The Korean Wave: Korean Popular Culture in Global Context

The rise in popularity of South Korean entertainment and culture began and is promoted as an official policy of the Korean government to revive the country's economy. This study examines cultural production and consumption, glocalization, the West versus. Asia, global race consciousness, and changing views of masculinity and femininity.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Release date: Feb 20, 2014
• ISBN: 9781137350282

Book preview

The Korean Wave

Korean Popular Culture in Global Context

Edited by

Yasue Kuwahara

THE KOREAN WAVE

Copyright © Yasue Kuwahara, 2014.

All rights reserved.

First published in 2014 by

PALGRAVE MACMILLAN®

in the United States—a division of St. Martin’s Press LLC,

175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010.

Where this book is distributed in the UK, Europe and the rest of the world, this is by Palgrave Macmillan, a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited, registered in England, company number 785998, of Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS.

Palgrave Macmillan is the global academic imprint of the above companies and has companies and representatives throughout the world.

Palgrave® and Macmillan® are registered trademarks in the United States, the United Kingdom, Europe and other countries.

ISBN: 978–1–137–35027–5

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

The Korean wave : Korean popular culture in global context / edited by Yasue Kuwahara.

    p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 978–1–137–35027–5 (alk. paper)

 1. Popular culture—Korea (South) 2. Mass media and culture—Korea (South) 3. Cultural industries—Korea (South) 4. Korea (South)—Civilization—21st century. I. Kuwahara, Yasue.

DS923.23.K58 2014

306.095195—dc23                                     2013033935

A catalogue record of the book is available from the British Library.

Design by Newgen Knowledge Works (P) Ltd., Chennai, India.

