework. Her specific focus emphasized how society and reader/viewers

28
consumed programs and novels constructed around female characters’ domesticity. Likewise, in
Tae-jin Yoon’s brief comparison of novels and reality television shows, he focuses on the
reader/viewer’s perception of the characters and events as real. Both Johnston and Yoon imply
value in connecting the perceived reality of characters in novels with the reception of individuals
on reality television shows.
In Stars, Richard Dyer writes, “Star images are constructed personages in media
texts…yet they also bear many of the hallmarks of novelistic character” (109). In Dyer’s work on
film stars, he needed to distinguish between star images as characters and stars playing a
character as a role within a scripted film. Performing as themselves, the cast members on
Running Man mold their star images into characters that develop throughout the show. Even with
the differences and complications created by merging star-image-as-character and character-as-
role, the cast members’ performances on Running Man fulfill the prerequisites of character
within a novel. Dyer uses nine qualities to define the novelistic character: particularity, interest,
discrete identity, autonomy, roundness, development, interiority, motivation, and consistency
(104). Over the course of the show the Running Man cast’s personas exemplify these qualities
through their actions, the production team’s decisions, the show’s formal elements, as well as
through features innate to television personalities.
By playing versions of themselves for camera, Running Man’s characters inherently meet
a character’s need for particularity, interest and discrete identity. Particularity, or uniqueness of a
character beyond a stock figure, exists simply because the Running Man characters are
extensions of themselves. This also includes the particularity of time and space. The show very
consciously acknowledges location, by basing entire episodes around landmarks, and time, by
including episodes that forefront events depicting the passage of time such as New Years and

29
members’ birthdays. The show’s signature game and style involve name tags the cast and guests
wear on the backs of their outfits. Having a personal identifier like a name incorporated directly
into the visual and formal aspect of the show reinforces the members’ uniqueness and
individuality.
Closely connected to particularity, interest, or the character as an individual existing
among a multiplicity of others and not just a representative of ideals, also stems from the on-
screen personas’ connection to their life and actions in reality. Beyond their grounding in a life
outside of the program’s mediatized space, the show clearly demonstrates the cast’s interest by
placing them within an ensemble cast. Running Man members playing characters of themselves
also directly imbues them with discrete identity, or the feeling that a character exists beyond their
actions. By presenting the on-screen personas as extensions of individuals who continue to exist
in the real world even after the cameras turn off, the on-screen characters intrinsically possess a
self separate from their role.
Autonomy, or the necessity for a character to take on a life of their own instead of just
operating as a part of the text’s design, starts to differentiate how Running Man members’ on-
screen personas function within a narrative from other show’s hosts. In many shows the featured
television personality remains thoroughly confined within their role defined in relation to the
program’s structure. For example, Alex Trebek, famed Jeopardy host, acted exclusively as a
function of the show’s format. His on-screen performance, fundamental to the show’s
iconography, consisted of reading the quiz questions and awarding points. His role could not
expand beyond that structure or contribute to an overarching narrative. As mentioned earlier,
Running Man members traverse a wide range of roles assigned to them within the show.

30
Additionally, the cast members’ characters on the show appear with consistency across a range
of other programs as well.
How viewers perceive the difference in autonomy between the Running Man cast and
popular show hosts in the United States becomes apparent with a cursory glance through how
they appear in fan fiction. Under the tag of Alex Trebeck or Julie Chen, host of Big Brother in
the United States, the fan fiction written includes them within their role of host on the program
they are associated with. On the other hand, Running Man fan fiction deals primarily with the
cast members relationships or personalities in other settings outside of the program. Although the
Running Man cast members clearly serve as a part of each stand-alone episode’s design, within
the show’s ongoing narrative stitching the individual episodes together, their characters succeed
in taking on a life of their own.
Over the many episodes, the Running Man cast members develop the roundness, or
complex multiplicity of traits, necessary to create a character. None of the members have only
one overbearing quality or motivation. Even though much of Kim Jong-kook’s character on
Running Man revolves around his physical prowess, other traits round out his character. While
his most apparent characteristic is his position as strongest cast member both within games and
his oft articulated love for the gym and working out, during team games, Kim Jong-kook
infamously nags and coaches his teammates to do better even in games he performs poorly in.
Other members frequently riff on the fact he is still unmarried and gets shy in front of female
guests on the show. As a result, instead of only being a strong man, Kim Jong-kook’s character
expands with each recurring detail discussed by the other cast members or as a result of games.
The variety of games and challenges over the course of a decade has embellished the cast’s on-
screen personas to such depths that none of their characters could be considered flat.

31
Development is a key element of character that begins to differentiate Running Man cast
members from other types of reality or variety shows. While many participants on survival
shows or game shows are able to develop or change their on-screen character, because they may
only appear for just one season or even one episode, development is not a guaranteed feature of a
participant or contestant. On the other hand, even though television hosts can appear on the same
program for decades, because they exist within an explicit and static role, they do not necessarily
demonstrate development in their on-screen persona either. In Running Man, however, the cast
members perform in a role that allows for growth and development while also appearing on the
same show consistently for a long time period. Over the course of ten years, the cast members’
characters have grown, developed, and shifted.
The playboy role’s migration demonstrates one of the clearest shifts in Running Man
characters. At the start of the program, HaHa formed his character around being a playful flirt.
Once he got married in real life, his character moved from silly playboy to matchmaker, where
he tries to get the still single members ensnared in love lines. A shift in the playboy character
occurred again when Lee Kwang-soo, who had inherited the role from HaHa, publicly
announced he had a girlfriend, causing Jeon Soo-min to pick up the role of hopeless romantic
flirt. While this is one of the most obviously articulated aspects of character development within
the show, the cast members’ characters change more subtly in many ways as they grow older and
as the continual filming over the course of a decade modifies the characters.
Interiority, or access to a character’s internal thoughts and feelings, is a challenging
quality to come across in any visual medium. However, Running Man achieves this through
subtitles and graphics added during postproduction. While the graphics and subtitles play a
variety of roles within the show, they often will appear to narrate the thoughts occurring inside a

32
member’s head. For example, an artificial blush will be added to a cast member’s cheeks to
demonstrate shyness, attraction, or inappropriate thoughts depending on the context. More
explicitly than this form of graphic, subtitles will put into words possible thoughts or emotions.
This can be as simple as a bright red exclamation point showing up over a cast member’s head to
indicate surprise or shock or as complex as narrating entire romantic feelings between two cast
members. The deliberate use of graphics and subtitles allow the program to highlight the cast
member’s personalities and motivations (Kim, Myung-seok 234). These subtitles function as
narration and well as asides directed toward the audience. By using text additions to the visual
frame of the show, Running Man and other Korean real-variety shows use certain literary tools
unavailable without the onscreen additions. Whether articulating a character’s minor reaction or
an episode’s climactic finale, the use of graphics or subtitles give the viewer access to the cast
members’ characters thoughts and feelings, fulfilling the requisite of interiority.
The structure of each individual episode provides short-term goals for the cast members,
but these stand-alone goals are supplemented by longer term motivation, or psychological
reasoning behind their actions, that tie into the rest of their character. A long-term goal for much
of the cast is defeating Kim Jong-kook in physical competition. The other members frequently
express their fear of being on a different team from him, whether it be physical competition,
because of his documented feats of strength, or deduction challenges, because of his uncanny
ability to suspect members with a hidden role. As they frequently scheme together, trying to
come up with ways to defeat him, the members often articulate motivations for their actions
stemming from the long-term cast dynamics rather than that episode’s particular set-up. These
long-term motivations also result in the members occasionally acting contrary to an episode’s
outlined short-term objective.

33
Running Man’s production team and cast demonstrate the on-screen characters’
consistency, or the coherence of a character’s actions and motives, by constantly situating the
current episode’s events in relation to previous ones. During 2019’s first episode, episode 433, Ji
Suk-jin and Lee Kwang-soo arrive at the opening segment in black long underwear covered in
stuffed pigs in honor of the Year of the Pig as punishment for failing their mission during the
previous episode. While this already links those two episodes directly together, Lee Kwang-soo
also brings up the fact that he was subjected to the same punishment for the Year of the Monkey
and the Year of the Chicken, which prompts a cut away from the current episode to briefly play
clips of him carrying out those punishments. By choosing to refer back to previous episodes and
emphasize the visual similarities of Lee Kwang-soo’s punishment over the course of three years,
Running Man demonstrates how it maintains consistency within the show through its characters.

