This article explores the issue of media literacy in Korean language education, considering the changes in the ways of communication in the society. The main argument of the article is that the subject of Korean needs to reconsider its curriculum in order to teach the students how to communicate through diverse media, and therefore to moves beyond the traditional, print-based literacy towards media literacy. The aims of media education as ‘reflexive cultural education’ are then discussed as making students active and reflexive ‘readers’ and ‘writers’ of media texts. Following this, the article explores the role of the teacher of media education as providing the students with relevant competences of media criticism and production. The article also argues that the perspectives of reflexive cultural education to teach the complex aspects of media texts, i.e., agencies, categories, technologies, languages, audiences and representation - needs to apply to the teaching of the traditional, print-based texts, including literary texts.