First edition: February 2014

10  9  8  7  6  5  4  3  2  1

To Martha Weaver

Contents

List of Tables

Introduction

Yasue Kuwahara

Part I   Production

1 Hallyu as a Government Construct: The Korean Wave in the Context of Economic and Social Development

John Walsh

2 Transformations of the Korean Media Industry by the Korean Wave: The Perspective of Glocalization

Hyejung Ju

3 The Politics of the Dancing Body: Racialized and Gendered Femininity in Korean Pop

Chuyun Oh

Part II   Glocalization

4 My Sassy Girl Goes around the World

Jennifer Jung-Kim

5 Gangnam Style as Format: When a Localized Korean Song Meets a Global Audience

Claire Seungeun Lee and Yasue Kuwahara

6 That’s My Man! Overlapping Masculinities in Korean Popular Music

Crystal S. Anderson

7 The S(e)oul of Hip-Hop: Locating Space and Identity in Korean Rap

Myoung-Sun Song

8 A Cultural Imperialistic Homecoming: The Korean Wave Reaches the United States

Sherri L. Ter Molen

Part III   Consumption

9 Winter Sonata and Yonsama, Ideal Love, and Masculinity: Nostalgic Desire and Colonial Memory

Young Eun Chae

10 Hanryu : Korean Popular Culture in Japan

Yasue Kuwahara

Appendix A: Questionnaire Questions

Appendix B

Notes on Contributors

Index

Tables

2.1 Import/Export Revenues of Korean television Programs, 1998–2010

5.1 Seoul as represented in Korean popular songs

5.2 Gangnam Style Parody: In South Korea

5.3 Gangnam Style Parody: Outside South Korea

Introduction

Yasue Kuwahara

Starting in Asia in the 1990s, the Korean Wave has become a worldwide phenomenon in recent years as attested by the phenomenal success of PSY’s Gangnam Style in 2012. Coined by the Chinese press, the Korean Wave refers to the popularity of Korean popular culture outside of South Korea.¹ This book analyzes the Korean Wave in order to answer the questions: (1) What makes it so appealing to the global audience? and (2) What does the success of Korean popular culture imply in terms of the hegemonic relationships that have existed among the countries? The book also examines the role of popular culture as a means of national as well as international economic policies. To a casual observer, the Korean Wave may not seem so remarkable in that it reflects the widespread popularity of Japanese popular culture during the 2000s, including anime, video games, and sushi. However, there exist significant differences between the two, for, first, the Korean Wave was begun and has been promoted as an official policy of the Korean government to revive the country’s economy. As such, popular culture products are tailored to appeal to the widest possible audience beyond the national and regional boundaries. Second, Korean popular culture owes its worldwide success largely to the coming of the digital age in that, in addition to the established routes, products are presented, distributed, and consumed through the Internet and social media by both entertainment agencies and enthusiastic fans. Additionally, the study of the appeal of Korean popular culture reveals the postcolonial relationship between Asia and the West, the issue of glocalization of culture, including cultural adoption and adaption, race/gender issues, cultural consumption, and the changes brought to South Korea by the Korean Wave. These issues are addressed in the essays written by scholars and researchers in diverse academic fields. The book consists of three thematic sections: (1) production—the government policies and the industries that produce Korean popular culture products; (2) glocalization—reception, adaptation, and effects of Korean popular culture in other countries as well as South Korea; and (3) consumption—the fan base and the implications of the popularity of Korean popular culture in the global context.

Since the end of the twentieth century, popular culture products have increasingly become important in South Korean economy. In the face of the financial crisis of 1998 that resulted in a 7 percent loss in GNP, then President Kim Dae-jung issued the Presidential Proclamation on Culture that subsequently established the Korea Institute of Design Promotion as well as the Korea Creative Content Agency and also gave priority to the cultural industries in the government budget. In 2005, the government started giving a large amount of grants to various organizations that introduced Korean popular culture to other countries.² The relationship between the public sector and private sector that gave impetus to the Korean Wave finds its root in the 1960s when the rapid industrialization and modernization of Korea began. John Walsh traces the development of this important, yet intricate and constantly changing relationship between the two in "Hallyu as a Government Construct." According to Walsh, Hallyu is the latest phase of this relationship in that the conditions for its development were put in place by the state and its agencies while private sector corporations and individuals have taken advantage of those conditions in inventive and sometimes unexpected ways. Once again, they have worked together to promote a joint brand, Brand Korea, across different products and sectors. The purpose, development, and nature of Hallyu is examined as a deliberately fostered manifestation of economic development that has resulted from a distinctive form of industry policy. Hallyu began with the successful showing of Korean television dramas in China. Hyejung Ju discusses how the Korean Wave demonstrates the rise of non-Western players in the media sphere as well as a potent glocalizing culture and medium by tracing the evolution of the Korean television industry from a marginal entity to a major player in the international entertainment market with focus on dramas that started the Korean Wave. In the early phase of the Korean Wave, the Korean star marketing system, which was similar to the Hollywood star system, opened the door to the Asian television market for the Korean television industry. Well-known and popular actors and actresses were the best marketing tools and thus were used in pre-broadcast promotion tours in order to create a planned boom for a new drama. While the demand for Korean drama thus increased, they were still regarded as cheap alternatives to expensive US and Japanese counterparts during the initial phase. An unexpected success of Winter Sonata in Japan in 2003, however, changed this and moved the Korean television industry to the new phase during which it has extended its reach to an increased number of Asian markets and also began to get top ratings in those markets. Both Korean stations and foreign stations that purchased Korean dramas used windowing, the one-source, multiuse marketing strategy, in order to increase profit. As a result, copyright became an important issue. Ju’s discussion on copyrights makes clear the business side of the Korean Wave. The most recent phase of the evolution of the Korean television industry is characterized by the rise of independent producers and joint ventures with foreign entities in order to defray the rising cost of production. As the countries beyond Asia began to show Korean dramas, localized content had to be universalized in order to appeal to the global audience. Korean networks and independent production companies began to develop a specialized global marketing system. On the other hand, the importers of Korean dramas also worked to make them appeal to the local audience by finding the best format to market, dub, reedit, and so on. It is the mutual effort of exporters and importers that has made Korean drama globally successful.