Lee Kwang-soo’s New Year’s Punishments
The Running Man cast members’ ability to fulfill the nine qualities of a novelistic
character Dyer proposed reveals what constitutes their characters and begins to show how these
characters provide stability and centrality to the show. The creation of these individual characters
is so complete that certain characteristics of the Running Man cast members were lifted from
their on-screen personas to create various fictional media extensions. In 2013, SBS created a
limited comic series that followed fictional representations of the cast members as they compete
in different races and missions. An animated children’s show of the same name premiered on
Cartoon Network throughout Asia and online starting in 2018. The animated series depicts the

34
characters of the cast members as their animal nicknames. In the real-variety show, the members
receive animal nicknames like Yoo Jae-suk as grasshopper, Lee Kwang-soo as giraffe, and Kim
Jong-kook as tiger. In the animated series set in the animal kingdom, the cartoon animals are
imbued with certain characteristics related to the real-variety show’s cast members’ personas and
relationships. The animated series then spawned a spin-off feature film (Running Man:
Revengers) set to be released in 2022. The ability for the cast members’ characters to get lifted
from the real-variety show context and placed within an entirely fictional and fantastical setting
demonstrates their fully formed cohesiveness.
The cast members’ characters represent a key junction between reality and fiction that
creates a broad appeal of the show. The cast members do not fit into currently understood
distinctions between contestant, host, or audience, and instead develop fully formed cohesive
novelistic characters that straddle reality and fiction both within their personas and the show’s
game setting. Understanding and situating the Running Man cast members as an essential
component of the show as a whole establishes further avenues of research into how exactly
Running Man toes the border between the factual and the make-believe.
Conclusion: Running Characters
As stated at the start of the chapter, seeing the same regular-cast MCs interact like a
family every week represents Running Man’s primary return for loyalty. Korean real-variety
shows’ hybrid format and use of ensemble celebrity cast members do not fit neatly into current
understandings of reality television. By not fulfilling the roles of participant, host, or presenter,
the cast members instead fulfill the criteria for novelistic characters. However, the way these
characters move to create a narrative and bring complex depth to the show remains very tied to
their appearance as real celebrities on television. While Running Man’s games, guests, prizes,

35
and punishments play important roles in creating an engaging show, the interactions between and
history revolving around the same regular cast of MCs create an anchor which provides the
meaning and narrative to all the show’s other components.
After situating the cast members’ on-screen personas as characters, the next question to
arise is how these characters function within a narrative. In her work on Japanese tarento on
television, Gabriella Lukas analyzes a series of commercials featuring actor Nagase Masatoshi
escaping from a gangster. Over the numerous commercials, Masatoshi interacts with a plethora
of other celebrities and products as he runs away. Lukas analyzes how his “running character”
intertextually connects a dispersed set of media installments and in doing so “destabilizes the
boundary between reality and fiction” (52). While Lukas was referring to Masatoshi’s character
literally running in the context of the commercials, the idea of a “running character” neatly
encapsulates the various components that create complex and engaging characters in real-variety
shows.
A running character is a celebrity persona’s character that consistently and recognizably
exists across different media over an extended period of time that blurs the boundaries between
reality and fiction. The Running Man cast members embody the “running character” in a number
of ways. Running can mean movement across distance. In this way, the Running Man characters
appear across multiple texts. Running characters also embody the use of running as in to blend,
merge and run into each other. Running Man’s characters cause different media products to
escape their clear confines, instead merging and blending into each other. Equally important,
though, is the idea of running as continuously over a period of time, such as long running or a
running joke. Over their extended media careers, the cast members perform continuity and

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develop their characters across time. The Running Man cast members rely on recurring jokes and
circumstances from both within the show and externally to embellish their on-screen actions.

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Chapter 2: The Vast Intertextual Narrative of Running Man
Running Man Episode 566 starts with the show’s ensemble cast chatting with and teasing
each other while they wait to receive the mission to begin the day’s episode. During that six-
minute introduction the cast members reference: a video posted on Kim Jong-kook’s YouTube
channel featuring fellow Running Man cast member Song Ji-hyo, Song Ji-hyo’s new drama
Witch’s Diner, the appearance of Eun-hye, Kim Jong-kook’s former loveline from X-Man, on
Men on a Mission, Yoo Jae-suk’s new talent agency Antenna, Yoo Jae-suk and Haha’s fomer
real-variety show, Infinite Challenge, Ji Suk-jin’s appearance on Yoo Jae-suk’s new real-variety
show Hang Out With Yoo, Song Ji-hyo’s first appearance on Running Man, and Ji Suk-jin’s half-
hearted performance on the show until the Running Man episode they filmed in Thailand. Within
a short timeframe, the density of references the cast makes to other media, members’ publicized
life events, and previous circumstances in Running Man creates a complex intertextual viewing
experience that rewards informed and engaged television viewers.
Henry Jenkins claims in his article “Convergence is Reality,” “reality television series
have narrative complexity that rivals the best of the hour-long, serialized, ensemble dramas” (4).
While Jenkins uses examples drawn from season-based survival shows whose narrative
complexity come from the shows’ format and competitive storytelling, Korean real-variety
shows create complexity from the encyclopedic depth of the cast member’s intertextual on-
screen characters. Mélanie Bourdaa uses the term “encyclopedic universe” to describe
transmedia that disperses information across media texts in a way that engages fans and avid
viewers to re-assemble the scattered pieces. Through their appearances across many programs,
many episodes, and many years, Running Man cast members’ characters embody the eclectic
pieces of information to create the complexity that attracts engaged viewers.

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The characters’ complexity provides all the components necessary for a vast narrative.
De Pascalis and Brembilla define vast narratives as “objects with a narrative extension exceeding
usual expectations,” character and world continuity, cross-media references, and multiple points
of entry for the audience (2). Expanding on the links created through the intertextual narratives
imbued in the cast members’ celebrity personas, Running Man actively incorporates media
outside of the show into the program’s body, effectively collapsing the distinctions between text
and paratext. As the show draws on its web of connections, it escapes its defined textual
boundaries and reveals a narrative extending beyond usual expectations.
Like the role of the Running Man cast members discussed in the previous chapter, the
vast narrative present in the show tied to the cast member’s characters works to collapse the
separation of fiction and reality. In Lukas’s tarento example, Masatoshi’s running character uses
the intertextually connected, yet dispersed media to “destabilize the boundary between reality
and fiction” (52). Likewise, a core function of vast narratives is an intentional encroachment of
the fictional world into the real world. As a narrative expands and complexifies, the more
realistic it appears. Additionally, a key feature of vast narratives is their utilization of transmedia
techniques to disperse media components across fictional and real environments. As Running
Man references fictional and unscripted external media, previous episodes, and real life events of
the cast and guests, it positions itself within and draws on larger trends, storylines, and themes in
the South Korean media ecosystem. This extends each episode’s narrative to create an
overarching vast narrative which, through its encyclopedic complexity, further blurs the
program’s boundaries between fiction and reality. Ultimately, Running Man’s complex
intertextuality reveals a vast narrative that posits a shared universe that compromises between
fiction and reality.

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A Vast Narrative
Running Man’s celebrity cast members create necessary continuity within the show’s
stand-alone episodes, while contributing the intertextuality from their celebrity personas to form
a vast narrative. Running Man’s complexity begins with the interwoven nature of the show.
While each episode functions as an independent media piece, the episode’s meaning and the
viewer’s enjoyment deepens with greater knowledge of previous occurrences on the show.
Running Man uses the cast members’ characters to connect disparate events through their
continuity, allow references to past moments to occur naturally within their conversation, and
create a space reminiscent of a group of friends or colleagues with a plethora of inside jokes and
stories. The show’s complexity again increases as the cast members contribute the intertextual
meanings imbued within their celebrity. With the internal continuity, recurring references and
character-driven intertextuality, Running Man creates a vast narrative within its stand-alone
episodes and across dispersed media products.
Although the cast’s characters exist and are essential in Running Man specifically, these
personalities exist and are formed outside of the show. While this is partly a ramification of the
celebrity cast members playing themselves, the foregrounded cohesiveness of their on-screen
persona across appearances creates the backbone of their character. The influence of outside
texts appears both implicitly and explicitly in the Running Man cast member’s characters. As the
cast’s characters move across different programs, their meaning and connections broaden,
providing more material and access points.
The heavy reliance on celebrities and media persona in South Korean reality shows
creates a specific type of intertextual density on the shows. Stars, or more generally celebrities,
operate as an intertext built from the connections of their past roles and media coverage. When a

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well-known individual participates in a media project whether it is an advertisement, television
show or film, they contribute the meanings built in the spaces between their other public
appearances and performances to that new project. The intertextuality drawn from celebrity
personas creates a specific set of affordances situated within reality. The viewer interacts and
draws on knowledge and memories of a “real” persona’s media history. Each mediatized aspect
of a celebrity’s life immediately adds to the available knowledge and associations of the persona.
While analyzing Lee Hyo-ri’s reality show, Myung-Jin Kim acknowledges that Lee Hyo-
ri is on the show not as a real person but rather a character built through the intertextual
meanings created throughout her career and media appearances (19). Ju Oak Kim notes the
intertextuality in the Korean reality show, New Journey to the West, in part through the cast
members referencing their past interactions on the program Two Days One Night (49). She
acknowledges the show’s transmedia storytelling relies on the connections created through the
show’s cast members. Not only do the cast members’ celebrity standings provide an immediate
amalgamation of intertextual references, but their actions and the shows’ production decisions
intentionally lean on the connections to previous programs or the celebrities’ life events.
Off-hand comments, repeated occurrences, hidden roles, and planned skits all get drawn
into the program to construct layers of meaning and understanding. A good example of this is in
Episode 473 when the final stage in a try not to laugh challenge involves former professional
basketball player, Han Ki-bum, performing a song and dance behind the counter at a
convenience store. While the scene can be enjoyed taken completely at face value with no pre-
existing knowledge, it plays with and combines layers of references from previous episodes.
While at first a teasing diss mentioned by the members comparing the tall Lee Kwang-soo to
Han Ki-bum, the comparison solidified itself as a reference during a look-alike themed episode.

