The purpose of this essay explores a critical review of the Korean critical communication studies focused on the problematic of cultural studies and political economy in 2000s. The findings are as follows; The 'consumer turn' or 'audience turn' in new revisionism modelling John Fiske's cultural studies has been interpreted not to complement but to substitute the necessary criticism of the post-authoritarian media establishment of Korea at that time, arising identity crisis of Korean cultural studies as one of the critical camp. On other side, however, some political economy studies close to the unilinear theses of orthodox marxism has been appraised to neglect the complex process and structure of media and cultural production as well. While the press war between the market-dominant dailies and some progressive dailies has given rise to a whole debate as expected in consolidating period of Korean emerging democracy, the conjucturalism as modelled by Hall's 'authoritarian populism' failed to initiate a new theo tical practice in Korea. Finally, this review essay propose the some new research issues that would converge cultural studies and political economy, modernism and postmodernism; citizenship vs 'cultural citizenship'(valuing the private identity and gender) or Habermasian public sphere vs 'cultural public sphere', the culture of production, (modern)citizen/(postmodern)consumer(recently debated in English media policy), 'differentiation' in capitalist production and 'difference' in consumer sovereignty, 21c future vision of public service broadcasting as one of the 20c institutions.