Recently, the center of global attention given to Korean popular culture has shifted from television dramas to music. Known as The Second Wave, this phenomenon is led by pop idol bands and singers who are trained by professional agencies in order to appeal to not only the domestic but also the international audiences. Chuyun Oh analyzes the music videos by Girls’ Generation, one of the most popular K-pop bands, in order to find out how the band’s performances in the videos not only reveal the ways in which gender ideology in South Korea has been constructed but also disrupt the submissive status as colonized and silenced Oriental Other. Western viewers often criticize K-pop performers’ hybrid identities, commenting that K-pop is a mere imitation of American culture. Oh’s analysis, however, reveals that Girls’ Generation’s hybridized performance is not a postcolonial mimicry because mimicry is only possible in relation to true authenticity, but the true origin is already racialized by the white supremacy. The categories of Westernization, Asianness, and postcolonial mimicry fail to frame Girls’ Generation’s hybridized identity, which demonstrates the incommensurability of Asian performance in the Western-centered paradigm. Oh terms this multicultural mutant Koreaness in order to decompose the imperial circulation and to consider performance authenticity as a fluid contemporary identity instead of an inherently fixed essence. This is an issue addressed in the next section.

Perhaps because of their historical relationship and perhaps because of their geographic proximity, South Korea and Japan are often compared and contrasted. Popular culture is no exception. Interestingly, while the global success of Japanese popular culture is often attributed to their conscious effort to universalize products—what Koichi Iwabuchi terms culturally odorless products³—Korean popular culture is emphasized by its hybridity. That is, even though Korean popular culture products are intended and produced for international consumption, their appeal in the global market is mainly due to their Koreanness (i.e., Brand Korea). At the same time, as the chapters in part I demonstrate, they are necessarily localized in content and format to adjust to the needs and demands of local markets. Thus, glocalization becomes an inevitable issue in analyzing the Korean Wave. The chapters in part II consider this from various viewpoints. First, Jennifer Jung-Kim examines the success and failures surrounding the movie My Sassy Girl in the global market. In the early 1990s, Hollywood movies began to lose a foothold in Korea as the domestic film industry, aided by the policy support of the government and the financial support of chaebols (a family-controlled industrial conglomerate in South Korea), began to produce high-quality movies and thus started drawing the audience to domestic films. Today, Korean films are not only successful in the domestic market but are also attracting the attention of movie fans all over the world.⁴ My Sassy Girl, a romantic comedy directed by Kwak Jae-yong, was one of the early films that became successful internationally. Released in 2001, the film sold 4,852,845 tickets in its ten-week run, making it the second highest-grossing film of the year with $26 million in proceeds.⁵ It was also a huge hit throughout Asia, including Hong Kong (with $1.7 million in box office revenues), Japan (with $4.3 million), China, and Taiwan.⁶ The film was not only popular among the audiences but also received awards at various film festivals. Due to such tremendous success, My Sassy Girl was remade in Japan, India, China, and the United States, but none of the remakes came even close to the success of the original film. Jung-Kim attributes this failure to a different mindset of the audience toward remakes. While the audience viewed the original My Sassy Girl as a foreign film, they were more critical of the domestically produced remakes. That is, while people are willing to accept unfamiliar aspects of a foreign film at face value, they have higher expectations of locally produced products to be relevant to their own culture. My Sassy Girl is thus an interesting case study of glocalization.