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Knowing the previous connection between Running Man and Han increases the base-line humor
of the situation for informed viewers as well as the cast themselves. However, the references do
not stop there. The dance itself, Kwang-soo’s signature mosquito dance, came from a scene
Kwang-soo acted in the sitcom High Kick Through the Roof. The final stage of the challenge
pulls all these references together from different episodes to create through lines and a sense of
continuity throughout the show.
The cast members work together to facilitate conversations that connect each other’s
characters and moments across episodes. For example, other members continually tease Ji Suk-
jin for over-exaggerating his popularity, especially in relation to his self-stated impact on
Running Man guests’ careers. When Ji Suk-jin promises to make guest actress Keum Sae-rok a
star in episode 486, the cast plays it off as a part of a running joke that builds into Ji Suk-jin’s
established character of somewhat cringey self-importance. When Keum Sae-rok reappears as a
guest a year later, she mentions that after she was a guest on Running Man her name appeared on
real time search rankings and she received an advertisement offer. Because her claims connect to
Ji Suk-jin’s promise to make guests stars, it creates a bond between that episode and Ji Suk-jin’s
previous statements on other Running Man episodes. The production team emphasizes the
connection of previous episodes with these claims by cutting to scenes from episode 486 and a
screen shot of Keum Sae-rok in the search rankings. The other members pick up the connection
and shift their banter from their earlier ridicule to calling him a star maker. The segment neatly
concludes with Yang Se-chan asking Ji Suk-jin why he cannot do the same thing with his stock
investments, a reference to the previous episode’s games and Ji Suk-jin’s history of terrible
investments in real life. None of these details directly advance the missions within the episodes

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they take place in, but instead connect different episodes and events that occur outside of the
show, outside games, with events within the show and within games.
These conversations between the cast members referencing previous episodes connect
episodes across their stand-alone arcs, but almost more importantly the continuity they create
relies heavily on their interpersonal relationships. The emphasis and use of these relationships
work to build an atmosphere of a close-knit group of people who welcome the viewer into their
privileged space of inside jokes and memory sharing. With the complexity of the running
characters expanding over episodes, the viewer gets introduced to many facets of their character
making their on-screen persona richer and more realistic. As the viewers grow along with the
cast, the connection between the audience and the performers becomes more intimate and
stronger through its complexity.
The cast members appear in many different programs that form and create their personas
on Running Man. Because the cast members play themselves, their other media presences
automatically get built into their on-screen persona. Specifically, all the cast members participate
in other television shows as the same on-screen personas they appear as on Running Man. Yoo
Jae-suk will appear as he does on Running Man in other shows such as Infinity Challenge, Hang
Out with Yoo, or Yoo Quiz on the Block. Regardless of the production company, television
stations, or format of the show, certain characteristics of the Running Man personas remain
constant across the various shows. In the plethora of other shows featuring the Running Man
members, they appear in different locations with different fellow cast members in different
scenarios that do not necessarily align with possible scenarios on Running Man. Within the
various programs and media, the cast members remain recognizable as the characters they

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portray on Running Man. This recognizability across different media productions fulfills the
necessary consistency for transfictional and running characters.
The many different television programs and shows the Running Man cast members
appear in as themselves creates a rich web of different relations for the viewers to follow. The
members’ television personalities form through the interpersonal relationships between members
through connections and shared experiences within a range of different media texts. Yoo Jae-suk
and HaHa were both core cast members on another long-running, popular reality-variety show:
Infinity Challenge. When the show ended its ten-year long run, both Yoo Jae-suk and HaHa
expressed their sadness during the following Running Man episodes. Likewise, when Ji Suk-jin
and HaHa separately appeared on Yoo Jae-suk’s Saturday program, How Do You Play, their
roles became topics of conversation in Running Man, giving rise to other cast members accusing
them of working harder on that show than on Running Man. While Ji Suk-jin and HaHa
adamantly refute these accusations, Yoo Jae-suk would jokingly give them a thumbs up or praise
them for their commitment to his other program. These exchanges acknowledge and emphasize
viewers’ knowledge of the cast members’ actions in different media and shows, while still
providing comedy to Running Man’s less informed viewers who have not seen the other shows.
Each of the cast members has an extensive number of connections across different shows, media,
and appearances. Within the Running Man episodes, the cast members will joke and refer to their
other media appearances. The Running Man cast members repeatedly reference Kim Jong-kook’s
relationship with Yoon Eun-hye and their famous interaction during the X-Man game Of Course,
even though that moment occurred on a different show before Running Man started airing. The
cast members’ personas alone bring a wide range of references to external programs and texts
which then imbue the show with intertextuality.

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As a show’s complex density increases, the program’s production must begin to utilize
methods for jogging the audience’s memory and cluing them into elements of depth they may
have missed. Running Man uses a number of strategies to emphasize the connections and
repeated occurrences across different episodes. Running Man cast does this through their
dialogue helped by editing that adds captions, inserts, and flashback/cutaways. Often the cast
will talk about a previous event or episode on air which triggers the viewers’ recollection of the
previous episode creating continuity across episodes.
Not all of these tactics occur directly within the show; rather, some of these happen in the
show’s peripheral material. Running Man has a dedicated, official YouTube channel that consists
primarily of themed compilation videos. The videos on this channel prioritize amalgamating
disparate clips and actions into a cohesive connection under a single label of the video. For
example, there is a video focusing on showing all the times Yoo Jae-suk interrupted or prevented
Lee Kwang-soo from speaking, since this was a common occurrence between their two
characters. After the compilation was released, Lee Kwang-soo brought up the video when Yoo
Jae-suk cut him off during an opening segment. Once the cast acknowledged the video on the
show, whenever Yoo Jae-suk would cut Kwang-soo off the production team would insert a
graphic of the video’s thumbnail to subtly acknowledge the action’s long precedence as well as
encourage viewers to go watch the supplementary video online. These short videos fulfill the
important role of collecting and categorizing the show’s encyclopedic complexity for viewer’s
easy consumption. The incorporation and reference to the videos in the show’s episodes also
works to bring external media into and mesh with the show.

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Crossovers Between Fiction and Reality
In his article, “Spin-offs, Crossovers, and Worldbuilding Energies,” Derek Johnson
points to the importance of shared characters to connect different television shows and activate
worldbuilding energy. While Johnson only considered fictional, scripted series where such
worldbuilding requires extensive coordination by the production team, real-variety shows also
demonstrate a style of worldbuilding equally reliant on shared characters propelled by the
performance of recognizable cast members in different shows. Running Man’s running
characters unavoidably link the program to their other shows as crossover episodes and spinoffs
connect fictional, scripted programs. Bourdaa points out how rich characters can become entry
points that introduce a world or universe. Each appearance of a Running Man cast member acting
as themselves becomes an entry point to through which viewers can approach Running Man.
Running Man’s vast narrative lies outside of simple distinctions between fiction and
reality, instead existing as a semi-fictional mediatized reality. The Running Man cast members
refer to and draw from aspects of their Running Man personas on other shows. When Jeon So-
min appeared as a guest on Yoo Jae-suk’s other show, Village Survival (SBS, 2018-2019), he
primes the cast of that show for the crazy antics she is known for demonstrating as a cast
member on Running Man. Later in the show, Yoo Jae-suk mentions fellow Running Man cast
member and potential on-screen romantic partner, Yang Se-chan, to Jeon So-min. These
exchanges specifically call on the viewers’ knowledge of Running Man even while watching a
separate show. In his analysis of crossovers, Johnson posits that television series that claim to
exist in a world with possible shared locations and times are capable of mixing via crossovers or
spinoffs through their shared space. Because Yoo Jae-suk and Jeon So-Min appear as themselves
on Running Man and Village Survival, it becomes possible for them to interact and connect the

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shows through their shared reality. While this point seems self-explanatory in the case of real-
variety shows that claim the real, present world as their setting, the appearance of Running Man
cast members on other shows create a connected mediatized universe through their running
character. Because, like Running Man, other South Korean real-variety shows also toy with the
distinctions between the real world and fictionalized game spaces, the appearance of the same
characters across multiple iterations of the mediatized reality begins to create a universe of
consistent depictions of the “real” across different media.
Interestingly, Running Man cast members’ personas also inform moments in scripted
media. For example, when Kang Gary made a cameo appearance as a taxi driver picking up Song
Ji-hyo’s drunk character in her drama, Emergency Couple (tvN, 2014), he jokes about being a
part of the Monday Couple with her. This scripted moment directly alludes to the viewers’
knowledge of their characters in Running Man. Because Emergency Couple and Running Man
both claim to exist in the “real” world of present-day Seoul, Kang Gary could believably interact
with Song Ji-hyo’s character in the drama, a divorced medical resident. Their interaction
solidifies the drama’s inexplicit connection to Song Ji-hyo’s intertextual image as a running
character. However, because the drama is scripted and Song Ji-hyo is playing a character distinct
from herself, the interaction does not feed into the specific universe created through real-variety
shows. Song Ji-hyo and Kang Gary remain in their loveline as the Monday Couple even though
Song Ji-hyo is playing a scripted character in a different relationship in the drama.
This stands in stark contrast to the impact of Song Ji-hyo’s appearance on the reality
show, We Are in Love (2016), where she was paired with Chen Bolin to act out a faux-
relationship. Her pairing in a fictional romance on a different reality show had direct
ramifications on the equally fictional Monday Couple relationship in a way that Song Ji-hyo’s

