Globalization and Popular Music in South Korea: Sounding Out K-Pop 9781138840010, 9781315733081

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Globalization and Popular Music in South Korea

This book offers an in-depth study of the globalization of contemporary South Korean idol pop music, or K-Pop, visiting K-Pop and its multiple intersections with political, economic, and cultural formations and transformations. It provides detailed insights into the transformative process in and around the field of Korean pop music since the 1990s, which paved the way for the recent international rise of K-Pop and the Korean Wave. Fuhr examines the conditions and effects of transnational flows, asymmetrical power relations, and the role of the imaginary “Other” in K-Pop production and consumption, relating them to the specific aesthetic dimensions and material conditions of K-Pop stars, songs, and videos. Further, the book reveals how K-Pop is deployed for strategies of national identity construction in connection with Korean cultural politics, with transnational music production circuits, and with the transnational mobility of immigrant pop idols. The volume argues that K-Pop is a highly productive cultural arena in which South Korea’s globalizing and nationalizing forces and imaginations coincide, intermingle, and counteract with each other and in which the tension between both of these poles is played out musically, visually, and discursively. This book examines a vibrant example of contemporary popular music from the non-Anglophone world and provides deeper insight into the structure of popular music and the dynamics of cultural globalization through a combined set of ethnographic, musicological, and cultural analysis. Widening the regional scope of Western-dominated popular music studies and enhancing new areas of ethnomusicology, anthropology, and cultural studies, this book will also be of interest to those studying East Asian popular culture, music globalization, and popular music. Michael Fuhr is Assistant Professor of Ethnomusicology at Hanover ­University of Music, Drama and Media, Germany.

Routledge Studies in Popular Music

1 Popular Music Fandom Identities, Roles and Practices Edited by Mark Duffett 2 Britshness, Popular Music, and National Identity The Making of Modern Britain Irene Morra 3 Lady Gaga and Popular Music Performing Gender, Fashion, and Culture Edited by Martin Iddon and Melanie L. Marshall 4 Sites of Popular Music Heritage Memories, Histories, Places Edited by Sara Cohen, Robert Knifton, Marion Leonard, and Les Roberts 5 Queerness in Heavy Metal Music Metal Bent Amber R. Clifford-Napoleone 6 David Bowie Critical Perspectives Edited by Eoin Devereux, Aileen Dillane, and Martin J. Power 7 Globalization and Popular Music in South Korea Sounding Out K-Pop Michael Fuhr

Globalization and Popular Music in South Korea Sounding Out K-Pop

Michael Fuhr

First published 2016 by Routledge 711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017 and by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2016 Taylor & Francis The right of Michael Fuhr to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilized in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Fuhr, Michael, 1975- author. Globalization and popular music in South Korea : sounding out K-pop / by Michael Fuhr. — 1st edition. pages cm. — (Routledge studies in popular music ; 7) Includes bibliographical references and index. 1. Popular music—Korea (South)—History and criticism. 2. Music and globalization—Korea (South) I. Title. ML3502.K6F84 2015 781.63095195—dc23 2015001968 isbn: 978-1-138-84001-0 (hbk) isbn: 978-1-315-73308-1 (ebk) Typeset in Sabon by codeMantra

Contents

List of Figures and Tables Note on Translation, Romanization, and Korean Names  Acknowledgments 1 Introduction: Rising K-Pop, Pursuing the Hyphen

vii ix xi 1

Part I Configuring K-Pop: Histories and Production 2 Inventing Korean Popular Music: Historical Formations and Genres (1885–2000)

39

3 Producing the Global Imaginary: A K-Pop Tropology

59

Part II Complicating K-Pop: Flows, Asymmetries, and Transformations 4 Temporal Asymmetries: Music, Time, and the Nation-State

127

5 Spatial Asymmetries: Imaginary Places in the Transnational Production of K-Pop

162

6 Asymmetries of Mobility: Immigrant Stars and the Conjuncture of Patriotism, Anti-American Sentiment, and Cyberculture

192

7

Conclusion: “Oppan, Korean Style!”: An Imaginary Horse Ride around the Globe

233

Appendix I: Korean Glossary Appendix II: Korean Music Sales Charts 2013 Index

243 247 249

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List of Figures and Tables

Figures 3.1 Cross-promoting K-Pop. Video stills: “TPL (Talk, Play, Love)” by Samsung Anyband, “Chocolate Love” by f(x) and by Girls Generation” 3.2 JYP Entertainment’s eight leadership principles 3.3 “Abracadabra” low register melody (bass synthesizer loop) 3.4 “Abracadabra” lead vocal (verse) 3.5 “Sorry Sorry” (Hook) 3.6 Lyric chart for “I Turned Off the TV” 3.7 Melodic-harmonic progression of “T.T.L.” (Time To Love) (Refrain) 3.8 Signature moves: Chin pose in “Jumon: Mirotic” by TVXQ; Crab leg in “Gee” by Girls Generation, Palm-rubbing in “Sorry Sorry” by Super Junior 3.9 Stills from the music video “It’s Raining” by Rain 3.10 Video stills: “Lollipop” by Big Bang & 2ne1, “Breathe” by Miss A, “Overdose” by EXO-K 3.11 Video stills: “Jumon: Mirotic” by TVXQ, “Hurricane Venus” by BoA, “Visual Dreams” by Girls Generation 3.12 Video stills: “Gee” by Girls Generation (boutique), “So Hot” by Sistar (catwalk), “Nu ABO” by f(x) (shopping street), “Shady Girl” by Sistar (plane), “Bbiribbom Bbaeribom” by Coed School (psychiatric clinic), and “Like This or That” by 5dolls (classroom) 3.13 Video stills: “Shy Boy” by Secret (50s diner), “Oh” by Girls Generation (cheerleaders), “Nobody” by Wonder Girls (Motown), “Bang!” by After School (marching band), “Yayaya” by T-ara (Native Americans), and “Roly Poly” by T-ara (disco) 4.1 South Korea’s content industry revenue (2005–2013) 4.2 South Korea’s music market size (1997–2013)

72 74 96 96 97 100 104 111 113 114 115

116

117 139 140

viii  List of Figures and Tables 5.1 5.2 5.3 5.4

Video stills from “Eat you up (Asian version)” by BoA, directed by Ch’a Ŭn-T’aek165 Video stills from “Eat you up (American version)” by BoA, directed by Diane Martel 166 Piano sheet of “Nobody” (verse) 173 Video stills from music video “Boom Di Boom Di” by Skull 182

Tables 3.1 3.2 3.3 4.1 4.2 4.3 4.4 5.1

Number of albums selling over 100,000 units in Korea (2001–2011) TVXQ “Rising Sun” (2005) formal layout Rhythm layering graph for “I Turned Off the TV” showing accented beats by instrument Favorite music genres Korean music industry by numbers Music export by region  Music import by region Harmonic progression of “I Will Survive” by Gloria Gaynor

87 94 101 142 142 142 143 174

Note on Translation, Romanization, and Korean Names

In this book, most of the interviews were conducted in English. The Englishlanguage translation of Korean interviews and song lyrics are provided by me unless otherwise noted. I used the McCune-Reischauer romanization system for the transliteration of Korean terms. Korean personal names are rendered in McCune-Reischauer or given in Anglicized forms, which either the individuals chose or are most commonly used in Korea. According to East Asian regional use, Korean personal names are written in the order of family name and then given name.

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Acknowledgments

I am grateful to many people and institutions that supported me in the writing of this book. It is derived from the dissertation, titled “Sounding Out K-Pop: Globalization, Asymmetries, and Popular Music in South Korea,” which I submitted to Heidelberg University, Germany, in 2013. I gratefully acknowledge the generous academic and financial support of the Cluster of Excellence “Asia and Europe in a Global Context: Shifting Asymmetries in Cultural Flows” at Heidelberg University and of the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD) that made this research possible. In particular, I would like to thank my PhD supervisors and mentors for their trust, guidance, and encouragement: Lars-Christian Koch at the ­Berlin Phonogramm-Archiv for initiating me into the field of ethnomusicology and Dorothea Redepenning and Barbara Mittler at Heidelberg University for taking me on board for their research project “Creative Dissonances: Music in a Global Context.” I am also pleased to add my deepest gratitude to ­Rüdiger Schumacher, who was the first to support this project idea when I was his graduate student at Cologne University but sadly passed away too early to have seen it grow. Much gratitude goes to Shin Hyunjoon, whose support and friendship has been invaluable. Thank you for multitasking and guiding me through Seoul in your car while listening to Korean pop songs and discussing the peculiarities of Korean culture. Many thanks to Oliver Seibt, my sŏnbae, colleague, and friend, for discussing many aspects of this book. I am happy our paths crossed unexpectedly. I also thank my student fellows from the Creative Dissonances project, the Sinology pop culture group, the Cluster graduate studies program, and Musicology at Heidelberg University. I also thank my students in Cologne and Hanover for their enthusiasm and stimulating discussions. My research would not have been possible without the help of many people in Korea. I thank Paik Won-Dam and her team at the Institute for East Asian Studies (IEAS) at Sungkonghoe University in Seoul for­ providing assistance and workspace in an inspiring intellectual environment. I also thank Kim Chang-Nam for introducing me to the Korean Association for the Study of Popular Music (KASPM). Special thanks go to Kim ­Miryang, Song Hawsuk, and Son Min-Jung for helping me to contact so many

xii Acknowledgments people and for acting as interpreters during interviews. I owe a great debt of gratitude to the following individuals for helping with contacts and for sharing their time, knowledge, and experience with me: Lim ­Sukwon, Park ­Hymn-Chang, Hahn Vad, Mark Russell, Bernie Cho, Jae Chong, Brian Joo, Chŏng Chaeyŏng, Sŏng Kiwan, Kim Hun-Chong, Kim Toyun, Im Ki-Hong, Cho Ch’ae-Yŏng, Ch’o Dong-Ch’un, Sin Hŭi-Won, Han Kyŏng-Ch’ŏn, Han Dae-Soo, Kim Doo-Soo, Lee Jaram, Sato Yukie, “Hachi” Hirofumi Kasuga, Whang Bo-Ryung, Emily Chu, Atchareeya Saisin, Yoshi Nakazawa, Yoko Watarai, Shin Chi-Won, Ch’o Yewon, the members of Crying Nut, and the Yoon Do-Hyun Band. I presented parts of this book in its earlier stages at conferences, talks, and workshops in Berlin, Cologne, Daejeon, Heidelberg, Hong Kong, Honolulu, and Seoul, where I benefited from critical discussions and conversations with Um Haekyung and Sung Sang-Yeon, with whom I had the luck to work on our K-Pop in Europe project, and also with Julio M ­ endivil, Koichi Iwabuchi, Keith Howard, Frederick Lau, Philip ­Bohlman, ­Christine Yano, Lee Jung-Yup, Tobias Hubinette, Lee Eun-Jeung, Yiufai Chow, Yoshitaka Mori, Oh Ingyu, Chua Beng Huat, and Thomas ­Burkhalter. Many thanks go to the Inter-Asia Popular Music Studies Group for creating a terrific forum for scholarly inspiration and exchange, as well as to the World Association for Hallyu Studies for boosting scholarship on Korean pop culture. I am grateful to Anthony Fung, Shin Hyunjoon, Chrizzi Heinen, Son Min-Jung, Oliver Seibt, Gauri Parasher, and Eleonor Marcussen for reading and commenting on earlier versions and individual chapters of the manuscript. I thank Sydney Hutchinson, Tammy K. Robinson, Mike Cofrin, and Kathleen Schöberl for proofreading draft proposals and chapters; Sung ­ Sang-Yeon and Kim Miryang for helping me with copyright permission and with Korean translations and transliterations; and Ursula Steinhoff for excellent photo editing. I am glad to have worked with Raimund Vogels at Hanover University of Music, Drama, and Media, who provided me ample writing time to finish this book. Many thanks for your patience and encouragement. At Routledge, Liz Levine and Katie Laurentiev provided great editorial assistance and guidance as I prepared the manuscript for publication. Warm thanks go to them and to three anonymous reviewers, who made helpful recommendations for improving the manuscript. I gratefully acknowledge permission granted by Koninklijke BRILL NV for reprinting the translated song lyrics “Come Back Home” by Seo Taiji and Boys, from Taylor and Francis for reprinting interview transcripts of Brian Joo and YB, and from Dee Entertainment for reprinting the song lyrics “88manwon ŭi Losing game” by YB. The video stills in this book appear under fair use and are taken from music video clips copyrighted by Core Contents Media, JYP Entertainment, Pledis Entertainment, Samsung Electronics, SM Entertainment, Starship Entertainment, TS Entertainment, and YG Entertainment.

Acknowledgments  xiii Finally, although they are first, I would like to thank my family, which grew bigger in the course of my research. Heartfelt thanks to my Korean aunts, uncles, and cousins, especially my twin cousins Kwon Hyeonhee and Jeehee for giving me a second home, my parents-in-law Edda and Manfred Steinhoff for their tireless commitment at my first home, my parents Ok sim and Willi, as well as Sandra, Hansi, and Hallamanka-Oma for continued motivation, fun, and inspiration. Deepest gratitude goes to Verena for her patience, kindness, and love. It is to her and our two boys, Miron and Raphael, that this book is gratefully and lovingly dedicated.

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1 Introduction Rising K-Pop, Pursuing the Hyphen

Performing K-Pop

Vignette 1: Staging K-Pop On a Saturday afternoon in Seoul, I find myself in a swirling mass of Korean teenagers all leaping toward the entrance of the MBC broadcasting studio building, host to one of the weekly pop idol chart shows aired live on the national television channel. Most of the teenagers are middle and high school girls, who apparently joined the crowd after today’s school classes ended— they are still dressed in school uniforms. Many of them are accompanied by friends or by their mothers, who chauffeured them to this event and who seem to want to keep an eye on their daughters. As soon as the crowd reaches the square in front of the studio building, the teenagers suddenly diverge into discrete rows and wait patiently, as if they were following a hidden command. The mysterious logic behind the forming of the queues is, as I will learn, the result of a pool of shared knowledge. Each idol group or pop star to appear on the show usually has its own official fan club, and thus each fan club forms its own queue. Unofficial fan club members, who are not registered with an official fan club but are supporters of a specific pop idol, can merge with the official fan club queue or form their own. Special interest groups, for example, foreigners who won their tickets in a prize competition, form separate lines. Ordinary ticket holders start a separate line as well, which is sometimes even subdivided by ticket numbers. Non-ticket holders like me, who are still trying to gain entry, make another line or loosely stand around and await the gatekeeper’s decision. Inside the studio hall, the auditorium is equally segmented because respective fan club members are grouped together. A voice reminds us spectators via loudspeaker to refrain from private filming and photo shooting and to remain seated and silent during the show. Stage hands hectically run around on the stage, sound and light engineers make final technical adjustments, cameras move into their positions, house lights go down, and an off-stage voice starts the countdown in Korean: “… 3, 2, 1.” The show’s opening trailer appears on various LCD screens in the auditorium, and three stylish, attractive teenagers, who are themselves members of pop idol groups, present themselves as today’s MCs of the show. What follows in the next

2 Introduction ninety minutes is a battery of young pop idols with beautiful faces and wellproportioned bodies entering the stage one after another to perform their current hit songs. On the one hand, we see groups entering the stage in bright and rainbowcolored teenage fashion wear with cute and innocent images, such as plush toys and nursery scenery, and lighthearted lyrics portray the pubescent world of teen pop. On the other hand, we witness more mature images of singers and groups, who are arrayed in glossy-dark business or leather suits and engage in seductive poses and dance moves while presenting morally inoffensive or ambivalent lyrics mostly about heterosexual romanticism. Vibrant electro dance beats meet sugary melodies, skillful rapping, and highly synchronized dance patterns. Sentimental pop ballads feature piano-string instrumentation, crooning voices, and exaggerated emotions. All songs are performed in the Korean language, although they often contain English code-mixing. Although the music is prerecorded, the show is live, and all pop idols are forced to sing live on stage (and some of them thus reveal minor singing talent). Musicians (real or mock) are absent on stage, and idols seem in a rush to finish their acts. Quickly bowing in front of the audience and then leaving the stage after their performance, they have no time to say a word to their fans. As show time is short and the list of pop acts is long, the program is highly compact and reduced to essentials; it is mainly designed to highlight the physical appearance of the pop idols. Their stage presence is mandatory, though it need not coincide with the full length of the pop song. This is most obvious in the disrupted performances of some pop idol acts. Usually, short breaks between two songs are filled by the moderators. In some cases, however, groups leave the stage before their songs have ended, and a video clip of the group substitutes for its stage performance. Screened on the LCDs in the studio hall, the music video plays the song to its end, while the next group enters the stage. This kind of artificial disruption might be regarded as a lack of authenticity for Western pop audiences, but it is apparently no problem for my younger, Korean, fellow viewers in the studio auditorium. Somehow, I find myself seated amid a crowd of highly euphoric and strongly engaged Korean female fans. Their support for a particular female pop idol on stage is vividly expressed by sweeps of uncontrolled screaming, the loud performance of organized fan chants, and the rhythmic waving of colored balloons, banners, light sticks, and other fan paraphernalia. These chants, which accompany or are interspersed with the idol’s vocal parts during key moments in the song, are usually developed by fan club officials and circulated through the fan club’s website before the date of the show. In this way they are adopted by the fans. The result is highly organized and disciplined rhythmical shouting. A girl’s yell from the back is ostentatious and deafening. Its cathartic effect can be read on her face. In the end, after the ultimate winner of today’s chart show has left the stage and the house lights are on again, I see many exhausted yet happy faces.

Introduction  3 Although Korean pop idols or K-Pop groups seem, at first glance, to be quite similar to pop idols in the West or elsewhere, K-Pop is far from being a replica. Its local performance context bears remarkable differences, for example, the specific contradiction between strict rationalization and unbounded sentiment during the performance and the quick and effectively organized form of collective engagement and subsequent exhaustion. Ultimately, K-Pop exposes a local cultural vision of what globalized modernity means in South Korea. As I pass by the back gate of the studio building, I see crowds of fans hoping to catch a glimpse of their idols; however, the pop stars leave the building in big black cars with tinted windows.

Vignette 2: Watching K-Pop South Korea is a land of TV screens. It would be nearly impossible to visit Seoul and not watch any K-Pop videos or listen to K-Pop music. In subway cabs and halls, buses and trains, restaurants, bars, and shops, at street food stalls (called p’ojangmach’a) or at the market stands TV screens appear. Whether on oversized LCD screens in high-definition quality, on clunky TV sets, or on iPads and smartphones, even on GPS devices in the car, people are able to watch their favorite TV dramas, personality shows, or video clips. South Korea is also a land of sound, or more precisely, of sonic stimulation and sound-designed environments. It is a land where washing machines play a tune to signal when the laundry is done or where passengers on the high-speed train KTX are bid farewell at their final stop with a kayagŭm (traditional twelve-string zither) version of the Beatles’ song “Let it Be.” Loudspeakers at public places are not unusual. Even my daily walk across the university campus is accompanied by light instrumental pop songs from the campus loudspeakers, and the supermarket near my place in the Sinchon district blasts the surrounding streets with loud K-Pop songs. K-Pop is mainstream music in South Korea. Initially modeled for the teenager market, this music of the country’s youth has become the most pervasive music in Korea, effectively shaping the sonic public sphere, the musical tastes among different generations, and the imaginative worlds of its consumers and producers. What kinds of visions are presented, and what kinds of stories are told in K-Pop? In 2009, the nine-member group Girls Generation (Sonyŏsidae) had sensational success on the local music charts with its hit single “Gee.” The song’s music video clip went viral on numerous Internet platforms and thus attracted viewers at home and overseas. Due to its enormous success, the group released a second version of the song in Japanese. The song is bubblegum pop at its best: a slick dance pop production full of digitally synthesized sounds, electronic drum beats, catchy melodies, and shrill teenage female vocals that support the song’s central theme of cuteness. The video features synchronized dance routines with signature moves in high-heeled shoes, while emphasizing

4 Introduction the flawless faces and figures of the nine group members, who are all dressed in trendy, vivid colors and placed against the multicolored backdrop of a stylized fashion boutique. In performing exaggerated gestures, along with wide eyes, gaping mouths, pneumatic pouts, and fingers or palms on their cheeks, the pop idols employ and reiterate the standardized and gendered behavioral codes for female cuteness in Korean society. In Korean parlance, it is called aegyo, a term that may translate into “charm” but implies more ambivalent notions underlying the coquettish behavior of young Korean females. Their high and squeaky girlie voices are congruent with this gestural repertoire, framed by a dreamy innocent recitative in the introduction and girlish giggles at the end of the song. The lyrics are sung in Korean (except for the introductory lines spoken in English and the often-repeated word “Gee”) and revolve around the standard theme of juvenile heterosexual desires and problems. Here, they deal with the coyness and worries of a girl who has fallen in love (with a boy) for the first time. The “Gee” music video puts much emphasis on the group’s dance performances, which are embedded in a narrative. The plot begins with the nine girls being displayed as mannequins in a shop window of a fashionable clothing store and coming to life after a male staff worker (played by the girls’ record label colleague Minho from boy band SHINee) closes the store and leaves the scene. In his absence, the awakened mannequins begin to discover their surroundings, as well as their desire for and adoration of the attractive young employee, whose portrait as “the employee of the month” is hung on the wall. In the end, he returns to the store and finds that the mannequins have left. The story comes as a pop musical rendition of the ancient Pygmalion motif, transferred into an urban and postmodern setting of late consumer capitalism. It recalls earlier video clips of Anglo-American pop songs, such as Starship’s 1987 song “Nothing’s Gonna Stop Us Now,” which served as the soundtrack to the romantic Hollywood movie Mannequin, or Sophie Ellis-Bextor’s song “Get Over You,” released in 2002. The musical and visual language of “Gee” is clearly directed toward an audience beyond national borders. It largely follows the standards set by Anglo-American pop music but is re-modeled in a Korean way featuring Korean language, faces, and bodies, and it primarily targets local and East Asian demographics. The song has proven to be successful among transnational audiences. Easily transferable between national consumer cultures, it is a vibrant example of what K-Pop producers like to call “global music, made in Korea.”

Vignette 3: Dancing K-Pop In an out-of-the-way mid-sized town in Western Germany, I walk in the city park where I am suddenly struck by familiar sounds, although I have never heard them before in public spaces in Germany. Suspiciously, I follow the sounds and gravitate toward a distant boom box and its owners. I am surprised to find four white German teenage girls dancing to a K-Pop

Introduction  5 song. They tell me that they love K-Pop and that they regularly meet up to listen to the songs and practice the synchronized group dances shown in the K-Pop videos. They do not have any specific interest in Korea as a country, nor do they have Korean friends, Korean language skills, or a deep interest in Korea-related topics. They have also never visited Korea. How then did they get in touch with K-Pop? What made them want to dance to the music? Considering the fact that K-Pop records, up to this point, have never been officially distributed, and Korean idols have never held performances or received any media coverage in Germany, it is an astonishing phenomenon. The answer is, of course, the Internet. Thanks to social networking services (SNS), such as online video channels, fan blogs, and forums, the four girls have been able to access K-Pop songs and related information and communicate them to their peers. They tell me that they were previously more interested in Japanese popular culture but gradually switched their focus when people in their Japanese pop forums started posting comments on K-Pop. They began to view K-Pop as a fresh alternative not only to Western pop music, but also to Japanese pop; it provided a way to deliberately distinguish their musical tastes from those of their classmates in school and other teenagers in their neighborhood. K-Pop appeared to help them to cultivate their role as social outsiders or “nerds” in their surrounding offline communities. One of the girls admits that the music has stirred her interest in Korea, and she thinks about studying Korean language or Korean culture in the future. A few weeks later, I meet a bigger crowd of K-Pop teenagers dancing in a different city. A German K-Pop fan club had invited its members to a public “dance flash mob”—a recent trend in the global online fan community. In the end, about fifty female teenagers (with different ethnic backgrounds and from different parts of the region) gather in front of the old City Hall building to synchronize their bodily movements to the songs of Super Junior, Girls Generation, 2PM, TVXQ, and other Korean idol groups. Although their performances are overly amateurish, often hung up in garbled movements, and clearly lack a choreographer or coach, the event seems to be fun for the teenagers. It also attracts a crowd of passers-by. Someone films the performance; a video clip will later be edited and uploaded to the Internet. As the core members of the fan club tell me, the main purpose of the video is to demonstrate their fandom to the wider K-Pop community and, moreover, to signal their wish that Korean entertainment companies will bring K-Pop idols to Germany (a message that principally remains unheard by the companies). K-Pop in Germany is an Internet phenomenon, and as in other parts of the world, it occupies more of a niche than part of the mainstream of pop. The teenagers immerse themselves in K-Pop videos and practicing the dances in their homes. They learn to sing along with the songs, decode and remember the Korean lyrics by using transliterations, and identify with the music

6 Introduction and its idols, thus raising their awareness of the small country that produces the music. The fans’ engagement with K-Pop notwithstanding, South Korea is not part of German public consciousness. Except for cars, smartphones, and flat screens, World Cup soccer, and the country’s political divisions and tensions with North Korea (whose “anachronistic” regime seems to provoke greater interest), South Korea remains rather unknown. K-Pop and the activities of its fans (not only in Germany) represent another pop musical fad, but more significantly they bring new attention to the symbolic notions of South Korea as a nation, specifically as a cultural nation. This is observable at the end of the flash mob event. At its end, the flash mobbers report satisfaction with their event, and they come together to pose for the final photo shoot, smiling, waving their hands, and holding up in their midst the national flag of South Korea. What Is the K in K-Pop?

Rising K-Pop “Cool Korea” (Bremer and Moon, 2002), “The Korean Pop Invasion” (Villano, 2009), “South Korea’s Pop Wave” (Al Jazeera, 2012), “South Korea’s K-Pop Culture Growing in Japan” (BBC News Asia, 2012), “Hallyu, Yeah! A ‘Korean Wave’ Washes Warmly over Asia” (The Economist, 2010), “South Korea’s K-Pop Spreads to Latin America” (Jung, 2012), “South Korea’s Greatest Export: How K-Pop Is Rocking the World” (Mahr, 2012)—the list of such headlines of international and Korean media reports may easily be augmented, seemingly ad infinitum. Aside from their sensationalist fervor, the reports reveal a discernible shift since the beginning of the millennium. It relates to the increased exposure of South Korean pop music and culture overseas and to the new visibility that South Korea enjoys in other parts of the world. Formerly ignored or at most recognized for its political conflict with the North or its achievements in the economic and sports sectors, South Korea is currently grabbing the headlines as the new pop cultural hub in the East Asian region and as an export nation for pop music. Korean pop songs have conquered music charts across Asia for years, and they have recently entered the Western markets.1 K-Pop stars, such as Girls Generation, 2ne1, Big Bang, and Super Junior, have sold out stadiums and concert halls around the globe, including venues in Tokyo, New York, London, and Paris.2 Their music videos have been spreading across the continents via social networking services, are watched hundreds of millions of times,3 and substantiate strong fan bases around the world. K-Pop has obviously become a global phenomenon. What had happened? How did it happen? Following South Korea’s political democratization processes in the late 1980s, the increased economic and cultural openings and the introduction of modern technologies prompted substantial changes in the country’s musical landscape. The “seismic shift in musical production” (Howard, 2002, 80)

Introduction  7 was stylistically marked by the arrival of rap in South Korea and the beginning of domestically produced dance pop artists, who started responding to the newly emerging youth culture market (and breaking the hegemony of the earlier “pop ballad system”). The 1990s were characterized by the high diversification of musical styles and by the consolidation of the domestic music market with homegrown products. The ratio between domestic and foreign music in the market began to reverse, with Korean songs accounting for about eighty percent of the total repertoire, and imported AngloAmerican songs being minimized to twenty percent. The local appropriation of globalized music styles, such as hip-hop, R&B, reggae, heavy metal, and techno, made Korean pop music a modernized, fashionable, and internationally oriented genre that attracted the new consumer group of affluent, urban, middle-class youngsters, but it also stirred debates on copying culture and piracy problems, on musical originality and imitation, and it served as a discursive battlefield for negotiating the notions and boundaries of Korean music, and moreover, of the Korean cultural identity. In the late 1990s, the appearance of the “Korean Wave” (hallyu 한류 韓流) indicated a “global shift” (Cho, 2005), reinforcing and transforming nationalistic discourses at home while celebrating the unprecedented success of Korean TV dramas, movies, and pop music in neighboring Asian countries, such as China, Taiwan, Japan, Indonesia, and Vietnam. With considerable effort and support from the Korean government, the term has since been utilized for nation branding purposes. Trying to sustain its economic and symbolic benefits, the “Korean Wave” has remained a shimmering label for South Korea’s new image as an export nation for pop culture products and formats. Music is only one element in the official reading of the Korean Wave that has been used flexibly to embrace other fields of the domestic content industry; the government-led Korea Creative Content Agency (KOCCA), for example, further subsumes categories, such as animation, broadcasting, cartoon, character, online games, and motion pictures. From the early 2000s, the domestic cultural content market has been growing and gained an economic value of up to USD 89 billion (91.5 trillion Won) by the end of 2013 (Korea Foundation for International Culture Exchange (KOFICE), 2014, 427), catapulting South Korea into the ten largest media and entertainment markets in the world (PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC), 2013). In the same period, the export rate for cultural content rose steadily from USD 500 million in the early 2000s to USD 5.1 billion in 2013, making a 10.6 percent year-on-year increase (KOFICE, 2014, 432). According to a report published by the Hyundai Research Institute in August 2014, the Korean Wave showed a range of positive economic effects from growing consumer goods exports, tourists visiting South Korea, and direct foreign investments (Jeong, 2014). The music industry (together with the games and broadcasting industries) turned into a staple pillar driving overall export rates. Music exports registered a more than tenfold increase, from USD 20 million in 2008 to USD 230 million in 2012 (Jeong, 2014).

8 Introduction Media, governmental, and scholarly discourses around the Korean Wave formerly centered on Korean TV dramas and movies, and they have just recently widened their scope to games, animation, and music. K-Pop emerged from and now appears to spearhead Korean Wave discourses, but it distinctly presents a unique phenomenon, thoroughly based on music. That is not to say that music is at the core of K-Pop (as will be discussed later), but music plays an indispensible role in it and unleashes specific dynamics and mechanisms that distinguish K-Pop from other cultural forms.

Reversing Flows, Decentralizing Flows K-Pop is the soundtrack (and K-Pop idols are the faces) of Korea’s globalization process in the new millennium. Its most popular representatives are boy and girl groups and dance pop acts that show many similarities with their counterparts in mainstream Western pop music in terms of aural and visual representation, performance, habitus, and mediation. These phenomena are, however, neither simple copies of Western originals nor the product of singlesided Western cultural imperialism. They do not represent any Korean cultural essence (or its loss), but are rather the source and the result of ongoing and entwined processes of homogenization and heterogenization, of transnational and multi-directed flows and their tensions, and of disjunctures in circuits of production and consumption. Against the common backdrop of increased intra-Asian cultural traffic, due to economic and technological growth in the region, South Korean pop culture as a recent example of East Asian popular culture (Chua, 2004; Chua and Iwabuchi, 2008) has revealed high significance and discursive power in shaping new forms of regionalism and cultural proximity, thus reshuffling the notion of Asian modernity. Leo Ching pointed to the consumerist condition of today’s Asianism when he stated, “Asia has become a market, and Asianness has become a commodity circulating globally through late capitalism” (Ching, 2000, 257). In the realm of pop music, for example, MTV Asia, since its inception in 1994, has been prominently facilitating a regional Asian imaginary (despite the fact that its eleven channels are confined to local audiences), and K-Pop has come to play a growing role in this context. Facing the success of Korean idols in East and Southeast Asia in the early 2000s (e.g., of H.O.T., S.E.S., Shinhwa, Park Ji-Yoon, and BoA), Jessica Kam, vice-president of MTV Asia at that time, was quoted as saying, “Korea is like the next epicenter of pop culture in Asia” (MacIntyre, 2002). Almost a decade later, Ben Richardson, one of her successors at MTV, realized that some of those early Korean stars are still vibrantly active and coexist with a multitude of new groups, that K-Pop has expanded its outreach and competitive power not only in Asia, but also in the global market. He stated: Korea as an entertainment exporter is, right now, very significant. Pretty much every market that MTV is in, I would say that Korean

Introduction  9 content is really driving ratings, program sales—it’s really connecting to audiences. Sometimes it’s really hard to find one U.S. hit that’s going to work everywhere in multiple cultures, for a youth audience it’s really difficult. For us, Korean content is equal to anything the U.S. is producing right now. (Monocle on Bloomberg, February 19, 2011) By increasing media spaces and market shares, K-Pop is seemingly contesting (though certainly not replacing) the long-lasting Anglo-American hegemony over popular music and its practices, discourses, histories, and industries. Narratives of popular music beyond the Western hemisphere (if existent) have always been told in terms of single-flow cultural appropriation, orchestrated within dichotomous power relations, between centerperiphery, West-East, North-South, Occident-Orient, etc. The West sells, the rest receives. In this sense, the history of Korean popular music in reflecting Korea’s path to modernity is largely a history of reception—be that appropriation, domestication, hybridization, transculturation, or whatever term one likes to adopt. If South Korea was long at the receiving end of popular music flows spreading from the West and from Japan, K-Pop signals a new stage on which these flows have become both reversed and decentralized. Media scholar Kim Youna stated: The transnational mobility of Korean popular culture is a fact of decentralizing multiplicity of global media flows today. The significance of its popularity is reflective of a region-wide reassertion or imaginary of Asianism and an alternative culture that is not necessarily American or European. (Kim, 2011, 56) K-Pop’s popularity is concurrent with and indebted to the multiple dynamics of media globalization that have created new alliances, networks, and ­cooperation between agents in South Korea and those in other countries in Asia and the rest of the world. The advent of new digital media seems to accelerate these decentralizing forces, and K-Pop is reflective of them; however, K-Pop also presents a vigorous example of contemporary cultural production that “allows the periphery to talk back” (Hannerz, 1996, 265).