Singer PSY’s 2012 mega hit Gangnam Style represents the current state of the Korean Wave in many ways as discussed by Claire Seungeun Lee and Yasue Kuwahara. Gangnam refers to the area south of the Han River in the city of Seoul that is commonly regarded as the wealthy section of town. The song criticizes Gangnam girls who are rich, materialistic, and full of vanity. Because such a perception of Gangnam was not known outside of South Korea, it was undoubtedly a localized song targeted at the domestic audience. Nevertheless, it spread like wildfire all over the world; PSY was on NBC Today Show two months after its release, the accompanying music video became the most watched video on YouTube in four months and reached a billion views in six months.⁷ Such an instant success was made possible by the combined development of social media, particularly YouTube, which, as the user-created content platform, functioned as a network between the song and consumers. Indeed, both Gangnam Style and the Korean Wave owe their success partly to this platform. Until recently, the success of K-pop and Korean television drama has been more or less confined to the global Asian communities, but now they have become a global phenomenon extending their reach to Europe and North America. The exposure through social media has made Korean popular culture products known beyond the national boundaries. Moreover, Gangnam Style spawned a variety of parodies that not only replaced Gangnam with specific geographic locations but also were about occupations, current events, etc. Thus, Gangnam Style showcases a new mode of production and consumption in the digital age. With the development of social media, consumers are given opportunities to be producers and disseminators of information. The success of Gangnam Style also shows that, contrary to the general opinion that a product must possess universal values to appeal globally, the original locally targeted content can be adapted globally.

South Korean culture was influenced by American culture like other Asian countries, particularly after World War II. Chapters 6–8 in part II examine the hybrid nature of Korean popular culture. Crystal S. Anderson considers transnational hybrid masculinity through the analysis of cultural production of TVXQ. Male K-pop idol groups such as TVXQ represent overlapping masculinities, where male idols represent several modes of masculinity in a way that reflects both South Korean and African American cultural elements. These hybrid masculinities retain elements of the cultures that inform them, and international fans recognize those cultural elements. Ultimately, such overlapping masculinities counter discourses that limit modes of Asian masculinity. Anderson’s analysis thus adds new dimensions to the scholarly discussion around Korean masculinities by centralizing ethnically informed masculinities and proffering the notion of overlapping, rather than exclusionary, masculinities. Anderson also focuses on the influence of African American culture on K-pop groups. It is interesting to note that the idol-making system employed by Korean entertainment agencies resembles the training system used by Motown in 1959. Another product of African American culture, rap music, which began in the 1970s as the music of de-franchised youth in South Bronx, has achieved an international success, including in South Korea. While idol bands such as Girls’ Generation and Super Junior lead the international appeal of K-pop, hip-hop music has significantly increased its appeal to Korean youth in recent years with the rise of domestic bands, such as Leesang and Big Bang. Myoung-Sun Song examines the appeal of hip-hop music in the Korean context through the analysis of song lyrics and performances by Korean artists. Often regarded as the music of African Americans, the authenticity of hip-hop outside of America has been questioned. Korean artists do not merely appropriate blackness but (re)translate, (re)build, and (re)negotiate the space of hip-hop outside of America. Through this process, they are able to claim a part of the hip-hop culture that is not necessarily Black but an extension of the notion of a global race consciousness. Korean hip-hop artists, through their lyrics and performance, are able to continuously question, challenge, and communicate their identities, and this communication becomes both the local and global areas of individual as well as collective consciousness narrative(s). Finally, Sherri Ter Molen shows multidirectional cultural flow of the postcolonial world through her examination of the relationship between South Korea and the United States since the end of WWII. After decades of US cultural imperialism during which media flowed in a one-way direction from the United States to Korea, there is now a contraflow of Korean media entering the United States. Interestingly, in recent years, original and remakes of Korean films have been shown in mainstream US theaters, and Korean pop songs have appeared on US music charts. Through the examination of the relationships between US cultural imperialism, the development and spread of the Korean Wave, and the American consumption of Korean popular culture, Ter Molen discusses that the Korean Wave’s hybridity, by combining Korean and American elements, ironically makes Korean popular culture easier for US audiences to digest since they recognize their own culture embedded in these foreign products. The rising popularity of Korean popular culture in the United States demands particular attention in light of the more than 65-year-old economic, military, and political ties between these two nations, including the 2012 ratification of the Korea–US Free Trade Agreement.