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dramas never did. The Running Man cast members would reference her relationship to Chen
Bolin, and Kang Gary would express sadness or jealousy. While the entire premise of We Are in
Love rests on showcasing fake relationships and both Kang Gary and Song Ji-Hyo openly admit
that the Monday Couple is just for the cameras, because both shows exist in the same mediatize
version of reality, Running Man was forced to address the other relationship in a similar way it
addressed the news of Song Ji-hyo’s real relationship. This reveals real-variety and reality shows
distinguish the “reality” they portray from scripted dramas while still blending the distinctions
between fact and fiction within the universe created through the reality shows. In a sense the
reception on Running Man situates We Are in Love in the same universe more strongly than
Kang Gary’s cameo on Emergency Couple.
Each cast member’s recognizable character over different networks and decades of
televised appearances presents the possibility to view their celebrity persona beyond one show,
production team, or talent management. As the cast members’ transfictional personas feed back
into Running Man’s narrative, they situate the show within a broader narrative formed by the
South Korean media landscape.
Beyond Textual Boundaries
This mediatized reality closely ties Running Man to a plethora of external media. The
textual boundaries of the program blur as it becomes an amalgamation of the broader media
landscape. In addition to the cast appearing on programs and media outside of Running Man, the
program also expands its complexity by bringing other media products into the very format of
the show. In their introduction to Reading Contemporary Serial Television Universes, De
Pascalis and Brembilla describe a storyworld as “one that, on a real-world level, merges texts
and paratexts, products and byproducts” (1). Likewise, in his article, “New Paths in

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Transmediality as Vast Narratives,” Mathew Freeman claims that “folding paratext into text”
allows stories to “escape their textual borders” (13). As Running Man folds texts into its form as
a paratext and its own paratexts into its form as text, it creates a storyworld that extends beyond
the program.
Running Man actively incorporates other media texts into its episode formats. Because
real-variety shows have flexible episodes, there is greater ability to incorporate many different
themes within one show. There are no limitations on the style or form of each episode, which
allows guests, locations, and games to be specifically catered to in each episode. These
demonstrate how the show as a whole is comprised of a patchwork of references to external
media texts. Johnson’s worldbuilding energies can be activated by characters on one show
appearing on another operates as a two-way street. Characters known through other media
appearing as guests or the Running Man cast members appearing in a setting or as characters
from other media again extend the vastness of the show. The ability for the show to incorporate
other media products of both fictional and non-fictional origins further blends fiction and reality.
Guests appear on Running Man to promote their recent media releases. As a result,
Running Man functions as a paratext for other media existing within the South Korean media
ecosystem. Paratexts are everything related to a text that informs a viewer’s understanding or
interaction with it. This includes all promotional materials and pre-existing knowledge of any
elements of production (writers, actors, affiliated companies). A substantial number of talk
shows operate as paratexts for film, television, and music releases. The use of paratexts is
essential in the conceptualization of vast or complex narratives. Because entire episodes can
function as a paratext to another media, the entire show gets connected to that media and as a
result expands to encompass it within its vast narrative.

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When guests appear on the program, the production team will often theme the episode or
games around the media those guests are promoting. For example, when the cast of the hit
drama, The Heirs, appeared on Running Man, the episode was themed around the idea of rich
chaebols competing for inheritance. There are numerous examples of this from dramas to movies
to other reality television shows. The cast of fictional media products appear on the show as
themselves, but within the construct of an episode based off of the media they are promoting. A
key aspect of promotional material surrounding the film and television casts is the ability for the
audience to check out the chemistry and interactions between the cast members. Lukas claims
that the viewers watching the cast play themselves as a form of promotion for their fictional
characters allows the viewers to “slide between the different registers of reality and fiction” (49).
Running Man extends this slippage by creating a semi-fictional promotional space which
capitalizes on both the guests playing themselves and the affordances of the fictional media
which they promote.
Additionally, Running Man activates guests’ specific intertextual meanings and
incorporates them into the program. When legendary Starcraft rivals Hong Jin-ho and Lim Yo-
han appeared as guests for an episode based around rivals, they decided which team they would
be on through a Starcraft rematch. The episode played a series of news clips from their previous
games to situate the match as the next addition to the ongoing “Lim-Jin War.” Although the
Running Man episode quickly moved on, the brief game carried all the previous history’s weight
and deepened the interaction’s stakes. As a result, because of the brief introductory game, that
Running Man episode incorporates an e-sports narrative surrounding the two guests into its own
storyline for that episode.

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Unlike talk shows or interview-based programs, Running Man as a show does not exist
only to cater to guests. Even if there is a brief promotional talk segment at the beginning or end
of each episode, the episode must still stand up to a standard of enjoyment and games even if the
viewer has no previous knowledge of the guest. This is most apparent with music guests.
Frequently musical guests will perform the chorus of their new song or their music will be used
as a soundtrack during a game. At the beginning of Episode 162, a Running Man member and
the two idol group members on their team perform the idol group’s hit song. The performances
explicitly promote both the idol group and their songs, however by having Running Man cast
members perform along with them, it creates humorous situations for viewers with no previous
knowledge of the other performers. Later in that episode, as two Running Man members
physically battled against each other to avoid last place, the song “This is War” by one of the
visiting idol groups was used as background music. The inclusion of the guest’s music creates
further connections between the guest and program while keeping the program’s focus on the
game and cast members. This style of incorporating the media promoted by the guest into the
content of the show fuses Running Man with the promoted media, while still allowing Running
Man to maintain an integrity separate from that of its inclusion of guests.
This allows the show to engage not just with the intertextual character of the guest, but
also directly connect to specific media products. The episode’s connection as a paratext to other
media allows the viewer to form direct connections between Running Man as a show and that
other media product rather than only indirectly though the celebrity guests. Like with guests,
Running Man engages external texts by basing stand-alone episode arcs on currently popular or
well-known media. The program draws from other unscripted shows by modifying those show’s
formats into one of the episodes. The program has themed episodes on cooking shows, dating

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games, and audition shows. The themed episodes make use not only of the other show’s format,
but also adopts music, iconography, and cast members directly linking the two programs.
Running Man parodying other unscripted television shows starring the same on-screen
entertainers adds a layer of irony. While these episodes can be enjoyed without having consumed
the original referenced show, certain unexplained actions or inside jokes take on greater meaning
to knowledgeable viewers.
Running Man not only references other unscripted media, but also scripted or fictional
shows. Even when a guest does not appear or there is no direct promotion with the episode’s
concept, the influence and use of outside media informs the creation of meaning within the show
and extends the portrayed reality into a fictional space. On the show, the Running Man cast
members have played Marvel superheroes, fairytale characters, couples in a melodrama, and
Greek gods. Yoo-ames Bond mentioned in the last chapter is a direct allusion to James Bond.
Kwang-vatar is a direct allusion to the race of blue people in Avatar. In addition to characters,
the episodes also draw on outside texts to create storylines and imbue the cast members with
certain easily culturally understood characteristics.
The show toys with fictional genre conventions as a way to situate the cast members as a
certain character or draw connections between the program’s action and scenes or clichés from
other media. A viewer generally understands what to expect if a piece of media is a comedy,
thriller, romance, or melodrama. With the flexibility to modify the style of each episode,
Running Man uses these understood genre conventions for comedic effect as well as a way to
structure and distinguish different episode arcs. For example, the episodes based on the Korean
melodramas That Winter, The Wind Blows and My Love from Another Star start with openings
that a viewer would expect to accompany the dramas, but with dramas’ cast replaced by the

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Running Man cast members. These intros would often be followed by the cast members acting
out an exaggerated skit set in the world of the drama. Even as the members play and accept the
premise of the skit, they juxtapose certain, ridiculous statements within the skit with that cast
member’s persona as themselves. By fluidly moving between a fictional genre set up and back to
the cast member’s consistent on-screen persona, the show collapses the boundaries between
genres and fictional and real space on the show.