Imagining the Global—Unveiling the National K-Pop’s thrust onto global stages is also predicated on and results in the specific translatability of its aesthetic parameters. This is realized through a set of effective border-crossing and standardizing strategies engrained in the manufacturing and dissemination of K-Pop and applied to its components, such as language, sound, visuals, star persona, and beauty. In conforming to the overall Western-dominated notion of global mainstream pop,

10 Introduction K-Pop borrows much from the U.S., Europe, and Japan. Nevertheless, it concocts these different features in a new and creative way that renders a search of their cultural origins highly cumbersome and not very fruitful. K-Pop is a thoroughly hybridized product, a unique coalescence of music, visuals, lyrics, dance, and fashion, a postmodern product of pastiche and parody, a carnivalesque celebration of difference, a shiny world of escapism, and a highly participatory cultural practice enacted through digital media. Globalization is thus the central keyword that characterizes the aesthetic dimension and the underlying production strategies of K-Pop. At the same time, K-Pop relies on and refers to a set of principles, beliefs, and values connected to the idea of the nation. This is not to say that K-Pop openly conveys messages of political nationalism, which one will hardly find in its music, lyrics, or visual texture. Rather, its “de-political” appearance as a global youth leisure commodity seems to make it prone to political instrumentalization and nationalist ideology. On the one hand, K-Pop is a result of strategic planning and a fostering of the domestic entertainment sector by state-national bodies; on the other hand, it is utilized by the government to increase the nation’s cultural capital in ways variously described as nation branding, soft power, or cultural diplomacy. Moreover, national belongings are obvious on the site of K-Pop production companies, which are not only located in Korea and cater to the domestic market, but have also modeled a “Korean” way of production, substantiated for example in the idol star ­system and in localization strategy. Finally, consumers’ nationalist sentiments have a limiting and regulating function in the K-Pop business and its public performance. This comes to the fore when, for example, immigrant K-Pop stars violate standard Korean moral values and ethical codes—a c­onflict that arises within the broader tensions between Korea’s multiculturalist turn and the widespread primordial notion of Korean identity. K-Pop’s global drive is thwarted and undermined by these national articulations, effects, and tendencies. The dialectic nature of globalizing and nationalizing forces is a characteristic feature of contemporary media culture, as Youna Kim stated: Nationalism has been central to the globalization of media cultural products; paradoxically, the question of how global such media are is to ask how nationalistic they are. (Kim, 2011, 57) This dichotomy is a good starting point for the analysis of K-Pop. It opens up a broad platform from which questions on the contested nature and complexity of identity processes can be addressed in more detail. In his book on the fabrication of mainstream culture, in which French media scholar Frédéric Martel investigates the geopolitical struggle over global mass culture, he corroborates the undisputed dominance of American cultural influence in the world while pointing to the challenging counter-formations of

Introduction  11 new, emerging nations and regional blocs. He devotes a small section of his study to Korean pop culture and argues that the rising soft power of South Korea (and the other Asian Tigers) has been bought dearly, namely, through a loss of their own identity. He writes: The Americans wanted to spread identical mainstream content all over the world, in English, but the American leaders did not have the same intuition that the South Koreans had […], who are willing to give up their national distinctiveness and their language to turn their cultural production into mainstream, even if they—lost in translation—lose their identity. (Martel, 2011, 299, my translation) This statement is highly hypothetical and questionable because it suggests identity is a stable and closed entity. It does not explain what identity exactly means (and to whom) and how it is actually involved in and negotiated through dynamic social processes. What is lost, and what is gained? Who loses, and who wins, and by which interests and means? What are the stakes, and what the risks? And how does it all affect the cultural product and the musical structure? The intention of this book is to bring clarification to these aspects and shed light on the different notions of national identity in K-Pop. To put it simply: What is the ‘K’ in K-Pop?4 Since answering this question requires consideration of how the K is related to its counterpart Pop, a more appropriate question is: What is the hyphen in K-Pop? Researching Popular Music and Globalization

Who’s Afraid of Bubble Pop? Musicology and its Other(s)5 A study of K-Pop is confronted with a set of theoretical limitations and methodical problems shaped by the history of Western academic disciplines and their (post-) colonial effects within the larger spread of European modernity. Musicology has defined Korean music in terms of a dichotomy between the Self and the Other (Song, 2000, 63), which, for example, has been manifested in the state protection of local traditional musical heritage (kugak) on the one hand and in the integration of Western-oriented art music (yangak) at cultural and educational institutions (i.e., concert halls, schools, universities) on the other. In Korea, the mass-mediated popular music that has existed since the early twentieth century, for which Koreans use the terms yuhaengga or (taejung) kayo, lacks a positive definition and adequate methodology from the viewpoint of European-centered musicology. Instead, popular music has been defined in double opposition to the two dominant fields (as music that is neither yangak nor kugak) thus rendering impartial descriptions of the phenomena difficult (Provine et al., 2001, 814f). This

12 Introduction definition can be read in encyclopedic accounts of Korean music, in which popular music is either excluded or marginalized and negatively assessed, as illustrated in the first volume of World Music: The Rough Guide, “The country has developed economically at a staggering pace, but in terms of popular music there is nothing to match the remarkable contemporary sounds of Indonesia, Okinawa, or Japan” (Kawakami and Fisher, 1994, 468). In the volume’s second edition, published in 2000, the crushing remark was replaced, although the negative undertone persisted, for example, in Okon Hwang’s remark, “Much of the music you hear is, as in Japan, a clone of Western hits […]” (Provine et al., 2000, 164). The common exclusion of Korean popular music from the musicological discourse can impressively be demonstrated with the well-known Garland Encyclopedia of World Music, whose East Asia volume embraces a 200-page section of the music in Korea without even mentioning any of its local popular music phenomena (Provine et al., 2002). In contrast to the extensive corpus of ethnomusicological studies on traditional music or kugak in both Korean and English languages (see Lau et al., 2001, 1076–82; Provine, 1993; Robinson, 2012; Song, 1971, 1974–75, 1978, 1984), academic publications on Korean popular music have remained scarce. Nevertheless, a number of studies in the English language has emerged since the early 2000s and has been constantly growing, thus mirroring the concurrently rising interest in Korean pop music among international audiences. Notably, this body of work includes articles and book chapters on various genres of Korean pop music, (Morelli, 2001; Epstein, 2000; Shin and Kim, 2010; Maliangkay, 2011; Kim, 2005) and on specific issues, including linguistics, digitalization, and audience reception (Lee, 2004; Lee, 2009; Siriyuvasak and Shin, 2007; Pease, 2009); encyclopedic entries and historical overviews (Provine et al., 2000; Provine et al., 2001; Howard, 2002; Hwang, 2005; Kim, 2012); the first edited volume on Korean popular music (Howard, 2006); and a range of dissertations on diverse topics, ranging from Korea’s colonial histories to music video analyses (Jung, 2001; Park, 2002; Son, 2004; Lee, 2005; Sung, 2008; Lee, 2010). The recent increase of K-Pop idols on international stages has created more scholarly attention and resulted in articles, special issues of academic journals, and edited volumes dedicated to the K-Pop ­phenomenon. The thematic range has further diversified and now includes issues of cosmopolitanism and socio-cultural effects (Ho, 2012; Oh and Lee, 2013a; Jang and Kim, 2013), production and digital distribution (Oh and Park, 2012; Oh, 2013; Park, 2013; Oh and Lee, 2013b; Ono and Kwon, 2013), gender and racial ­representations (Jung, 2013; Epstein and Turnbull, 2014), and tourism and new audience reception (Kim, Mayasari, and Oh, 2013; Lie, 2013; Otmazgin and Lyan, 2013; Sung, 2013; Khiun, 2013)6. Conspicuously, these contributions were written across a variety of academic disciplines in which musicology has remained rather marginal. This situation shines a light on a wider problem, namely that popular music has been a disenfranchised subject in Western academia and in musicology.

Introduction  13 The problems of musicology with popular music analysis have extensively been discussed (Tagg, 1982; Shepherd, 1982; Middleton, 1990, 104–106; McClary and Walser, 1990; Krims, 2000, 17–45; Wicke, 2003; Moore, 2001). In sum, they revolve around the use of inappropriate terminology, the equation of score and music that Philip Tagg aptly called “notational centricity” (Tagg, 1979, 28–32), and the ideological premises, predetermined on the grounds of nineteenth century aesthetics of autonomy, surrounding the concept of music as artwork (Krims, 1998; Fuhr, 2007). From this perspective, musicology’s text-centered approach, which submits music’s meaning-making processes to formal structural analysis and thus reduces social complexity to music’s textual parameters alone, appears insufficient in the analysis of K-Pop’s specific cultural qualities and dynamics. The methodological problems in studying K-Pop arise not only from classical musicology but also from earlier cultural studies and cultural anthropology, which have avoided studying highly commodified and commercialized music phenomena, such as manufactured teenage pop idols. From these older strands, mainstream pop music has been conceived neither as bearing aesthetical value (by musicology) nor as employing forms of cultural resistance (by cultural studies). It has thus remained beyond the scope and methodical approaches of these disciplines. Another problem arises from the notion of fieldwork as a core method in cultural anthropology and ethnomusicology, which was a much debated issue in both disciplines (Barz and Cooley, 2008; Clifford and Marcus, 1986; Gupta and Ferguson, 1997; Marcus, 1995). Since K-Pop must not be seen simply as the music of a particular ethnic or subcultural group, but rather as a cross-cultural phenomenon in the sense that its production, distribution, and consumption processes are transnationally organized and highly mediatized and also cross age, gender, class, and ethnic boundaries, traditional fieldwork that presupposes a clearly delineated cultural group identity is inappropriate. In this book, I respond to these briefly addressed historical problems by arguing for a study of music as a study of relations (which might be called “relational musicology”). In viewing K-Pop as a popular form of cultural practice as well as a multitextual and performative phenomenon, I suggest a combined methodology (from cultural anthropology, cultural studies, and new musicology) for inquiring into the multiple relations and asymmetries through which K-Pop is utilized and connected to strategies of identity construction for shaping national and transnational representations. I consider cultural identities not as static essences but as positions within ever-changing social and historic-topographic discourses (Hall, 1994), which are always pervaded by multiple power relationships. In this sense, music spurs permanent processes and modes of appropriation and thus serves as a terrain highly contested by different interests. Music, as Simon Frith noted, “constructs our sense of identity through the direct experiences it offers of the body, time and sociability, experiences which enable us to place ourselves in imaginative cultural narratives” (Frith, 1996, 124).

14 Introduction Instead of focusing on works of art, or music as texts (Adler, 1885, 6; cf. Wicke, 2003), this book emphasizes a discursive and performative approach. Popular music must be understood not as a closed entity (i.e., the score) but as a category affected by strategies of negotiation (agency) enacted through words and cultural practices. Performativity as a productive and constructive principle (set out in John L. Austin’s speech act theory) that focuses on creative and culture-making processes has long permeated through the social sciences and musicology’s neighboring disciplines, such as ritual, dance, and theater studies (Turner, 1986; Klein and Friedrich, 2003; Fischer-Lichte, 2008). Relating to music, it allows the overcoming of singlesided text-orientated approaches of classical musicology and enhances the reception-sociological approach of cultural studies. Rather than maintaining a simple essentialist homology between music and culture, the performative approach enables the analysis of cultural productions as dynamic processes in and through popular music. It can also be located in the wider context of the methodical tensions—well-known in ethnomusicology and popular music studies—between musicological and culturalistic approaches (Merriam, 1964; Seeger, 1977; Middleton, 1993).

Global Imaginary—National Identity—Transnational Flows “The construction of identities through expressive activity […] remains a messy process,” wrote ethnomusicologist Martin Stokes (2003). In this study, I attempt to convert this “mess” into more organized forms by delineating the K-Pop phenomena upon a triadic model that considers the multiple relationships and intersections among global imaginary, national identity, and transnational flows.

Global Imaginary The term “global imaginary” recalls a large discourse in social and political sciences on the processes of globalization. For example, political scientist Manfred B. Steger, who uses the term in his book The Rise of the Global Imaginary (2008), describes the shifting political ideologies over the past 200 years. He adopts Charles Taylor’s concept of the social imaginary, which can be understood as “an implicit ‘background’ that makes possible communal practices and a widely shared sense of their legitimacy” (Steger, 2008, 6). Steger describes the rise of new ideological forces, unleashed with the end of the Cold War, as follows: By the mid-1990s, a growing chorus of global social elites was fastening onto the new buzzword “globalization” as the central metaphor for their political agenda—the creation of a single global free market and the spread of consumerist values around the world. Most importantly, they translated the rising social imaginary into largely

Introduction  15 economistic claims laced with references to the global: “global” trade and financial markets, “worldwide” flows of goods, services, and labor, “transnational” corporations, “offshore” financial centers, and so on. (Steger, 2008, 11) First, what Steger describes here had sweeping effects on South Korea’s situation. South Korea encountered not only globalization’s destructive power as a victim of the Asian financial crisis in 1997, it also instigated its own state-driven globalization policy, called segyehwa, promulgated under the Kim Young-Sam government (1993–98) in response to more fierce economic global competition. This is also when the first Korean entertainment companies adopted globalization strategies and when K-Pop took off as an international phenomenon. Therefore, this study’s timely focus ranges from the early 1990s until the late 2000s. Second, this study reads globalization from the angle of Korean popular music because globalization, as Steger adds, “constitutes a multidimensional set of processes in which images, sound bites, metaphors, myths, symbols, and spatial arrangements of globality were just as important as economic and technological dynamics” (Steger, 2008,11). Although the “global imagination,” in Steger’s notion, certainly affects and permeates the political and cultural processes in Korea and could be mapped on the practices and world-views of K-Pop agents, I use the term in a slightly different and a more specific manner. Hence, it represents not an external view, bluntly spoken, not what the world (the Other) imagines as global, but rather an internal view, that is, what Korea imagines as global. Transferred to pop music, the global imaginary is, for example, at work in K-Pop producers’ imagination and envisioning of global pop music. This may be a very local or even individual understanding of global pop, but it yields very concrete musical results in the production of K-Pop songs. The global imaginary thus affects the making, the aesthetic dimension, and the musical structure of the songs. Apart from being the object of imagination and its materialized reality, the global imaginary also gives emphasis to the relation to this imagined object, namely to the notion of desire. The desire to be a global player, to produce global pop music, or to be acknowledged as a global pop music producer seems to be intrinsic or even precedes most K-Pop productions and thus creates a source for musical creativity. In their discussion on the different structural articulations and techniques of the musical imaginary, Georgina Born and David Hesmondhalgh make the following statement: Given music’s suitability to mass, global commodification, and given the profitability of the music industry, the stakes in the exploitation of indigenous and marginalized groups’ cultural property are very high. At the same time, due to commodified music’s boundless capacity to create and corral desire, the capacity of these other musics to generate

16 Introduction new aesthetic forms of identification, new modes of the global musical imaginary, are also great. (Born and Hesmondhalgh, 2000, 44f) This remark is made in reference to world music discourses to which K-Pop (and other Asian Pop styles) would hardly be added for its ostentatious commercial character and its alleged lack of indigenous authenticity, but it is exactly this double force of commodification and desire that is projected into the global imaginary through which K-Pop apparently provides new forms of identification.

National Identity The global imaginary is arguably a driving force for contesting the multiple proliferations and meanings of national identity. Generally spoken, K-Pop is marked by its inherent desire to be(come) global pop and to erase the K in its name. At the same time, the K remains a signifier for locality and thus seems to offer an impervious site to the homogenizing effects of globalization. K-Pop agents (i.e., artists, producers, cultural intermediaries, and politicians) have a common interest in taking the newly grown economic sector of pop cultural goods seriously and in finding ways to stabilize or expand these markets. They follow different concepts and strategies to reach their objectives, while referring to the same symbolic spaces, like the imagined unity of the nation, the common feeling of the Asian, or the global community, in terms of a “community of sentiment” (Appadurai,1996, 8). In this study, questions of national identity do not simply disappear, but instead they are reinforced, reinvigorated, or at least rearticulated in the realm of K-Pop. Thereby, I avoid confining the meaning of national to the boundaries of the nation-state. Instead, I argue for a broad concept of national that allows consideration of the diverse entanglements and contestations between popular music and national identity, as outlined in the volume Music, National Identity, and the Politics of Location, edited by Ian Biddle and Vanessa Knights (2007): It is clear, then, that popular music can productively open out the national not simply as the space in which nationalist ideology locates itself, but also as a “territory” that has symbolic force beyond its parochial-political needs. This territory is fluid, open-ended and productively unstable in its encounter with “real” nation-states and, also, with “real” national and nationalist aspirations. (Biddle and Knights, 2007, 14) In the same volume, John O’Flynn points to three hegemonic strata in the musical-national field that have become important subjects in popular music studies: first, the agency of the nation state (i.e., through its legal structures,

Introduction  17 regulations, and policies); second, the articulation of nationality in international musical forms (i.e., in the “Israelization” of rock music); and third, multinational interests (i.e., the influence of multinational record companies in shaping national music styles) (2007, 28f). These issues emphasize the effects and processes enacted within nation-state boundaries, but they hardly allow for capturing the transnational connectivities that are present in K-Pop. Apart from that, multinational record companies (the majors) are not powerful agents in the contemporary Korean music industry, and K-Pop strives to articulate globalness rather than nationality. From this view, Mark Slobin’s concept of “interculture” provides a more appropriate approach (Slobin, 1993, 61). He distinguishes three types of interculture: the industrial, the diasporic, and the affinity. While industrial interculture can highlight the interaction between music agencies and the state in forming nation-specific popular music, diasporic interculture allows for considering identity formations between the nation and diasporic communities. Finally, “affinity interculture” describes the translocal connections between musicians and fans based on the mutual interest within a scene or subculture, or what Slobin calls “transnational performer-audience interest group(s)” (1993, 68). Taking Slobin’s term “interculture” as a basic plane for analysis, this study provides a detailed view of three re-configurations of “national” complicated in the global cultural flows of K-Pop. These reconfigurations are the role of the nation-state and its promotional agenda for K-Pop, the role of imaginary places in transnational K-Pop production, and the role of diasporic Koreans and foreign nationals as immigrant K-Pop idols (see Part II). As contestations of K-Pop’s global imaginary, these formations of the national are partly prefigurative measures and partly responsive effects of the globalizing efforts in K-Pop and may thus be understood in what Lee Dong Yeon called the “re-nationalization of transnational phenomena” (Lee, 2011, 12).

Transnational Flows The dichotomy between the global imaginary and forms of national identity can be read in light of, and in response to, the number of cultural globalization theories that appeared in the 1990s and largely revolved around the binary relationship between the global and the local. For example, Rob Wilson and Wimal Dissanayake in their co-edited volume Global/Local: Cultural Production and the Transnational Imaginary, first published in 1996, noted in their introduction: The nation-state, in effect, having been shaped into an “imagined community” of coherent modern identity through warfare, religion, blood, patriotic symbology, and language, is being undone by this fast imploding heteroglossic interface of the global with the local: what we diversely theorize as the global/local nexus. (Wilson and Dissanayake, 2005, 3)

18 Introduction My theoretical approach is an attempt to re-configure that “global/ local nexus” by counteracting the dissolution of the national and by reemphasizing the national as a principal form of “middle-ground territories” (Biddle and Knights, 2007, 10). However, it must be mentioned that the discourses on K-Pop mostly equate notions of locality and nationality. As mentioned above, K-Pop can be perceived neither solely as a musical genre or style—defined by its inner-musical textual parameters—nor as a subculture—defined by a predetermined and coherent group identity. Its most defining aspect lies in its relationship to the national. More precisely, it lies in the dialectic relationship between the global imaginary and the various manifestations of national identity that cohere or cross-cut it. Therefore, I understand K-Pop as the cultural arena in which the tension between both of these poles is played out musically, visually, and discursively. This dichotomy is, however, undermined and interspersed by real transnational circuits, networks, and flows, which are complex and diverse. For example, Korean entertainment companies have spanned their business networks over diverse global cities, such as Seoul, Beijing, Tokyo, Los Angeles, and New York, where subsidiaries and partner companies are located. The production circuits of K-Pop—from idol auditions to album debuts—are highly fragmented and translocally organized (proliferating around the core model of domestic in-house production). The flows of people involved in K-Pop production: idols, trainees, instructors, producers, technicians, and others, move back and forth in that network, constantly actualizing and reshaping the network by adding new strands to it or cutting old ones off. Material textures and practices, such as songs, images, videos, song narratives, dance moves, hair styles, and costumes, follow different paths, as do symbolic systems and aesthetic concepts, such as musical styles, production aesthetics, and beauty ideals. Apart from production, on the level of distribution and consumption, there are different (though at times overlapping) circuits, channels, and connections through which the K-Pop flows are conducted. Deterritorialization is central to the K-Pop phenomenon. It is not the aim of this study to trace all of these various elements in their respective trajectories or to reveal the complexity of K-Pop’s cultural traffic and networks by mapping them against a set of different strata, for example, as proposed in Appadurai’s scape-model (i.e., techno-, finance-, ethno-, ideo-, and media-scape) (1996, 33f). Instead, keeping that model in mind, this study emphasizes the particular nodes from where transnational networks emerge, the nodes to which they contribute or that collide with K-Pop’s inherent tension between the global imaginary and national identity. For analytical purposes, the study cuts from the vast complexity of K-Pop’s global flows and investigates three different sets of transnational flows (Part II), which have developed in a natural manner from my ethnographic fieldwork: K-Pop’s intra-Asian flows, K-Pop idols’ crossover to the U.S., and immigrant flows from the U.S. to South Korea.

Introduction  19 This study seeks to understand Appadurai’s statement on the dynamics of global cultural flows: [T]hese global cultural flows have a curious inner contradiction since they create some of the obstacles to their own freedom of movement and strangely self-regulate the ease with which they cross cultural boundaries. [...] The fact that the same dynamics produce various cultural flows and the very obstacles, bumps, and potholes that impede their free movement, constitutes a highly significant, new development in our understanding of cultural flows in the era of globalization. (Appadurai, 2010, 8) Following Appadurai here, one of the aims of this study is to identify some of these obstacles, bumps, and potholes in the global circulation of K-Pop and to take them as venture points for making visible and reconstructing its cultural flows and dynamics. In doing so, it seeks to understand the ways “in which the forms of circulation and the circulation of forms create the conditions for the production of locality” (Appadurai, 2010, 12).

Shifting Asymmetries The notion of asymmetry is not new to cultural theory. The awareness of power imbalances between and within societies is the underlying motif in the majority of works dealing with concepts of the Other. This has become programmatic since the end of the 1960s, when new political realities (the end of European colonialism), a new generation of critical academics from former colonies, and the post-structuralist turn in the humanities imbued the formation of new academic disciplines, such as postcolonial, gender, or cultural studies. At the core of these minority studies is the critique of European logocentrism and its inherent mechanisms of constructing the Other as an essentialized, naturalized, and passive object that stays excluded from hegemonial discourses. An early example in postcolonial literature is Edward Said’s seminal work on orientalism, which he defines as “a style of thought based upon an ontological and epistemological distinction made between ‘the Orient’ and (most of the time) ‘the Occident’” (1979, 2). As Western theory production itself is mired in asymmetrical relations to its object of study and tends to reinforce the difference between “the West and the rest” (Hall, 1992), studies about the Other have since been devoted to uncovering the power mechanisms at work and to letting the subaltern speak for itself. In anthropological studies, the writing culture debate problematized the uneven relationship between researcher and the culture being studied and revealed the ideological implications of ethnographic representations. Ethnographies are never objective, neutral, and complete; they represent “partial truths” (Clifford, 1986) and are always written from a specific position within a socio-political context in which the researcher

20 Introduction is able to speak about and for others due to his “ethnographic authority” (Clifford, 1983). This crisis of representation has far-reaching epistemological and methodical consequences for the study of culture, since it affects the concept of “culture” at its heart. Culture as an essentialistic notion, a coherent, timeless, and distinct entity that has contributed much to the Othering processes and therefore has been defied by a new corpus of reflexive anthropological literature that seeks to grasp the term in its fluid, fragmented, pluralistic, or adjectivized notions. This notion gave way to new methods within the overall program that Abu-Lughod aptly called “Writing against culture” (1991). She identified three modes of writing against culture that remain valid principles in the study of contemporary cultures within the context of global, trans-national, and multi-directed flows of commodities, peoples and ideas. The modes are also valuable to the study of popular music from the angle of cultural anthropology. First, practices and discourses (in the sense of Bourdieu and Foucault) must be studied in order to identify the multiple relationships between social uses, individual and collective statements, and those interests, strategies, and functions attached to different speaker positions that altogether organize and regulate the field. Second, the various connections and preconditions that constitute the relationship between the studied community and the researcher need to be captured in the written text. Finally, “ethnographies of the particular” are important in an effort to reduce generalizations and direct the focus toward individual experiences and detailed histories. She notes that “reconstructing people’s arguments about, justifications for, and interpretations of what they and others are doing would explain how social life proceeds” (Abu-Lughod, 1991, 162). Taking as important the particularities of people’s lives would mean attributing full agency to the involved actors, their practices, and the perceptions that are anchored in daily life experiences. This, however, entails a methodical approach that starts with micro-social analysis. It eschews the notion of asymmetry between two static poles, as exemplified by macro-social models in globalization theory, such as core-periphery (Wallerstein, 1974) or metropolissatellite (Frank, 1967). Nevertheless, asymmetry as an analytical tool can be justified, if we take into consideration the ways in which asymmetrical relationships are inscribed into the discourses of our informants, how they are operationalized, and how they trigger specific practices. For example, Korean pop artists in the U.S. (see Chapter 5) clearly show that patterns of asymmetry, between the East and West, were discursively produced and reiterated among producers, artists, and fans and were thus highly significant to their world views and activities. This study submits another analytical layer focusing on the asymmetrical relations involved in the observed K-Pop flows. In Chapters four, five, and six, I observe the above mentioned flows from the respective angle of shifted temporal, spatial, and mobility asymmetries.

Introduction  21 Studying Relations For this study, I used a combined set of research methods including ethnographic, musicological, discourse, and conjunctural analysis. This multifocal approach helped me to overcome the methodical limitations of each of the classical disciplines mentioned above and, at the same time, allowed me to follow the multiple traces and relations induced and represented by K-Pop.

Fieldwork: Sites and Avenues Most of the data for this book was garnered from several visits to South Korea between 2008 and 2012. Following a preliminary stay from July to August 2008 (three weeks), I conducted regular fieldwork in Seoul in two phases, the first of which took place from February to September 2009 (seven months) and the second from September to December 2010 (three months). This was succeeded by a brief roundup visit in August 2012 (one week). Seoul is the capital and the largest city of the Republic of Korea with a population of 10,388,055 (Seoul Statistics, 2013). Seoul’s population density is among the highest in the world and Seoulites represent nearly a quarter of the South Korean population. The city area accounts only for less than one percent of the country’s area (i.e., c.100,000 sq. km). Seoul is the political, economic, and cultural hub of the country. In Seoul, I met various people and groups at different places. My research methods included participant observation and diverse interview techniques, ranging from casual conversations to semi-structured and structured interviews (i.e., questionnaires), which helped me to build up personal relationships with various players in the pop music field and to gain deeper insight into music events, activities, and backgrounds. I carried out in-depth interviews (each ranging between one and three hours) with more than sixty female and male persons of different ages and from various sectors (i.e., music, industry, media, politics, academia, audience), including agents in the mainstream pop business as well as from local underground scenes, known in Korea by the term “indie” (for independent). I conducted a survey on popular music consumption with forty middle school students aged thirteen and conducted feedback interviews with one male radio show producer, two Japanese female fans, one Taiwan-American graduate student, and two student travelers from the Philippines. In addition, I utilized my personal network of Korean relatives and friends to talk about K-Pop and its role in Korean everyday culture. For example, I regularly spent my Sunday afternoons at my Korean aunt and cousins’ home, watching pop idol shows on TV with them, which gave me ample opportunities not only to discuss any details of the show that interested me, but also to gain their view on K-Pop and on the history of Korean popular music. During my fieldwork in Seoul, I lived in small apartments (called “officetel” and “one room”) in Sinch’ondong and Hapchŏngdong, which are

22 Introduction neighborhoods (dong) close to the Hongdae area (Hongdaeap), the vibrant student entertainment quarter near Hongik University, located in the Mapo district in the Western part of Seoul. As this area is a youth culture hotspot, home to many local musicians and bands, music venues, and entertainment companies, as well as domestic and international university students, my neighborhood became my primary research site. From there, it was easy to visit concerts and record shops and to get in touch with the local music scene as well as with international audiences. My step into Seoul’s indie music scene was fruitful in two ways: it helped me to complement my view on manufactured pop idols to get a more comprehensive picture of contemporary Korean pop music, and it showed me that in spite of being assumed as principally separate spheres, indie and mainstream have also fluid boundaries with some musicians and entrepreneurs crossing over. Furthermore, I took Korean language classes at Sogang University, and I was surprised to find many of my fellow classmates were passionate about Korean dramas, movies, and pop music. Some told me that their interest in K-Pop was the main reason for learning Korean. Hence, coming from Japan, China, Indonesia, Taiwan, and the U.S., my classmates served as able informants and as a small peer group for discussing K-Pop songs from an international audience perspective. The Kangnam district (Kangnamgu) south the Han River is known as the most affluent area in Seoul and is home to many media conglomerates, entertainment companies, digital start-ups, and celebrities. It became another important research site because many interview partners from the industry were located in Kangnam, and I found myself frequently crossing the Han River to meet them. As a visiting scholar at the Institute for East Asian Studies at Sungkonghoe University, I was lucky to have one senior research professor and one student assistant help me contact interviewees from the industry and governmental organizations. They arranged interviews, accompanied me to meetings, and served as English-Korean interpreters during or after the interviews. Their support was most valuable to me, not only for approaching the field of pop idols, but also for evaluating the interviews in the context of my research. In addition, I benefited much from formal meetings and casual talks with other scholars at the institute, which helped me to conduct my fieldwork against the academic backdrop of social sciences and cultural studies in South Korea. TV broadcasting stations, which host weekly pop idol shows, and concert venues were other important sites. I regularly visited these places to attend and watch these shows and to meet the producers of the show as well as local and international fans. While fans were queuing up in front of the entrance gates, they most often had ample waiting time and a willingness to talk. Outside of South Korea, there were several locations where I realized the continuous spread of K-Pop during the research stage. Although these are not the focal point, and therefore are scarcely dealt with in this book,

Introduction  23 they were still pertinent to my understanding of the transnational dynamics that rule K-Pop business and fandom. These places included several mid-sized and large cities in Germany, such as Heidelberg, Berlin, Cologne, Frankfurt, Aachen, and Düsseldorf, where I worked and lived or visited at that time and where I happened to meet and talk to different people who were engaged in Korean popular music in their individual ways (i.e., Korean noraebang [karaoke bar] owners, German teenage K-Pop fans, and exchange students, travelers, and immigrants from Asia who liked K-Pop). Beyond that, I am grateful that my position as a scholar endowed me with generous travel funds that led me to international workshops and conferences (i.e., in Leiden, Hong Kong, Tokyo, Honolulu, and San Francisco), where I was able to discuss my project with the academic community and see K-Pop’s impressive outreach; everywhere I went, I met K-Pop fans, saw K-Pop CDs in local record stores, or saw advertisements with K-Pop idols. Finally, the digital world of the Internet was an important site of my research. As K-Pop transmission is highly driven by digital media, I frequently used video-sharing websites and services, such as YouTube.com and gomtv.com, and English-language UCC sites like allkpop.com, soompi.com, seoulbeats.com, and omonatheydidnt.livejournal.com, which were useful sources of K-Pop video clips, news, and fan comments. For collecting songs and albums, I referred to the music download services Soribada, Melon, and iTunes (in addition to a much smaller number of physical carriers I purchased at local record shops in Seoul). For tracing media discourses, I visited various international news portals and the main English and Korean language online newspapers (i.e., The Korea Herald, The Korea Times, The Hankyoreh, Joongang Ilbo, Chosun Ilbo, Dong-a Ilbo). For tracing fan discourses, I visited the international fan blogs, forums, and Korean fan club sites (called Fan Cafes) of respective idol stars.

The Hybrid Ethnomusicologist: Position and Dialogue In taking ethnographic fieldwork as the basic ground for the multi-disciplinary view on K-Pop that I pursue in this study, my research is informed by my personal experiences as a male mixed-raced music researcher trained in ethnomusicology in Germany. Born to a German father and a Korean mother who immigrated to West Germany in 1973 as a “guestworker,” I spent my early life within rural and overly white German middle-class communities, having hardly any exposure to other Koreans or Asians. Along with that and other aspects that limited my affinity to and my identification with Korean culture and that, at the same time, led people not necessarily to perceive me as a Korean descendent (i.e., my lack of Korean language skills, my German education, my phenotypic traits usually typified as Caucasian rather than Korean), my Korean-German heritage had not played a major role in my prior everyday life. This changed the moment I entered fieldwork, where I was exposed to the shifting insider/ outsider boundaries that regulated my relationships with my informants.