Part III of the book focuses on consumption of Korean popular culture around the globe. Young Eun Chae examines the popularity of Winter Sonata that opened the door to non-Chinese-speaking Asian countries for the Korean Wave and established its star, Bae Yong-joon, as an international heartthrob. Winter Sonata is an archetypical melodrama that features familiar tropes, including the fate of first love, extramarital affairs, secrets surrounding birth, a series of accidents, terminal diseases, and amnesia, among others. While these tropes make the drama predictable, the complete predictability paradoxically endorses active reading by the viewers. Chae analyzes how Winter Sonata sanctions the audience members across the borders to reflect their fantasy for primitive modernity and nostalgic longing for the past where the morals and ideals of culture were intact. Furthermore, she discusses the psychological effect the extreme popularity of the drama in Japan created among Koreans. The enormous popularity of Winter Sonata and Bae provided Koreans with an opportunity to reexamine and reflect upon South Korea’s troubling relationship with Japan and the critical position Japan occupies for the formation of national identity. Given their intricate relationship with Japan stemming from the history of colonial occupation, Koreans experienced an ironic sense of satisfaction, facing the Japanese who were eager to learn their language and visit their country. Winter Sonata unquestionably ushered in the Korean Wave in Japan. While the appeal of Korean television dramas was limited largely to middle-aged women, the introduction of K-pop in the late 2000s extended the appeal of Korean popular culture, called Hanryu in Japan, to teenagers. When actor Jang Geun-suk made a television commercial for a Korean fermented alcoholic drink, makgeolli, in 2011, the Hanryu boom seemed to achieve its peak, which has continued till this day. On the other hand, it is known that some of the actors and actresses who are enormously popular among the Japanese fans are not equally liked by Koreans. Also, the images of actors presented in Japanese magazines are different from those Koreans are familiar with. Yasue Kuwahara considers why such discrepancy exists based on a questionnaire survey undertaken in South Korea and Japan. The results of the survey show that (1) the Hanryu boom has not spread as widely as it is commonly believed in Japan and (2) Hanryu functions as a fun house mirror to the Japanese in that the Japanese are attracted to Hanryu because it shows them who they are and what their society is about.

The Korean Wave, more than Japanese popular culture of the 1980s, proves that the global cultural flow is no longer merely one way from the West to the rest of the world. It has shed light on various aspects of cultural exchange among nations. Contemporary Korean popular culture is produced under the influence of the Western hegemony, such as American popular music and Hollywood films, and then transformed to appeal to the wider audience before being exported to neighboring Asian countries and beyond. As the demand for Korean popular culture increases in these countries, the imported products are changed to meet the local taste and thus to maximize profits. Using the concept of glocalization, glocalized Korean popular culture was universalized and then glocalized again. Furthermore, with the rapid development of digital technology, traditional consumers of popular culture began to assume a more active role in that they not only consume the products brought by mass media but also disseminate the information by starting fan websites for television dramas, covering the dances of their favorite musical groups, or creating parodies of the original music videos. While the combined development of digital technology and social media is undoubtedly a key to the global success of Korean popular culture, its appeal in the non-Western countries is often attributed to the portrayal of traditional values based on Confucianism in television dramas, movies, and even through the images of pop idols. As stated by Eun-young Jung, the Korean Wave is indeed multilayered and multidirectional in terms of its production, dissemination, consumption, and appeal.⁸ For instance, it is interesting to note that, while the issue of glocalization is dealt with in most of the chapters in this book, the contributors view it differently, thus indicating the complexity of the issue. The Korean Wave has certainly prompted the discourse on postcolonial global cultural flow. As Korean popular culture continues to widen its sphere of influence, it is an exciting time to join the discourse.

Notes

1. The Korean Wave: A New Pop Culture Phenomenon (The Republic of Korea: Korean Culture and Information Service Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism, 2011), 11.

2. South Korea’s Pop-Cultural Exports: Hallyu, Yeah! The Economist , January 25, 2010, accessed March 29, 2012, http://www.economist.com/node/15385735 .

3. Koichi Iwabuchi, Recentering Globalization: Popular Culture and Japanese Transnationalism (Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2002).