The intros to Running Man episodes based on Korean dramas
While the show uses external media to format entire episodes, Running Man also
references a wide array of cultural touchpoints within each episode. The Running Man
production team uses music that elicits very clear connotations and feelings through their
references to other media products. For example, when the Running Man cast members started
their trip across the Han River in cardboard boats, the Pirates of the Caribbean theme song
accompanied them. The choice of music both increases tension and draws comedic parallels by
referring to dramatic voyages on the high seas in pirate ships with the slow pace of the cast
members rowing their small cardboard boats.
Adopting a fictional setting or concept for an episode again creates a special style of
game space in the show. The added emphasis on acknowledged fictional elements that the show
and cast still treat as “real” works to set the program in a limbo between the real world and the
entirely fictional worlds of the parodied media. Using both locally popular media and globally
recognizable stories and characters, Running Man negotiates the program’s position in both
South Korea and the global media landscape. By layering the references to other text and

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enmeshing them within the show, Running Man creates a rich text tied to other media and a
broader culture. By escaping its textual borders, Running Man’s vast narrative suggests a shared
universe that exists in the space between and within its intertextual references.
Conclusion: An Intimate Universe
Ultimately, Running Man’s complex intertextuality reveals a vast narrative that posits a
shared universe that compromises between fiction and reality. In her analysis on Japanese
tarento, Lukas repeatedly articulates how the intertextual circulation of performers creates a
“meta-reality that is suspended between fiction and reality” (30). Lukas proposes the intertextual
circulation of the performers creates “a culture of intimate televisuality, participation in which
generates a vital sense of membership in a nationally based televisual community” (30). To
Lukas this intimate televisuality differentiates Japanese media and creates programming that
carries meaning to be specifically understood on a national level. Running Man reveals running
characters that create a culture of intimate television beyond specific national boundaries and
instead uses its televisual density in the way complex fictional narratives do in the creation of a
shared universe. The intimacy Running Man creates builds a feeling of membership with the
program’s cast.
Running Man has become one of the most internationally successful Korean real-variety
shows outside of South Korea. Early in the program’s airing, the cast was shocked by the huge
turnout of fans waiting for them at the airport when they arrived in Thailand for an episode. The
program grew in international popularity and resulted in very successful Chinese and Vietnamese
adaptions. These adaptions specifically emphasized their connection to the original South Korean
program through the inclusion of the original cast for certain episodes or missions. These

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instances reveal the range of the show’s success and the international importance and relevance
of the original cast’s character contributions.
Even as the program draws on meaning from the broader television community within
South Korea, because it also creates complex density contained within the show an audience is
able to enjoy and slowly acquire the deeper meanings the show relies on. The cast members
bring to their characters all the other media performances and roles they have. This already
begins to connect the program to music, through Kim Jong-kook, Gary, and HaHa’s early
careers, as well as to films and dramas, through Song Ji-hyo and Lee Kwang-soo’s acting
careers. By simply playing themselves in Running Man and referencing their previous roles, the
cast brings a plethora of connections directly into the program’s content. The production team
then extends the show’s references by taking advantage of the real-variety format’s flexibility
and basing episodes, games, or moments on well-known and recognizable media texts. Acting
both as inspiration for episode themes and as complex media figures themselves, the show’s
guests also connect the program as a paratext for their primary media appearances.
As a result, Running Man’s characters use the density of their references to create the
appearance of a shared universe across different media and programs. This shared universe
creates the need for a level of knowledge about its components that builds the intimacy.

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Chapter 3: Intimacy in Running Man: Reality, Fiction, and Celebrity
Scholarship on both reality television and complex narratives wrestles with the
increasingly blurred distinctions between reality and fiction. Scholars and viewers alike struggle
to rectify reality television’s paradox that it claims to depict authentic reality even as the reality it
depicts is clearly packaged and mediatized. As complex narratives turn towards intertextual and
transmedia approaches, fictional works begin to integrate our everyday surroundings as they
present themselves as a facet of reality. On television, reality shows and fictional complex
narratives arose as a response to the television industry shifting towards catering to a more niche
but engaged viewer.
Running Man actively merges aspects of action, setting, and cast aligned with an
adherence to reality with aspects that emphasize the mediated or “fictional” elements.
Throughout the show, the cast members’ spontaneous reacting gets juxtaposed with their
exaggerated overreacting. As the cast members mix “authentic” and “performed” actions, the
show also combines the concepts of a filmed setting and a film set. Running Man blends the
barriers between the mediatized celebrity cast and the unknown crew. The show’s transparent
depiction of the real and the unreal’s fusion through acting, setting and cast results in an
acknowledgement of the show’s own contrivance. The reflexive approach to the blurred
distinctions between reality and fiction provide the viewers with access points to feel welcomed
into the program’s space and form deeper parasocial relationships with the on-screen celebrity
characters.
Reality Television, Reflexivity, and Celebrity
In the field of reality television, a show’s claim to portray reality acts as a foundational
tenet of the television style. In Reality Squared: Televisual Discourse on the Real, James

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Friedman lists “participants who are non-actors, minimal scripting, drama or narrative created
through structure and editing” as fundamental components of reality television programs’
depiction of reality (18). From Friedman’s list, participants who are non-actors bear the largest
amount of importance placed on them. The non-actor’s ordinariness signifies the genre’s
characteristic claim to the real (Grindstaff). However, reality television programs have also
successfully featured celebrity casts, claiming to give audiences a look at the real person behind
the celebrity. As Su Holmes points out in her article “It’s a Jungle Out There,” this claim to
represent the real person comes into direct conflict with the program’s performative, mediatized
space.
Because celebrities are mediatized individuals, they cannot contribute an element of
realism that the usual non-actor participants contribute to the television style. According to Han-
Yul Lee, because the real-variety programs are celebrity-based, they lack the globally understood
key element of reality television’s claim to depicting reality: a non-professional cast. As a result,
Lee argues that South Korean real-variety programs localize reality television’s need to portray
the ordinary citizen by breaking the fourth wall and exposing the staff, crew, and production as a
whole. This revelation of the production space within the program demonstrates the use of
reflexivity to override the celebrity’s image and indicate a faithfulness to the real.
The presence of a well-known celebrity cast fundamentally alters the perception and
necessity of the programs’ reflexivity. Mark Andrejevic mentions reflexivity in reality television
through featuring the production process as part of the content. He uses the examples of shots of
the production crew, participant’s discussions of cameras, and special behind-the-scenes
episodes as ways programs make the production process more accessible to viewers as well as
enhance a show’s promise of reality (89). However, in reality television, the use of reflexivity

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creates interesting tension between the form’s promise of reality and the acknowledgement of
contrivance. By fully revealing the fact that what is seen on camera exists in an artificially
produced scenario, the reality programs hope to demonstrate their commitment to displaying
reality in its entirety.
In order to rectify the apparent contradiction posed by celebrity reality television, Holmes
turns to Joshua Gamson’s argument that the audience’s relation to celebrities takes the playful
shape of a believing game that rides the axis between fiction and reality. For Gamson’s
audiences, their perception of what is real or not real does not alter their enjoyment of the
celebrity text; rather, it leads to different readings. Reality television superimposes the real and
the mediatized to create a similar space where the viewer can traverse a spectrum of belief
between authenticity and contrivance. Holmes maintains that “however self-reflexive and playful
the contexts may have become; it is evident that the illusion of access and intimacy remains the
dominant structuring force in celebrity texts” (54). With its reliance on celebrity cast members
and the larger celebrity structure, Running Man deals closely with managing the celebrity text.
How does the real-variety programing use its “self-reflexive and playful” methods to continue to
reinforce the illusion of access and intimacy?
As Yoon Tae-jin points out in his study on Korean reality television, as the relationship
between cast and crew breaks down, the relationship between the cast, crew, and viewer also
changes (29). Yoon claims that through the interactions between cast and crew the viewer gets to
feel as though they are there watching the production as it occurs. This statement can be
extended to the distinctions between film set and filmed setting and the members’ onscreen
actions. The staff, as non-celebrities, can take the place of an ordinary average person in reality
television, but they also have access to the on-screen celebrities that is unattainable for viewers.

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The acknowledgement of the filmed setting and the cast’s performative actions provides the
viewers’ access to the program’s production. The staff’s friendly and playful relationship with
Running Man cast members actualizes the show’s fans’ parasocial relationship with the on-
screen celebrities. Running Man’s reflexive approach blends fiction and reality as a way to
provide the viewers’ greater access to the program.
Spontaneous Reacting and Exaggerated Overreacting
The Running Man cast plays with the perceived authenticity or inauthenticity of their
actions in a nod to savvy viewers. The members exaggerate their actions for the camera while
acknowledging they are exaggerated, reflect on how their actions might be portrayed by the
show and perceived by viewers, and candidly reveal the production process through their actions.
As a result, on-screen cast members acknowledge their settings’ pretenses, but through their
unabashed open revelation of what is usually obscured from viewers they regain credibility as
purveyors of reality. By claiming the contrived nature of their actions in front of the cameras, the
Running Man cast members provide access to the audience to revel in the mixture of contrivance
and authenticity within the show.
The Running Man cast members intentionally exaggerate their reactions for the camera.
While sometimes these overreactions pass without additional commentary, often a cast member
or guest will mention or call out the artificial reaction. For example, the other members often
tease Ji-Suk-jin for wanting additional camera time and butting into the conversation with non-
sequiturs. While sometimes the other members jokingly react by pretending to fall asleep as he is
talking, other times they withhold all reaction to what he is saying until he angrily informs them
to respond. In these instances, while not clearly scripted, the cast members’ conversations are
clearly and intentionally played up for and informed by the camera.

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While completing a particularly strenuous or arduous mission, members will often
rhetorically exclaim aloud asking what purpose they are going to this extent, that what they are
doing is just for a game, or how amazed they are at ending up in such a situation. During these
moments, the cast member’s asides remind the audience that they are on camera playing
contrived games for the explicit purpose of the viewer’s entertainment. If a contestant on
Survivor or Jeopardy asked why they must go to such an extent to win, it would create
dissonance with the stated purpose of appearing on the program. Because the purpose of Running
Man is not to choose a winner through competition or manufacture fame and celebrity, but for
recurring cast members to create entertaining scenarios on a weekly basis, these exclamations
contribute to situating both the cast members and the show as a whole within that goal.
Even more revealing instances of reflexivity are when the Running Man cast members
over exaggerate product placement (PPL) and openly discuss using their onscreen endorsements
to finance the show. Often products used during games such as phones or food will be sponsors
of the show. The cast members are sometimes called out for their excessive and unnatural praise
of the sponsored products either by other cast members, by the present production team, or by
the post-production editors. In Episode 453, after Ji Suk-jin makes an awkward comment, Yoo
Jae-suk jokes that a condition in the product placement contract stated that Ji Suk-jin should not
say anything about the products. In fact, there are so many instances of the cast incorporating
acknowledged product placement into their comedy that the official Running Man YouTube
channel created a fifteen-minute-long compilation of the show’s “excessive PPLs” that has since
been viewed more than 8 million times. These moments let the viewer in on some of the
commercial workings of the show and see behind an additional level of inauthenticity.