24 Introduction The issue of biculturality—and of one of its musical equivalents found in the term (Hood, 1960)—remains at the heart of ethnographic fieldwork, as it describes the researcher’s capability to transcend his own culture in order to think in both categories, that is, his own and a second foreign culture. Ethnomusicology has centered its enterprises on and gained its legitimacy from this very notion of fieldwork that presupposes the researcher’s transformation from being an outsider to becoming an insider of the studied culture by means of “uniquely and truly participatory participant observation” (Barz and Cooley, 2008, 4). This emphatic notion of fieldwork along with the underlying “going native” precept adopted from anthropology has spawned much criticism for its epistemological conditions grounded in culturally fixed and essentialized insider/outsider boundaries. One such critical response was made by anthropologist Kirin Narayan who argued for an “enactment of hybridity” (Narayan, 1993) through which all ethnographers, even those who are native to the studied culture, appear “as minimally bicultural in terms of belonging simultaneously to the world of engaged scholarship and the world of everyday life” (Narayan, 1993, 672). Fieldwork’s dilemma with the indigenous researcher, to which Narayan responded, poses an equally problematic situation for researchers with mixed national or cultural identities. Lila Abu-Lughod in what she calls “halfie anthropology” defined the problem of halfie ethnographers as follows: “More importantly, not just because they position themselves with reference to two communities but because when they present the Other they are presenting themselves, they speak with a complex awareness of and investment in reception” (1991, 469). Although I attempted to present myself as a cultural foreigner to my informants (in order to gain as much information as possible), my halfie identity as a Korean-German, once revealed during my encounter with them, triggered shifting positionalities in the field. My identity principally shifted, from outsider-status (labeled as oegugin [foreigner] and togil saram [German]), to in-between-status (isegyop’o [second generation overseas Korean], honhyŏra [mixed-blood-child], Korean-German, half-Korean), to insider-status (han’guk saram [Korean]). This flexible identity not only influenced people differently in what they were ready to tell me and what not (“He is one of us; I don’t need to explain everything to him.” or “He is a foreigner; I need to introduce Korean culture to him.”), it also steered conversations and atmospheres into specific directions (“Ah, from Germany; we also hope to celebrate our country’s reunification one day.”) and posed questions about my own identity (“Are you searching for your Korean roots?”). Instead of keeping a neutral position, which is part of an objectivistic fallacy and not possible, I quickly learned to utilize this flexibility strategically to create communicative links and atmospheric bonds with my counterparts to make them talk. During many conversations about global pop music, I realized that my German origin seemed to provide a neutral stance in a discourse where U.S.-Americans and Japanese represented the hegemonic

Introduction  25 forces in pop music; this enabled my Korean interview partners to talk more freely about their envy of and their anxiety about those pop musical powers. Finally, during my fieldwork I found myself more often than not in a lively and critical dialogue with my conversational partners, rather than just viewing them from a distanced, though participatory, observer position. I did not have the feeling that they wanted to be studied as objects or were weavers of a homogenuous cultural text that I had to learn to read. Instead of the Geertzian mode to “read over the shoulders” (Geertz, 1973, 452) of my informants, I rather experienced myself as an active participant in an ongoing debate about music and globalization. I was sometimes confronted with various questions from musicians and producers related to my opinion on specific decisions, my world-view, personal background, or national origin. For example, one singer asked me whether he should sing in English or in Korean to attract global audiences (which also led to discussions on language use in K-Pop), and one singer and one K-Pop producer were interested in what I thought about their crossover strategies for the American market. I was often surprised about my Korean interview partners (even managers from big media conglomerates) and their interest in what a German ethnomusicology student and, in general, what the world was thinking about their country. I was also astounded by their readiness to listen to and to learn from other countries and by their speedy and pragmatic way of thinking and making business by recombining old but well-proven concepts and by fashioning them into something new. From this view, I experienced fieldwork as a productive and dynamic space in which the different positions, worldviews, and interpretations could be expressed, negotiated, and sometimes changed in direct dialogue.

Paratexts, Discourses, and Conjunctures The collection of audio, visual, and textual material, such as CDs, videos, concert posters and ads, newspaper articles, song lyrics, websites, and documentation of concerts, live recordings, rehearsals, and events, complemented the data I gathered through interviews and observations. It contributed to further analysis and helped the investigation of the multitextual nature of K-Pop and in identifying its aesthetic parameters in relation to the social discourses around K-Pop. For example, by using the textual approach of “musical poetics” (Krims, 2000), the structural and music-immanent elements can be related and compared with the identity processes revealed through discourse analysis without falling back on reduced homological concepts. Furthermore, I sought to locate K-Pop in the context of the historical conjuncture that has been effective in South Korea since the 1990s. In this, I loosely refer to Stuart Hall’s understanding of a conjuncture as “a period when different social, political, economic, and ideological contradictions … are at work in society and have given it a specific and

26 Introduction distinctive shape … producing a crisis of some kind” (Hall and Massey, 2012, 55). The crisis in question may be identified as a “national crisis” (Cho, 2008), which took hold in South Korea in the aftermath of the economic crisis of the late 1990s, and since then has broken off in ruptures between the country’s globalization drive and Korean ethnic nationalism. K-Pop plays a vivid role in negotiating this rupture. I discuss, for example, the public scandalizing of immigrant K-Pop idols (see Chapter 5). In this sense, K-Pop serves as a powerful site for negotiating the boundaries between Self and Other and as a vibrant example of South Korea’s global modernity. This Book In this  book, I aim to understand how the musical imagination intersects with the production of national and ethnic identity and the history of listening in the context of globalized popular music in South Korea. I analyze the transformative processes in the field of Korean pop music since the 1990s, which paved the way for K-Pop (and the Korean Wave), and I relate them to the aesthetic dimension and material condition of K-Pop. In doing so, I examine the effects of transnational flows, asymmetrical relations, and the role of the imaginary Other in K-Pop production and consumption. Thus, the central focus lies on aspects of how K-Pop is utilized and connected to strategies of (trans-)national identity construction, for example, in connection with Korean soft power, with transnational production circuits, and with the transnational mobility of immigrant pop idols. As academic work on popular music in Asia is still scarce; the study aims at widening the regional scope of Western-dominated popular music studies and seeks to unlock and enhance new areas of study in (ethno-)musicology and cultural studies. Instead of reading Korean pop music as a sign of mere Westernization or Americanization, the study provides deeper insight into the structure of popular music and into the dynamics of cultural globalization through a combined set of ethnographic, musicological, and cultural analysis. The following three research questions, which are complementary and overlapping, served as general guidelines to this study: (1) How does globalization affect the transformation of popular music in South Korea (since the 1990s)? (2) In which ways do forms of circulation and circulation of forms create the conditions for the production of locality? (cf. Appadurai, 2010, 12). (3) How does the musical imagination intersect with the history of listening and the production of national (and ethnic) identity in the context of popular music in South Korea? The book has two parts. The first part highlights the globalizing forces and effects that shaped K-Pop as a musical genre and characterize its specific production modes and aesthetic qualities. In this part, Chapter 2 gives a brief overview of the history of Korean popular music from the late nineteenth to

Introduction  27 the end of the twentieth century. The chapter traces the broad historical formations of popular music in Korea in the twentieth century, largely, in view of the cultural impact from the two colonizing parties, Japan and the U.S., of the multiple transnational flows and domestication processes that underlay the various political chapters of Korea’s modernizing project. Chapter 3 describes K-Pop as a multitextual phenomenon consisting of discursive, visual, and acoustic parameters. In discussing seven categories (words, system, idols, songs, formats and forms, sounds, and visuals) with each of them understood as a constitutive genre principle and as a formative component in the production of the global imaginary, the chapter provides answers to where and how the mechanisms of musical globalization are shaped and penetrate the material conditions and production modes of K-Pop. The second part of this book emphasizes the nationalizing forces that create the K in K-Pop against the backdrop of existing and shifting power asymmetries. In Chapter 4, I turn to inspecting one notion of the national in K-Pop by examining the role of the Korean nation-state as a promoter of K-Pop and of pop culture in general. After briefly introducing the spread of the Korean Wave and K-Pop in Asia, I discuss the Korean government’s globalization agenda since the mid-1990s, the state-national interests and strategies in enhancing Korean pop culture (considering cultural policy changes and aspects of cultural diplomacy and nation branding), and its effects on media and market development. The Asia Song Festival is an example of governmentally supported events; the work of its organizers at the Korea Foundation for International Cultural Exchange (KOFICE) illustrates how K-Pop is utilized for state-national representation and cultural exchange. In this chapter, I argue that K-Pop’s “inter-Asian” flow is tightly interwoven with state-national interests in regard to Korea’s geo-cultural significance in East Asia. K-Pop’s popularity in Asia is suggestive of a substantive shift that has taken place in the perception of cultural and temporal distances between Korea and other Asian countries from the perspective of foreign Asian K-Pop consumers. This will be discussed in the chapter’s final section, which addresses audience receptions of Korean pop music in Japan in relation to aspects of “timely coevalness” (Fabian, 1983; Iwabuchi, 2002), postcolonial nostalgia, and modernity. In Chapter 5, I discuss recent debuts of South Korean singers and musicians in the U.S., with regard to aspects of musical alterity and cross-border transformations. Far from being homogenous or standardized, this transnational flow of Korean pop music is a complex, multi-layered, and at times contradictory phenomenon entangled in multiple strategies, contingencies, and attempts to refer and construct places through musical and visual imaginaries. After successfully crossing borders in Asia and driven by the desire to expand their businesses toward the Western hemisphere, some artists have decided to target the American music market. The chapter analyzes the production, promotion, visual, and sound strategies of four musicians and singers: dance artist BoA, pop group Wonder Girls, rock band YB, and reggae singer Skull. Based on fan

28 Introduction discourses and interviews with producers and artists, I argue that places such as America, Asia, and Korea, are not suspended in the realm of globalized pop music. They remain relevant, serving as imaginaries that trigger and shape musical transformations. Furthermore, the artists oscillate between discourses of self-orientalism and pop globalism. Place is thus closely entwined with issues of identity and constantly interpreted, constructed, and re-negotiated. In Chapter 6, I discuss the role of immigrant artists within the overall context of a shifted ethnoscape in Korea’s pop music business, asking how this transnational flow of people to South Korea is triggered and organized but also limited and rejected, and how this affects the constitution of public opinions about concepts of Self and Other. After discussing the asymmetric dynamics of mobility in view of the music industry’s shifting strategy to incorporate, capitalize, and market foreign artists, the chapter takes a closer look at media stories around scandalized Korean American pop singers to shed light on Othering processes in K-Pop and on the multiple entanglements of pop music stardom, identity politics, nationalism, and transnational fandom. These scandals are symptom and result of a wider socio-political context; it is addressed and discussed in the chapter’s central part as a conjuncture of the patriotism, anti-American sentiment, and cyber-culture that has shaped Korea’s public climate since the early 2000s. In the conclusion, I briefly discuss PSY’s 2012 song “Gangnam Style” and its worldwide popularity as an extraordinary example of K-Pop’s globalization agenda. Notes 1. In August 2011, Billboard introduced the K-Pop Hot 100 Chart in response to the growing number of K-Pop listeners in Western countries. 2. In June 2011, the first K-Pop concert in Europe took place at the concert hall Le Zénith in Paris. Tickets for 6000 seats were sold out within 15 minutes, causing hundreds of fans from all over Europe to call for another show by performing flash mobs in front of the Louvre museum (Mesmer. 2011; Falletti, 2011). Eventually, the entertainment company announced a second show, which again sold out within minutes. Similar flash mobs were organized by K-Pop fans in other places in Europe, for example, at Trafalgar Square in London. 3. The most sensational was the music video “Gangnam Style” by Korean male singer PSY (real name: Park Jae-Sang). Released on July 12, 2012, the video was viewed over 430 million times on YouTube.com in three months, making it one of the most viewed and the most liked video clip in the history of the Internet (see also Chapter 7). 4. John Lie concludes in his article, “It is precisely because there isn’t very much ‘Korean’ in K-Pop that it can become such an easy ‘sell’ to consumers abroad” (Lie, 2012, 361). This globalizing dynamic can be observed in many production details, as will be discussed in this book. It may however be simplistic to reduce Korean culture to traditional Confucian and folk culture and music, as it appears in Lie’s text. Instead of viewing the K in K-Pop as a “nearly empty

Introduction  29 signifier” or “merely a brand” (Lie, 2012, 361), I consider where and how the K (as a floating signifier) has been manifested and valorized in cultural and musical formations and textures. 5. In this title, I use the term “Bubble Pop” as a short form of bubblegum pop, a pop music genre, which I think may best illustrate what traditional musicology liked to characterize as popular music’s inferior qualities: its blatant commodified characteristics and thus lack of originality, creativity, and authenticity. This discontent owes much to the fact that bubblegum pop is by definition mainstream pop music marketed to preteens and teenagers and produced in a top-down process, which means that producers and record company executives create a concept first and then hire unknown singers to execute it in recordings and live performances. A standardized production system including ­ assembly-line production and formulaic composition is central to the genre. Main aural characteristics often include catchy “sing-along” melodies, repetitive riffs or hooks, limited harmonic variation, a dance beat, and cheerful and morally innocuous lyrics revolving around children and teenager themes. American singers and groups in the late 1960s and early 1970s, such as The Archies (“Sugar, Sugar”), Fruitgum Company (“Simon Says”), and Tommy Roe (“Dizzy”), epitomize the genre. They can be seen as forerunners of Anglo-­ American teen pop acts of the 1980s and 1990s, such as New Kids on the Block, ­ ackstreet Boys, and Britney Spears, who themselves Take That, Spice Girls, B partially became an important reference for K-Pop production. “Bubble Pop!” was also the title of a hit song by K-Pop idol Hyun-A (Kim Hyuna) in 2011. Its music video rapidly spread internationally on SNS, attaining more than five million views on YouTube.com within five days of its release. 6. While this book was in production, one edited volume (Choi and Maliangkay, 2014) and one monograph (Lie, 2014) on K-Pop were upcoming but were published too late to be considered.

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Introduction  31 Fuhr, Michael. 2007. Populäre Musik und Ästhetik: Zur Rekonstruktion einer Geringschätzung. Bielefeld: transcript. Geertz, Clifford. 1973. The Interpretation of Cultures. New York: Basic Books. Gupta, Akhil, and James Ferguson, eds. 1997. Anthropological Locations: Boundaries and Grounds of a Field Science. Berkeley/Los Angeles/London: University of California Press. Hall, Stuart. 1992. “The Question of Cultural Identity.” In Modernity and its Future. Edited by Stuart Hall, D. Held, and T. McGrew, 274–316. Cambridge: Polity. Hall, Stuart. 1994. “Kulturelle Identität und Diaspora.” In Rassismus und kulturelle Identität. Ausgewählte Schriften 2. Edited by Stuart Hall and Ulrich Mehlem, 26–43. Hamburg: Argument. Hall, Stuart, and Doreen Massey. 2012. “Interpreting the Crisis.” In The Neoliberal Crisis. Edited by Jonathan Rutherford and Sally Davison, 55–69. London: Lawrence and Wishart. Hannerz, Ulf. 1996. Transnational Connections: Culture, People, Places. London/ New York: Routledge. Ho, Stewart. 2012. “Block B Makes Formal Apology through Video Message.” enewsworld, February 23. Accessed November 1, 2014. http://enewsworld.mnet. com/enews/contents.asp?idx=3773. Hood, Mantle. 1960. “The Challenge of Bi-Musicality.” In Ethnomusicology 4/2: 55–59. Howard, Keith. 2002. “Exploding Ballads: The Transformation of Korean Pop Music.” In Global Goes Local: Popular Culture in Asia. Edited by Timothy J. Craig and Richard King, 80–95. Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press. Howard, Keith, ed. 2006. Korean Pop Music: Riding the Wave. Folkestone, Kent: Global Oriental. Hwang, Okon. 2005. “South Korea.” In Continuum Encyclopedia of Popular Music of the World. Volume V, Asia and Oceania., Edited by John Shepherd, David Horn, and Dave Laing, 45–49. London and New York: Continuum. Iwabuchi, Koichi. 2002. Recentering Globalization: Popular Culture and Japanese Transnationalism. Durham, N.C./London: Duke University Press. Jang, Wonho, and Youngsun Kim. 2013. “Envisaging the Sociocultural Dynamics of K-Pop: Time/Space Hybridity, Red Queen’s Race, and Cosmopolitan Striving.” Korea Journal, 53/4: 83–106. Jeong, Nam-Ku. 2014. “Korean Wave Shows Growing Economic Effects.” The Hankyeoreh. August, 25. Accessed on March 10, 2014. http://english.hani.co.kr/ arti/english_edition/e_international/652630.html. Jung, Eun-Young. 2001. “Transnational Cultural Traffic in Northeast Asia: The ‘Presence’ of Japan in Korea’s Popular Music Culture.” PhD diss., University of Pittsburgh. ProQuest (AAT 3284579). Jung, Eun-Young. 2013. “K-Pop Female Idols in the West: Racial Imaginations and Erotic Fantasies.” In The Korean Wave: Korean Media Go Global. Edited by Youna Kim, 106–19. New York/London: Routledge. Jung, Ha-Won. 2012. “South Korea’s K-Pop Spreads to Latin America.” Jakarta Globe, June 20. Accessed November 1, 2014. http://www.thejakartaglobe.com/ asia/south-koreas-k-pop-spreads-to-latin-america/525517. Kawakami, Hideo, and Paul Fisher. 1994. “Eastern Barbarians: The Ancient Sounds of Korea.” In World Music: The Rough Guide. Edited by Simon Broughton and Mark Ellington, 468–72. London: Rough Guides.

32 Introduction Khiun, Liew Kai. 2013. “K-Pop Dance Trackers and Cover Dancers: Global Cosmopolitanization and Local Spatialization.” In The Korean Wave: Korean Media Go Global. Edited by Youna Kim, 165–81. New York/London: Routledge. Kim, Andrew Eungi, Fitria Mayasari, and Ingyu Oh. 2013. “When Tourist Audiences Encounter Each Other: Diverging Learning Behaviors of K-Pop Fans from Japan and Indonesia.” Korea Journal 53/4: 59–82. Kim, Chang-Nam. 2012. K-Pop: Roots and Blossoming of Korean Popular Music. Seoul: Hollym. Kim, Hyun Mee. 2005. “Korean TV Dramas in Taiwan: With an Emphasis on the Localization Process.” Korea Journal 45/4: 183–205. Kim, Youna. 2011. “Globalization of Korean Media: Meanings and Significance.” In Hallyu: Influence of Korean Popular Culture in Asia and Beyond. Edited by Do-Kyun Kim and Min-Sun Kim, 35–63. Seoul: Seoul National University Press. Klein, Gabriele, and Malte Friedrich. 2003. Is ThisRreal? Die Kultur des HipHop. Frankfurt/Main: Suhrkamp. KOFICE. 2014. 2013한류백서 [Hallyu White Paper 2013]. Seoul: Korea Foundation for International Cultural Exchange. Krims, Adam. 1998. “Introduction: Postmodern Poetics and the Problem of ‘Close Reading.’“ In Music/Ideology. Resisting the Aesthetic. Edited by Adam Krims, 1–14. Amsterdam: Gordon and Breach Arts International. Krims, Adam. 2000. Rap Music and the Poetics of Identity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Lau, Frederic, Miri Park, Jennifer C. Post, Tokumaru Yosihiko, Jessica Anderson Turner, Heather Willoughby, and J. Lawrence Witzleben. 2001. “A Guide to Publications on East Asian Music.” In The Garland Encyclopedia of World Music. Volume 7: East Asia: China, Japan, and Korea. Edited by Robert C. Provine, Yosihiku Tokumaru, and J. Lawrence Witzleben, 1057–1084. New York/London: Routledge. Lee, Hee-Eun. 2005. “Othering Ourselves: Identity and Globalization in Korean Popular Music.” PhD diss., University of Iowa. ProQuest (AAT 3184730). Lee, Jamie Shinhee. 2004. “Linguistic Hybridization in K-Pop: Discourse of Selfassertion and Resistance.” World Englishes 23/3: 429–50. Lee, Jung-Yup. 2009. “Contesting the Digital Economy and Culture: Digital Technologies and the Transformation of Popular Music in Korea.” Inter-Asia Cultural Studies 10/4: 489–506. Lee, Yong-Woo. 2010. “Embedded Voices in Between Empires: The Cultural Formation of Korean Popular Music in Modern Times.” PhD diss., McGill University, Montreal. ProQuest (NR 72648). Lie, John. 2012. “What is the K in K-pop? South Korean Popular Music, the Culture Industry, and National Identity.” Korea Observer 43/3: 339–63. Lie, John. 2013 “Introduction to the Globalization of K-Pop: Local and Transnational Articulations of South Korean Popular Music.” Cross-Currents 9. Accessed November 1, 2014. https://cross-currents.berkeley.edu/e-journal/issue-9/ introduction-k-pop. Lie, John. 2014. K-Pop: Popular Music, Cultural Amnesia, and Economic Innovation in South Korea. Oakland, CA: University of California University Press. MacIntyre, Donald. 2002. “Flying Too High?” Time World, July 29. Accessed November 1, 2014. http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,2056115,00. html.

Introduction  33 Mahr, Krista. 2012. “South Korea’s Greatest Export: How K-Pop’s Rocking the World.” Time World, March 7. Accessed October 6, 2012. http://world.time. com/2012/03/07/south-koreas-greatest-export-how-k-pops-rocking-the-world/. Maliangkay, Roald H. 2011. “Koreans Performing for Foreign Troops: The Occidentalism of the C.M.C. and K.P.K.” East Asian History 37: 57–72. Marcus, George E. 1995. “Ethnography in/of the World System: The Emergence of Multi-Sited Ethnography.” Annual Review of Anthropology 24: 95–117. Martel, Frédéric. 2011. Mainstream. Wie funktioniert, was allen gefällt. München: Albrecht Knaur Verlag. [Original publication: Mainstream. Enquête sure cette culture qui plâit à toute le monde. Paris: Flammarion.] McClary, Susan, and Robert Walser. 1990. “Start Making Sense! Musicology Wrestles with Rock.” In On Record: Rock, Pop, and the Written Word. Edited by Simon Frith and Andrew Goodwin, 277–92. New York/London: Routledge. Merriam, Alan P. 1964. The Anthropology of Music. Evanston, Illinois: Northwestern University Press. Mesmer, Philippe. 2011. “La vague pop coréenne gagne l’Europe.” Le Monde, June, 9. Accessed November 1, 2014. http://www.lemonde.fr/culture/article/2011/06/09/ la-vague-pop-coreenne-gagne-l-europe_1534023_3246.html. Middleton, Richard. 1990. Studying Popular Music. Philadelphia: Open University Press. Middleton, Richard. 1993. “Popular Music Analysis and Musicology: Bridging the Gap.” Popular Music 12/2: 177–90. Monocle on Bloomberg. 2011. “Episode 5: Korean Music Industry.” Video clip. Monocle on Bloomberg, February 19. Directed by Jordan Copeland and written by Robert Joe. Accessed November 1, 2014. http://www.monocle.com/monocleon-bloomberg/episode05.aspx#. Moore, Allan F. 2001. Rock: The Primary Text—Developing a Musicology of Rock. Aldershot/Burlington: Ashgate. Morelli, Sarah. 2001. “Who Is a Dancing Hero? Rap, Hip-Hop and Dance in Korean Popular Culture.” In Global Noise: Rap and Hip-Hop Outside the USA. Edited by Tony Mitchell, 248–58 Hanover, NH: Wesleyan University Press. Narayan, Kirin. 1993. “How Native Is a ‘Native’ Anthropologist?” American Anthropologist 95/3: 671–86. Oh, Ingyu. 2013 “The Globalization of K-Pop: Korea’s Place in the Global Music Industry.” Korea Observer 44/3: 389–409. Oh, Ingyu, and Gil-Sung Park. 2012. “From B2C to B2B: Selling Korean Pop Music in the Age of New Social Media.” Korea Observer 43/ 3: 365–97. Oh, Ingyu, and Hyu-Jung Lee. 2013a. “K-Pop in Korea: How Pop Music Industry is Changing a Post-Developmental Society.” Cross-Currents 9. Accessed November 1, 2014. https://cross-currents.berkeley.edu/e-journal/issue-9/oh-and-lee. Oh, Ingyu, and Hyo-Jung Lee. 2013b. “Mass Media Technologies and Popular Music Genres: K-pop and YouTube.” Korea Journal 53/4: 34–58. Ono, Kent A., and Jungmin Kwon. 2013. “Re-Worlding Culture?: YouTube as a K-Pop Interlocutor.” In The Korean Wave: Korean Media go Global. Edited by Youna Kim. London/New York: Routledge. Otmazgin, Nissim, and Irina Lyan. 2013. “Hallyu Across the Desert: K-Pop Fandom in Israel and Palestine.” Cross-Currents 9. Acessed November 1, 2014. https:// cross-currents.berkeley.edu/e-journal/issue-9/otmazgin-lyan.

34 Introduction Park, Gil-Sung. 2013. “Manufacturing Creativity: Production, Performance, and Dissemination of K-Pop.” Korea Journal 53/4: 14–33. Park, Hyunju. 2002. “The Global and the Vernacular: The Non-Western Appropriation of Global Pop and the Reconstruction of National Cultural Identity in the Realm of Contemporary Korean Popular Music.” PhD diss., London: University of London. Pease, Rowan. 2009. “Korean Pop Music in China: Nationalism, Authenticity, and Gender.” In Cultural Studies and Cultural Industries in Northeast Asia: What a ­Difference a Region Makes. Edited by Chris Berry, Nicola Liscutin, and Jonathan D. ­Mackintosh, 151–67. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press. PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC). 2013. “Global Entertainment and Media Outlook 2013–2017: Überall-Internet revolutioniert Medienbranche.” Accessed November 1, 2014. http://www.pwc.de/de/technologie-medien-und-telekommunikation/gemo2017-ueberall-internet-revolutionert-medienbranche.jhtml. Provine, Robert C. 1993. “East Asia.” In Ethnomusicology: Historical and Regional Studies. Edited by Helen Myers, 363–76. London: Macmillan. Provine, Robert C., Okon Hwang, and Andy Kershaw. 2000. “Korea: Our Life is Precisely a Song.” In World Music. Volume 2: Latin and North America, Caribbean, India, Asia and Pacific. The Rough Guide. Edited by Simon Broughton and Mark Ellington, 160–69. London: Rough Guides. Provine, Robert C., Okon Hwang, and Keith Howard. 2001. “Korea.” In The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians (Second Edition). Edited by Stanley Sadie, 801–19. London: Macmillan Publishers Limited. Provine, Robert C., Yosihiko Tokumaru, and J. Lawrence Witzleben, eds. 2002. The Garland Encyclopedia of World Music. Volume 7: East Asia: China, Japan, and Korea. New York/London: Routledge. Robinson, Kenneth R. 2012. “Korean History: A Bibliography (Music).” Online Bibliography by the Center for Korean Studies, University of Hawai’i at Mānoa. Accessed November 1, 2014. http://www.hawaii.edu/korea/biblio/music.html. Said, Edward. 1979. Orientalism. New York: Vintage Books. Seeger, Charles. 1977. “The Musicological Juncture: 1976.” Ethnomusicology 21/2: 179–88. Seoul Statistics. 2013. “Seoul Statistics.” Website. Seoul Metropolitan Government. Accessed November 30, 2013. http://stat.seoul.go.kr/Seoul_System5.jsp?stc_cd=418. Shepherd, John. 1982. “A Theoretical Model for the Sociomusicological Analysis of Popular Musics.” Popular Music 2: 145–77. Shin, Hyunjoon, and Kim Pil-Ho. 2010. “The Birth of ‘Rok’: Cultural Imperialism, Nationalism, and the Globalization of Rock Music in South Korea, 1964–1975.” Positions 18/1: 199–230. Siriyuvasak, Ubonrat, and Shin Hyunjoon. 2007. “Asianizing K-Pop: Production, Consumption and Identification Patterns among Thai Youth.” Inter-Asia Cultural Studies 8/1: 109–36. Slobin, Mark. 1993. Subcultural Sounds: Micromusics of the West. Hanover/London: Wesleyan University Press. Son, Min-Jung. 2004. “The Politics of the Traditional Korean Popular Song Style T’ŭrot’ŭ.” PhD diss., The University of Texas at Austin. ProQuest (AAT 3145359). Song, Bang-Song. 1971. An Annotated Bibliography of Korean Music. Providence, R.I.: Asian Music Publications.

Introduction  35 Song, Bang-Song. 1974–75. “Supplement to an Annotated Bibliography of Korean Music.” Korea Journal 14/12 to 15/4. Song, Bang-Song. 1978. “Korean Music: An Annotated Bibliography Second Supplement.” Asian Music 9/2: 65–112. Song, Bang-Song, 1984.한국 음악 통사 A History of Korean Music. Seoul: Ilchokak. Song, Bang-Song. 2000. Korean Music: Historical and Other Aspects. Seoul: Jimoondang. Steger, Manfred B. 2008. The Rise of the Global Imaginary: Political Ideologies from the French Revolution to the Global War on Terror. Oxford/New York: Oxford University Press. Stokes, Martin. 2003. “Identity.” In The Continuum Encyclopedia of Popular Music of the World, Volume I, Media, Culture and the Industry. Edited by John Shepherd, David Horn, Dave Laing, Paul Oliver, and Peter Wicke, 246–49. London and New York: Continuum. Sung, Sang-Yeon. 2008. “Globalization and the Regional Flow of Popular Music: The Role of the Korean Wave (Hanliu) in the Construction of Taiwanese Identities and Asian Values.” PhD diss., Indiana University. ProQuest (3319905). Sung, Sang-Yeon. 2013. “K-Pop Reception and Participatory Fan Culture in Austria.” Cross-Currents 9. Accessed November 1, 2014. https://cross-currents.berkeley. edu/e-journal/issue-9/sung. Tagg, Philip. 1979. Kojak: 50 Seconds of Television Music: Towards the Analysis of Affect in Popular Music. Göteborg: Skrifter fra ån musikvetenskapliga institutionen. Tagg, Philip. 1982. “Analysing Popular Music: Theory, Method and Practice.” Popular Music 2: 37–69. The Economist. 2010. “Hallyu, Yeah! A Korean Wave Washes Warmly over Asia.” The Economist, January 25. Accessed November 1, 2014. http://www.economist. com/node/15385735. Turner, Victor W. 1986. The Anthropology of Performance. New York: PAJ Publications. Villano, Alexa. 2009. “The Korean Pop Invasion.” The Phillipine Star, November 15. Accessed October 6, 2012. http://www.philstar.com/article.aspx?articleid=52350 3&publicationsubcategoryid=70. Wallerstein, Immanuel. 1974. The Modern World-System. New York: Academic Press. Wicke, Peter. 2003. “Popmusik in der Analyse.” Acta Musicologica 75: 107–26. Wilson, Rob, and Wimal Dissanayake. 2005 [1996]. “Introduction: Tracking the Global/Local.” In Global/Local: Cultural Production and the Transnational Imaginary. Edited by Rob Wilson and Wimal Dissanayake, 1–18. Durham/ London: Duke University Press.