4. The Korean Wave , 79–89.

5. Data from Korean Film Archive, accessed February 2, 2013, Koreanfilm.org.

6. Korean Film Council data cited in Sun Jung, Korean Masculinities and Transcultural Consumption (Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2011), 1; Jinhee Choi, The South Korean Film Renaissance: Local Hitmakers, Global Provocateurs (Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 2010), 85.

7. 2012 Year in Review: Obsessions: #9 ‘Gangnam Style,’  Yahoo News , accessed July 31, 2013, http://news.yahoo.com/year-in-review-2012-obsessions-gangnam-style-001718949.html ; William Gruger, Psy’s ‘Gangnam Style’ Video Hits 1 Billion Views, Unprecedented Milestone, Billboard October 29–30, 2012, accessed July 31, 2013, http://www.billboard.com/biz/articles/news/1483733/psys-gangnam-style-video-hits-1-billion-views-unprecedented-milestone .

8. Eun-young Jung, Transnational Korea: A Critical Assessment of the Korean Wave in Asia and the United States, Southeast Review of Asian Studies 31 (2009): 69–80.

Bibliography

2012 Year in Review: Obsessions: #9 ‘Gangnam Style.’ Yahoo News. Accessed July 31, 2013. http://news.yahoo.com/year-in-review-2012-obsessions-gangnam-style-001718949.html.

Choi, Jinhee. The South Korean Film Renaissance: Local Hitmakers, Global Provocateurs. Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 2010.

Gruger, William. Psy’s ‘Gangnam Style’ Video Hits 1 Billion Views, Unprecedented Milestone. Billboard October 29–30, 2012. Accessed July 31, 2013. http://www.billboard.com/biz/articles/news/1483733/psys-gangnam-style-video-hits-1-billion-views-unprecedented-milestone.

Iwabuchi, Koichi. Recentering Globalization: Popular Culture and Japanese Transnationalism. Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2002.

Jung, Eun-young. Transnational Korea: A Critical Assessment of the Korean Wave in Asia and the United States. Southeast Review of Asian Studies 31 (2009): 69–80.

Korean Film Archive. Accessed February 2, 2013. Koreanfilm.org.

Sun Jung, Korean Masculinities and Transcultural Consumption. Korean Film Council data. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2011.

South Korea’s Pop-Cultural Exports: Hallyu, Yeah! The Economist, January 25, 2010. Accessed March 29, 2012. http://www.economist.com/node/15385735.

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Part I

Production

1

Hallyu as a Government Construct: The Korean Wave in the Context of Economic and Social Development

John Walsh

Introduction

Commonly regarded as the popularity of Korean¹ popular culture overseas, Hallyu—the Korean Wave—is also considered a phenomenon of cultural production that has been used to promote Korean interests overseas, particularly in East and Southeast Asia. The Hallyu has so far consisted of various forms of production, which have, to some extent, been able to work synergistically with each other.² Productions include film and television presentations, pop music and dance, fashion and cosmetics, video games, and food. Many of these sectors are combined within a single production through product placement and endorsement. They are part of a new phase of economic development that emphasizes the role of intellectual property and creativity in the production process and, hence, the decoupling of the cost of production and retail price. The marketing component of Hallyu products is instrumental in widening the cost-price gap and has also been used to promote Korea and Korean society in a friendly and nonthreatening manner, thereby promoting tourism and the consumption of other Korean products. The result has been a blossoming of interest in the country verging in some cases on hysteria and the elevation of its thoughts and deeds to a higher level—Korea joined the rich person’s club, the Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), in 1996, but it is the Hallyu that has persuaded Asian countries at the societal level that Korea is really part of the developed, western world. This has had considerable impact on the soft power that can be deployed overseas in further promoting national interests in the areas of diplomacy, investment, education, and trade. This has been facilitated by such developments as the liberalization of media around Asia from the mid-1990s, when the Hallyu first became notable. Two television dramas from this period, What Is Love All About? and Stars in My Heart, as well as the Korean content on the music video station Channel V led the way in China and other nations that were showing such foreign content for the first time.³ Prior to