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Specifically, with product placement, the cast members reveal a function of the show that even
they acknowledge is supposed to remain natural and hidden to the viewer.
Episode 530 fully displays the members discussing acting up for the camera as well as
their acknowledgement of the specific form of space they are in on the show. During this
episode, three actresses, who do not frequently guest on entertainment programs, appear on
Running Man for the first time to promote their new drama. Lee Ji-ah, one of the actresses, gets
shocked by the members’ enthusiastic response to the guests’ introductions. Yoo Jae-suk
mentions her surprise, which leads the members demonstrating their excessive and frivolous
reactions. A caption on the screen pops up claiming that reactions are very important in variety
shows. Throughout the episode, the members frequently refer to Lee Ji-ah’s discomfort in the
real-variety show in order to comment on how ridiculous their job is, yet also demonstrating their
skill at drawing comedy and humorous situations out of unsure and inexperienced guests.
With the exaggerated acting, the cast members portray their actions in full awareness of
the audience and production process. They exhibit this in many ways from asking for a scene to
be edited out to claiming the audience could not understand a cast member’s choice to thanking
the viewers for staying with the program for a long time. Each of these actions reveals the cast
member’s awareness of the viewing audience as they perform in front of cameras. Rather than
obscuring their knowledge of their mediatized space, the cast members openly play with that
information bringing greater comedic effect or raising the stakes of different situations. This
becomes most apparent when the cast members with children, Yoo Jae-suk, Ji Suk-jin, and
HaHa, shout out during missions for their children to change the channel so they do not see
whatever embarrassing or awkward situation their father is currently caught up in. These call
outs emphasize the cast’s familial relationship with specific members of the audience. By

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including family members in the show’s imagined audience, the cast members work to create the
perception of a close bond between the cast and the show’s perceived audience. Because the
audience is an ephemeral and undefined category consisting of many disparate individuals, the
ability to include the cast member’s families under the same category as the average viewer
creates an additional feeling of closeness.
Filmed Setting and Film Set
As the cast members fluctuate between spontaneous reaction and exaggerated over-
reacting, the setting around them mirrors the fluid mixture of contrivance and authenticity.
Running Man creates a hybrid film set and filmed setting that situates the show’s action both
firmly within its privileged, mediatized game space, but also firmly within the real and mundane
film set.
One of the main ways real-variety programs exhibit reflexivity is by revealing the on-site
production within the filmed space. Han-Yul Lee argues that South Korean real-variety programs
break the fourth wall and expose the staff, crew, and production as a whole. He separates the
exposure of the production crew into three different categories: exposure by “mistake” through
using footage that includes the elements of the production such as equipment or staff members;
intentional exposure of the production crew as a necessary mechanism within the production;
and finally, intentional exposure of the production crew as cast members themselves. In addition
to fulfilling all of Lee’s categories, Running Man’s exposure of its own production and how it
incorporates that exposure into the show’s final form extend beyond Lee’s categories and
theorization.
Throughout Running Man, images of the production crew as they film the cast members
are incorporated into the episodes. These are often seen in establishing shots that situate the cast

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in a physical location and in front of the cameras, and as a natural result of the cast members’
chaotic/spontaneous reactions and interactions with the film set. Running Man is a big
production involving numerous locations and hundreds of cameras each episode, including drone
cameras, jimmy rigs, and personal camera operators. A camera man is assigned to each of the
Running Man cast members, which during large-scale missions, results in unavoidable exposure
of the crew members.
Part of this exposure comes out of necessity given Korean real-variety shows’
commitment to showcasing spontaneous reactions. While American and European reality
television shows must often ensure a level of scripting to minimize risk and to receive approval
from a broad range of producers, executives, and networks, Korean real-variety shows achieve
success by highlighting impromptu, spontaneous reactions and interactions that prevent redoing a
shot or scene that may inadvertently reveal the show’s production.
Although some of the production’s exposure can be attributed to the need created by
unscripted action, other times the production team intentionally incorporates elements of the film
set directly into an episode’s theme. In Episode 541, the members must sift through clues to find
out which house hides a gold prize. Kim Jong-kook ultimately figures out that the production
team hid the gold under the jimmy jib (지미 집) camera which is a play on the Korean word for
house (집) . In this case, the entire premise of the episode centers around the presence of
production equipment in the filmed space and the cast members’ interaction with it.
By merging the filmed setting where the cast members act in front of the cameras with
the entirety of the show’s film set inclusive of the crew and equipment, the show collapses the
distinctions between the mediated fiction meant for the viewers’ consumption and the
unmediated reality of the production process as it creates the show. The resulting reflexivity

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creates a final product that appears to acknowledge Gamson’s audience’s fluidity between
reading celebrity text’s authenticity and contrivance. In a sense, Running Man does internally
what complex narratives do externally by extending the special space of fiction into the real
world.
The lack of differentiation expands the game space to include areas that would previously
be off limits. Because the film set gets incorporated into the filmed setting, the cast members also
actively reference the camera set up and include the cameramen in their game play. Running
Man members often disguise themselves as part of the crew during hide-and-seek missions. At
other moments during hide-and-seek games, the cast members yell at their personal camera
operators to hide themselves or take the camera to film themselves and send the cameraman
away to avoid detection. On the reverse side of these actions, the members also use the
production set-up to make deductions about where something or someone might be hidden or
who might have a hidden role that episode. In Episode 547, Yoo Jae-suk successfully finds the
members on the other team by looking amongst the crew and following the direction of where a
suspicious looking cameraman was looking.

Yoo Jae-suk finding other members hiding amongst the crew and by discovering their cameraman
Members often accuse one another of having a unique role during an episode if they have more
than one camera and producer following them around as they complete missions. In these
instances, the program’s cast unavoidably incorporates the presence of the filmed set into their
approach to tasks or challenges.

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In Lee’s analysis, he explains that in a film or scripted television sense, many instances of
unintended exposure of the crew would be considered bloopers or “NG” cuts. In Running Man,
even beyond the exposure of a camera or microphone, moments that would otherwise be
considered bloopers or mistakes become naturally incorporated in the episode. During Episode
66, a producer falls backwards over a bench while trying to warn the members not to fall. Not
only do the cameras capture the entire moment, but the cast members actively interact with and
teasingly berate the producer for not being more careful. During Episode 379, Yoo Jae-suk loses
a camera when it gets stuck in a tree as the members attempt to feed crocodiles. Again, the whole
process of the crew members reacting and retrieving the lost camera appears on-screen during
the episode. Earlier in that same episode, a cameraman moves too close to the water and gets
yelled at to back away. While these instances are not necessarily noteworthy in themselves, the
regular inclusion of these moments within an episode reveals a tendency not to hide production
blunders, but instead showcase them. By exposing the production process, the program attempts
to portray a transparent approach to revealing reality.
A similar instance occurs when the show reveals that the camera and the production team
lost a guest or member as they hide or run away. In Episode 138, Running Man members corner
the rising star actor, Kim Woo-bin, in a supply closet. In order to escape, the guest jumps out of
the small window into the hallway, leaving behind the camera team and the encroaching Running
Man cast. The only image of this escape is a grainy, zoomed-in shot from a hallway security
camera. In another escape attempt, Running Man member Lee Kwang-soo slips into an elevator
just as the doors are closing again leaving both his chasers and his camera team behind.
Including moments like these within episodes serves two purposes. The first is situating a
mission in the context of the crew and its limitations. The second purpose for including these

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moments are that they highlight how seriously the cast and guests play the games. By leaving
behind the filming crew, the on-screen participants appear to believe it is more important for
them to succeed within the game than appear on camera. As the program’s action sometimes
happens outside of the ability to capture it on camera, it creates the appearance of the show
existing in the larger, everyday world beyond just what is seen on camera.
Beyond the filmed setting including the film set, Running Man often uses every day,
commonplace locations as backdrops for its games and missions. The original purpose of the
show centered around showcasing these recognizable urban locations. Kim and Li claim Running
Man exhibits a degree of “interactive self-reflexivity” through the show’s blurring of boundaries
between public and private spaces (164). The interactivity comes from the recognizing and being
able to inhabit mission locations associated with mundane tasks such as commuting, working,
shopping, or other leisure activities. Within these unremarkable spaces, Running Man brings its
special, mediatized game space. Now what was previously an office building is now the arena
for dramatic chases, betrayals, and tenuous alliances or the cast members inhabit a random
metropolitan street as superheroes or royalty. The extraordinary and unusual abilities granted
within the Running Man games mesh with the real-world locations to create what Kim and Li
highlight as an essential part of the show’s viewing pleasure. As the show utilizes recognizable,
everyday spaces it again brings the real, unmediated world into the filmed setting which
collapses boundaries between reality and fiction. The cast members exist in this combined space
as celebrities and cast members, but as Kim and Li continue to point out, the show further erodes
the binaries of the ordinary person and the celebrity as well as the distinctions between
consumption and production.