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Part I

Configuring K-Pop Histories and Production

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2 Inventing Korean Popular Music Historical Formations and Genres (1885–2000)

Terms and Precursors: Hymns, Marches, and School Songs (ch’angga) Korea’s popular music emerged at the beginning of the twentieth century as a creative, yet ambivalent, product of and response to the complex modernization instigated by Western influences, technological innovations, and Japanese imperial politics. The colonial presence of Japan profoundly shaped Korea’s musical landscape and with it the definition of popular music throughout the first half of the century, as can be read from the Korean terms used for popular music: yuhaengga 유행가 (song in fashion) and taejung kayo 대중가요 (mass popular song). The first is the Korean pronunciation of the Japanese ryūkōka 流行歌, an antecedent genre of enka [enk’a] 演歌 (performance song), and the second derives from kayōkyoku 歌謡曲, the Japanese word for “popular song.” Today, Koreans still use the word kayo 가요 (popular song) for their local popular music (see Chapter 3). The definition of popular music in Korea has been closely associated with external influences and in the beginning, in particular, with European modernity transmitted and filtered through Japanese colonialism. The precursors of Korean popular music date back to the first encounters with Western music, which, as in other parts of the world, occurred with Christian hymns and military bands (cf. Nettl, 1985). The Japan-Korea Treaty of 1876 opened Korea to commerce with foreign powers and led to the rapid influx of Western ideas, concepts, and practices, together with the first missionaries who played a key role in establishing a modern school system. As Ahn Choong-Sik noted, “There is no historical record that Koreans had been exposed to Western music before 1885” (Ahn, 2005, 2), the year when the first group of American Protestant missionaries, consisting of Henry G. Appenzeller, Mary F. Scranton, and Horace G. Underwood, arrived on Korean shores. The “new schools” (sinsik hakkyo) these missionaries established followed the Western education system and were an alternative to the Confucianist schools of the Chosŏn Empire. They served (next to the Christian Church) as the new institutional basis for introducing Western hymns to the Korean people.1 The two earliest collections of hymns were Ch’anmiga (published in 1892) and Ch’anyangga (published in 1894)—both

40  Configuring K-Pop titles translate into “songs of praise”—contain Western hymns with Korean translations and partly re-written Korean lyrics (Lee et al., 2001).2 These songs were quickly popularized; as more Western melodies were added with newly written Korean lyrics and secular content (mostly patriotic themes), ch’angga (song, the Korean pronunciation of the Japanese school songs shōka (唱歌))began to be used as a new term for this popular type of fusion song. An early example of ch’angga was presented at King Kojong’s birthday party in 1896; it was a version of the Korean national hymn “Aegukka,” based on the melody of the Scottish folk song “Auld Lang Syne” with newly composed verses added for that specific occasion. The first ch’angga known to be composed by a Korean is “Haktoga” (Student’s Song) by Kim In-Sik (1885–1963) in 1903, which appeared to be largely modeled after a Japanese song from 1900 (cf. Lee, 2006a, 9). The other strand of Western music influence was established with the inauguration of the first royal military band in 1901. At that time, while the Chosŏn Empire had tried to regain its military strength and representational power, the German composer Franz Eckert (1852–1916), who had previously worked with the Japanese military band, was asked to set up a Korean military music corps after the European model. The Imperial Military Band was institutionalized and thus served as an important node through which Western music theory, instruments, techniques, and repertoires found their way to Korean musicians (cf. Song, 2009, 19). As the military music principally remained instrumental, it was rather the vocal song style ch’angga that became attractive to wider audiences and was increasingly popularized as commercial recordings and mass mediation took hold under Japanese occupation. Musical characteristics of ch’angga include Western tonality and the (albeit limited) use of major/minor chords, a melodic contour that relates to harmonic functions, multiple verses in a song, a 2/4 or 4/4 measure beat often with quaver and semi-quaver note repetition, pentatonic scale (as the fourth and seventh degree of the heptatonic scale is rarely used), the typical European bourgeois song form (with eight or sixteen bars consisting of two or four phrases), unisonous voices that already contain the homophonic character, and songs beginning on the downbeat. Hence, in terms of musical characteristics ch’angga was not different from Japanese shōka (Lee, 2001, 113f; cf. Song, 2009, 22f). Japanese Occupation Era: Yuhaengga (T’ŭrot’ŭ), Sinminyo, Jazz (1910–45) The earliest remaining recordings of ch’angga have become known as yuhaeng (popular) ch’angga or yuhaengga (popular song) and date back to 1925. They include “I p’ungjin sewŏl” (These Troubled Times), sung by Kim San-Wol. Nonetheless, it was “Saŭi ch’anmi” (Glorification of Death) from

Inventing Korean Popular Music  41 1926 that became the first Korean hit song. It adapted the melody of the waltz “The Waves of Danube” (1889) by Romanian composer Ion I­ vanovich and added Korean lyrics by an unknown writer. It was sung by the famous soprano and actress Yun Sim-Dŏk and was recorded and released by the Japanese record company Nitto. After Yun recorded the song in Osaka, she committed double suicide with her lover Kim U-Jin, a famous playwright. The publicity around this tragic love story contributed much to the song’s popularity (Jung, 2007, 81f). These early recordings based on foreign melodies mark the initial phase of Korean popular music during the Japanese colonial period,3 as Lee Young Mee noted: No Korean appears to have been able to compose adequately in the new idiom, hence Korean lyrics were added to foreign melodies. Early examples featured edifying lyrics for the common people, but the themes changed as the second decade of the century dawned, as sentiments of love, emptiness and the beauty of nature became central. Many of the early songs were designed for school use, but as they broadened their appeal they became known as “popular ch’angga” (yuhaeng ch’angga). These recorded and released on disc, marked the birth of Korean taejung kayo. (Lee, 2006a, 3) Propelled by the unprecedented success of “Saŭi ch’anmi” and by the prospect of expanding markets, a transnational record industry began to take shape in colonial Korea in 19274—the same year the first official radio broadcasting station, with the call sign JODK, started regular operations with its bilingual Japanese-Korean program.5 With the introduction of modern mass-media and a Japanese-dominated entertainment culture in the 1920s, commercialized popular songs, called yuhaeng ch’angga or yuhaengga began to sprout. Although it is hardly possible to distinguish between genres in this early stage of popular music, the social contexts of these pieces were different. The term yuhaeng ch’angga emphasizes its origins from earlier school songs, whereas yuhaengga points to Japanese ryūkōka—the antecedant genre of enka, which was introduced to Korea through shinp’a (new school), the modern form of Japanese melodramatic play and theater where ryūkōka songs served as musical fillers between acts (Song, 2009, 28). With the prospering music industry in the 1930s, popular songs further proliferated in the Korean public, the music business became professionalized, the first star singers emerged, and music genres diversified and were stabilized. Dominant popular music genres of that time were yuhaengga (t’ŭrot’ŭ), sinminyo, and jazz. Yuhaengga was initially used by record companies as an umbrella term for all kinds of Western-style Korean popular songs, but eventually the term came to be solely associated with Japanese enka. By using the pentatonic

42  Configuring K-Pop scales (i.e., the minor yonanuki mode: mi-fa-ra-ti-do) and the duple-meter characteristics of enka, this genre has, since the 1980s, come to be known in Korea as t’ŭrot’ŭ (derived from the English term “fox trot”) or ppongtchak (an onomatopoetic and often derogative expression for the songs’ duple meter rhythm) (Son, 2004, 128; Song, 2014, 264; Pak, 2006, 62). The pathos of these melancholic love songs is based on a mixture of “tearful sorrow” and “bitter lamentation of the defeated,” as Okon Hwang noted. The subject in t’ŭrot’ŭ songs, “was always defeated by the cold and hard reality of a world full of impossibilities and was always denied fulfillments of basic human desires,” and has thus become a “metaphor for the nation’s desperation under colonial reality” (Hwang, 2005, 46). Typical examples are “Iwŏn aegok” (Lamentation of Separation) sung by Ko Poksu in 1934 and “Mokp’o ŭi nunmul” (Tears of Mokpo Port) sung by Lee Nan-Yŏng in 1935.6 In addition to melancholic lyrics, both songs contain regular 4/4 meter (in contrast to the 3/4 meter of earlier popular and folk songs), minor pentatonic scale, and a vocal style with heavy inflections, which together represent the standard characteristics of t’ŭrot’ŭ from the mid-1930s until the 1950s (Lee, 2006a, 4). Sinminyo (new folk song) was the other major genre that emerged with the burgeoning record industry in Korea, but unlike t’ŭrot’ŭ, its popularity rapidly declined with the end of the Japanese occupation. Characterized by the combination of Western instruments and the melodies, rhythms, and vocal styles of Korean folk songs (minyo) and written by Korean composers, sinminyo has been widely regarded as distinct from imported or imitated Japanese styles like yuhaengga. It is seen as promoting itself as the popular continuation of familiar Korean traditional folksong aesthetics, if not as “Korea’s first indigenous pop music” (Finchum-Sung, 2006, 11). Sinminyo songs, the first of which were recorded in the early 1930s, cover diverse themes ranging from descriptions of rural sceneries and seasons to romantic love, either in light or dark, sorrowful tones (Finchum-Sung, 2006, 15f). Professional female entertainers called kisaeng played a crucial role in popularizing these songs. They were trained in various arts (including Korean classical and folk music and dance) at kisaeng schools (kwŏnbŏn)7 in order to serve their male customers, who were mostly Japanese or Koreans working for the colonial government. Some kisaengs gained stardom as recording artists and became well-known sinminyo singers with songs, such as “Ulchi marayo” (Don’t Cry) sung by Wang Su-Bok, who was signed with Columbia and Polydor Records, or “Kkotŭl chapko” (With Flowers in Hand) sung by Sŏnu Il-Sŏn (1918–90), who worked with Polydor, Victor, and T’aep’yŏng Records (Finchum-Sung, 2006, 17). By the end of the Japanese occupation, sinminyo withered and was eventually lost to the popular appeal of other genres like t’ŭrot’ŭ and jazz. Jazz in colonial Korea was broadly considered by Koreans to be Western popular music and was thus to a great extent equivalent to yuhaengga,8 although the emphasis on then-contemporary American popular music styles (filtered through Japanese tastes) was strongly evident and complicated the

Inventing Korean Popular Music  43 notions of Korean modernity under Japanese occupation (Lee, 2010b, 40–87). As an umbrella term for various genres, such as blues, Big Band jazz, swing, rumba, and tango, the different spelling and pronunciation of the term jazz— in Japanese (ja-zu ジャズ) and in Korean (chyasŭ 쟈스)—mark a significant difference to today’s notion of jazz (chaejŭ 재즈) (Song, 2009, 52). Korean jazz songs were largely modeled after Japanese versions of American pieces in terms of composition, arrangement, vocals, and instrumentation. They were mostly shaped by Japanese arrangers and usually adapted the altered idioms of Westernized Japanese music. One example is the Japanese version of blues, which “generally ignored the standard sixteen-measure chord progression and ‘blue-notes’ characteristic of American blues, latching on instead to its melancholy mood” (Yano, 2002, 36). The idea of Korean indigenous jazz was further betrayed by a complex set of appropriation processes created by Korean singers and lyricists, as Lee Young-Woo observed in his study: First, the Korean singers’ vocalization is reminiscent of Japanese singers’ mimicking American jazz singers, such as Rudy Vallée, Bing Crosby, and Frank Sinatra; these were filtered through Japanese performers, such as the Calua Mamainasu Band and Columbia Nagano rizumu boyz, who in turn influenced the jazz vocal styles of Korean singers, such as Nam In-Soo, Chae Gyu-Yeop, and Kim Hae-Song. Secondly, the majority of the song lyrics were also overflowing with expressions of emotion, using excessive exclamation (Oh! Ah!) to express self-indulgent tendencies. Thirdly, the jazz songs often overused “modern” English as buzzwords, particularly in songs such as “Sarangui rangdebu” (Rendezvous of Love, performed by Chae Gyu-Yeop), “Dinah” (Diana, performed by Kang Hong-Sik and Ahn MyeongOck), “Sarangeui Yoreitie” (Yodel Song of Love, the first yodeling song in Korea, sung by Chae Gyu-Yeop) and “Neonui Paradaisu” (Paradise of Neon sign, performed by Yu Jong-Sup). (Lee, 2010b, 75) During the Pacific War (1941–45), the Japanese government classified jazz songs as music of the enemy, in particular of the allied powers—U.S. and UK—and banned them from being played in public. It was thus not until the liberation from Japanese occupation and the subsequent deployment of U.S. military troops in Korea that jazz songs regained their former popularity along with a broadening affection for American popular culture in general. Pre- and Post-Korean War Era (1945–50s) After the Second World War and liberation from Japanese occupation, the Korean peninsula plunged into a tumultuous political situation characterized by the country’s division in two occupation zones and the devastating

44  Configuring K-Pop Korean War (1950–53). The situation of popular music genres remained, however, relatively autonomous from the political shifts and ideological disruptions of this period. The t’ŭrot’ŭ genre remained popular and gained momentum in the late 1940s and even throughout the 1950s due to the fact that many musicians and composers who were successful during colonial times continued to write and perform songs. It has also been argued that the popularity of t’ŭrot’ŭ songs remained high because the “pathos of this genre was easily transferable from the reality of a colonized nation to that of a war-torn country” (Hwang, 2005, 46). Representative songs reflecting the agony and grief of this time are: “Pi naeri-nŭn Komoryŏng” (Rainy Komo Ridge) (1948), “Ulgo nŏmnŭn paktalchae” (Climbing over Bakdal Pass in Tears) (1948), “Tanjangŭi miari kogae” (Miari Hill of Sorrow) (1955), “Kusseŏra Kŭmsuna” (Be strong, Geumsun) (1953), “Samp’al sŏnŭi pom” (Spring in the 38th Parallel) (1958). The benefits of the recording industry diminished seriously as production facilities and distribution networks, previously backed by Japanese capital and manpower, broke down in the overall course of the government’s de-Japanization efforts. Most Korean musicians were thus forced to make their living from live performances instead of record sales. Among the public spaces that provided central stages for live musicians were theaters that promoted the so-called “musical drama troupes” (akgŭkdan). They were variety show collectives that combined traditional and popular music and dance performances with (stand-up) comedy acts; many of these eventually came to play as show troupes, performing in front of American servicemen in the U.S. military camp shows. The K.P.K. Akgŭkdan, which derived its name from the initials of its main members Kim Hae-Song, Paek Ŭn-Sŏn, and Kim Chŏng-Hwan, was among the renowned show collectives; the Kim Sisters, formed by Kim Hae-Song’s three daughters, were also a successful show troupe in Korea before they settled in Las Vegas, where they continued their successful career (Maliangkay, 2011; Shin and Ho, 2009). Apart from t’ŭrot’ŭ songs, which had their place in the context of these musical theater troupes, Shin and Ho (2009) categorized three further musical styles that existed throughout the 1950s. These were national or “healthy” songs, called kŏnjŏn kayo (healthy popular song), which were officially promoted by the South Korean government to propagate patriotic sentiment, national unity, and anti-communist agitation. There were also “songs for broadcasting,” which included radio drama theme songs featuring exclusively signed singers, crooning voices, and big band instrumentation. Finally, there were cheerful “hybrid songs of popular melody and Western dance rhythm,” which often merged sinminyo-like melodies with then-trendy dancehall rhythms, like mambo (Shin and Ho, 2009, 91). The last category is closely tied to the growing presence of the U.S. in South Korea9 that began to take hold under the rule of the U.S. Army Military Government (USAMGIK) from 1945–48 and gained its full blast in the wake of the Korean War when U.S. military troops (the Eighth Army)

Inventing Korean Popular Music  45 were garrisoned in various parts of South Korea. The American Forces Korean Network (AFKN) and the camp towns (kijich’on) that formed next to the military bases were the prime disseminators of American pop culture and music. The impact of American pop culture resonated well in the new hedonistic lifestyle of adult and urban middle-class Koreans after the war. Hence, Korean songs began to express the pleasure of, and the envy for, American modernity, symbolized by the economic and military strength of the U.S. This can be read from English words appearing in song titles and lyrics, such as in “Arijona K’auboi” (Arizona Cowboy) (1955), “Lŏkk’i moning” (Lucky Morning) (1956), and “Saenp’ŭransisŭk’o” (San Francisco) (1952), or from song titles that adopted the names of Western dance styles, such as “Toraji Mambo” (Balloon Flower Mambo) (1952), “Kit’a bugi” (Guitar Boogie) (1957), “Taejŏn purŭsŭ” (Daejeon Blues) (1956), and “Piŭi taenggo” (Rainy Tango) (1956). Economic Development Era: Kŭrup Saundŭ (Group Sound) and T’ongkit’a (1960s–70s) The 1960s and 1970s were a comparably stable era characterized by stateled economic development paired with a forceful national ideology resting on anti-communism. Under Park Jung-Hee’s military dictatorship (1961–79), South Korea’s modernization process was steered with the help of a fiveyear economic development plan that entailed rapid industrialization and urbanization, as well as the expansion of control and censorship over public and private mass media. In the early 1960s, commercial radio stations (i.e., Munhwa Radio, Tonga Radio, and T’ongyang Radio) and the first TV stations (i.e., KBS, TBC, MBC) began operation. The Broadcasting Ethics Committee (pangsong yulli wiwŏnhoe) established its control over broadcasting programs, and the overall infrastructure and capacities of public and commercial mass media production, distribution, and consumption began to be restored, extended, and consolidated. In this period, the prevailing music genres were t’ŭrot’ŭ and standard pop. The latter was also referred to as easy listening (iji risŭning) (Lee, 2006b, 165). T’ŭrot’ŭ was best represented by the songs of Lee Mi-Ja, who has been called the “queen of elegy” (ellejiŭi yŏwang) and whose song “Tongbaek Agassi” (Camellia Lady), released in 1965, became an all-time favorite hit in the genre, as did the urban t’ŭrot’ŭ songs of male singer Pae Ho, which depicted the gloomy aesthetics of specific urban areas in Seoul, such as “Toraganŭn Samgakchi” (Walking down Samgakchi) (1967) or “Pinaerinŭn Myŏngdong” (Raining Myŏngdong) (1970). In contrast, standard pop loosely described the light and easy-to-follow Western pop-influenced songs sung in Korean by singers like Han Myŏngsuk, Hyŏmi, Ch’oe Hŭijun, and Patti Kim. Patti Kim began her career in the context of the Eighth Army (mi-p’­al-gun) shows, like many other singers and musicians in post-War

46  Configuring K-Pop Korea, but soon transformed herself into a successful mainstream singer and celebrity. American pop culture and music sprouted beyond the U.S. military circles into Korean society and became closely tied to the emergence of a consumer-based youth culture. New entertainment venues, like music listening clubs, movie theatres, coffee shops, billiard halls, new record labels, and record stores opened in urban districts and became important sites for disseminating American(ized) pop music among young people. t’ŭrot’ŭ came to be associated with the older generation, especially those living in rural areas, whose musical taste was shaped during colonial times, but the young generation increasingly appreciated American pop music. Group sound (kŭrup saundŭ) was a direct offspring of the music played in the Eighth Army Shows, where Korean musicians learned to adopt the styles, techniques, and idioms of American soul music, rhythm & blues, and rock ‘n’ roll. When the music of the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, and the Animals swept the globe, young Korean musicians—similar to their counterparts in Japan and other countries—started their own rock groups and began to write songs in the new idiom and to perform them for Korean audiences. From the mid-1960s, groups such as the Add4, the Key Boys, the K’okkiri Brothers (Elephant Brothers), and He6 initiated the new group sound era, providing Korean listeners with a vivid alternative to the sonic worlds of t’ŭrot’ŭ and other mainstream music. A pioneering figure was Shin Joong-Hyun [Sin Chunghyŏn], nicknamed the “godfather of Korean rock” (han’guk rokŭi taebu), who was among the first musicians to introduce the electric guitar to Korean music. He gained his name as a guitarist at the Eighth Army Shows. He made his album debut with his rock band Add4 in 1964, before his luminous career as a guitarist, bandleader, composer, arranger, and producer took off and partially moved into the Korean mainstream. The song “Nima” (My Dear), performed by the Pearl Sisters in 1968, was his first chart-topping song and was soon followed by more hits that he wrote for other singers, such as Kim Ch’u-Ja, Kim Chŏng-Mi, Yi Chŏng-Hwa, and Jang Hyun [Chang Hyŏn]. Apart from his work for other artists, he continued to experiment with different styles with his own bands, for example, American West Coast psychedelic rock, thus injecting druginspired psychedelic sounds and longer improvised and free-floating forms into the development of group sound in the 1970s. The heyday of group sound bands was the late 1960s to the early 1970s, and this was closely tied to the rise of Korean hippie culture and new performance spaces, such as midnight dance clubs (also called gogo clubs), band contests, and students’ song festivals, which provided ample occasions for live musicians to play for a young dance-crazed and culturally open-minded audience. T’ongkit’a (box guitar) marks a different strand of American-influenced pop music: a new style of Korean folksong largely modeled after the songs from the American folksong movement and of singers like Bob Dylan, Pete Seeger, and Joan Baez. However, most songs added Korean lyrics and were imbued with the critical awareness and social idealism of their

Inventing Korean Popular Music  47 singers surrounding South Korea’s political situation under the oppressive Park Chung-Hee regime. T’ongkit’a prospered in the same (counter-)cultural atmosphere of the early 1970s as group sound did, but it derived not from the context of U.S. military bases, but instead from that of music cafés (ŭmak kamsangsil) in downtown Seoul, which had become a meeting place for college and university students. Kim Min-Ki (born 1951), a former student from Seoul National University, South Korea’s most prestigious university, began his career as a t’ongkit’a player in the Green Frog Hall, a music café, and became a major figure in the new song movement (norae undong) and eventually a cultural icon. Many of his songs, such as “Kkot piunŭn ai” (A Child Growing a Flower) (1971) or “Ach’im isŭl” (Morning Dew) (1971) sung by Yang Hŭi-ŭn, were banned by the government. However, they were circulated widely among students and intellectuals and became anthems in Korea’s protest culture in the following decades. In general, t’ongkit’a songs were appreciated by young people as a fresh alternative to t’ŭrot’ŭ and rock music. Characterized by the use of the acoustic guitar and simple melodies, t’ongkit’a songs were easy to sing and thus put an emphasis on the singer’s vocal delivery, the lyricism in song texts, and aspects of individuality and authenticity embodied in the singers’ stage performance. In order to circumvent governmental censorship, many t’ongkit’a songs were devoid of inflammatory political messages and instead focused on sentimental and joyful aspects of love and youth. Numerous t’ongkit’a songs, such as those sung by Cho Yŏng-Nam, Song Ch’ang-Sik, Yun Hyŏng-Ju, Kim Se-Hwan, and Lee Jang-Hee [Yi Chang-Hŭi], made their way into radio and TV programs and gained high record sales. T’ongkit’a “became one of the most dominant forces in popular music” in Korea, as Okon Hwang wrote, “[T]he sudden growth and popularity, and the related cultural paraphernalia, with blue jeans, draft beer and hippie-like long hair, becoming symbols of urban youth, led to the phrase ‘T’ong Kit’a Boom’” (Hwang, 2006, 39). The historical significance of t’ongkit’a lies in the “politicization of pop music,” as Hwang (2006) argued in light of Kim Min-Ki and the song movement. Considering that most singers had an academic background in the “intellectualization of pop,” the significance of group sound lies in the extension of the sonic possibilities brought about by electric instruments, electric amplifiers, and sound manipulation devices, such as distortion, phaser, echo, and others. T’ongkit’a and group sound both reflect the strong impact and appropriation of American pop music and more importantly its transition into new articulative forms of Korean identities and their distribution into the wider Korean public of the 1960s and 1970s. With much overlap, t’ongkit’a and group sound music proliferated in the early 1970s, but their cultural significance began to vanish as soon as the authoritarian government more strongly oppressed musicians. In 1972, Park Chung-Hee proclaimed martial laws and the yusin (revitalizing reform) program, which allowed for the stabilizing of his dictatorship by granting him unlimited constitutional power. In the field of music, the tightened control over anti-governmental

48  Configuring K-Pop sentiments turned into a number of state-led activities against the alleged “foreign decadent culture,” of which the Americanized songs and group sound and t’ongkit’a musicians were part. A preliminary climax in the governmental control procedures against musicians was reached within the massive crackdown on drug abuse in 1975, where musicians were prosecuted for smoking marijuana. In the wake of this marijuana crackdown, the government arrested and blacklisted many musicians, banned their songs from broadcasting and public performance, and censored their recordings. As these oppressive activities became the rule, the careers of many individual musicians, such as Shin Joong-Hyun, were either severely disrupted or came to an abrupt end. In the same vein, group sound and t’ongkit’a lost their earlier edginess and cultural impact; from then on, they either transmuted into light mainstream-compatible standard pop music or survived in the realm of Korean underground music, where they became an inspiration and reference for subsequent generations of rock and folk musicians. The Fifth and Sixth Republic: Overground and Underground (1980s) Following Chun Doo-Hwan’s coup d’état in 1979, South Korea was again subjugated to military dictatorship. The 1980s, spanning the Fifth Republic (1981–87) and early Sixth Republic (since 1987), was a decade of enforced political oppressions, popular protests, and strict control over the media. By its end, there were significant changes toward political democratization. Television was the new key medium and the center piece of a state-led media monopoly. The Chun government closed all commercial broadcasting stations and left only two state TV channels, KBS and MBC, in existence and under tight control. As TV provided the only stage for pop singers to pursue careers, music business began to (re-)organize itself around the two TV broadcasting companies, and pop music culture was henceforth to be characterized by a topographic divide, namely “overground” and “underground.” While the first was the only financially viable sector largely dominated by TV music production, the second, usually devoid of commercial potential and tied to live bands and concerts, was by definition marginalized. Alongside this basic cultural split, the media exerted other long-­lasting effects on the culture of music production that shall survive as typical influences or limitations in today’s K-Pop production. This is the case with the star system that evolved in the context of TV programs (­ Howard, 2006, 81), where singers were chosen through contests and by scouts mainly for their abilities to perform on screen. Composers and lyricists wrote new songs for them, and the broadcasting stations employed ­backing bands, dance groups, arrangers, conductors, and choreographers to work with the stars. Due to this labor division, the singers, who usually had to perform with in-house bands and sing songs written by others only had marginal

Inventing Korean Popular Music  49 power. The identity of songs was determined by the media rather than the singers, as Keith Howard noted: “One result was that songs became hits less for individual singers and less because of stratospheric recording sales, but because they were widely sung” (Howard, 2006, 84). The rise of karaoke singing in Korea from the late 1980s seemingly m ­ irrored this situation. The dissociation between singer and song, between the singer’s personal identity and star persona, and the general preference for anodyne singers, which all became characteristics of later K-Pop as well, result from the specificities of a star system that developed under a strict censorship policy. Censorship, as Howard noted in view of Appadurai’s scapes model, “restricted personal identity (Appadurai’s idioscape) while the media, through their employment of arrangers and in-house bands, restricted technical evolution (technoscapes); both, by controlling the importation of Western music, restricted consideration of ethnicity (ethnoscapes)” ­(Howard, 2006, 84). These multiple restrictions blatantly marked the big fault lines of Korea’s pop music in the 1980s, which were ready to burst when hip-hop pioneer Seo Taiji (Sŏ T’aeji) and his generation entered the stage in the following decade. Furthermore, the strict control and censorship of recordings from the West and from Japan, paired with Korea’s economic rise and the emergence of a consumer society, led to a prospering domestic music market in which pop songs in Korean sung by Koreans were to form the largest portion. Overground music was largely dominated by three genres: pop ballads (palladŭ kayo), t’ŭrot’ŭ, and dance music (taensŭ mjujik). Pop ballads emerged as a new genre and have become the most popular genre in Korea. They can be seen as a continuation of earlier standard pop and t’ongkit’a music, though mostly with orchestral accompaniment and without political connotations; romantic love and self-indulgence are the central themes (Hwang, 2005, 48). Representative pop ballad singers of the time were male singers Lee Mun-Se (Yi Mun-Se) and Byeon Jin-Seob (Pyŏn Chin-Sŏp) and female singer Lee Sun-Hee (Yi Sŏn-Hŭi). Lee Sun-Hee, for example, started her singing career by winning the grand prize at the Fifth MBC Kangbyŏn Kayoje (MBC Riverside Song Festival), one of the various music festivals held by the broadcasters, in 1984. Following her successful debut with the song “J ege” (Dear J), she quickly became a teen idol with annual album record releases and an anodyne image, which Keith Howard described. “In performance, Lee routinely dressed like a university student, wearing delicate thin-rimmed spectacles; this created an image, not just of Confucian studiousness, but of a character people wanted to be like. She was […] ‘the chaste girl-next-door’ […]” (Howard, 2006, 86). Lacking any political messages or morally offensive lyrics and images, pop ballads appeared as an appropriate genre to stabilize and enhance the authoritarian government’s political power due to their innocuous themes, and they were appreciated by mainstream audiences as an alternative to t’ŭrot’ŭ songs.

50  Configuring K-Pop T’ŭrot’ŭ suffered under the government’s enforced censorship policy, especially from the mid-1970s, inasmuch as many commercially successful songs were banned from broadcasting and sale for their alleged Japanese influence. The term wae-saek (little color) derogatively described the Japanese color in the songs by referring to discourses on t’ŭrot’ŭ’s similarities with Japanese enka and to related questions of whether t’ŭrot’ŭ may be considered Korean by origin or a mere imitation of Japanese enka. The government’s censorship policy, as well as public sentiments against Japanese culture, brought general discredit to t’ŭrot’ŭ, despite its ongoing popularity among older, rural, and underclass people. In 1984, when the genre was re-evaluated by t’ŭrot’ŭ experts and practitioners in a public “ppongtchak debate” (Pak, 2006) t’ŭrot’ŭ made a large-scale comeback through the appearance of new singers, such as Choo Hyun-Mi (Chu Hyŏn-Mi) and Mun Hee-Ok (Mun Hŭi-Ok), who best represented the genre’s transformation. The new t’ŭrot’ŭ style was then closely tied to the emergence of a lucrative cassette market, in which t’ŭrot’ŭ producers began to feature the t’ŭrot’ŭ-medley cassette tapes as the genre’s central medium of transmission. Accordingly, t’ŭrot’ŭ medley singers became popular, and signifying an aesthetic shift in the genre, up-tempo disco rhythm, major diatonic scale, and lighthearted playful lyrics replaced the slow, minor scale-based songs, the elegy, and the pathos of the earlier t’ŭrot’ŭ style (Son, 2004, 179). Chu Hyŏn-Mi, a Chinese-Korean female singer, made her debut in 1984 with the medley album “Ssang ssang p’ati” (Couple’s Party), which had a million sales on the cassette market and established her as a respected t’ŭrot’ŭ singer. Because she was a professional pharmacist prior to her singing career, she earned the nickname yaksa kasu (pharmacist singer), which helped to elevate the genre’s low reputation. Choo promoted her fresh and cheerful songs along with a personal vocal style that rested on heavy tonal inflections, embellishments, and the so-called kkŏngnŭn mok (breaking throat), a technique derived from Korean folksongs using glottal and nasal breaks and that became a new vocal standard in t’ŭrot’ŭ (Pak, 2006, 65; Son, 2004, 195). T’ŭrot’ŭ ‘s mainstream popularity vanished again in the early 1990s with the advent of hip-hop and dance pop groups but was revitalized in the mid-2000s when young t’ŭrot’ŭ singers, such as Jang Yoon-Jeong (Chang Yun-Jŏng) opened the genre to a youth audience. As a symbol of Korea’s adult working class culture, however, t’ŭrot’ŭ has remained alive until the present day in public spaces, taxi cabs, local marketplaces, tour buses, and highway rest areas (Son, 2004, 265). Dance music (taensŭ mjujik) became popular in the late 1980s when TV sets were available in most Korean households and when the music industry discovered Korean teenagers to be a group of affluent consumers. Influenced by the international popularity of disco music and by music video clips of American stars, such as Michael Jackson and Madonna, dance music began to take hold in the Korean mainstream, creating a strand that has led up to present-day K-Pop. Singers like In Sun-I, who gained immense popularity

Inventing Korean Popular Music  51 with her 1983 disco hit song “Pamimyŏn pammada” (Every Night). Kim Wan-Sŏn, who started her career as one of In Sun-I’s backup dancers and who was later called the Korean Madonna for emulating Madonna’s dance and fashion style, and Pak Nam-Jŏng, known for his rendition of Michael Jackson songs, successfully represented the new dance music genre by incorporating the latest disco fashion trends, glitzy costumes, and disco dance moves into their stage performances. Visual appeal was a defining feature of the dance music genre, but unlike their Western counterparts, Korean singers still referred to TV shows, as the era of music videos in Korea was yet to come. A notable exception in the 1980s mainstream pop music was male singer Cho Yong-P’il who enjoyed great popularity in Korea and in Japan throughout the decade and achieved unprecedented album sales of more than 20 million copies in total. Labeled with diverse superlatives, like “superstar,” “king of mainstream,” and “revolutionary of Korean popular music,” Cho embodied the age of Korea’s prosperous music industry by churning out multi-million sellers and giving rise to an organized idol fan cult of female fans, known in Korea as oppa p’aendŭl (older brother fans) or oppa pudae (older brother squad). He began his musical career as a guitarist in the Eighth Army club scene in the late 1960s and after being banned from performances due to the censorship policy during the late 1970s, he became a full-fledged mainstream singer and solo artist with his first official studio album “Ch’angbakkŭi yŏja/Tanbalmŏri” (The Woman Outside the Window/ Bobbed Hair) released in 1980, which also contains a funk rock version of his 1975 hit song “Torawayo Pusanhange” (Come Back to Busan Harbor). On his eighteen albums, released between 1980 and 2003, he combined a rich diversity of musical styles ranging from t’ŭrot’ŭ, ballad, and minyo to disco, rock, funk, and jazz. Genre-crossing played a decisive role in the marketability of his music and did not derogate his commercial success, which began to decline as Seo Taiji and his fellows conquered the charts. Underground music was a direct contrast to the heavily commercialized and televised overground music. From the mid-1980s, a new generation of musicians began to resume the disrupted strands of ‘60s and ‘70s t’ongkit’a and group sound music and aimed to revitalize them in a more professional manner. Freed from the amateurish status of earlier student folk singers and from their political intent, the new underground musicians presented themselves as real artists emphasizing notions of personal identity, musical authenticity, artistic creativity, and technical ability. Underground music, best represented by bands and musicians such as Tŭlgukhwa (Wild Chrysanthemum), Kim Hyŏn-Sik, Cho Tong-Jin, Sinch’on Pŭrusŭ (Sinchon Blues), Ŏttŏnnal (One Day), Yu Chae-Ha, Pom-yŏrŭm-kaŭl-kyŏul (Spring-SummerAutumn-Winter), Sinawi, Paektusan, and Puhwal (Resurrection), embraced a range of styles such as rock, heavy metal, blues, folk, and fusion jazz, and they gained popularity through passionate live shows and ambitious studio recordings. Underground music has continued to exist as a dichotomic