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Mediatized Cast and Unknown Crew
Beyond just the exposure of production practices, the production crew appears on screen
in various capacities. Just as the Running Man cast members fulfill different on-screen roles, the
crew on screen also take on the role of participants, studio audiences, extras, and hosts. The
production crew’s exposure foregrounds the show’s creation. But as the filmed setting envelops
their appearance, the crew, as ordinary people, enter the semi-fictional, contrived space of the
show providing access to the celebrity cast and the show’s world through their position as an
ordinary person in a privileged space.
In a number of episodes and countless games, the Running Man production crew either
competes against or works with the cast members during missions. The Running Man cast
members have played dodgeball, games of chance, had chicken fights, and arm-wrestled with the
crew – just to name a few examples. In addition to one-off games, a recurring episode format pits
the cast and crew against each other for the entire episode. The most iconic of these episodes is
the 2013 end of year special where the Running Man members had to complete increasingly
ridiculous and challenging missions (such as building a boat made out of cardboard and rowing
across the Han River) under time limits set by the show’s producers. The winning team would
enact a list of requirements for the future direction of the show while the losing team would
receive the penalty at the end of the episode. Another instance of the crew actively getting
incorporated into the show was in Episode 261 when the members’ personal camera operators
also received the penalty for having to find name tags in a haunted house. During these episodes
and games, the crew exists on equal footing as the cast as participants. They must abide by the
same game rules they have set for the cast members and exist within the same filmed space.

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Regardless of if the crew actively participates in the episode as participants of the games
or missions, their presence also contributes to the finished episode by fulfilling the role of studio
audience. During especially funny, shocking, or chaotic moments in the show, the crew’s
reactions will be caught on camera. In these instances, the crew of non-actors who, unlike the
cast, is not openly reacting for the camera works to authenticate the humor and unscripted
moments. If the in-person crew found that joke or slapstick funny or was surprised by an
unexpected turn of events, then those moments inherently feel more unscripted and spontaneous.
Historically, studio audiences have been used to facilitate the feeling of liveness and intimacy on
television. Here the reaction shots of the production crew achieve that same goal.
Certain episodes or missions would also require bit parts that Running Man crew
members would play. Most recognizably, the youngest floor director, Dong-wan, became a
feature of Running Man episodes through his serious but cringey demeanor as he took on a
multitude of different roles, from a mysterious shaman on a bridge to the final runner of the
“Running Olympics” torch. These many minor parts and elaborate costumes earned him the title
master of disguises.

FD Dong-won and a couple of his many disguises
In addition to FD Dong-wan, other crew members will dress up in iconic yellow track suits to
distribute mission cards, give directions, or facilitate missions while on screen. While some
crew, like FD Dong-wan, become known for their extra parts, all of the crew that appear on
screen in these episodes function as extras and fulfill fundamental roles in the show.

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In addition to visual representations of the crew caught onscreen, including just the voice
of the producer extends the diegetic space of the show beyond the on-screen members and
contributes to breaking the fourth wall. Because the cast and guests on the program often do not
know in advance what the games, missions, or episode themes will be for any given episode, the
on-site producers inform the onscreen participants of game rules, acceptable actions or answers,
and generally run the challenges. In these moments, the production crew takes on the position of
host within the program. According to Frances Bonner, the current formulation of the usual on-
camera television host places them as an intermediary between viewers and participants or
guests. These television hosts on game shows and reality programs are intermediaries between
the ordinary contestants in the show and the ordinary viewer at home. In this case, the production
crew as host acts as an intermediary between the ordinary viewers and the celebrities on-screen.
Because the production team subsumes the role of the ordinary person as well as host, the
production team speaks both to the viewers and as the viewers.
A friendly relationship between the cast and crew of Korean real-variety shows is
essential for the successful implementation of the program. These close off-screen relationships
appear in specific on-screen dynamics between the cast and crew. The friendly banter, equal
footing, and sharing of personal information between the cast and the crew actualize the viewer’s
parasocial relationship with the onscreen celebrity.
Running Man cast members and crew have frequent and casual repartee back and forth
during episodes. This takes the form of playful teasing and poking fun at each other. When the
production team makes a blunder, the members do not hold back from commenting on it. The
members often jokingly complain to the producers when they are asked to complete a mission
that is exceptionally ridiculous or distasteful. During these instances the production team can be

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heard and seen laughing and playfully responding to the cast members. One of the times Lee
Kwang-soo went to extremes even the production crew was unprepared for, one of the producers
had to run across the mud flat after him, telling him the game was not meant to be so extreme. As
Kwang-soo returned from his muddy jog, the other cast members berated him for stressing out
the crew until he apologized to the onlooking crew members. These amiable interactions
foreground the personal relationships between the cast and crew within the on-screen content.
This trusting and playful relationship also allows the Running Man cast members to
diverge from the production team’s wishes, sometimes to the point of “breaking” games. In
Episode 502, the Running Man cast members are losing a 7 v 1 hidden mission against Kim
Jong-kook when they get the chance to play a game where he is blindfolded. The seven other
members completely ignore the game they are supposed to be playing and instead focus on their
now not-so-hidden mission of putting stickers on Kim Jong-kook. The producer can be heard off
screen pleading with the members to play the game at hand.
Another example is when the Running Man members had to take turns buying items in a
market by linking the last letter with the first letter of the next item. After a couple of tries the
members got frustrated and started creating more and more ridiculous sentences to connect the
first letter with the random item they brought. When Song Ji-hyo returned with a radish (무),
instead of finding an item that starts with the same letters Kim Jong-kook instead brought
“scarily delicious kimchi (무섭게 맛있는 김치).” As the members discussed their plans to
implement this strategy, a subtitle popped up on the screen questioning that the members dared
change the rules of the game right in front of the producers. As the cast members insist on
increasingly outrageous answers, the producer from off screen complains that their answers are
getting to be too much. Eventually, the producers let the cast members pass the mission even

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with their precarious answers. During these moments the cast members show that they also exert
control over the on-screen situation and work mutually with the production team to create the
episodes. The cast members would only be able to continually get away with such blatant
disobedience if they have a close relationship on relatively equal footing with the producers.
Throughout the show, the clear divisions between cast and crew begin to disappear. For
example, during the first two months of 2017, the concepts, guests, and some of the games were
thought of by the cast as part of the Member’s Week special project. For this special project,
each member was allowed to design an episode in a way of their choosing. Another brief
example of the cast taking on production roles is during Episode 408. The production team tells
the cast members that the rules for how they determine who will pay for their expensive trip is up
to them. The on-screen cast responded that they had talked the previous night and had come up
with thirty different possible games they could play. During Episode 272, for the special 100
versus 100 theme, the cast members had to use their personal connections to try and cast an
additional 93 participants to compete in a final battle. By allowing the onscreen cast members to
step into the roles of producers, even for a short time, the distinctions between the two roles
begin to slightly collapse. As Yoon mentioned in his study on Korean reality television, because
the relationship between cast and crew changes, the relationship between the cast, crew, and
viewer also collapses (29).
One of the clearest displays of the close relationship between the cast and crew on
Running Man was during the mission when the cast earned mission funds by auctioning off their
signed nametags to the crew. Because the cast knew that the production crew would not value
their name tags very highly, the members added certain incentives and displayed their personal
knowledge of the crew. Kwang-soo knew that a crew member had recently got double eyelid

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surgery and had emceed his cameraman’s wedding. Other cast also demonstrated knowledge of
crew members relationship status, family situation, and other general personal information. The
crew likewise showed friendly and lighthearted interactions with the crew. From Yoo Jae-suk’s
cheeky cameraman, Ryu Kwong-ryul, winning the auction in order to slap Yoo Jae-suk on the
forehead, to Gary’s former cameraman sadly commenting that Gary had left the show. This
extended interaction demonstrates the cast and crew’s close personal relationships.
Crew During Postproduction
Beyond the exposure of the crew on-screen and incorporated into the filmed space and
the casts’ actions and acknowledgement of production, the crew also contributes to the real-
variety show’s reflexivity through post-production on-screen commentary in the form of editing
and graphics. South Korean real-variety shows make liberal use of graphics and editing to
enhance the on-screen action. This can range from a simple exclamation point to connote shock
to narrating entire interactions between cast members. The presence of these graphics alone
disrupts a purely observational style of reality television by adding an additional level of
mediation. While the graphics and subtitles often serve a functional purpose like making sure
audio is understood properly or concisely summarizing a game’s rules, Running Man’s post-
production effects intentionally call attention to the show’s production.
These graphics reveal the acknowledgement of the authenticity-inauthenticity spectrum
Gamson’s audiences exist along while consuming celebrity texts. The postproduction crew joins
forces with the viewer and the cast members’ calling into question the separation between
fictional and real components. The post-production editing sometimes also calls out the
inauthenticity of the on-screen action through graphics and subtitles. For example, during
Episode 530 Jeon So-min excessively acts as Yang Se-chan’s romantic interest, subtitles pop up

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that label them a capitalist couple (자본주의 커플) with another subtitle that claims that Jeon
Soo-min is just working (일하는 중입니다). Similarly, in Episode 508, a subtitle states that the
massage coupon the members are enthusiastically fighting over is not product placement even
though they are reacting excessively. In these moments, the graphics and subtitles point out the
inauthenticity of the action on screen, even as the members do not, while also calling attention to
the fact that the episode is edited and modified during post-production.
Like with the use of subtitles and graphics, instead of trying to obscure the act of editing,
the editors call attention to the fact that they manipulate the final product with noticeable flashy
editing. The editors will often cut between still frames to capture one moment in a humorous
way. In Episode 175, Ji Suk-jin pulls off Yoo Jae-suk’s swim trunks during a game (in slow
motion). The editors then insert still frames taken the moment after his pants come off to the tune
of Beethoven’s 5
th
Symphony.

Still frames set to Beethoven’s 5
th
Symphony during Episode 175
Another example comes from Episode 209 when idol guest, Kai, slips on some mud next to the
mud wrestling pit for the game. After one of the other guests remarks that it looked like he was
dancing, the editors reversed and replayed Kai’s fall to the tune of one of his idol group’s songs.
Through these moments of clear modification of the filmed reality through editing, the Running
Man production team once again rejects the documentary filming and editing style often
associated with portrayals of reality.
By emphasizing the presence of the production team in the on-screen material and
acknowledging the program’s edited nature, Running Man also emphasizes the spontaneity of the

73
filmed action. In both Episode 293 and Episode 439, Lee Kwang-soo, known for being unlucky,
loses a luck-based pirate game against all odds on the very first try. The cast and crew react with
shock and surprise at the extent of his bad luck and the cast members on-screen tell the editors
not to edit the footage to prove that Kwang-soo’s bad luck was not manipulated. The editors
oblige by rewinding the just aired clip and showing the same unlucky choice from a single
unedited camera angle. As a result, the postproduction actions compliment the cast’s establishing
their authenticity through their open acknowledgment of their filmed environment. The show
calls attention to its construction even as the noticeable editing attempts highlight the veracity of
the on-screen action.
Ultimately, everything that gets included within a finished episode first goes through
postproduction decisions. Even if the exposure of crew or production equipment at certain times
cannot be avoided due to limited angles and the show’s unscripted format, other instances of
revealed production practices on-screen and acknowledgement of the cast members of their
filmed environment would only be included through conscious intentional choice on the part of
editors, directors, and producers.
Conclusion
The beginning of the chapter asked how does the real-variety programing use its self-
reflexive and playful methods to continue to reinforce the illusion of access and intimacy? As the
cast members’ actions, the show’s setting, and the inclusion of the production crew self-
reflexively and playfully collapses the distinctions between the privileged mediatized space and
the real world, the show creates the illusion of access and intimacy to the celebrity cast members.
Gamson argues audiences’ relation to celebrities takes the playful shape of a believing
game that rides the axis between fiction and reality. Running Man takes that believing game and

74
acknowledges it within the text itself. The cast and crew validate the viewers’ continuous
movement between fiction and reality by self-reflexively interacting with the show’s
environment. As Running Man places the cast, crew, and viewers within the same axis of belief,
the show creates new avenues for intimacy.

75
Conclusion: Running Characters and Authorship
While the Running Man cast members act out a skit about a mountain climbing club in
Episode 578, HaHa suddenly refers to Yoo Jae-suk as Director Yoo. Yoo Jae-suk looks into the
camera and responds by saying “You are seeing us on Sunday, as well as Saturday. This is a
continuous story.” Ji Suk-jin follows this statement up with “Part one: Hangout with Yoo. Part
two: Running Man.” As he is saying this, a subtitle pops up explaining that the character of
Director Yoo appears in both Hangout with Yoo, which airs on Saturdays, and Running Man,
which airs on Sundays. In the twenty seconds it takes for the whole exchange to occur, the cast
members draw on their intertextual characters to contribute depth to the narrative, merge their
actions in a fully fictional skit setting with their reflexive acknowledgement of their filmed
performances, fluidly transition between interacting together as cast and directly addressing the
audience, and reveal the inclusion of a shared universe across South Korean real-variety shows.
As running characters, the Running Man celebrity cast members have characters that
consistently and recognizably exist across different media over an extended period of time in a
way that blurs the boundaries between reality and fiction. In the skit with Director Yoo and
Manager Ha, the characters of Yoo Jae-suk and HaHa connect not only the two current shows
Hangout with Yoo and Running Man, but also their characters in previous programs, like the
recurring Munhwa Company skit on Infinite Challenge. The show reveals running characters that
create a culture of intimate television beyond specific national boundaries and instead uses its
televisual density in the way complex fictional narratives do in the creation of a shared universe.
This brief connection formed between all three shows demonstrates a style of
worldbuilding reliant on shared characters propelled by the performance of recognizable cast
members in different shows. Running Man’s running characters unavoidably link the program to

76
their other shows as crossover episodes and spinoffs connect fictional, scripted programs. Each
appearance of a Running Man cast member acting as themselves becomes an entry point through
which viewers can approach the program.
The show’s inherent marriage to the real world and the depth of references it provides
differentiates the unscripted television personas from scripted characters. As the production and
the cast members exhibit self-reflexive intertextuality, the show’s mediated landscape and
special game space get incorporated and melded with its portrayal of reality. The Running Man
members straddle the distinctions between fictional and real by layering further elements of
make believe into the show’s already separate mediatized space. During this moment in Episode
578, the cast plays as members of a mountain climbing club. Within the skit, the members throw
around a variety of different characters: from Director Yoo and Manager Ha to Song Ji-hyo as a
wealthy middle aged woman interested in real estate. As the cast members drift between
different registers of reality and fiction within the program, the very boundaries distinguishing
one from the other begin to break down. The cast members simultaneously act within the
fictional scene and refer to the presence of the camera and their filmed setting. Yoo Jae-suk
directly acknowledges the viewer watching the program and refers to his work in a separate
program while still partially immersed within the fictional skit. By owning the artifcial nature of
their actions in front of the cameras, the Running Man cast members join the audience to revel in
the mixture of contrivance and authenticity within the show.
Running Man’s cast members fluidly transition between roles that primarily function as
bridges between the content and viewers and roles that emphasize their everyday ordinariness
and authenticity. During this moment, Yoo Jae-suk utilizes direct address associated with the
function of a host while still actively contributing to the ongoing game as a participant. Just as

77
the show’s running characters disrupt the boundaries between reality and fiction to create new
avenues for viewer engagement, the collapse of distinctions between the cast members’ on-
screen roles allows for greater access and intimacy for the celebrity cast members.
Because the Running Man cast members create on-screen characters who exist across
various media texts and are continually informed by real life events, the performers exhibit a
degree of agency and ownership over their on-screen characters and, by extension, the show’s
narrative. While other factors such as the production team, talent agencies, management, and
public press undoubtedly play a role in the creation of television personalities, the reliance on the
character’s spontaneous reactions, movements across multiple texts, and the interwoven
connection to reality places a style of ownership unique to unscripted media squarely on the
performer. Running Man has rotated through a number of different producers and directors, but
the show most fundamentally alters when the cast itself changes. Each cast member’s
recognizable character over different networks and decades of televised appearances presents an
option to view their celebrity persona beyond one show, production team, or talent management.
As Ju Oak Kim acknowledges in her article on the real-variety show New Journey to the
West, the authorship of real-variety programs and reality television overall is rarely studied.
While Kim focuses on the contributions of the program’s director, I would argue the importance
of running characters to the creation and engagement of real-variety programs raises the question
of their claim to authorship. The centrality of the Running Man cast members’ on-screen
characters to the formation and function of the show suggests that they are the authors of not
only their own on-screen characters, but the program overall. Further research is needed to
understand how running characters author the narratives that merge reality and fiction while

78
creating the illusion of access and intimacy and what that means for celebrity studies and media
landscapes.
This thesis has attempted to contribute to the global scholarship on the function of
character, narrative, and celebrity in reality television by analyzing on-screen personas in the
long-running Korean real-variety show Running Man. Ultimately, the running characters in
Running Man reveal an intertextual character-driven televisual system which collapses
distinctions between fiction and reality and results in a semi-real, semi-fictional, self-reflexive
universe which provides new avenues for viewer engagement.

79
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Creator Collins-Laine, Ursula Graal (author)

Core Title Running characters: how the character-centered world of the South Korean real-variety show Running Man collapses textual boundaries between the real and the fictional

School College of Letters, Arts and Sciences

Degree Master of Arts

Degree Program East Asian Area Studies

Degree Conferral Date 2022-05

Publication Date 01/20/2022

Defense Date 01/20/2022

Publisher University of Southern California (original), University of Southern California. Libraries (digital)

Tag celebrity,Character,Fiction,Games,intertextuality,OAI-PMH Harvest,reality,reality television,real-variety shows,reflexivity,South Korean television,vast narratives

Format application/pdf (imt)

Language English

Contributor Electronically uploaded by the author (provenance)

Advisor Choe, Youngmin (committee chair), Govil, Nitin (committee member), Imre, Aniko (committee member)

Creator Email ucollins@usc.edu,ursa.major.1764@gmail.com

Permanent Link (DOI) https://doi.org/10.25549/usctheses-oUC110520224

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