52  Configuring K-Pop umbrella term for a diversity of musical styles and acts that range beyond financial success and TV mass-mediation. Although the boundaries between the two spheres have principally remained stable until today, underground styles began to move toward the mainstream during the subsequent decade. Democratization Era: Rap Dance, Stylistic Fragmentation, and Idol Pop (1990s) By the early 1990s, Korea experienced significant changes. After decades of authoritarian military rule, Korea made a substantial move toward democratization marked by its first civil government under Kim Young-Sam (1993–98); at the same time, it faced major economic prosperity (as a result of the strict developmentalism forged under Park’s and Chun’s dictatorships) that had begun to elicit broad consumerism throughout the classes, especially among the Korean youth. The term sinsedae (new generation) indicated the new consuming power of urban affluent middle-class youngsters, whose values, lifestyles, and cultural practices significantly differed from those of the kisŏngsedae (older generation). Born in the early-mid 1970s, [t]he youth had not shared the political and economic difficulties experienced by the older generation; most had grown up in nuclear families, where busy urban lifestyles displaced traditional Confucianism. The older repressive educational system was not suited for them, and ­conflict arose as individualism led them to reject the demands for a­ cademic achievement. (Jung, 2006, 111) The new generation had already grown up consuming American pop culture (i.e., food, fashion, films, and pop music) and was now increasingly demanding global and new domestic pop cultural trends. This youth cultural shift resulted from and reflected Korea’s new openness to the world, which was also symbolically marked by major events, such as the 1988 Seoul Olympic Games, the 1993 Daejeon World Expo, and the rise of new technologies, networks, and formats (i.e., MCs, CDs, portable media players, karaoke machines, and music video clips). Trade, labor migration, tourism, and overseas studies ultimately led to the increased traffic of international and particularly American pop culture and music to Korea. Local mainstream pop music of the time was dominated by never-changing pop ballads and simple copies of American dance pop and thus felt monotonous and inappropriate to the life of young Koreans, who asked for something different and new. Seo Taiji and Boys (Sŏ T’aejiwa aidŭl) were the ones who filled the void and whose startling success transformed them into top cultural icons. In spring 1992, Seo Taiji, a former bass player with heavy metal band Sinawi, and his two dancers Lee Juno (Yi Chuno) and Yang Hyun-Suk (Yang Hyŏn-sŏk), the

Inventing Korean Popular Music  53 latter of whom later founded YG Entertainment, made their album and TV debut as Korea’s first hip-hop group. By combining rap with Korean lyrics and sampling supplemented with various other musical styles and messages for Korean society, they performed with elaborate hip-hop dance choreographies in then-unconventional fashion by wearing baggy pants, sunglasses, and baseball caps. The group presented a provocative novelty within Korea’s conservative media and thus earned rapid success among the young generation while Seo Taiji became the foremost representative of Korean youth. By introducing faster dance rap songs to the Korean mainstream, Seo Taiji and Boys paved the musical ground for the upcoming generations of Korean pop idols. Instead of just recycling standard pop formulae, however, creative freedom and musical innovation were characteristic of the group’s repertoire, which consisted of the four regular studio albums the group released before its disbandment in 1996. With each new album, the group experimented with new elements and styles, as is illustrated in various songs. The debut hit song “Nan arayo” (I Know) (1992) established Korean rap dance (delivered with the conventional sampling technique and romantic lyrics). “Hayŏga” (1993), from the second album, enhanced the group’s hip-hop style by employing stronger beats, faster rapping, and heavy metal guitar riffs combined with reggae fashion and dreadlocks and featured the sounds of the traditional Korean double reed wind instrument taepyŏngso. “Kyosil idea” (Classroom Ideology) from the third album (1994), fused hardcore rapping and shouting, death metal guitar, and growling voices with critical lyrics on Korea’s oppressive education system.”Parhae-rŭl kkumkkumyŏ” (Dreaming of Balhae) on the same album directly addressed the topic of national unification—a subject unusual in pop songs. “Come Back Home,” on the fourth album (1995), adopted American West Coast gangsta rap in the style of hip-hop group Cypress Hill and put a more moderate spin on Seo Taiji’s social criticism with lyrics that gave solace to teenage runaways and sought to reconcile the generations. “Sidaeyugam” (Regret of the Times), which exposed alternative rock and grunge style, was originally to appear on the same album but did not pass pre-censorship control due to its alleged disrespectful lyrics toward the elder generation. Once fan protests and public debates successfully forced the abolition of the pre-censorship system (sajonsimŭije), a legacy from authoritarian times, the group finally released the song as a single in 1996.10 Seo Taiji gained his iconic status not only from modernizing Korean pop through appropriating new music, dance, and fashion styles, and from catering to new youth cultural desires, but also from contributing to a substantial shift in the industrial arrangement of pop music production. As he was the composer, lyricist, producer, and manager of the group, Seo Taiji had total control over the group’s image and songs. This concept of an independent pop idol, who is not reliant on managers and agents and who creates his own image, was radically new to Korean mainstream pop, and it contested the hegemonic powers of the broadcasting stations with their in-house star

54  Configuring K-Pop system and big band orchestra-centered TV shows. Like no other, Seo Taiji symbolized the shift to image-centered pop music, which was no longer confined to the standards of the old TV stations, but available also to the new ones brought about by the approaching era of music video television in Korea. Subsequently, the mainstream pop market began to diversify into various segments and was henceforth stylistically fragmented. Pop ballads and t’ŭrot’ŭ continued to prevail in the old media (TV and cassette tapes) but also appeared with new facets and adopted foreign styles like the French chanson. Jazzy songs marketed to university students and intellectuals, disco music marketed to club audiences, and soundtracks of films and TV dramas emerged as new categories (Howard, 2006, 90). Seo Taiji and Boys broadened the acceptance for American black music styles and pushed the music industry’s door open for other hip-hop and R&B acts that became enormously successful, such as 015B (Kongirobi), a group fronted by Chŏng Sŏk-Won and Chang Ho-Il, and Solid (Sollidŭ), which consisted of the three members Yi Chun, Kim Chohan, and Chŏng Chae-Yun. Korean singers and groups were quick in appropriating foreign pop styles and molding them into local variants of the dance pop genre. Among them, reggae stylistics popularized by male singer Kim Gun Mo (Kim Kŏn-Mo) on his second studio album P’ingye (Excuse) in 1993 and by the four-member group Roo’ra, which released its debut album Roots of Reggae in 1994. However, techno beats underlay most of the dance pop chart songs in the second half of the 1990s. The rapidly expanding domestic music market, due to increased youth consumer powers and the quick appropriation of foreign styles and ideas paired with lacking copyright controls made music piracy a much-debated issue. Many Korean groups and singers allegedly copied not only directly from American pop stars, but also from Japanese pop culture (i.e., pop idols’ fashion, songs, dance styles, and cartoons), as Jung Eun-Young showed in her dissertation on the Japanese presence in Korean pop culture (Jung, 2001). For example, the group Roo’Ra obviously copied a melody from a song by Japanese idol group Ninja, the early Korean idol pop boy group H.O.T. was accused of copying songs and styles from Japanese visual rock group X-Japan and from the Japanese cartoon figure Dragon Ball. Korean girl groups, such as S.E.S., FIN.K.L., and Baby V.O.X. seemed to directly emulate Japanese girl group SPEED, a four-member group signed under Japanese record label Toy’s Factory (1996–2001), a multi-million seller across Asia. Korea’s open-door-policy toward Japanese cultural products, processed in four stages from 1998 to 2004, did not automatically wipe out the problem of pirating Japanese pop songs but did make it more difficult for Korean singers and producers to freely copy Japanese songs, “as the Korean audience became more and more knowledgeable about Japanese popular music and the general public’s concern over the copyright issues became more and more serious” (Jung, 2001, 144f).

Inventing Korean Popular Music  55 Since the 1990s, Korea’s music industry has largely been a “cottage culture industry” (Petersen, 2003, 199) because the influence of multinational music companies, so-called major labels, has remained marginal. Instead, small-tomid sized companies embodied in the so-called entertainment agencies (yŏnye kihoeksa), which began to replace record companies (ŭmbansa), became the dominant forces in music production. The hegemony of the big broadcasting corporations began to shrink with the advances of the local IT industry by the turn of the millennium. Large business conglomerates, such as Samsung, Hyundai, and LG, had provided financial backing since the late 1980s and increased their investments in the thriving music market during the 1990s. It eventually had to withdraw from the music business during the country’s economic downturn in the wake of the 1997 Asian financial crisis, also known in Korea as the IMF (International Monetary Fund) crisis (Shin, 2008). The buying power of young consumers shrank drastically, music record sales shriveled, and record companies and record stores were forced to close down. While the domestic music market went downhill, export-orientation became a necessary survival strategy for small-to-mid sized music companies, and talent managers and agents were elevated to the status of key cultural intermediaries. In re-configuring the earlier TV star system, they principally returned to formulaic production and enhanced it in view of a transnationally Asian youth target audience by enriching it with Seo Taiji’s musical legacy: fast and rap-based dance pop. Korean TV dramas and movies had already made a significant impact in the Chinese-speaking countries, which led ­Chinese commentators to coin the term hallyu 한류 韓流 (Korean Wave). Idol dance pop music made in Korea was soon to follow and continued to widen its circles. In 1996, the same year Seo Taiji and Boys disbanded, the first systematically trained idol boy group H.O.T. (High Five of Teenagers) left the assembly line of entertainment company SM Entertainment. Four years later, H.O.T. became the musical spearhead of the Korean Wave in China; together with other Korean idol groups, such as CLON, NRG, Shinhwa, Baby V.O.X., and S.E.S., they symbolically marked the beginning of K-Pop’s national, and at the same time, transnational success story. Transnationality is all but a recent phenomenon in Korean popular music, as this chapter demonstrated. It can be seen as intrinsic to the varying notions of Korean popular music and constitutive to its manifold genres, which have proliferated and diversified since the first encounters with Western music in the late nineteenth century. K-Pop, in the sense of the manufactured idol star centered in a training system that emerged in the mid-1990s, thus represents the latest stage in a long history of complex encounters between transnational and national forces in Korean popular music. Its export-orientation and international popularity on a broader scale make the K-Pop phenomenon distinct from earlier Korean popular music. The next chapter aims to investigate K-Pop’s distinctive qualities and discusses K-Pop from the angle of genre formation. It also discusses the global imaginary that is driving, as well as resulting from, the production of K-Pop songs.

56  Configuring K-Pop Notes 1. In 1886, Appenzeller established the “Paeje” mission school for Korean men, Underwood established the “Kyongsin” mission school, and Scranton established the first women’s school called “Ihwa,” all located in Seoul. At these mission schools, hymn singing was incorporated into the curricula and into the lives of their students (Ahn, 2005, 10f). 2. Ch’anmiga was the first hymn book in the Korean language comprising twentyseven hymns and published without musical notation by Henry G. Appenzeller in 1892. Ch’anyangga comprised 117 hymns edited by Horace Underwood and was published in 1894, containing for the first time musical notation for fourpart harmony (Ahn, 2005, 12; Lee et al., 2001, 26f). 3. Lee distinguishes four stages, of which the second stage is marked by the emergence of Korean composers, such as Kim Sŏjŏng, who began to write popular songs, i.e., “Nakhwa yusu” (Fallen Flowers, Flowing Waters) (1929) and “Pom norae purŭja” (Let’s Sing a Song of Spring) (1930), although yet in a style preliminary to the upcoming t’ŭrot’ŭ and sinminyo songs. These two later genres, that flourished between 1935 and 1940, mark the third stage. The fourth stage is marked by the increased restrictions on Korean society accompanied by the appearance of military marches, i.e., “Kamgyŏk sidae” (Days of Impression) sung by Nam In-Su, from the late 1930s to the end of colonial rule. 4. In the late 1920s and early 1930s, Japanese subsidiaries of American and ­European record companies expanded into the Korean market, such as Nippon Victor (1927), Nippon Columbia (1928), Nippon Polydor (1930), next to the fully owned Japanese labels Chieron (1931) and Taihei/T’aep’yŏng (1932), and before the first collaborative Japanese-Korean record company Okeh (1933) entered the market (Paik et al. 2007, 55–60; Song, 2009;46). 5. The Kyŏngsŏng Radio Broadcasting station in Seoul, launched on February 16, 1927, received its call sign JODK from being the fourth radio station in the Japanese Empire, after Tokyo (JOAK), Osaka (JOBK), and Nagoya (JOCK). Its broadcast time was six and a half hours per day, of which most of the programming was in Japanese, and only 1–2 hours in the Korean language. Initially, the programs dealt with news on political and market issues, but soon they were also used for educational purposes, including radio lectures, book reading sessions, concerts, and serial radio plays (Lankov, 2009). 6. “Iwŏn aegok” and “Mokp’o ŭi nunmul” were both composed by Son Mogin and recorded and released by Okeh Records. The lyrics of the former were written by Kim Nŭngin and the latter were Mun Ilsŏk. 7. At these kwŏnbŏns, young girls aged from 13 to 23 were offered a three-year training course with a final diploma before they transformed into professional courtesans and went to work all over the country. At the P’yŏngyang kwŏnbŏn, for example, which had 250 students in 1934, kisaengs were taught eleven subjects: kagok, Korean folk songs, Japanese songs, singing practice, composition, music, calligraphy, painting, poetry, Japanese, and attitude and manners. The preservation of traditional culture and teaching methods were central aims of these schools (Lee, 2010a; Zhang, 2010). 8. Lee Young-Woo noted that according to the remaining song sheets of popular song lyrics in the 1930s, only 43 songs were labeled as “jazz” songs (Lee, 2010b, 59). 9. Charles K. Armstrong considers the American influence as enormous. He wrote: “In the area of popular culture, South Korea was permeated by American films,

Inventing Korean Popular Music  57 music, literature, and television even more than other parts of the postwar world; in Asia, possibly only the Philippines, an outright colony of the U.S. for nearly half a century, was influenced as deeply by American culture as was South Korea” (Armstrong, 2007, 24). 10. For more detailed discussions on Seo Taiji and Boys see Jung, 2006; Song, 2009; and Maliangkay, 2014.

References Ahn, Choong-Sik. 2005. The Story of Western Music in Korea: A Social History, 1885–1950. Morgan Hill, CA: eBookstand. Armstrong, Charles K. 2007. The Koreas. New York/London: Routledge. Finchum-Sung, Hilary. 2006. “New Folksongs: Sinminyo of the 1930s.” In Korean Pop Music: Riding the Wave. Edited by Keith Howard, 10–20. Folkestone, Kent: Global Oriental. Howard, Keith. 2006. “Coming of Age: Korean Pop in the 1990s.” In Korean Pop Music: Riding the Wave. Edited by Keith Howard, 82–98. Folkestone, Kent: Global Oriental. Hwang, Okon. 2005. “South Korea.” In Continuum Encyclopedia of Popular Music of the World. Volume V, Asia and Oceania., Edited by John Shepherd, David Horn, and Dave Laing, 45–49. London and New York: Continuum. Hwang, Okon. 2006. “The Ascent and Politicization of Pop Music in Korea: From the 1960s to the 1980s.” In Korean Pop Music: Riding the Wave. Edited by Keith Howard, 34–47. Folkestone, Kent: Global Oriental. Jung, Eun-Young. 2001. “Transnational Cultural Traffic in Northeast Asia: The ‘Presence’ of Japan in Korea’s Popular Music Culture.” PhD diss., University of Pittsburgh. ProQuest (AAT 3284579). Jung, Eun-Young. 2006. “Articulating Korean Youth Culture through Global Popular Music Styles: Seo Taiji’s Use of Rap and Metal.” In Korean Pop Music: Riding the Wave. Edited by Keith Howard, 109–22. Folkestone, Kent: Global Oriental. Jung, Eun-Young. 2007. “Transnational Cultural Traffic in Northeast Asia: The ‘Presence’ of Japan in Korea’s Popular Music Culture.” PhD diss., University of Pittsburgh. ProQuest (AAT 3284579). Lankov, Andrei. 2009. “Who Listened to the Radio?” Korea Times, October 7. Accessed May 4, 2012.http://www.koreatimes.co.kr/www/news/include/print. asp?newsIdx=48243 Lee, Insuk. 2010a. “Convention and Innovation: The Lives and Cultural Legacy of the Kisaeng in Colonial Korea (1910–1945).” Seoul Journal of Korean Studies 23/1: 71–93. Lee, Kang-Sook, Kim Chun-Mi, and Min Kyeong-Chan. 2001. 우리 양각 100-년 [Our 100 Years of Western Music]. Seoul: Hyeonamsa. Lee, Yong-Woo. 2010b. “Embedded Voices in Between Empires: The Cultural Formation of Korean Popular Music in Modern Times.” PhD diss., McGill ­ ­University, Montreal. ProQuest (NR 72648). Lee, Young Mee. 2006a. “The Beginnings of Korean Pop: Popular Music during the Japanese Occupation Era (1910–45).” In Korean Pop Music: Riding the Wave. Edited by Keith Howard, 1–9. Folkestone, Kent: Global Oriental. Lee, Young Mee. [이영미]. 2006b. 한국대중가요사 [History of Korean Popular Song]. Seoul: Minsokweon.

58  Configuring K-Pop Maliangkay, Roald H. 2011. “Koreans Performing for Foreign Troops: The Occidentalism of the C.M.C. and K.P.K.” East Asian History 37: 57–72. Maliangkay, Roald H. 2014. “The Popularity of Individualism: The Seo Taiji Phenomenon in the 1990s.” In The Korean Popular Culture Reader. Edited by Kyung Hyun Kim, 296–313. Durham/London: Duke University Press. Nettl, Bruno. 1985. The Western Impact on World Music: Change, Adaptation, and Survival. New York: Schirmer. Paik, Won-Dam, Jang Yu-Jeong, Lee Jun-Hee, and Park Aekyung. 2007. “일제강점 기 한국 대중음악사 연구” [Study on Korean Popular Music during the Japanese Colonial Era]. Research paper (unpublished). Pak, Gloria Lee. 2006. “On the Mimetic Faculty: A Critical Study of the 1984 Ppongtchak Debate and Post-Colonial Mimesis.” In Korean Pop Music: Riding the Wave. Edited by Keith Howard, 62–71. Folkestone, Kent: Global Oriental. Petersen, Mark Allen. 2003. Anthropology and Mass Communication: Media and Myth in the New Millennium. New York/Oxford: Berghahn. Shin, Hyunjoon. 2008. “Globalization of Korean Popular Music/Music Industry and the ‘Studies’ about It.” Paper presented at the bi-annual conference of the ­Inter-Asia Popular Music Studies Group, Osaka, July 26–27. Shin, Hyunjoon, and Ho Tung-Hung. 2009. “Translation of ‘America’ During the Early Cold War Period: A Comparative Study on the History of Popular Music in South Korea and Taiwan.” Inter-Asia Cultural Studies 10/1: 83–102. Son, Min-Jung. 2004. “The Politics of the Traditional Korean Popular Song Style T’ŭrot’ŭ.” PhD diss., The University of Texas at Austin. ProQuest (AAT 3145359). Son, Min-Jung. 2014. “Young Musical Love of the 1930s.” In The Korean Popular Culture Reader. Edited by Kyung Hyun Kim, 255–274. Durham/London: Duke University Press. Song, Haw-Suk. 2009. “Over, Under und Dazwischen: Populäre Musik und Kultur in Südkorea” [Over, Under, and In-between: Popular Music and Culture in South Korea]. PhD diss., Humboldt University Berlin. Yano, Christine Reiko. 2002. Tears of Longing: Nostalgia and the Nation in Japanese Popular Song. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Zhang Eu-Jeong. 2010. “What It Means to be a ‘Star’ in Korea: The Birth and Return of Popular Singers.” Korea Focus, September 28. Accessed May 12, 2013. http://www.koreafocus.or.kr/design2/essays/view.asp?volume_id=101&content_ id=103227&category=G.

3 Producing the Global Imaginary A K-Pop Tropology

The music business in the 1990s experienced a substantial shift toward an era of increased global awareness among musicians and music producers and saw the emergence of artist management companies as new powerful players in the music market. Pop idols have, since then, become the center of the mainstream music business. Rather than the arbitrary and vague use of the term K-Pop in governmental, media, and fan discourses, where it usually means “pop music from Korea” (without further specifications) and may include artists and music styles from very different genres, I understand K-Pop as a result of a relationship, namely, of the inherent tension between the global imaginary it depicts and issues of national identity that were underlying, intersecting, and conflicting with it. Thus, K-Pop can neither be defined by stylistic or intra-musical features nor by geographical or national origin alone, but must be understood within the wider socioeconomic dynamics, in particular, as a product of the globalization of music production companies in South Korea that started to expand their target markets beyond national borders in the mid-1990s. K-Pop, in this narrow sense, denotes Korean pop music that is teenager-oriented, star-centered, and mass-produced by multi-faceted entertainment conglomerates. Given the growing number of K-Pop fans in and outside South Korea and the variety of sources that confirm its distinctive qualities, this chapter seeks to address these qualities by taking the following questions as guidance: How does K-Pop construct and represent the global imaginary? What are the strategies, techniques, and parameters characteristic of K-Pop? Despite the variety of artists, styles, agents, and agendas in the field of Korean idol pop, there is a certain consistency in how the field of K-Pop music is delineated and organized and in the parameters attributed to it. Therefore, I choose a systematic approach in this chapter (instead of continuing the historical one in the previous chapter) to describe K-Pop as a coherent phenomenon in terms of a musical genre. In order to avoid notions of closeness and universality implicit in phenomenological accounts, the chapter gains insight and inspiration from more open and fragmented models of genre description. In musicology, Adam Krims, for example, has outlined a genre system for rap music that relates music’s internal structuration to its social functions. He considers social life as internalized in  musical

60  Configuring K-Pop poetics,  which  work as a level of mediation between musical and social categories. In terms of rap music, he states that “simply describing a genre involves reinvoking not only the entire context of rap music, but also the equally (relatively) autonomous world of discourses that surrounds the ­latter—and not too indirectly, reinvoking the aspects of the (late) c­ apitalist mode of production itself” (Krims, 2000, 46). Unlike the (sub-)styles and topics Krims discusses as markers for internal genre distinction within rap, it is remarkable that in K-Pop the mode of production (visible in the casting and training system or in the loyalty of fans toward specific production companies) is much more crucial and directly relevant to the identity formations of artists, companies, and fans than the assumed coherence of music styles, textual messages, or artists’ attitudes. Therefore, the discussion has to consider the role of the idol production system as integral part of K-Pop as a genre. Further, I understand K-Pop as a multi-textual phenomenon, a symbolic regime composed of discursive, visual, and acoustic strategies. This chapter draws from a variety of sources and methods, combining ethnographic data with a textual, musico-poetical, and discourse analysis. It is divided into seven categories (words, system, idols, songs, formats and forms, sounds, and visuals), each of them understood as a constitutive genre principle and as a formative component in the production of the global imaginary. Needless to say, the structure is selective, fragmented, and fluid. It is not my aim to present a complete taxonomy of stylistic features, a stable genre system, or a musical phenomenology of K-Pop. Instead, I try to shed light on where and how the mechanisms of musical globalization shape and penetrate the material conditions and production modes of K-Pop. The chapter’s structure can thus be read as a tropology, which is not meant as a comparative study of metaphors and rhetorical figures in the narrow sense of literary studies, but rather understood in the broadest notion of Hayden White’s definition. “[T]roping,” he notes, “is both a movement from one notion of the way things are related to another notion, and a connection between things so that they can be expressed in a language that takes account of the possibility of their being expressed otherwise” (White, 1978, 2). The K-Pop tropology presented here is an assemblage of disparate components that, only in conjunction with each other, constitute K-Pop as a music genre.

Terminology The term K-Pop (K-p’ap K-팝) has rarely been used by Koreans in the past. The prevalent term to designate domestically produced pop music in Korean language is han’guk kayo 한국가요 (Korean popular song), taejung kayo 대중가요 (mass popular song), or simply kayo 가요 (popular song). Historically, K-Pop has been used to broadly distinguish Korean popular music from other forms, such as kugak 국악 (Korean traditional music) and k’ŭllaesik 클래식 (Western classical music), as well as from p’ab song 팝송

Producing the Global Imaginary  61 (Western popular music). Despite the recent popularity of the term K-Pop, especially among foreigners and fans outside Korea, mainstream media and consumers in South Korea still prefer the term kayo over K-Pop.1 In the same manner, the majority of physical music retail stores and commercial music download services is confined to local consumers and thus uses the label gayo to distinguish the domestic repertoire from other music genres, which are defined either by their foreign origin (e.g., pop, classic, jazz, world, J-pop, Chinese) or by specific functions or topics (e.g., Korean traditional music, OST, CCM, Buddhist music, children’s songs, new age). In November 2010, the music download service Soribada launched its English online portal for legally distributing Korean music to international consumers. The fact that Soribada uses gayo on its Korean portal but K-Pop on its global portal to label exactly the same musical repertoire indicates a discursive shift and the emergence of a new term connected to the rising interest in Korean pop music abroad. This terminological distinction and separation between internal and external use (reminiscent of the emic/ etic divide known from anthropology) newly rekindles the significance of the nation as a symbolic boundary marker. Different from J-Pop, which evolved as an endogenous label for a specific musical genre in Japan in the late 1980s (Mori, 2009, 474), the term K-Pop works as an exogenous label, primarily used in various other (mostly Asian) countries to categorize Korean pop songs. In the same manner, C-Pop stands for Chinese pop, or T-Pop for Taiwanese pop, always from the perspective of respective foreign markets. Siriyuvasak and Shin argued in their study of K-Pop consumption among Thai youth that nationality in such N-pop (N for nation) is dually and simultaneously concealed and revealed and at times eclipsed by or transformed into the pan-Asian notions of Asian pop, which itself must be regarded as a “trans-local (re)creation of a new global style” (Siriyuvasak and Shin, 2009, 120). The emergence of such N-pop genres can be seen as a result of strengthened production and consumption circuits and of increased transnational traffic within the Asian region, established against the common backdrop of a rising urban middle-class and consumerist youth culture in diverse Asian countries. A short look at Google statistics on the keyword K-Pop and its variant “Kpop” (conducted in October 2014) reveals that the search volume for both terms has risen exponentially since 2009.2 The regional interest breakdown shows that the nine countries with the highest number of search queries were in Southeast and East Asia, led by Indonesia, Malaysia, Vietnam, Singapore, and the Philippines. It is notable that the term K-Pop is also becoming more established in South Korea, where industry people in particular utilize it for marketing purposes. The term K-Pop is not simply a genre label; it has become a signifier for the global imaginary represented by fashionable and edgy dance music. Thus, it is part of a new politics of words in which linguistic flexibility and ambiguity are by no means serendipitous but are rather functionalized and brought into service by specific players

62  Configuring K-Pop with economic interests (i.e., music industry, mass media, and cultural promoters in governmental sectors).

Artist Names This flexibility can be observed most directly in the plethora of K-Pop ­artists and groups that have abolished Korean names and that instead use initials, acronyms, numbers, symbols, and odd Anglicisms in their names. The ­talent agencies’ favor for such wordings and neologisms is reflected in the ­following enumeration, names that have swamped the music charts since 1996: 1TYM, 2AM, 2PM, 4Minute, 5-Dolls, 8eight, 2ne1, Baby V.O.X., BoA, B.A.P., Big Bang, B2st (Beast), B2Y, BtoB, CNBlue, Code-V, DBSK, D-NA, EXO, F.CUZ, FinK.L, FT Island, f(x), Gn.E, G.O.D., HAM, H.O.T., IU, JJ, JQT, J.T.L., JYP, JYJ, LPG, M, MBLAQ, Miss A, Miss S, NRG, NU’EST, SAN E, Sechs Kies, Seeya, S.E.S., Se7en, SG Wannabee, S#arp, SHINee, SHU-I, SM the Ballad, SNSD, SS 501, T-ara, Teen Top, T-Max, TEN, TOP.AZ, TwiNy, U-Kiss, UP, VNT, V.O.S, X-5, X-Cross, YG, YMGA, ZE:A. Although the list is incomplete, it is obvious that artist names look and sound enigmatic. Their orthography resembles encrypted computer passwords or avatar names rather than the personal or proper names common for Western pop groups. Their linguistic ambiguity enables word play and puns.3 For example, B2st is a boy group’s name (sometimes spelled “Beast”) that draws on the shared pronunciation of the Sino-Korean number 2 and the English letter e, thus offering semantic inflections between beast and best. Acronyms and abbreviations are massive and mostly revolve around English words and their pronunciations, such as H.O.T. (for High Five of Teenagers) or 1TYM (pronounced One Time). Names are usually short and easy to remember, whereas their meaning often appears to be secondary. Sometimes they are a result of mistranslation or wrong usage of words in the standard foreign language, as for example the name of boy group Sechs Kies demonstrates. According to fan websites and the group’s Wikipedia article, the name is a compound of the two German words sechs (six) and Kies (gravel) intended to mean “six crystals”; this bears, however, a mistranslation and a wrong usage of the word Kies. Artist and group names have a double function. They can be easily understood by non-Korean audiences, and they convey the image of globality to Korean audiences. Most artist names are based on English words, whereas the group TVXQ4 is a notable exception for their reference to Chinese language and for extending the scope of linguistic flexibility. The group’s management company pursued a transnational marketing strategy within the East Asian region and based the group’s name on the Chinese characters 東方神起 (The Rising Gods of the East) to similarly attract Korean, ­Japanese, and Chinese speaking audiences. Depending on the target market and on the nationality of fans in online communities the group name appears in various characters, transliterations, and spellings. In Korea, they are written

Producing the Global Imaginary  63 동방신기, Dong Bang Shin Ki, and DBSK; in Japan, they are written 東方神起, Tohoshinki, TVXQ, and TVXQ!; in China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan, they are written 東方神起, Tong Vfang Xien Qi, and TVfXQ. This polymorphic denomination spawns greater flexibility for the production company in selling the group’s music to different Asian countries. It is part of the company’s localization strategy, in which localized products appear as local products (i.e., in Japan the group was marketed as a J­apanese band). Thus, the stronger identification of consumers with presumably homemade products leads to higher revenues for the production company. Furthermore, drawing on my own experiences and those of ­Western fans of TVXQ, the variant spellings of the group can appear as quite confusing in the beginning but at the same time can provoke curiosity and a desire to learn more about the group and its music.5 Here, initial confusion can serve as a selling point. The same principle and effect are apparent in the band members’ names that circulate with many variations.6 Finally, it is notable that, despite TVXQ’s growing fan communities beyond the East Asian region, their management company and fans do not use the English translation of the group name. Unlike the English code-switching of artist names found in most idol group and transnationally disseminated artist names (e.g., Rain who is also known as Chŏng Chi-Hun and pi 비 in Korea, as pi ピ in Japan, and as yu or bēi 雨 (sadness) in China), TVXQ refers only to Chinese characters as a common linguistic denominator among Korea, Japan, and China. Their name shifts away from the hegemony of the ­English language as a signifier for modernity and instead evokes and reiterates the imaginary of cultural proximity between these countries.

English Code-Mixing in Lyrics The use of English is prevalent not only in group names but also in song titles and lyrics. Code-mixing or code-switching is characteristic of many other Asian pop songs,7 although in Korean songs, it can hardly be found before the mid-1990s. Dal Yong Jin and Woongjae Ryoo pointed out that an E ­ nglish boom in Korean broadcasting and society occurred in the 1990s, which has added to the rapid growth of English mixing with Korean pop songs since the mid-1990s (Jin and Ryoo, 2014, 119). Among the earlier examples is the rap song “Come Back Home” from Seo Taiji and Boys in 1995. It uses only English words in the title and in the repeated chorus phrase “you must come back home.” The following shows the English words (in italics) significantly standing out from the enclosed Korean lyrics (given in English):8 What am I trying to find? Where am I restlessly wandering? I see the end of my life, feeling heavy in my heart. My life is blocked by my fear for tomorrow. After I see myself abandoned day after day. I am not there. And, tomorrow is not there, either.

64  Configuring K-Pop My rage toward this society is getting greater and greater. Finally, it turned into disgust. Truths disappear at the tip of the tongue. [Refrain:] You must come back home to warm up the coldness of your heart You must come back home. In this harsh life. You must come back home to warm up the coldness of your heart You must come back home. I will keep trying. One more life is born and parents take charge. No love for me. My painful tears have dried up. The world is like an empty bubble. Hmmm. Look around. Waiting for you. Yes, that’s enough now. I wish I could fly in the sky. Because we are still young and our future is good enough, Here! Now wipe the cold tears out and come back home. [Refrain] [In the place to be! One, two, three. In the place to be! In the place to be! In the place to be!] Although my exploding heart is driving me crazy. Now, I know, (they) loved me. [Refrain] What am I trying to find? Where am I restlessly wandering? What am I trying to find? Where am I restlessly wandering? The song responded to the increased number of teenage runaways in Korea around the time of its release. The song gives runaways a critical voice on the oppressive education system, but the refrain supports the perspective of worried parents begging their children to come back home. Seo Taiji’s role is that of a mediator between teenagers and parents, and he formulates his striking appeal to the youngsters in English. Hence, English serves as an attention getter. As such, it might address the fugitive children more directly than Korean words. English is therefore also used to mark the generational gap between parents and kids. Its lyrical function is that of representing the language of the young generation as distinguished from the language of the parents. In this sense, English may be seen as a secret code between Seo Taiji and the runaways, as a means to make his words more credible and to gain more persuasive power. Furthermore, if we take the words “come back home” literally, as being spoken by the parents, the English use may also be seen as the parents’ attempt to catch up with the young generation and to overcome the lack of communication and reconnect with their offspring (though they have to speak in a language that remains principally foreign to both sides). Either way, codeswitching serves the purpose of contrasting age categories and value systems.

Producing the Global Imaginary  65 Similarly, Jamie Shinhee Lee (2004) argued in her socio-linguistic study of K-Pop lyrics that English is used to express positions of asserted and liberated self and unsettled identities (i.e., sexual desire, self-indulgence, and resistance to the prevailing social norms and values), whereas Korean lyrics (in the same song) represent a “reserved, wholesome, and introspective conformist’s view” (Lee, 2004, 446). Beyond this dichotomy of discursive functions, in which English is used to convey a sense of globality, modernity, or Westernness and Korean is used to represent locality, conservatism, or Easternness, the forms and functions of English-mixing, as Lee stated, are more heterogeneous. From single word switches and phrases that do not disrupt the grammatical structure of the Korean sentence to whole sentences that repeat or inflect the meaning of the preceding clause, English mixing is various and is also done for stylistic and rhyming purposes following music genre conventions or the lyricist’s personal taste. As an example, BoA’s song “My Name” (2004)9 illustrates the use of English keywords and catch phrases within Korean lyrics. English words are emphasized by doubling the rhythmic accents of the music and by being placed at the beginning and/or at the end of each line in the refrain. The following shows the Romanized and translated opening lines of the first refrain, again with English words italicized: Don’t wanna fake it! nŏrŭl alge toen hu maeil kidarin phone call I got to make it! ŏnŭsae alge haesŏ maeil kadŭn sik, tto ajik mŏn tŭthan naeil, ahh. Don’t wanna fake it! After I got to know you, Every day I waited for your phone call. I got to make it! I began to realize after some point: Every day same style, and tomorrow seems so far away. This point was also confirmed in a personal interview with a composer and lyricist who had written numerous chart topping hit songs for one of the leading music production companies: “I use English for rhyme and to make it easy to pronounce, or sometimes when I cannot find any right word in Korean, but there is no rule or intention when exactly I use English” (personal communication, September 17, 2009). Given the fact that my informant’s command of English was not sufficient for spoken or written conversation, it is evident that English is used in the songs exclusively for its signaling effect. Even if songwriters are proficient in writing English lyrics, the increased use of code-mixing in K-Pop should not lead to the assumption that its fans possess a greater comprehension of English than the listeners of completely monolingual Korean songs. Instead, as Leo Loveday explained in his analysis of Japanese songs: [T]he high degree of English contact should be interpreted as a symbolic consequence of trying to establish a sophisticated image (in the

66  Configuring K-Pop pop-music sphere), which the associations of the English language are seen to be capable of providing. (Loveday, 1996, 132f) English successfully constructs such a sophisticated image of K-Pop and builds a linguistic gateway through which international fans can easily connect with the songs. It “makes K-Pop less nationally marked and more regionally accepted,” as Lee notes (2004, 447), emphasizing its hybrid character in creating both pan-Asian acceptance and local distinctiveness. The linguistic bond that English is able to establish across national borders has, however, lately become effective even beyond the limits of the Asian region. English-mixing in K-Pop is thus not a shallow attempt to copy American or British pop. It rather provides its unique quality by providing a common ground, a lingua franca, for people who are not capable of the Korean language and for Korean singers and their international fans. How powerful the mechanism of ­English-mixing works beyond Asia is best demonstrated by E ­ uropean teenage girls who gather in their public hometown places to dance and sing along with the original K-Pop tracks. When the singers switch to English, which is most often the case in the chorus or at key points in the verse, one may be surprised to hear the teenagers suddenly raise their voices to sing with great fervor or even to enthusiastically shout; at these moments they obviously feel more confident to engage with the English lyrics than with the subsequent Korean parts.

Fansubbing In addition to code-mixing, which serves as a creative tool for crossing linguistic and spatial boundaries and that bears a strategic quality for Korean music producers in expanding to foreign markets,10 various practices have evolved for tackling the language problem from the standpoint of fans who are not capable of the Korean language. Numerous Internet sites and K-Pop fan blogs provide translated and transliterated versions of Korean song texts in different forms and languages. Yet, most remarkable and attractive to English speaking fans are online video-sharing platforms, on which fans with Korean language competence upload K-Pop music video clips and provide their own translations and transliterations in edited subtitles. These practices, known as fansubbing, initially emerged in the context of sharing Japanese animes, movies, and TV programs with fans who did not understand the Japanese language. On web-translation sites, fans freely engage themselves as individuals or in spontaneous work groups in translating, transcribing, and subtitling the original audiovisual material while viewers are able to respond, comment, discuss, correct, and suggest better translations. With K-Pop music videos, fansubbing represents a similar example of audience participation and fan agency as with audiovisual content, although with a remarkable difference. Movie subtitles are always aimed at capturing the plot’s meaning, the semantics of the spoken language, and thus always appear as a translation into a foreign

Producing the Global Imaginary  67 language; K-Pop videos are most often, additionally or exclusively, provided with subtitled transliterations conveying the phonetics of the Korean lyrics. This helps international fans to overcome their difficulties or inabilities with reading the Korean script. At the same time, it leads to the curious situation of fans’ singing along with their favorite K-Pop tunes, reciting the lyrics by heart and with perfect pronunciation, though without knowing the Korean language and without knowing the meaning of the song text.11 The visualization of song lyrics is key to memorizing the songs, familiarizing oneself with the (foreign) spoken language, and communicating with fellow fans. In Korea, visualizing song texts is a prevalent practice in the context of karaoke singing and can also be found in all TV music shows, which provide song lyrics on screen as a service to their viewers. Outside Korea, the translation and transliteration practices by K-Pop fans have evolved as successful means for circumventing natural language barriers that have long prevented Korean pop music from crossing national borders. This is even more astounding since it is safe to say that language barriers still remain one of the principle impediments to the transnational consumption flow of non-Anglophone pop music. System

Talent Agencies Stars have become the most valuable goods in the transnational movement of Korean pop culture. Their instant success through movies, TV dramas, and pop music exported to other Asian countries since the late 1990s has significantly enforced the reshaping of the music industry into an industry that centers on the creation of stars instead of music. Instead of record companies, talent agencies that manage and produce stars have evolved as key players in the music and entertainment industry. Some have developed from small production companies into huge conglomerates that are vertically and horizontally integrated. They serve as content providers to the domestic ICTs (Information and Communications Technology) and media industries that became most powerful in the thriving digital music market. Korea’s relatively small music market, a high piracy quota, and the continuous decline in physical music sales since the early 2000s led management companies to develop a long-term business model that largely concentrates on two principles: music export and the idol star system. Among the vast number of talent agencies, three of them—SM Entertainment, JYP Entertainment, and YG Entertainment—have positioned themselves as market-leaders and prolific trendsetters; each has a distinct corporate image, a global outreach, and a stall of famous artists and hit songs. SM Entertainment was founded in 1995 by Lee Soo-Man, who was a popular folk-singer and TV and radio host in the 1970s and 1980s before he became one of the most influential business men in Korea’s music industry. He is credited with setting off the “industrialization of the star-making process”

68  Configuring K-Pop (MacIntyre, 2002) in Korea by having invented a system for cloning young talents and grooming pop stars. In realizing the enormous market potential of the growing teenage market in East Asia and China’s huge population, his company started to produce teenage dance pop that could be successful at home and be sold to foreign markets. The company established a recruiting and training system for pop idols that brought out its first boy group H.O.T. in 1996 and has since been refined and developed into a strongly effective apparatus and centerpiece for idol production. After H.O.T.’s first performance in Beijing in 2000 was met with enthusiastic response by Chinese fans and media, SM Entertainment professionalized its business and systematized its globalization strategies. It formed a joint venture with Avex Entertainment, Japan’s biggest label for dance music, became the first Korean entertainment company to be listed in the Korean stock market KOSDAQ, and subsequently installed foreign branch offices in Beijing, Hong Kong, and Los Angeles. The company’s globalization strategy has evolved in three steps, as the music business director of SM Entertainment explained: In the beginning, our basic cultural strategy was to make Korean stars actively involved in the foreign entertainment business as foreign singers. […] Our second type of strategy was to make Korean singers localized, so that they speak the foreign local language. We trained them in the local country for a long time to turn them into localized stars [hyŏnjihwadoen kasu]. Third, as our company’s knowledge of producing and making music and dances developed, we thought of accumulating such knowledge as an higher value-added business [kobuga kach’i sanŏp], so that at the end, we could bring someone from the local country to Korea, handle him with our knowledge and then make that person differentiated in the local country. (Personal communication, September 10, 2009, emphasis added) H.O.T. marks the first step. BoA (see Chapter 5) and TVXQ mark the second step, as they were Koreans trained in Japan and marketed to both Korean and Japanese audiences. The third step, in which Chinese singers were trained in Korea and distributed in Chinese-speaking areas, is represented by artists and collaborative projects, such as thirteen-member boy group Super Junior (see Chapter 6), Kangta and Vaness Wu, and Zhang Liyin. JYP Entertainment was founded in 1997 by Park Jin-Young, a multi-­ talented pop singer, composer, producer, business man, and mentor of numerous pop idols, such as Park Ji-Hyun, G.O.D., Rain, Wonder Girls, and 2PM. Although its production system and globalization strategy largely follows that of SM Entertainment, its expansion plans took a slightly different geographical turn. Instead of China or Japan, the primary goal for JYP Entertainment was to enter the U.S. market—an enterprise first realized with the opening of the company’s U.S. branch in New York City in 2007 and the subsequent American debut of the girl group Wonder Girls (see Chapter 5). In a newspaper interview, Park Jin-Young pointed to the distinct

Producing the Global Imaginary  69 quality of the Korean production system and its potential advantages over music companies in the U.S. He argued that a consistent star image is key to developing stars with high added value and that the in-house production system of Korean companies may be most effective in meeting this requirement: The problem of the U.S. music industry is that music companies, management companies, and performance planning companies work individually. It’s hard to create added value with music only, so companies are likely to make a loss. We are going to do these three sectors at the same time, centering on stars. This is the Korean style. If we produce successful cases, the U.S. music industry will follow us. (Park Jin-Young, Chosun Ilbo, 2007) Park’s orientation to the U.S. music market and his personal preference for American black music as well as for European ‘80s pop music have permeated the musical style of many JYP artists. Influences from Soul, Funk, Disco, and R&B characterize the label’s hybrid sound that Park in the same interview described as “black music with a K-Pop feel.” It is notable though that JYP Entertainment’s corporate identity, and that of other Korean music companies, hardly rests on the coherence between artists and their musical styles in the sense of authenticity creation, as most Western music labels (especially the A&R departments of major labels) do; instead, they focus on its elaborated production system. The system, not the music, creates label and artist identity. This is why artists can easily change music styles and elements—sometimes within the same song—without losing credibility among their fans. YG Entertainment was founded in 1996 by Yang Hyun-Suk, a former member of the group Seo Taiji and Boys. After the group disbanded, Yang became a producer and started his company with a focus on hip-hop and R&B music. Among the first artists the label successfully established in the domestic market were hip-hop duo Jinusean and four-member group 1TYM. Overseas activities began in 2005 with the Japanese debut of Se7en, a male R&B singer. In order to expand Se7en’s success internationally, YG Entertainment started cooperating with distribution partners in Japan (Unlimited Group), China (21 East Entertainment), and Thailand (RS Promotion) and with music producers in the U.S. YG Entertainment fostered and expanded its business relations in these countries and subsequently introduced its artists to these foreign markets. Next to Se7en and reggae singer Skull (see Chapter 5), who both stepped into the American market with English single debuts, the most successful YG artists in the East and Southeast Asian regions were Big Bang, a five-member boy group launched in 2006, and 2ne1, a four-member girl group launched in 2009. As the major talent agencies saw their business expand and K-Pop consumption grow in the foreign market, they sought to stabilize and bolster export facilities by systematizing and unifying their separate approaches within a joint strategy. In June 2011, SM Entertainment, JYP Entertainment,

70  Configuring K-Pop YG Entertainment, and three more Korean talent agencies bundled their forces and formed a joint company under the name United Asia Management (UAM). According to its chief executive officer Chŏng Yŏng-Bŏm, the agency’s main task is “to bring the excellent cultural content from Korea to foreign countries” (Yim Seunh-Hye, 2011), a goal that could be realized by bringing together the resources, know-how, and manpower of the individual agencies to create a platform for organizing and managing business relationships with foreign Asian entertainment companies and making them easier and more effective than before.

Idol Star System Next to export-orientation, Korean entertainment companies centered their business on the idol star system (aidol sŭta sisŭt’em) also known as the trainee system (yŏnsŭpsaengjedo) or academy system (ak’ademi sisŭt’em). Most characteristic to this system is the training and nurturing of young talents. Management companies provide the financial support and the professional environment for turning those young talents into stars; in return, they gain revenues from the stars’ diverse activities, such as music sales, performances, and advertisements. Over the years, these companies have developed into complex organizations that control all areas and processes of star manufacturing, from planning and production to management and distribution. The idol star system, which originated within Japanese idol production, was adopted by Korean companies in the late 1990s, although it received its own significance in the unique context of Korea’s music market and its rapid digital transformation in the new millennium. Whereas in the late 1990s, the idol star system largely rested on two pillars, record sales and TV promotion, the 2000s saw Korea’s uprising digital economy restructuring the music business. Record sales dropped to a minimum and small record companies closed down or settled into niche markets. When music sales alone could not guarantee revenues and a company’s sustainability any more, bigger companies restructured their businesses by placing the idol star system at the center of a value-added business. During the dot-com boom in the early 2000s, some companies benefited from large investments in the entertainment industry from shareholders and venture capitalists, and they launched diversified business groups. SM Entertainment, for example, grew from a one-man start-up into a company with hundreds of employees and a yearly revenue of more than USD 80 million as of 2010 (Naver, 2011) with several subsidiaries under its roof. Its star system rests on K-Pop typical in-house production, realized through a highly diversified manufacturing system with multiple divisions catering to different yet interlinked operating fields, such as planning, production, distribution, and circulation of records, casting, training, licensing, publishing, singer/actor management, event management, agency activities, marketing, Internet/mobile content, online promotion of released CDs, and global business. The control over all steps related to the production of stars is known as

Producing the Global Imaginary  71 vertical integration. In addition, SM Entertainment has also realized horizontal integration through merging or buying out other media companies, such as a DVD distributor, a karaoke machine distributor, a music video channel, and new media platforms. With this all-round strategy, also known as threesixty (for 360 degrees) business, the major entertainment companies sought to strengthen their position in the highly competitive market. In-house production enabled them to control the processing of a coherent star image more neatly and at lower cost, whereas additional income to the music sales could be realized through cross-promotion. The highly diversified business structure of these companies correlates with the diversified functions and talents an idol star needs to possess. It is not sufficient anymore for idol stars to sing well and look good, as it was in the early stage of Korean idol pop. Stars now need to be all-round entertainers and are trained as singers, dancers, actors, models, and TV personalities in at least two foreign languages. Stars do not simply perform a song; they promote its visibility and are generators of a value-added property, as seen from the companies’ perspective. Cross-promotion has become an indispensable means for selling K-Pop songs. Since entertainment companies are integrated across the television, advertising, and ICT industry, they are able to gain additional revenues from so-called tie-in products. This means, for example, an idol group may release a new album and appear in a reality show on the company’s own TV network to promote the songs. The group may appear in advertisements, such as in TV and radio commercials for a cell phone brand, in which again the songs are introduced. In addition, the songs are utilized for various technological devices and functions, for example, as mobile ringtones and ringback tones (belsori), as background music for Internet websites (BGM), as music for video and online games, or for karaoke boxes. Furthermore, the idol group will perform concerts and its members may appear in TV dramas and movies. In most cases, tie-ins already predetermine the production and planning of a song, or even of a band. In 2007, for example, Samsung’s cell phone brand created the project group Anyband consisting of four artists (BoA, Tablo, Xiah Junsu, and Jin Bora) to promote its new cell phone model of the same name. The group appeared in a lengthy drama-like commercial film that featured specially written songs, which were also released on a mini-album and as music videos (Figure 3.1) and which the group also performed at concerts. Another typical example for tie-in collaborations between entertainment and telecommunication companies is the song “Chocolate Love” produced by SM Entertainment to promote LG Cyon’s new cell phone product in 2009. The song was digitally released with two different versions; one sung by Girls Generation and the other by f(x), who were girl groups in the label’s roster. Each had its own music video (Figure 3.1) and TV commercial film; when the first version topped the music charts the company released the second version that thereafter also went up to peak. While the song is used as a jingle in TV advertisements, the cell phone is prominently placed in the groups’ music videos. Additionally, each video version briefly features the respective other girl group

72  Configuring K-Pop through cameos at the end of each video. Such visual intertextuality, the aural repetition through different song versions, the product placement in the music video, the song’s use as a commercial jingle, the heavy rotation on TV and radio channels, the specific release strategy of the song by successive releases, and the live performances of both groups at promotional events hosted by LG, were all based on repetition and interlinkage to amplify the song’s value.

Figure 3.1  Cross-promoting K-Pop. Video stills (clockwise, from left): “TPL (Talk, Play, Love)” by Samsung Anyband, “Chocolate Love” by f(x) and by Girls Generation”.

Fan Identification with Labels Compared to fans in other pop music genres, K-Pop fans not only identify with individual stars and groups, but they also have a strong awareness of the management company that stands behind the stars. Even non–diehard fans know to which label an artist or a group belongs. One reason for the high consumer awareness of production companies may be the broad perception that these companies enjoy among the Korean public. They receive high coverage from Korean mainstream media—for example, national newspapers regularly report when major labels launch new idol groups or when they reveal their business data—that presents them as the backbone of Korea’s culture industry and as a subject of economic and national interest. Another reason is related to the various activities that production companies engage in to bind the image of their stars closely to the company’s corporate image. Hence, stars gain credibility and authenticity not necessarily

Producing the Global Imaginary  73 and exclusively through their music or artist personality, but substantially through references to the management company they are signed under. These references are made visible by the company, for example, through packaging several of its artists in one concert or compiling them in one album. The major agencies organize annual concerts to showcase their roster of recording artists (i.e., YG Family Concert, SM Town Concert, JYP Family Concert) mostly in front of sold-out stadiums. Fans appreciate these “family concerts,” for they are not only able to watch their preferred pop idols but also see them perform with other label mates on the same stage. These ­concerts present a musical retrospective with hits the label produced in the recent past combined with label evergreens and artist collaborations, and they serve to highlight the bond between the stars and their company. In a similar manner companies introduce new idol groups to the public through collaborations with already established artists. For example, boy group TVXQ made their debut during a live show of label mate BoA, and girl group 2ne1 released their debut single in collaboration with their male colleagues from boy group Big Bang. Furthermore, label and producer names are often cited within the songs. Influenced by hip-hop music, in which musicians give their “props” (proper respect) to other people by rapping their names, many K-Pop songs expose the producer’s name or initials whispered or shouted in their introductory sequence or displayed prominently in the setting of the music video. Producers, such as JYP, make extensive use of this form of self-­crediting to acoustically and visually brand their songs and to strengthen the label’s ­corporate identity. Finally, it must be mentioned that idol stars have their own official fan clubs, which are organized and controlled by the management companies. Fan clubs not only play a crucial role in the communication between stars and fans, they also work as a platform on which fans can create loyalty toward the company, in exchange for the fan service the company provides to them (i.e., through fan meetings, exclusive showcases, free concert tickets, seat reservations in shows, and various fan paraphernalia). Since companies consider fan clubs as marketing channels for their stars and a means to organizing and monitoring consumer behavior and steering them toward their own business interests, bigger labels have incorporated fan clubs in their organizational structure and seek to utilize them in a systematic manner. The label-fan nexus observed in the high identification of fans with labels is a result of strategic planning and systematic business. It is part of the overall system that underlies K-Pop production. The term “system” describes not only the key mechanisms of idol production (idol star system) or the integrated business structure of entertainment companies. On a more abstract level, it seems to convey the notion of modernity itself. An example can illustrate this point. When I entered the headquarters of JYP Entertainment in the Kangnam district, I spotted a board at the wall of the chief executive officer’s room that reveals the company’s vision in the form of eight rules a leader should follow (Figure 3.2). According to that board, a leader should be neat and clean, deserve respect, study, be able to change himself, be attentive, take the initiative and set a good example, work with a system, and, finally, have a big dream.

74  Configuring K-Pop

Figure 3.2  JYP Entertainment’s eight leadership principles.

The word system (Figure 3.2; Line 7) stands out from the rest for being the only word written in English (system-ŭro irhanda), and the chief officer stressed the importance of systematic working in his company. The use of the English instead of the Korean word for system (ch’egye) seemingly reveals the company’s desire to present itself as modern by signaling its adoption of a presumably foreign concept. The “working with a system” business mantra postulates the capitalist mode of cultural production as a precondition for success. The system is embodied in the highly rationalized and labor-divided manufacturing apparatus that Korean entertainment companies have refined and combined with export-oriented strategies. It is regarded as a warranty for the company’s sustainability and a metaphor for modern business management, in opposition to the contingencies, clientelistic networking, and short-term investments that deeply characterized the organizational practices of music producers in former times (Lee, 2005, 81). Idols

The Birth of Korean Idol Pop Groups: H.O.T. (High Five of Teenagers) The performing artist in K-Pop is known in Korea by the term “idol” (aidol). The first manufactured Korean teenage pop idol group, which became the

Producing the Global Imaginary  75 prototype for legions of following idol groups, was H.O.T. (High Five of Teenagers). This five-member boy group was active between 1996 and 2001 and ranked among the best-selling artists in Korean pop history, with five studio albums released. They were a product of Lee Soo-Man and his company SM Entertainment who had intensively scrutinized the music market while working out a recruiting and training system for young talent. After Lee conducted a survey with teenage girls, he looked for singers and dancers who best matched what girls wanted. He organized auditions, sifted through masses of demo tapes, and carefully assessed applicants on basis of their looks and their singing and dancing abilities before selecting the most promising talent as members of H.O.T. An Ch’ir-Hyŏn, alias Kangta, was first discovered in a Seoul amusement park at the age of 14 and became H.O.T.’s leader. Mun Hŭi-Jun was selected through an audition at SM Entertainment and recommended his friend Ri Chae-Wŏn, who also auditioned and joined the group as its youngest member. Chang U-Hyŏk won a dance contest and was referred to SM Entertainment. An Sŭng-Ho, better known as Tony An, who attended high school in the U.S., was discovered in an audition in Los Angeles (Howard, 2002; Russell, 2008). Similar to the idol cast formula realized in internationally successful American and British boy groups of that time, such as New Kids on the Block,12 Take That, and Backstreet Boys, the members of H.O.T. were presented to audiences with slightly different qualities (i.e., images, character traits, looks, fashion styles), skills, and functions that filled in the group (i.e., singing, dancing, rapping, or being the group leader or the youngest member)—a strategy to cover a broad range of differing consumer tastes. The rise of music television in Korea put a strong emphasis on music’s visual aspects; dance and fashion became important and turned singers and dancers into icons of the latest teenage consumer trends. In 1996, the year when Mnet and Kmtv began broadcasting twenty-four hours a day, H.O.T. came out with their debut album We Hate all Kinds of Violence, which sold 1.5 million copies (Howard, 2002). In the music video of the album’s lead single “Candy,” the members wore baggy plush costumes in bright rainbow colors placed in the vibrant setting of an amusement park. Bubblegum aesthetics paired with a 4/4 bar mid-tempo dance rhythm, catchy sing-along tunes, rap parts, hip-hop samples, and inoffensive lyrics about love turned the song into one of their biggest hits. In other songs, the group took on a variety of musical styles and elements, ranging from ballad (“Song for a Lady”) and dance pop (“Haengbok”) to heavy metal influences (“T’uji”) and industrial hip-hop (“Iyah”). Visually, the group tended in their later years toward a darker and more futuristic image, with black leather outfits, dyed hair, edgy dance styles, and dystopian music videos. In 2000, H.O.T. became the musical forefront of the Korean Wave in China, which started three years earlier with its importation of Korean TV dramas. With a concert in Beijing in front of 13,000 fans and 400,000 albums sold (which is only half the number of albums sold in Korea in the same year), H.O.T. gained enormous popularity among Chinese teenagers

76  Configuring K-Pop and paved the way for Korean music companies to capitalize on their success by breaking into Chinese-speaking markets. Henceforth, Korean companies trained their idols in Mandarin, let them perform Chinese versions of Korean songs, and placed them in films and TV dramas from China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan (Pease, 2006). For example, since H.O.T. disbanded in 2001, lead singer Kangta has pursued a solo career under SM Entertainment with appearances in the Chinese market. He co-starred with Taiwanese pop stars Ruby Lin and Alec Su in the Chinese TV drama Masulkiyŏn (Magic Touch of Fate) (2005), collaborated with Vaness Wu from the Taiwanese boy group F4 on the Korean-Mandarin language album Scandal (2006), and released his first Chinese mini album Jìng xiǎng qī lè (Rest in the Seven Luck) (2010).

Nurturing Human Resources Running the idol factory with a big stable of artists is expensive and bears high risks. There are only a few talent agencies in place that can afford the investments and provide all facilities necessary to send talents through all of the manufacturing processes and maintain a whole career life cycle once they’ve made their debut. Auditions are the main site for discovering young talents. They are held on a regular basis—weekly or twice a year—at the company’s main office or at its overseas departments. Each pulls in thousands of teenagers who are quickly whittled down to a handful being accepted as trainees (yŏnsŭpsaeng). In addition, companies select new talents directly in street castings, with the help of talent scouts or through recommendations by others. According to one of the executive directors at SM Entertainment (personal communication), his company caters to an average of thirty to forty trainees (reduced over the years from seventy to eighty) at the same time; more than eighty percent debut, and seventy percent of these become successful artists. Although there is no fixed training period, his trainees are trained between two and four years on average before they make their debut. Up to this point, the company invests large sums into the grooming of their talents by covering not only all training expenses, such as music, dance, and foreign language instructors, but also their living expenses, such as food, housing, clothes, and transportation if necessary. Exact numbers are barely disclosed by the companies, but estimations vary from 50,000 USD (MacIntyre, 2002) to over 500,000 USD (Hilliard, 2007) spent on the making of one idol until his or her debut. Furthermore, companies need to pay a considerable amount of money for purchasing exposure for their idols on TV and radio shows, especially on the entertainment shows run by the three major broadcasters, KBS, MBC, and SBS, and on some music cable channels. Once the stars have successfully debuted and entered the pop business cycle, consisting of music releases, media appearances, and concerts, the operating costs raise exponentially. According to calculations publicized by a Korean cable channel, companies pay about 60,000 USD per month for a seven-member girl group. Half of the costs are spent on beauty (i.e., hair, make-up, and skin care), a third on the rent

Producing the Global Imaginary  77 of dormitories, and the rest for food and transportation (Star Today, 2011). Altogether, Korean mainstream music has arrived at a point where companies have to adopt the “high risk, high reward” (Surh, 2011) business model by putting such high initial capital into their idols before they can even expect them to generate revenues or reach their breakeven point. This star-making process has, on the flip side, spawned a greater asymmetric power relationship between agencies and their talent reflected by a singlesided contract system, which is favorable to the music industry. Siegel and Chu mentioned five points commonly included in a contract: “(1) a liquidated damage clause favorable to agents, (2) a constraint on early termination by the artists, (3) a long-lasting noncompetition clause, (4) a termination without cause clause only for the agents, or (5) free transferability of contract only by the agent” (Siegel and Chu, 2008, 20). The question of whether the K-Pop industry benefits from unfair contracts, teenage exploitation, and violation of basic human rights has emerged as a serious subject in public debates shedding light on the disastrous financial situation of artists and on suspect working conditions in the pop idol industry. Exclusive long-term contracts over more than ten years, tight schedules for performances and events, unpaid wages and inappropriate compensation, control over private life, child labor, and sexualization of teenage idols were among the most debated problems that asked for adequate political and legal regulation (Choi, 2011; Kim, 2011; Surh, 2011; Sung So-Young, 2011; Korea Herald, 2011). It is notable, in this respect, that the overseas success of K-Pop, paired with the increasing competition in the domestic market, has worsened the already harsh labor conditions of idol stars. A newspaper article, for example, mentioned the tight performance schedule of idol group Girls Generation that left Internet users and fans wondering how the group managed to cope. According to the official schedule disclosed on the group’s website, Girls Generation’s concerts and entertainment activities were as follows: “MJ presents special” on June 8; “Samsung Taiwan Anniversary” on June 9; “SM Town in Paris” on June 10–11; “NHK Music Japan” on June 12; a five-day break; “Japan Arena Tour” in Tokyo on June 17–18; “MTV VMAJ Fan Meeting” in China on June 25 and another “Japan Arena Tour” in Tokyo on June 28–29. The nine members of the girl group have not complained about the schedule, though. (Kim, 2011) At the same time, as the article noted, the increased exposure of K-Pop idols to the international entertainment business has led them to take a different perspective on their work conditions at home by considering Korean practices as non-typical compared to international practices, according to which the artists’ labor, for example, is usually restricted to a maximum of eight-hours per working day. In response to unfair terms and conditions, the Korean Fair

78  Configuring K-Pop Trade Commission (KFTC) had intervened several times in the past by calling management companies to amend or revise details in their contracts (i.e., the shortening of excessively long contract durations). In June 2011, the KFTC took further steps and issued a new guideline for exclusive standard contract terms between agencies and pop cultural artists (taejŭng munhwayesurin p’yojunchŏnsok kyeyaksŏ) by limiting the physical exposure of underage idols and by protecting their right to education and their personal rights. Despite these efforts, the dark side of idol production has remained a valid and complex problem given the fact that agencies as well as artists find it difficult in practice to clearly define at which point exposure is overdone, sexualization is at work, workload has become too heavy, or even how to define an idol’s working hours. This grows even more complex when considering that idols voluntary accept harsh work conditions as a precondition for gaining success, and agencies perform open and subtle routines of selecting only those who are willing to obey the company’s rules. Talents are thus defined by their ability to take up a subordinate role to the company executives.

Audition and Training How does the idol training system look from the inside of the production machinery, and how is it assessed by someone who passed it? Kim Sujin,13 a twenty-year-old ex-idol trainee at SM Entertainment, is a good example, although her case is exceptional, for she deliberately quit her promising career plans in entertainment—six months before debuting—in order to complete high school and pursue her academic plans as a university student. She was selected through an audition at 13 and joined the “idol ­academy” for three years before she completely abandoned all of her training a­ ctivities. The special twist in her biography—from a selected cast member of pop sensation Girls Generation to a freshman at the Korea Advanced I­nstitute of Science and Technology (KAIST), one of Korea’s most prestigious u ­ niversities—left her with neither a desperate nor glorifying but rather a balanced view of the training system, as she told me during an interview (Kim Sujin, personal communication, November 2, 2010). SM Entertainment held regular auditions every week and so-called special auditions twice a year. Together with around 5000 people, she attended the winter special audition, which comprised seven categories: singing (noraetchang), dancing (taensŭtchang), look (oemotchang), acting (yŏngitchang), songwriting (chaksatchang), gag (kaegŭtchang), and model (modeltchang). She took part in the look contest, where—apart from her facial beauty—she had to show off her singing and dancing abilities: I’d heard about the audition only two days before it took place, so I had not much time to prepare. For the dancing part they played a song and I did the moves. For the singing part, I prepared a song by Dana [a female singer at SM Entertainment], titled “Maybe” (Untold Story)

Producing the Global Imaginary  79 that I intentionally selected because it was from SM. […] The winner of each category received 50 manwon [c.400 USD]; the overall winner received 200 manwon [c.1700 USD] and a contract with SM. The other winners were not completely neglected or forgotten but were put on the waiting list to get a contract. (Kim Sujin, personal communication, November 2, 2010) The audition had four steps spanning a period of three months: After the qualifying round (yesŏn), the company invited her to the re-recording round (chaech’waryŏng), in which her performance was videotaped and on-screen qualities were evaluated. The most promising aspirants were short-listed on the company’s homepage for entering the advanced round (kyŏlsŏnjinch’ulja) where they received training for one month in the company’s practice rooms. The winners of the final round (kyŏlsŏn) were given a contract. Sujin got first place in the look contest, and even though she did not get the grand prize (taesang) she was given a contract together with the grand prize winner. It is noteworthy that her contract included a non-competition clause that prohibited her from closing contracts with other companies until ten years after the scheduled date of her debut, which remains valid in case she decides to re-enter the entertainment business. Since the full contract details, however, only come into effect once the idol debuts, she had no other obligations for the time she was a trainee. Her daily training at the company comprised different classes. Dance classes were taught in groups of twelve people and included contemporary styles, such as jazz, hip-hop, girls’ hip-hop (t’ŏlgi, a sexy brush-off-like dance style), and poppin’ (p’app’in). Vocal lessons were given on an individual base and focused on vocal techniques (i.e., side singing and hearing, abdominal vocalization) and repertoire singing (all kinds of Western and Korean pop songs except Korean t’ŭrot’ŭ songs). Acting lessons were taught in groups of ten people. And the language class she entered was Chinese. Her training schedule left hardly any space for recreational and leisure time. I had to go to middle school, and when school finished, I went to the training center right away, still wearing the school uniform. It took 1.5 hours to the training center in Apgujeong where I practiced from 5:00 p.m. until 10:30 p.m. Then I got back home around midnight. That was during the week. At the weekend or during vacation when I didn’t have to go to school, I left home around 9:30 a.m., and practiced from 11 a.m. to 10:30 p.m., almost 12 hours. […] The teachers at SM were not harsh, but I had competition because the other trainees looked so pretty and good. (Kim Sujin, personal communication, November 2, 2010) Classes are not structured in fixed time cycles, unlike school terms, since the number of trainees entering and leaving the academy is irregular and idol aspirants have to continue their training until they are chosen for

80  Configuring K-Pop debut. The training process is monitored by the respective class teachers, who are mostly freelancers, and supervised by the training team manager (t’imjang), a regular company staff member, who arranges and coordinates training teams, schedules and organizes classes, and serves as a link between trainees and decision-makers in the company. The training team manager is involved in the planning of new idol groups as the person closest to the trainees who controls their training process and evaluates their development. Through weekly filming of their performances and public showcases once a year, trainees are able to demonstrate their improved qualities, and the production executives can assess them and decide who is ready to debut. Unlike established pop idols, a few of which are known for writing their own songs and lyrics, SM trainees are not supposed to take the lead in any of the production processes. In Sujin’s case, it was neither on the formative aspects regarding the girl group she was planned to be part of (“I knew something was going on, but I had no influence in the decision-making process. There were no special incentives; they always told us to work hard and to do whatever they say.”), on studio recording tasks (“The atmosphere was quite free but there was no-one of us who did suggestions. We accepted what they gave to us.”), nor on the choice of clients and promotional jobs (i.e., CFs and cameo roles in dramas and movies) she was assigned to (“Actually, trainees have no choice in where to work, it’s the choice of the company.”). (Kim Sujin, personal communication, November 2, 2010). Yet, the chances of stardom dwarf the downside of idol business. Sujin was reflective of the negative aspects—the power disparity between company and trainees—and saw as most critical points of the idol star system the company’s strong focus on figure and appearance, as well as the company’s way of treating their idols differently—favoring some and neglecting others who then quickly feel alienated, lonely, and in despair. Nevertheless, she felt neither exploited nor disempowered by the idol makers and stated that it was her free choice to enter the system; she would have to accept the conditions and pay a high price for stardom. Furthermore, she told me that her mother supported her plans and that the entertainment company was the institution necessary for putting her on the road to stardom. In Korea, it has become almost impossible for artists to gain mainstream success without being signed to any of the existing entertainment companies. With the rising significance of those companies, idol stars have become central to mainstream pop culture. They are not only K-Pop’s bodies and faces, but they also represent behavioral codes (i.e., high discipline, modesty) exercised right from the beginning of idol apprenticeship and realized in the later innocent boy-(and girl-)next-door image that K-Pop fans find highly appealing. “Idols are designed to contribute to the industry’s establishment in the market by virtue of their abilities to attract people and perform as lifestyle role models,” wrote Hiroshi Aoyagi in his study on Japanese idol pop (Aoyagi 2005, 3). These abilities are not natural, but rather result from the elaborate training system in which idols are drilled for many years to

Producing the Global Imaginary  81 become all-round entertainers. As Korean idol production has developed under the logic of value-added and export-oriented business, the functions and skills of idols have increased and diversified in order to expand their marketability. Idols have become the center of the music business, and music has become their vehicle. Songs

Composing Performance-Centered Music Korean pop music charts are filled with songs that can be broadly categorized into dance pop and pop ballads. Whereas the huge popularity of ballads derives from the 1980s and early 1990s when ballads, next to t’ŭrot’ŭ songs, dominated popular music taste as the least provocative genres to the then ruling state ideology, it is rather dance pop in the wake of Seo Taiji’s success that is representative of Korea’s globalization era and is primarily referred to as K-Pop. In practice, stylistic boundaries are never strict; idol dance pop singers and groups always have a couple of ballads in their song repertoire, and dance pop songs draw from stylistic diversity and pastichelike compositions, combining elements from diverse pop genres, such as soul, disco, rap, rock, techno, and reggae. K-Pop songs largely follow the standard formula of international dance pop songs characterized by catchy melodies, addictive up-tempo beats, and vibrant sounds. They are strophic, diatonic, exposed in 4/4 bar meter over a duration of three to five minutes, grounded in digital recording technology, and written toward the key principles that further typify a pop song: familiarity, accessibility, simplicity, and repetition (cf. Warner, 2003, 8f). The modeling of K-Pop songs according to these standards, especially after American pop songs—their adoption of black music idioms, dance rhythms, rap vocals, and English language use—means many listeners view K-Pop as a product of mere imitation or Americanization. The musical production of meaning from the perspective of K-Pop composers and producers is, however, quite different, considering the historical circumstances under which Korean production companies in the mid-1990s started to produce dance pop. For export-oriented companies, such as SM ­Entertainment, dance pop was not a matter of imposition, but rather served as the best choice for realizing their business strategy, namely as a bridge to the Chinese market: When we decided to go to China, we basically thought it would be difficult for foreigners like us to make Chinese songs that could express the feeling of Chinese people. Of course we could have just tried it, but we thought we wouldn’t do it well. So we thought about showing performances instead because people use different languages and have different ethnic backgrounds. We thought performance may serve as a

82  Configuring K-Pop commonness and a good way to approach people. We decided to focus on performance-centered music. (An executive producer at SM Entertainment, personal communication, September 10, 2009, emphasis added) Intended as a common denominator between Korea and China, performance-centered music has evolved as a success model for K-Pop, and it describes the new musical paradigm under which Korean composers and producers have shifted away from melody-based songwriting, which is predominant in ballad and t’ŭrot’ŭ songs, to rhythm and dance-based songwriting. Visual aspects, dance routines, and stage choreographies have become central and shape the compositional process from the beginning. This opened the door for a new generation of young songwriters, who were not necessarily trained in classical composition or piano play, as was the case with many ballad composers, but were often musical autodidacts ready to approach songwriting from the angle of bodily movements, to acquire skills in sound engineering, and to experiment with the latest recording and sampling technology and with new forms and sounds. The importance of dance choreography and rhythm as leading principles in writing K-Pop songs becomes obvious with Yoo Young-Jin (Yu Yŏng-Chin), a long-term hit composer for various idol groups of SM Entertainment: There is a beginning-to-end flow in a dance routine, just as there is in a song. It is better to tense up and loosen up in certain parts rather than having it stay intense throughout. And in places where you need to go strong, you have to accentuate the moves clearly. [...] For me, songwriting is something that makes the stage performance and music become one. People call it “a song” but I want to make music that fulfills both the eyes and ears, like a musical production. (Kang, 2010) On rhythm, he stated: A rhythm is not a sub-unit of the melody; it is the main unit of a song. Lyrics are important to some songwriters while for others, melody is key. In my case, I think about the rhythm first and add other stuff with the arrangement. [...] I have written about 2000 songs and around 180 have been published. Except for one or two songs, I always produced the rhythm first. Even with the ballad tracks. (Kang, 2010) This new songwriting style, which SM Entertainment was quick to brand in terms of its own corporate identity as “SMP (SM Performance)”-style, has since become typical for many other Korean producers. Successful hit producers, such as Yoo Young-Jin, Park Jin-Young, and Yang Hyun-Suk, were

Producing the Global Imaginary  83 themselves pop dancers in their earlier careers. Their sense of stage performance, visual imagination, and black music had a tremendous impact on the composition of K-Pop songs. In this respect, a much cited role model for Korean producers and idol stars is Michael Jackson. His enormous success with the emergence of MTV in the U.S. in the 1980s put this kind of highly visual and black rhythm-driven dance pop on the agenda of producers, such as Lee Soo-Man who studied in the U.S., at that time. As soon as more U.S. pop stars during the 1990s, such as MC Hammer, Bobby Brown, and Janet Jackson, filled airwaves and sold albums in Korea along with local R&B and hip-hop acts, such as Seo Taiji and Boys, Solid, and 015B, it became obvious to Korean mainstream pop composers that the rhythm-based and performancecentered songwriting style fit a standard form for idol pop songs. Before discussing musical parameters in more detail, the influence of European and U.S. composers and the role of licensing songs in K-Pop needs to be addressed.

North-European and U.S. Composers in K-Pop Since Korean entertainment companies started to globalize their businesses in the late 1990s, collaborations with foreign overseas composers and producers have increased. Scandinavian and U.S. producers account for a rich number of songs that became K-Pop hits. Most recent hit singles (released between 2009 and 2014) were among others Girls Generation’s “Genie,” “Run Devil Run,” “Hoot,” and “I Got a Boy”; BoA’s “Eat You Up,” “Copy and Paste,” and “Hurricane Venus”; SHINee’s “Juliette” and “Everybody”; f(x)’s “New ABO”; EXO’s “Wolf”; Super Junior’s “Candy”; and Red Velvet’s “Happiness.” They were all co-written by songwriter teams from Sweden, Norway, and Denmark. The latest K-Pop songs in collaboration with U.S. producers and artists include JYJ’s “Ayyy Girl” by Kanye West, Rihana’s “Dr. Feelgood,” Girls Generation’s “The Boys,” and Super Junior’s “Mamacita” by Teddy Riley, Se7en’s “Girls” with Lil’ Kim, and 2ne1’s collaboration with will.i.am from The Black Eyed Peas on “Take the World On” and “Gettin’ Dumb.” In 2011, a U.S.-based production company stated that collaborations between overseas composers and K-Pop artists had increased from about ten to fifty percent, and one out of twelve K-Pop songs is written by an overseas composer (Oh, 2011). Over the years, the practices and circumstances for Korean music companies in licensing overseas songs have altered, while the overall motif has remained the same—to find the best song available. When production companies started to settle their business in the mid to late 1990s, they had difficulty finding proper dance pop songs in Korea, as the pool from which to draw good songs was limited. Ballad pop was still dominant, and the growing demand for dance pop was barely met by those few skilled composers (i.e., those with a performance-centered approach), who were then already signed with the production companies. Furthermore, Korean composers were usually not affiliated with publishers, and copyright control was not effectively managed, so companies could not rely on established

84  Configuring K-Pop structures for licensing new songs, but instead had to negotiate with composers individually—a rather time-consuming task that did not bring a flood of new potential hit songs to the companies. These restrictions led production companies to turn to foreign overseas composers. From the beginnings of its foundation, SM Entertainment has looked for talented songwriters outside Korea and contracted with licensing partners in Europe and the U.S. A male staff member, who was responsible for international business, A&R, and licensing at SM Entertainment at that time, recalled the company’s inclination to Western pop songs: Western music was better at that time, more stylish. In Korean pop, we said “the ballad thing,” was prevalent, you know? Mid-tempo music. Korean songs were not that diverse, and SM wanted to create cuttingedge style of music. (personal communication, December 1, 2010, emphasis added) What did the licensing process look like? How did songs travel to Korea, and how were they adjusted? We can roughly distinguish three different types of songs, which emerged subsequently, although they co-exist in the current music business. They represent different stages in terms of licensing practice, music production, and collaboration between overseas composers and Korean companies and artists. The first type includes cover songs, remixes, and adaptations of songs that were previously released by other artists. An early example is the song “Dreams Come True” (1998) by girl trio S.E.S., an adapted version of the song “Like a Fool” sung by Finnish pop duo Nylon Beat. SM Entertainment licensed the song from the Finnish composers and reproduced it by adding Korean vocals, sound fills, and newly arranged parts in the last third of the song. The song is a smooth dance number with a moderate ‘80s synth beat, a catchy synth flute hook melody, and soft vocal phrasings that create a spheric atmosphere. Differences between the two versions relate to language, vocal phrasings, and visual imageries. The instrumental tracks (except for the additional parts) remained identical and kept the melodic and harmonic structure of the three parts of the song: the synth flute hook melody, verse, and chorus. Whereas the version by Nylon Beat repeats these three parts until the end, it is striking that the song by S.E.S. breaks this structure after the second round (at 2:45) by adding a bridge and a rap with a high-pitched synth voice—strategies that change the entire dynamic of the song and have an irritating effect on the listeners before the song gets back to the ending chorus part. Another example is the song “Nan Nŏ Ege” (1999) by G.O.D. (Groove Over Dose), a boy group produced by JYP Entertainment. The song is an adaptation of the 1984 hit song “Out of Touch” by American pop duo Hall & Oates. The song is a hip-hop-style remix that adopts the original instrumental tracks and adds Korean rap vocals over the verse parts, but it keeps the hook melody of the chorus, although Korean lyrics have been

Producing the Global Imaginary  85 added. Both K-Pop songs had been lead singles on the respective albums and gained chart success in Korea. In this early stage, the relationship between foreign composers and K-Pop artists was not reciprocal. Korean companies chose from songs that were already published or intended for Western artists and adjusted them to their own artists. Korean singers did not affect the work of overseas songwriters, and the licensing business didn’t rest on personal relationships between overseas songwriters and Korean company representatives. The second type is original songs. These are songs that were not previously released by someone else, but were also not intentionally written for a specific K-Pop artist. A primary example is BoA’s song “No.1” (2002) composed by Sigurd Heimdal Rosnes, alias Ziggy, a Norwegian songwriter and producer. How could a song from a widely unknown Norwegian composer at that time travel to South Korea and become a hit? One of the responsible intermediaries at SM Entertainment, who established personal contacts with Scandinavian composers, explained the situation: In the late 1990s Swedish composers were influential in American pop. Many artists, such as Britney Spears and N’Sync, were managed by U.S. companies, but the songwriting was done by Europeans. So I  ­visited MIDEM [a music fair in Paris] where I met many Swedish composers. They invited me to Stockholm, and in 2001, when I went there, I saw that Stockholm had a strong community of musicians and composers who had tight networks. Everyone seemed to be a ­musician. I came back to Korea with a bunch of demo tapes. Among them was “No.1” from Ziggy. I liked the title. At that time, BoA came back from Japan, where she was number one on the Oricon charts. The melody and the style and the catchy tune were attractive. We reproduced the original track, but there was not much change to the original track, just some changes to the beat: from quarter to semi-quaver beat. We made it more energetic, maybe more funky. (ibid.) The song was the opening track and lead single of BoA’s second Korean album and was a bonus track with additional English lyrics for the album’s release in Japan. In addition, the song was released with Japanese lyrics on BoA’s Japanese single “Kiseki/No.1” (2002) and on her second Japanese studio album Valenti (2003). Released in the year of BoA’s breakthrough in Japan, the song is not only a milestone in her career as a transnational idol star, but also proved the viability of SM Entertainment’s export strategy. It was the first time the company gained chart success in Korea and Japan with a song licensed from Europe. Hence, it encouraged the company to intensify partnerships with Scandinavian songwriters and publishers. The third type is custom-made songs, songs written by overseas composers and confined to K-Pop artists. Over the years, SM Entertainment intensified personal contacts with Scandinavian songwriters and major publishers,

86  Configuring K-Pop amongst them the European Group of Universal Music Publishing. Through personal meetings, for example, at a songwriter camp in Stockholm in 2010, SM Entertainment’s representatives were able to convey details about their artists so that Swedish composers could write songs exclusively for their artists (Oh, 2011). From SM Entertainment’s perspective, the opportunity to have many talented songwriters write songs for one artist increased the chance of having a hit song. Such customized songs are, for example, “Hurricane Venus” (2010) by BoA, composed by Swedish, Norwegian, and British songwriters Erik Lidbom, Martin Hansen, Anne Judith Wik, Andrew Nicholas Love, and Jos Jorgensen. Another was “The Boys” (2011) by Girls Generation composed by Americans Teddy Riley, Dominic “DOM” Rodriguez, Richard Garcia, and Korean Kim Taesung. Furthermore, the contact with many publishers who regularly select demo songs and send them to the company’s artists and repertoire team, widens the pool of available songs from which the company can choose. Another aspect that has become visible with the latest stage of customized songs is that K-Pop songs benefit from the star power of overseas composers. Whereas Scandinavian songwriters were mostly composer-producers and thus fairly neglected in K-Pop discourses, Korean entertainment companies capitalized on U.S. artist-producers, who were themselves international celebrities. American star producers, such as Sean Garrett, Teddy Riley, and will.i.am, who collaborated with K-Pop artists, had been widely mediatized by Korean companies to promote the new song or album of their own artists and at the same time to signify credibility as globally operating companies. This significance had not always translated into surmounting chart success, but it can be noted that Scandinavian and U.S. songwriters have become more actively involved in the K-Pop business, and they play an ever growing role in K-Pop’s global imaginary. Formats and Forms

Fracturing the Album Concept: Digital Singles, Mini Albums, and Re-packages The pop single format is a recent phenomenon in South Korea. Unlike music industries in the West and in Japan, which have a long tradition of hit singles inscribed on the medium of 45rpm vinyl records, Korea’s music industry was, until the late 1990s, mainly organized around album records (released on vinyl, MCs, and CDs) and live performances. The latter together with the centrality of television (i.e., TV music and personality shows) and of music video channels in the 1990s were utilized by the industry to finally sell recorded albums. Albums were the main source of revenue for the music industry that started to invest high sums in promoting idol singers and churned out multimillion sellers each year. The pop album format that emerged from the material conditions of the vinyl record medium with its limited total playtime of around forty-five minutes (eight to fourteen songs) and being a compound of

Producing the Global Imaginary  87 two or three hit songs and filler tracks has continued to exist to the present day but has lost significance for the music industry and the audience. The advent of digital technologies had a tremendous impact on music dissemination and reception. The shift from record to digital storage file (from album to single track format) as the core unit of music circulation and consumption contributed to the constant decline of music album sales over the first decade of the twenty-first century. Between 2001 and 2011, the number of albums with more than 100,000 sold copies decreased from 80 to 12 (Table 3.1), whereas the highest selling album in 2011—Girls Generation’s third album The Boys—remained far below the one million benchmark with a total of 385,348 sold copies (KOCCA, 2012, 500). Table 3.1 Number of albums selling more than 100,000 units in Korea (2001–2011) Year 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 Number 80 66 27 27 17 9 3 6 6 7 12 of albums Sold 22,862 15,409 5,644 5,429 2,856 1,662 473 1,112 898 1,075 2,154 units (Total) Unit: 1,000. Since 2004: Both Local and International Sales. Source: Adapted from KOCCA 2012 edit of the original source provided by Korea Music Content Industry Association and Gaon Charts and from KOCCA, 2012, 183.

The single track became the main unit of music consumption—on portable music players, mobile phones as ringtones and ringback tones, online networks, personal webpages, popular blogs, social networks sites as embedded music and background music, and on legal and illegal music download services. These new digital environments have generated a more flexible and personal use of music, which can also be observed in new forms of music packaging, for example, through personal playlists and thematic bundling of single tracks, as Lee Jung-Yup (2009) argued. He mentioned the thwarting effect on the traditional album format: “In a sense, the personalized compiling of music for portable music devices is a response to the industrial control strategy of inflexible bundling, i.e. albums” (Lee, 2009, 495). The music industry’s attempt to adapt to these new consumer practices turned the digital single into the prime selling format but also spawned greater creativity in selling physical albums (i.e., through lavish cover sleeve designs, additional photo material, bonus tracks, gifts, or unusual album sleeve materials and sizes). Furthermore, other formats, such as mini albums, extended plays (EPs), and re-packaged albums, have entered the market as typical formats of recent K-Pop production. Mini albums and EPs are shorter than full-length albums and usually contain four or five songs including the group’s actual hit single. They are less expensive and time-consuming in production than

88  Configuring K-Pop albums, and they help to popularize new groups who otherwise lack the number of songs required for a full-length album. Re-packaged albums in the domestic market have recently begun to appear soon after a group’s regular album release and are usually re-edits of regular studio albums with additional songs or, at least, including the group’s latest hit single. In the wake of these more flexible packaging formats, the release cycle of music products, as well as the attention span of consumers, has become shorter. Whereas in the past, an artist released one album a year, from which one or two songs were chosen as promotional songs and turned into music video clips, in recent times an artist has come to release a new song every two or three months. These songs first come out as digital singles and re-appear on full-length albums and repackaged albums. Hence, production companies benefit from this multiple exploitation of songs while flushing the market with diverse formats, and consumers (if not overwhelmed by the sheer number and diversity of music product releases) can choose from the range of products more flexibly and are more likely to keep an interest in the artists’ frequent output. The top-selling album in 2013 was boy group EXO’s first studio album XOXO, which alone only sold 335,823 copies. Due to creative release strategies by its company, however, the album charted among the year’s top ten albums with different versions, including a Korean and a Chinese version and several repackaged versions, which altogether accounted for more than one million sold copies (Appendix II). The short cycle and the new forms of music releases around which a number of promotional activities is organized (i.e., TV show appearances, advertisements, and live performances) have supported the pop idol’s role in becoming a ubiquitous media celebrity throughout the whole year.14 Hook Song Form The rapid digital turn in Korea’s music market has not only spawned new formats of industrial music packaging along with the rise of the digital single, but it has also affected the formal structure of pop songs. Industry insiders and music critics have popularized the term “hook song” (hukŭsong) to describe this change toward the most significant characteristics in latest K-Pop trends.15 These are songs that last between three and four minutes and are seemingly composed around hooks, which are short, catchy, and repetitive musical phrases. Hooks are a defining aspect of popular music in general and, as musicologist John Shepherd notes, “refer to that part of a song’s musical and lyrical material through which the song remains in popular memory and is instantly recognizable in popular consciousness” (Shepherd, 2003, 563). According to Gary Burns, listeners are “caught or trapped by ‘a “catch” phrase or melody line’ and may become hooked in the addictive sense

Producing the Global Imaginary  89 as a result of the hook’s memorability and recurrence” (Burns, 1987, 1). Although hooks are ubiquitous in pop songs and mostly make up a songs’ chorus section, they show some specificity in K-Pop songs, where they tend to appear as compositional core elements being most vigorous in shaping a song’s formal structure. They mark the shifted musical form principle in accordance with the changing functionality of pop songs within the wider processes of music’s digital transformation. Hence, hooks are composed over a maximum duration of thirty to forty seconds, which is the average length of ringtones and ringback tones. Predetermined by the logic of music’s digital utilization, these sound fragments have become the primary units of songs open to flexible and multiple exploitation, short, self-contained, and easily cut out and inserted on diverse mobile devices and Internet platforms. Hook songs, thus, seem to serve the prime function of advertising jingles for other lucrative products, as Lee (2009) observed. In permeating Korean mainstream pop music, hook songs have become the latest and most obvious marker for the music industry’s transition into an “integral but subordinate part of the entertainment and ICT industries” (Lee, 2009, 502). K-Pop composers attempt to make hooks more memorable and addictive to the listeners by placing them at the beginning of a song and by repeating them three or four times during the whole song, which is more often than before. Formal patterns in K-Pop songs broadly follow the conventions found in contemporary Western mainstream pop music, as being principally based on sequential models, such as the ABABCB form, although often with considerable deviations and extensions or infused with or transgressed by additive principles. The conventional formal divisions in pop songs include verse, chorus (refrain), bridge, introduction, and coda, as well as instrumental link, solo, and break. Whereas earlier K-Pop songs used to follow sequential patterns with the most memorable hook provided in the chorus and those patterns repeated and contrasted by a middle part after twothirds of the song, hook songs appear as more fragmented and circularly organized by exposing the hook as a discrete formal entity and by repeating it several times. The hook tends to be formally emancipated from the chorus and may be potentially interspersed with all of the other less addictive formal units. A typical example for earlier songs, though with a somewhat elaborated middle part, may be the title song from BoA’s Korean debut album ID; Peace B (2000), an up-tempo dance pop song with intricate synth string arrangements. After a twelve-bar introduction (4+8), which establishes the beat and the characteristic synth string theme, we have an eightbar verse, a four-bar bridge, and an eight-bar chorus, repeated, followed by the middle section (consisting of a middle eight plus one-bar fermata, a half-bar drum beat break, and a four-bar instrumental link with synth vocals), which turns again into a bridge, chorus, and finally into an eightbar coda plus half-bar drum beat end. The sections can be formalized as

90  Configuring K-Pop (Intro)-ABCABCDBC-(Coda). B serves as a bridge between verse (A), chorus (C), and the middle section (D), setting the biggest contrast harmonically and rhythmically to the previous sections; this is what in other pop song genres is usually called the bridge. In earlier K-Pop songs, we often find this ABC succession with a short bridge (mostly eight-bars) that harmonically leads to the most central part in the song, the chorus. A typical example for hook songs, which have mushroomed since the late 2000s, may be the lead single “Bo Beep Bo Beep” (2009) from the debut album of girl group T-ara. The onomatopoeic title already evokes a ringtone sound, and indeed, the hook, with a repetitive major second interval held in straight staccato eights and delivered in a high-pitched synth sound with low overtones and doubled with high female teenage vocals, underscores the signature effect. If we consider the combined part of vocal and synthesizer melody over eight bars as the main hook in the song, we can see the following form: an eight-bar introduction, hook, two eight-bar verses (A+B) with B having a bridge function, eight-bar chorus, hook (plus two-bar break), repeated, sixteen-bar middle, chorus, hook, and coda. The formalized pattern would be: (Intro)-H-ABC-ABC-H-ABC-H-DC-H-(Coda). The song structure is significantly disrupted by the hook, which appears four times in total. However, if we further consider that the synthesizer hook melody alone recurs in other parts as well, for example, in the second half of the introduction, in the bridge-like verse, in the second half of the middle, as well as in the coda, the signature effect is prevalent throughout the entire track. The hook, thus, appears nine times in total. Repetition is paramount here, though it must not become boring. The combination of chorus-plushook section has been cut out for ringtones, as it has the exact length of thirty seconds. Formal analysis of pop songs that focus on medium-and-high-level units may be of limited evidence, as “in the end, perceptions of song form belong to the listener,” as Richard Middleton (2003, 517) reminds us. In general, listeners may perceive the formal divisions of a song as not important or very different from each other. Yet it is safe to say that hook and chorus are usually those formal parts in K-Pop songs to which listeners instantly respond and which are best remembered for their catchy sing-along melodies. The timely coincidence between the burgeoning of hook songs in K-Pop and K-Pop’s international acceptance beyond Asian countries may further suggest that the specific (i.e., extremely repetitive and disrupted) formal structure of hook songs contributes to K-Pop’s attractiveness to young listeners across continents.

Song Dramaturgies Beyond the scope of hook songs, it is to say that for songwriters and listeners of K-Pop songs, it is not so much the formal structure itself that characterizes a song, but rather the overall feeling and dynamic as the song

Producing the Global Imaginary  91 progresses. What I like to call “song dramaturgy” in this context is the way songs develop, how they keep the listeners’ attention, and how they handle a song’s flow and create tension, relief, and dynamic shifts. These aspects also affect or rather presuppose certain types of formal structuring. I will briefly mention the four most general ones. The first type of song can be called flow-oriented. This is beat-driven, often with a continuously looped rhythm pattern throughout, heavily influenced by hip-hop production while paying more attention to horizontal organization (i.e., groove, layering of sound patterns) than to harmonic progression and melodic contours. Rap vocals are mostly dominant and define the song’s flow and dynamic, whereas the instrumental groove and dynamic remain relatively static and are only interrupted (if at all) by rhythmic stops, short breaks, and the more melodic chorus part—a characteristic that Robert Walser described as “non-teleological” groove (1995, 204). Many songs of American R&B and hip-hop-influenced artists (e.g., from YG and JYP Entertainment) follow this principle. Examples are legion, although a typical one from more recent idol groups is Big Bang’s second single “La La La” (2006). There are only two identifiable sections in the song, whereas the characteristic beat of the verse (syncopated bass drum kick with handclaps on two and four of the measure) continues in the chorus-like “La La La” part and throughout the song. The lack of greater shifts in dynamic and tension on the instrumental level is compensated by greater diversity in shaping the rap flow on the vocal level. The second type of song can be called climax-oriented. This is mostly written in standard pop song form (i.e., with at least three distinct parts ABC) exposing the typical verse-chorus relationship and developing the song toward a musical climax that is usually located after the second third or at the end of the song. Preferably the climax is at the end of a song leaving the listener in a state where she wants to listen to the song again. A ­contrasting middle part takes out or modifies the tension by changing one or more musical parameters (i.e., lowering tempo and volume, using different melodies, harmonies, or rhythmic-metric patterns) in order to build it up again and advance it to the climax. Tension and relief are the driving factors that shape the overarching dramaturgy of these songs. The climax is mostly reached with the middle section or with the subsequent final chorus and sometimes even prolonged through the coda by means of increased musical densification, that is, for example, through additional backing vocals, enriched instrumentation, harmonic modulation, by juxtaposing two different melodies from previous parts of the song, or by adding highpitched and melismatic ad lib vocals. Most mainstream pop songs fall into this category, whereas an illustrative example may be Girls Generation’s first single “Tasi mannan segye” (Into the New World) (2007). The song is written in the e-minor key, and it exposes an eight-bar middle section with harmonic chords shifting per measure (VIm7-VII-Vm7-I-IVm7-Vm-VI-VII)

92  Configuring K-Pop and progresses into harmonic modulation toward the F-sharp minor key of the final chorus. The climax is prepared by melodic and harmonic progression and is marked by the highest vocal tone in the song at the end of the middle section (D5 as a whole tone at 3:34 minutes). The final chorus is delivered in a shifted major second key with additional high-pitch ad lib vocals in order to create musical density and keep tension after the climax. The third type of song is characterized by abrupt switches of musical parameters, mostly after formal divisions. This breaking-the-flow model entails a wide range of measures that disrupt the overall feeling of the song and betrays the listeners’ expectation. This model can be seen as the most apparent difference from Western mainstream pop songs, which, for the most part, seek to expose one coherent feeling or atmosphere from the beginning to the end, rather than to confront listeners with unexpected, multiple, and rapid changes during a song. K-Pop composers, however, tend to deliberately change the flow of a song by inserting rhythmic stops, by slowing down or speeding up the beat, or by adding entirely different harmonic-melodic segments or instrumental and vocal layers. Veteran songwriter and record producer Yoo Young-Jin is mostly identified with these techniques, and they can be found in many of his songs. The song “Nu ABO” (2010) by girl group f(x), for example, employs a subtle redirection of the song’s overall flow. It uses a sixteenbar middle section after the second chorus-plus-hook part in order to set a contrast to the prior sections. The shift is marked by harmonic modulation, higher-registered vocals, and a stomping techno bass kick on each beat of the measure. Short vocal semiquaver melodies and rap phrases instead of long melodies contribute to the monotonous beat and the overall static atmosphere of the middle section. Remarkable is the fact that the middle section does not directly lead over to the chorus as could be expected, but extends over another four-bar section, which again changes the feeling of the song and prolongs the suspense. Here, the massive techno synthesizer bass sound from the verse played in staccato quaver notes reappears and intensifies the static effect, while melodic and timbral changes in the vocals make the utmost difference. The female vocal is delivered with a high-pitched belting voice that sings a longer melodic phrase than before (over two bars) and that is processed through digital reverberation to sound stadium-like. The underlying sample of cheering fans contributes to this vibrant stadium effect. The dramaturgic function of this part is to break the song’s flow, to redirect it, and to finally return to it (in the final chorus).16 The last type is the remix-style that in a way can be seen as an extension of the third type. Abrupt stylistic changes are multifold and result from the creative practices of the hip-hop DJ culture and the specific sequencing technique in hip-hop-based recording production. Different samples, song fragments, or musical ideas are thus smoothly mixed together in overlapping horizontal layers on top of the beat and can turn a track into a vibrant

Producing the Global Imaginary  93 bricolage of heterogeneous sounds and styles with fluctuating characteristics and also changing beats. The method is highly eclectic and pastichelike; the effect is that musical ideas proliferate within one song and create high variety and rapid change, often at the expense of consistency. As one track sounds as if three or more songs are molded together, the overall feeling is similar to that of listening to a song medley or potpourri. Unlike hip-hop remixes, however, the source material is rarely taken from released songs but is mostly original. The arrangement of different sequences either obeys or foils regular song forms. A remarkable example of the latter is the song “Rising Sun” (2005) written by Yoo Young-Jin on TVXQ’s second Korean studio album of the same title. It is an energetic up-tempo track that fuses various styles, such as nu metal, rap rock, electronica, and punjabi pop, in a way that suspends usual song form division. Instead, the sequence may serve better as the formal unit, whereas the definition of a sequence may vary greatly depending on the analytical purpose. In Table 3.2, I have chosen bigger compounds of bars containing characteristic musical features to be a sequence. Conspicuously, sequences are not repeated, at least not until the final part of the song when the refrain-like sequence (S6) re-appears. Hence, change is key during the entire song; the musical texture is constantly shifting, whereas the stylistic caesura with the punjabi pop-inspired sequence (S12) is audibly outstanding. The song is held in 4/4 meter with 126 bpm and a total length of 4:42 minutes.

Sounds

Dance Beat On the level of sound organization, the musical discourse in K-Pop, as jointly promoted by producers, critics, and fans, has largely remained ignorant or at least vague in typifying distinct sound characteristics of K-Pop. Yet among those few parameters that listeners mentioned regularly, although in quite general terms, is the dance beat. As with other common words used in public discourses of popular music, the term “dance beat” is not used as a technical term in the musicological sense, but rather, as Garry Tamlyn pointed out, “suggests a level of rhythmic abstraction informed by interpretative aspects relating to musical performance” (2003, 606). “Beat,” “groove,” “rhythm,” and “feel,” are words often used interchangeably to denote music styles in reference to repetitive rhythms produced by one or more simultaneously sounding instruments or sound sources. Given the stylistic variety among K-Pop dance songs, there is no particular rhythm that is determinative of K-Pop. Nevertheless, as Korean producers were always quick in adopting the latest trends of U.S. and European pop music charts, the rhythmic organization of K-Pop songs largely follows the stylistic norms that have developed from and permeated Western mainstream pop music since 1950s rock ‘n’ roll music.

94  Configuring K-Pop Table 3.2  TVXQ “Rising Sun” (2005) formal layout Timeline

Sequence Number Musical features, of bars Instrumentation 0:00–0:23 S1 12 breakbeat, synth string 0:23–0:39 S2 8 bass kick, full beat and instrumentation 0:39–1:02 S3 12 lead vocals 1:02–1:17 S4

8

1:17–1:31 S5

8

1:32–1:52 S6

8+2

1:52–2:07 S7

8

2:07–2:22 S8

8

2:22–2:37 S9

8

2:38–2:53 S10

8

Lyrics Formal (beginning) function Rise up (shouts) Introduction

Now, I cry under my skin spheric e-piano, himŭl irŏbŏrin restrained beat nalgae (My wings have lost their strength) S4 with full beat chinsirŭn nugurado katko innŭn kŏt (Truth is what everyone wants) all vocals narŭl talma kasŭm ane kadŭk ch’a k’ŏjyŏganŭn innocence (Be like me, my heart is filled with growing innocence) Now, burn my rock guitar eyes + bass riff, distorted rap shouts chŏngmal, vocal + synth hondone phrase over kkŭt’ŭn aeolian minor ŏdilkka? scale (Seriously, where is the end to this chaos?) chord insaengŭn mach’i progression, kkŭt’ŏmnŭn upward vocal melody kwedorŭl tallinŭn pyŏl kat’a (Life is like a star trapped in an endless orbit) spheric synth strings, muted beat, vocal reverb

Introduction Verse A Verse B1

Verse B2 (Pre-chorus 1)

Chorus

C1

C2

D(Prechorus 2)

Break

Producing the Global Imaginary  95 2:53–2:57 S11

3:44–4:03 S6

2 + half ritardando to 102 bpm 16 102 bpm, tabla + tumbi pattern, shuffle beat, Michael Jacksonlike yells 4 accelerando to 126 bpm 8+2 all vocals

4:03–4:18 S8

8

vocal + synth phrase over aeolian minor scale

4:18–4:42 S2

8

bass kick, full beat and instrumentation

2:58–3:36 S12

3:36–3:44 S13

Slow down

Break

i siganŭn ŏnjena Interlude hŭllŏga (Time is always passing by) Break Chorus narŭl talma kasŭm ane kadŭk ch’a k’ŏjyŏganŭn Innocence (Be like me, my heart is filled) C2 chŏngmal, hondone kkŭt’ŭn ŏdilkka? (Seriously, where is the end to this chaos?) Rise up (shouts) Coda (Fade Out)

These stylistic norms are described in Allan Moore’s book, Rock: The Primary Text (2001). What Moore identified as the rhythmic principles of rock music can be seen as baseline in most contemporary pop songs and K-Pop songs. Hence, quadruple meter with four beats per bar appearing either straight (binary beat) or shuffled (ternary beat) is widespread. So is the tendency to bundle four groups of bars to hypermeter and to organize four groups on the hypermetric level within one verse (Moore, 2001, 39–41). Rhythmic patterns range from “standard rock beat” (Moore, 2001, 36) with the characteristic backbeat (snare drum accents on even quavers) being produced on drum machines to a four-on-the-floor disco beat (bass accents on each beat with quaver or semi-quaver hi-hat pattern) to more elaborate hip-hop beats with more micro-rhythmic irregularities and syncopations. Although K-Pop listeners tend to appraise the dance beat rather loosely in terms of genre categories (i.e., ballad, R&B, ‘80s disco, Euro disco, synth pop, electronica, techno, electro) than in precise technical terms of rhythm, they do suggest that the danceability of a song is most often realized by the interplay of what Moore referred to as the “rhythmic layer” (i.e., drum kit, beat box, and percussion) and the “low register melody” layer (i.e., bass guitar) (Moore, 2001, 31). This can be illustrated by the rhythm structure in the song “Abracadabra” (2009)17 by four-member-group Brown Eyed Girls—a song that was elected as the Best Dance/Electronic Song of the Year in the 2010 Korean

96  Configuring K-Pop Music Awards. The rhythmic layer consists of a plain backbeat produced by bass kick and hand claps. The low register melody layer is made out of a two-bar synthesizer loop (Figure 3.3) that is repeated throughout most of the song. In terms of rhythmic structuring, both layers are tightly interwoven in relation to the underlying pulse of the song (128 bpm), and through steady repetition they yield the song’s characteristic forward-driven groove. In addition, the lead vocals reinforce the repetitive effect putting forth a mechanic character by singing a series of quavers on nearly the same note, almost continuously and only with slight (semi-quaver) deviations in rhythmic accentuation (Figure 3.4).

Figure 3.3  “Abracadabra” low register melody (bass synthesizer loop).

Figure 3.4  “Abracadabra” lead vocal (verse).

This rhythmic fabric, which must not be overlooked in view of its being perceived as an “addictive dance beat,” gains its ultimate character through the distinct timbral qualities and sound effects attached to and involved in the respective layers. Here, what is most remarkable and audibly striking is the deep and distorted electro synth bass sound (known from early polyphonic analog synthesizers, such as Sequential Circuits’ “Prophet-5”), as well as the digitally manipulated lead vocals by means of studio production devices, such as vocoder, filtering, and autotune effects.

Hooks Another musical component that is typical for K-Pop songs are hooks. As discussed above, hooks have come to play a significant role in shaping the formal structures of songs. On the level of sound composition and perception, hooks are the most outstanding structural element that creates a song’s persona and grabs K-Pop listeners’ attention. They create an affective response and are easily remembered. As hooks are highly repetitive and easy to sing along to or to whistle, listeners often describe hooks in terms of melody (“catchy/sugary tunes,” “ear worming refrain,” and “hook melody”). Nevertheless, hooks can basically stem from all structural elements involved in a recorded song (i.e., rhythm, melody, harmony, instrumentation, tempo, sound effects, mix), as

Producing the Global Imaginary  97 Gary Burns demonstrated in his typology of hooks (1987). In the same sense, K-Pop hooks cannot be reduced to melody alone. In fact, what makes K-Pop hooks attractive to their listeners is in most cases a compound of melody, rhythm, and lyrics forged into short and repetitive phrases. According to Burns, who based his classification of hooks on the degree of change (repetition, variation, modulation) conducted upon musical elements, K-Pop hooks tend to fulfill the extreme position of having very little change. Many melodies revolve around a single note that is repeated many times, whereas rhythmic patterns are simple and straight and avoid metric shifts, elaborate phrasings, and greater subdivisions of the beat in favor of a singable melody. Vocal melodies are almost always syllabic and often resemble the contour of counting-out rhymes. Repetition is also key in the lyrical organization. Hook lyrics include repetitive nonsensical or onomatopoeic syllables or short English words that are easy to follow and that also make up the song titles. Prominent examples include Wonder Girls: “Tell me” (“Tell me, tell me, t-t-t-t-t-tell me”), Girls Generation: “Gee” (“Gee, gee, gee, gee, baby, baby”), T-ara: “Bo Peep Bo Peep,” “Ya-ya-ya,” “Tic Tic Toc,” “Roly Poly,” “Lovey Dovey,” SHINee: “Ring Ding Dong,” Big Bang & 2ne1: “Lollipop,” f(x): “La Cha Ta,” and Hyuna: “Bubble Pop.” The song “Sorry Sorry” (2009) by boy group Super Junior is a typical example of the sort of catchiness that fans attribute to K-Pop hooks. The hook’s melodic-rhythmic-lyrical composite, as illustrated in Figure 3.5, shows greatest redundancy in the lead vocals by repeating the same single quaver note A440 over the length of almost four bars.

Figure 3.5  “Sorry Sorry” (Hook).

98  Configuring K-Pop The pedal point effect caused by single note repetition over rapidly (half-bar wise) changing harmonies is supported and reinforced on the lyrical level by repeating single words and by using phonetically similar syllables, as can be seen from the first line: “So-rry, so-rry, so-rry, so-rry / nae-ga nae-ga nae-ga mŏn-jŏ / ne-ge ne-ge ne-ge ppa-jyŏ / ppa-jyŏ ppa-jyŏ pŏ-ryŏ ba-by” (Sorry, sorry, sorry, sorry / I.. I.. I.. first of all / (fell) for you.. you.. you.. fell / fell fell completely baby”). The underlying bass electro synthesizer melody (shown as harmonic progression in Figure 3.5) unfolds over four bars. Looped throughout the entire song, it forms the low register layer and thus creates the song’s ultimate hook character. The words “sorry” and “shawty” are similarly pronounced by the singers and appear more than thirty times in the song. They are easy to understand and seem proper words to which Korean and foreign listeners can instantly sing along to. Extreme tonal, rhythmic, and lyrical repetition is crucial in forming the hook character in K-Pop songs. As repetition is nothing without change, it seems obvious that the hook gains its full suspense-creating effect in relation to other varying parameters, such as adding different rhythmic-melodic layers (i.e., in the verse vocals) and formal sections (i.e., instrumental links, bridges), through shifting timbral qualities by using different instrumental sounds, by rotating lead vocalists (i.e., Super Junior consists of thirteen vocalists), and eventually through the relentless changes on the visual level (i.e., in music videos and performances).

Rap Flow Rap has become an integral part of mainstream K-Pop songs since early hiphop protagonists, such as Seo Taiji and Boys, Deux, and DJ Doc, conquered the music scene in the early to mid-1990s. In each of today’s idol pop groups, there is at least one member (sometimes with outstanding rapping skills), who fulfills the position of the rapper in the group and who is usually given (at least moderate) space in almost every song to perform his or her rapping talent. Many dance pop songs include short rap features in contrast to the preponderant vocal melodies of chorus and hook parts and place them mostly in the song’s middle section or in the final verse parts. Although ample illustrations for this can be found across music production companies, JYP Entertainment artists, such as 2PM, Wonder Girls, and Miss A, are a good reference because most of their songs follow this model. Artists from more hip-hop affine companies, such as YG Entertainment (i.e., T.O.P. and G-Dragon from Big Bang, CL from 2ne1, and PSY), enjoy greater space and artistic freedom in the songs to perform longer rapping parts usually over full verse lengths and in cyclic orders. Although idol pop rappers may vary greatly in their technical skills, hit song standards force them to reduce the complexity of the rap flow to a level that producers think is acceptable to mainstream audiences. In musicological literature, the term “flow” in rap music refers to the “rhythmic styles of MCing” (Krims, 2000, 48) and describes “all of the

Producing the Global Imaginary  99 rhythmical and articulative features of a rapper’s delivery of the lyrics” (Adams, 2009). Adam Krims (2000) identifies three categories of flow, which he labels as “sung,” “percussion-effusive,” and “speech-effusive” styles. The sung style is characterized by “rhythmic repetition, on-beat accents (especially strong beat ones), regular, on-beat pauses […] and strict couplet groupings,” whereas the two effusive styles comprise the “spillingover of rhythmic boundaries [that] may involve staggering the syntax and/ or the rhymes; […] relentless subdivision of the beat; […] repeated off-beat (or weak-beat) accents; or […] any other strategy that creates polyrhythms with four-measure groupings of 4/4 time” (50). The percussion-effusive style refers to rappers who use their mouths as percussion instruments, whereas speech-effusive styles “tend to feature enunciation and delivery closer to those of spoken language, with little sense often projected to the underlying metric pulse” (51). Krims associates sung style with early-mid 1980s oldschool rap and effusive style with new-school rapping since the mid-1990s; although he suggests an increase in complexity between sung and effusive style, the former one did not become obsolete. We find many of today’s rappers engaged with the sung style often in combination with effusive styles or with faster delivery and more complex rhythms and rhymes within the phrase (Woods, 2009). In K-Pop songs, idol rappers largely explore the sung flow, in support of and within the structural framework of highly melody-oriented and hookintense songs. Hence, accentuation on strong beats (almost always on the first beat of the measure), couplet rhymes and end rhymes on the fourth beat of the measure, regular phrasings, and rhythmic repetition are often taken into service to make the rapping part predictable, memorable, and in some cases even singable for listeners. More complex flows have, however, made their way into mainstream pop through rappers who emerged from underground hip-hop. Korean underground hip-hop has evolved over the years into a vibrant scene with many high-skilled rappers, tight networks, and hip-hop collectives. Artists and groups, such as Drunken Tiger, Epik High, MC Sniper, Tasha, and LeeSsang, could successfully establish themselves at the node of underground hip-hop and mainstream pop and were successful in launching their songs, individual styles, and elaborate flows to wider audiences. A good illustration for such elaborate flows can be found in ­LeeSsang’s smash hit song “TVrŭl kkŏnne” (I Turned Off the TV …) (2011), which features speech effusive style rapping embedded in the conventional ­ structure of a piano-based mid-tempo pop number.18 Figure 3.6 shows the metrical techniques19 employed by the group’s rapper Kang Hŭi-Gŏn, alias Gary, over the song’s first verse (0:41–1:11 min.). The figure reveals how the accented syllables (bold) and the rhyming syllables (shaded) are organized over the song’s quadruple 12/8 meter (written as 4/4 meter with eighth note triplets).

100  Configuring K-Pop 1

y

z

2

y

z

tto˘n

so˘n

3

y

z

4

da-un

no˘

y

z Nae nun

1

en

2

mae

ku˘-o˘

Ko˘m

3 nan-nu˘n 4

sang

5

T’i

6

do

u˘l bi-ru˘l

po ttae

ch’am

a

o˘

8

mar

ha-ji

ma

9

chanh

a

10

chu

go

7

11 12

ka si

kka go

Ni i no˘r

da

yok

ri mol

hyang

lae

u˘ng

k’u˘m-han

i

son

ne-e-

ko˘t

ta

wo˘n

hae

sim

ga

do

ko˘-ri

do o˘p

si

nan

no˘

ru˘l

k’e

son

man

chab-a ttak

tto˘

mo an’

ni-ga

nal

ttak

no˘

mu

sa-rang

du˘n

ko˘l ta go

do˘ng-i t’o

kak

sip

o˘

dak

t’o

u˘i

u˘i

no˘-man

da

No˘l

o˘ng

Ttae-ron

ku˘-ro˘

hae

mo˘

u˘n

ne

nong

bo da-a-ru˘m

ru˘l

ha-ge

hae

nae

ko

sip Nae

dak

ha go

mom

gi

e sang

e ga

do si Mot

Ttak

ttak

ha-ge

man

du˘r

o˘t

mo-du˘n

ko˘l

da

o˘

To˘

mom sip

u˘l

cho˘k o˘

Horizontal: 4/4 meter bar with eighth note triplets Vertical: number of bars Shaded boxes: rhyming syllables (grouped by shading) Bold letters: accented syllables Capital letters: beginning of line

Figure 3.6  Lyric chart for “I Turned Off the TV”20.

Instantly striking on the audible level, as well as in the lyrical chart, is the timely mismatch between rapped syllables and the song’s metrical units. Although the displayed syllables in the figure are approximate in terms of rhythmical placement, they clearly indicate Gary’s deliberate and extensive use of syncopation. In addition, where syllables in the figure are placed in time (i.e., on the first or third beat of the measure), they are mostly gradually deviant in reality, as Gary articulates the onset of syllables almost always slightly before or after the beat. This creates the basic rhythmical tension with the underlying groove and thus emancipates the rap layer from the rest of the rhythmical fabric. Rap verses are irregular in length and syntax and cross-cut rhythmical boundaries (in the figure each verse begins with a capital letter). This entails constantly but irregularly shifting accents, as stressed syllables fall on weak beats (i.e., the first syllable of a verse, like “Kŏm” on the second beat in the second line of the chart) and weak syllables fall on stressed beats (i.e., on the first and third beat of the measure). Rhyming and repeated syllables are present, although also irregularly placed internally or across the boundaries of lyrical units (i.e., verses or phrases) as well as of metrical units (i.e., four-bar measures). The highlighted syllables, for example, “mom-mae,” “nong-ne,” “mol-lae,” “(sang-sang-ŭl-)hae,” “son-ne,” and “wŏn-hae” appear on different syntactical units of the verses

Producing the Global Imaginary  101 and also on different units of the measure, so that the rhyming effect is weakened by coming unexpectedly, either advanced or delayed. This effect is even intensified as Gary at one time stresses the first syllable (i.e., “mol-lae”) and another time the second syllable (i.e., “mom-mae”) of rhyming words. All these techniques create the rap flow and its polyrhythmic tensions with the underlying quadruple meter and also with the rhythmic patterns of the accompanying instruments. Furthermore, what increases the staggering of the flow’s syntax is its intentional counteracting against the rhythmic layer of the other instruments. Gary’s vocal delivery frequently stresses the first and the third beat of the 4/4 measure much in line with the accents of the quadruple meter, whereas the drum kit plays a backbeat with the snare drum stressing two and four. Table 3.3 shows the rhythmic organization of the instruments as a layering graph over two bars length. The tension between the vocal’s downbeat accents and snare drum’s off-beat accents is even complicated by the rhythmically syncopated second downbeat of the bass kick drum. Instead of stressing the third beat of the 4/4 measure, the kick drum alternately accentuates the weak second note (y) and third note (z) of the third eighth note triplet. The piano chords (delivered with a Fender Rhodes sound) stress the same accents, whereas the bass elides them. It is most striking that the strong syllables of the rap are never in line with these kick drum/piano accents, and that they sometimes take on or drop the accented beats of the bass. This creates an audible stumbling effect that contributes to the tensional polyrhythms and the speech-effusive character of the rap flow. Table 3.3  Rhythm layering graph for “I Turned Off the TV” showing accented beats by instrument Piano Bass Closed Hi-hat Snare drum Kickdrum

× × × × × − − − × × × × × × × × × × × − × × × × × × × × × × × × × × × × × × × × × × × × × ×

× ×

× ×

× ×

1 y z 2 y z 3 y z 4 y z 1 y z 2 y z 3 y z 4 y z × accented beat − sustained note.

As rapping has become ubiquitous in K-Pop, the techniques and functions of rap flows have also diversified. LeeSsang’s song is not only a recent example of the acceptance of complex rap flows within Korean mainstream pop, but it also mirrors the flourishing rap and hip-hop culture in Korea, which had already started to emancipate itself from the hegemony of African-American rap music. Nowadays, commentators and rappers from both sides of the divide see no major differences between American and Korean rappers in

102  Configuring K-Pop terms of quality and technical skills. What Korean rap flows, and in particular speech-effusive rap flows, bring to the fore as a very distinct characteristic within the global pop music arena are the phonetics of the Korean language—a quality that increasingly draws attention from international audiences.

The Ppong (뽕) Factor: Fermentation of Korean Sounds Finally, we must mention another musical component that can be regarded as unique to K-Pop, although it is thinly veiled in the musical fabric of many K-Pop songs and often obscured by discourses that view K-Pop as merely Westernized music. What I like to call the “ppong factor” refers to sound parameters in relation to the construction of traditional Korean identity. Ppong (뽕) or ppongkki (뽕끼) is an unofficial term that music producers and artists sometimes use during the recording process to make songs sound Korean, a strategy used to attract Korean listeners. Korean listeners, especially older ones, seem to be familiar with these sounds, although the obvious lack of terminology hinders them from describing their feelings beyond general statements that I often heard in interviews, such as the following made by a middle-aged Korean female fan of boy group 2PM: “There is something Korean in their music—a Korean flavor; but I cannot exactly say what it is. It’s just a feeling.” Although, in practice, the word “ppong” is used vaguely and does not translate into precise technological descriptions of musical sound, some relational connections between it and its sounding parameters can, however, be drawn. The term derives from the word ppongtchak, a synonym for t’ŭrot’ŭ that is used derogatively and that onomatopoeically expresses the sound of t’ŭrot’ŭ songs’ characteristic 2/4 duple meter rhythmic pattern with its accented first beat (ppong) and weak second beat (tchak). Although t’ŭrot’ŭ is a traditional popular music genre in Korea that has remained rather distinct from Korean idol pop, young t’ŭrot’ŭ singers, such as Chang Yun-Jŏng with her 2005 hit song “Ŏmona,” popularized the genre among young audiences and allowed new idol pop groups to capitalize on t’ŭrot’ŭ’s revitalization in Korean mainstream pop. Artists such as LPG (Long Pretty Girls), Super Junior T, Kang Tae-Sŏng from boy group Big Bang, and Aurora are well-known for merging t’ŭrot’ŭ and dance pop styles and are largely categorized as new t’ŭrot’ŭ or semi t’ŭrot’ŭ acts. Apart from these genre-crossing groups and their intentional appropriation of t’ŭrot’ŭ stylistics (i.e., 2/4 beat, melodic-harmonic progression, guitar-saxophone-centered instrumentation, vocal embellishments, old-fashioned ballroom costumes or traditional hanbok), which are clearly perceived by listeners as obvious references to older t’ŭrot’ŭ music, the term “ppong” has gained a much more subtle meaning in the production of K-Pop. One dimension relates to the preponderance of melodies and harmonic progression in K-Pop songs. This relationship is somehow difficult to evaluate, in particular given the fact that most pop songs rely on characteristic

Producing the Global Imaginary  103 melodies, but it can be best illustrated in contrast to American pop, as record producer Chŏng Chae-Yun did in a personal interview: [...] the best way to describe ppong would be melody. There are a lot of melody movements in Korean songs, whereas a lot of American songs are unichord, just one chord, for example, it will stay on E minor chord the whole way and different melodies are stuck on top of it, whereas in Korean songs, you hear a lot of chord progression through the songs. One thing is, when you put a lot of chord progression in a song you lose the sense of the beat, the aggressiveness of the beat, that’s why U.S. music and Korean music are sometimes different in that sense. If you listen to K-Pop songs now, they always have that ppong melody, and they go into that monotonous beat for that dance break to give it that aggressiveness in the middle. And I think that’s what American kids are catching on to now. (Chŏng Chae-Yun, personal communication, December 3, 2010) As suggested by Chŏng and other producers, ppong marks a specific understanding of the melodic-harmonic structure in many K-Pop songs that can be found in t’ŭrot’ŭ songs as well. It is characterized by the paramount role of the vocal melody, which is easy to sing along to, although it is much longer (over four or eight measures) and less repetitive than, for example, hook melodies. The melodic contour is shaped like an arc by a long ascending and descending movement. Constantly changing harmonies underlie the vocal melody, while minor chords are predominant. This is well illustrated in the 2009 song “T.T.L.” (Time to Love) by girl group T-ara in collaboration with members of boy group Supernova (Ch’osinsŏng). The song can be categorized as electronic dance pop that features alternating male and female rap vocals in the verses and a comparably long vocal melody in the refrain, which Korean listeners tend to recognize as ppong melody. Figure 3.7 shows the melodic-harmonic progression of the refrain melody (bars 5–12). The melody spreads over eight bars and the accompanying chords change bar-wise or even half bar-wise and are conducted through all functional steps of the d-minor scale: Dm Am Gm7 – C F Gm – A/E [Edim7] Dm – Bb Gm7 – Am7 Dsus4 – D (or in Roman numeral ascription: i v iv7 – VII III iv – V [IIdim7] i – VI iv7 – v7 i). The vocal melody line, starting up-beat, is ascending over the first four bars and descending again over the last four bars, while the melodic ambit ranges from A3 to D5. This kind of ascent/descent arch-contour in pitch and the minor key-centered harmonic progression is basic to the song’s identity, and its ppong character and can be found in many other K-Pop songs as well, especially in those produced for local Korean audiences. From a historical point of view, this harmonic pattern showing a clear periodic structure (4+4 bars) can be described as an “open/closed” or “binary” structure, as Richard Middleton (1990, 203f), drawing on Arnold Schoenberg’s theory (1967), observed as typical in bourgeois song and early

104  Configuring K-Pop

Figure 3.7  Melodic-harmonic progression of “T.T.L.” (Time To Love) (Refrain).

Tin Pan Alley songs. Hence, the period consists of two phrases that form a question and answer relationship, of which the listener hears the second phrase in light of the first. Due to the cadence, the first phrase is open as it ends on a non-tonic harmony (III in our example), whereas the second phrase creates a feeling of closure while ending on the tonic. In contrast to this open/ closed principle are pop songs with “open-ended repetitive patterns” (Middleton, 1990, 238; Moore, 2001, 50–52), which create a feeling of continuation and can be found in most songs derived from African-American pop music genres, such as in rock and dance pop. Although this aspect requires a much more extensive and deeper analysis of the historical traces of melodicharmonic composition in Korean pop songs, it may suggest that what listeners currently refer to as ppong melody/harmony actually echoes nineteenth century European song tradition through the veins of Japanese colonialism in early modern Korea (probably transmitted through Japanese school songs (shōka, ch’angga) and popular songs (ryūkōka, yuhaengga), rather than evoking a direct linkage to African-American pop music traditions. Apart from this hypothetical question, it is indeed striking that this kind of melodic-harmonic progression can hardly be found in American pop music, at least in the 1990s and 2000s, in which rhythm-centered and sound-oriented

Producing the Global Imaginary  105 genres, such as hip-hop, R&B, and ambient electronica, have become dominant. In current K-Pop songs, ppong melodies are audibly outstanding from the abundance of repetitive hook patterns and black music idioms. The discursive function of ppong apparently lies in its possible contrast to foreign influences, especially American music, while retaining, or better constructing something uniquely Korean in the music. Hence, the ppong melody serves as an audible signifier for Koreanness, despite its assumed trajectories to compositional principles in early European song traditions. If references are made to European music, they point to a quite different historical corner, namely to late 1970s and 1980s European dance pop, in short—Europop. Drum machine beats, pulsating disco bass patterns, keyboard synthesizer chords, and appealing vocal refrain melodies, as prominent in the works of famous European Disco and Dance producers, such as Georgio Moroder, Frank Farian, and later Max Martin, and Stock, Aitken, and Waterman, infused many K-Pop productions through a broad retrowave of Europop that began to sprout with Korean singers and groups in the late 2000s; examples include Wonder Girls single “Tell me” (2007), Uhm Jung-Hwa’s EP D.I.S.C.O. (2008), and Sondambi’s album Vol. 1 Type B-Back To 80’s (2009). Interestingly, the fact that 80s Europop songs are very melody-driven and contain harmonic progressions, mostly over more than three chords, not only makes 80s Europop a suitable sound source for K-Pop, but also a referential tool in the discourse of Korean ppong. In a humorous twist, producer Chŏng Chae-Yun (Chae) uses the term ppong in a self-assertive and ironic manner of postcolonial mimicry during an interview. Q: When I listen to K-Pop, it reminds me of ‘80s Europop. Why did these retro-sounds (i.e., that trashy Casio keyboard sound) become so popular again, especially in Korea? Chae:  I think for Europe, that’s something that has been there. You guys have a history of electro-pop there for about 30 years. Actually one of my favorite groups comes from Europe. Q: Who is it? Chae:  Who? Modern Talking [a German Europop Group], man! [laughs] Q: Do you know Dieter Bohlen? Chae:  I don’t know him personally, but I love Dieter Bohlen. You know, Dieter Bohlen, he is like the king of ppong. He’s got the ppong melody down. And I think a lot of music right now comes from the influence of 80s Europop. You know Modern Talking was very popular here in Korea in the ‘80s, and there is a reason: it translates perfectly into Korean music because there are a lot of minor progressions, the ppong melody, etc. That’s all in there. (ibid.) Ppong, thus, not only describes an indigenous Korean concept of sound but is also strategically useful in defying master narratives of Western pop hegemony

106  Configuring K-Pop by introducing it as a key to a common musical understanding between ­European and Korean pop listeners. Although Chae’s statement reveals his personal and humorous take on the flows of global pop music, it has become obvious that there is nothing essentially Korean in the melodic-harmonic ­material related to ppong. Rather, the discursive functions of ppong come to the fore and show how the K-Pop field constructs the idea of a uniquely Korean sound, which is preserved and delineated against foreign pop influences. Another dimension of the term ppong relates to the vocal practice of ornamentation as, for example, can be found in Korean pop ballads. In general, the pop ballad is the musical genre for stories around unfulfilled love, desire, grief, and the absence of a beloved person. The claim that singers should be able to express deep emotions through their voice appears to be universal in international pop music. In the Korean context, however, ballads require a specific vocal technique—the so-called ppong-style or mutestyle—that is broadly conceived as traditionally and ethnically Korean. The pop duo Fly to the Sky opened their 2007 album with the song ­“Saranghae” (I Love You), a sentimental piano ballad that highlights the emotional intensity in the voices of its two male singers. During the chorus, the two members, Hwanhee and Brian Joo, alternately sing the essential line of the refrain “Saranghae na ttaemune ulji marayo” (I love you, don’t cry because of me) with great poignancy. Brian Joo explains the role of ppong as follows: You could just sing “Sarang hae” [he sings with a soft timbre and clean vocal attack], but in order to make it ppong or mute-style, you have to sing “Sarang hae” or “na ttaemune ulji ma” [he sings with the same timbre as before, but switches between breathy and hard glottal attacks in between with heavy tremolo at the end creating a whining sound], you know? It’s got that posy feel, and that’s kind of ppongish. […] You could even sing it in a Western pop song, for example, in Whitney Houston’s song “And aah-i-yai will always love you” [he emulates Whitney Houston’s vocal style]. And to make it Korean “And aah-i-yai will always love you” [he exaggerates the vocal inflections sung by Whitney Houston by singing each syllable with a hard vocal attack making a kind of gurgling sound]. It’s the way you emphasize emotion! […] I never received pansori training, so I don’t know, but I guess, [the Korean vocal technique] derives from the traditional Korean style. (Brian Joo, personal communication, December 6, 2010) Vocal embellishments as a means of emotional expressivity and ethnic identification, which can also be found in other Korean pop genres, like t’ŭrot’ŭ and rock (Son, 2004; Fuhr, 2013), have been legitimized as uniquely Korean because of their common reference to sigimsae, a generic term in traditional music discourse that is related to the concept of universal vitality (him). Hwang Byung-Ki defined sigimsae as a basic aesthetic principle and related

Producing the Global Imaginary  107 it to the taste-making process in Korean food culture in which fermentation plays a central role: First, each musical sound must carry a powerful, vibrant tone color […]. Second, each musical sound must be dynamic, varying delicately in tone color, volume, and pitch. What gives such variation to one sound or one voice is called sigimsae—the term indicates something that “ferments” a sound in order to make it flavorful. (Hwang, 2001, 815) Sigimsae is realized by the use of vocal inflections through vocal breaks, narrow and wide vibrato, switches between chest and head voice, shifting vocal attacks, and other forms of microtonal shadings. The ppong vocal style in K-Pop reflects and draws on this repertoire of vocal techniques, which is explicit in traditional music genres, like p’ansori, kagok, and minyo. Altogether, ppong—either referring to a song’s melodic-harmonic structure or to a singer’s vocal delivery—is used to qualify sound parameters in terms of identity categories. Ppong serves as an acoustic and discursive marker of Koreanness in pop songs. Its functioning involves a part of what Adam Krims (2000), focusing on the rap genre, described as the musical poetics of identity: The musical poetics [...] complements discussions of gender, geography, class, race, and so forth, not as a discrete and externalized dynamic, but rather as a moment of symbolic production that internalizes the other levels of mediation. In other words, musical poetics in some sense transcodes the social dynamics that are otherwise considered external to it; and a relational map of the social world is chartered within the genre system to be described here, invoking [...] pre-existing genres, gender relations (and gender domination), class relations, and the possibilities more generally of [...] urban life. (Krims, 2000, 46) In view of ppong, the musical poetics, as described above in terms of melody and vocalization, are not transcoded in the social dynamics related to national or ethnic Korean identity rather than class or gender identities. By invoking the t’ŭrot’ŭ genre and Korean traditional music genres (kugak), both of which have long been crucial to state-national self-representation in twentieth century Korea, ppong embodies and perpetuates the musical poetics of Korean identity on the level of contemporary idol pop. In today’s K-Pop songs, ppong not only indicates such a sound trajectory into the Korean history of listening (which is the reason Korean listeners feel a familiarity with it), but it also indicates an indigenous Korean sound concept that counteracts the notion that K-Pop sounds are merely Americanized or imitated from Western pop songs.

108  Configuring K-Pop The use of ppong is not without conflict with regard to the global imaginary envisioned in K-Pop. It elicits a basic problem for those K-Pop producers working under a globalization agenda. As a musical signifier for traditional or national Korean identity, ppong is hardly compatible with the globalization strategies of entertainment companies, such as SM Entertainment or YG Entertainment. These export-oriented entertainment companies view global music as analogous to global companies in other industries (i.e., Samsung), as a product that appears as de-nationalized, de-localized, and de-ethnicized. Hence, K-Pop producers seek to avoid notions of traditional Korean identity in the musical texture. At the same time, they cater to the domestic market, where ppong is inscribed into the discourse of traditional Korean popular music and anchored in the cultural memory of its listeners and thus cannot be simply ignored. This is the basic tension between the global imaginary of K-Pop and the form of national identity evoked by ppong. In practice, K-Pop producers define the relationship between Korean and global identity in K-Pop songs depending on the primary target market and by inflecting the musical poetics of Korean identity through emphasizing, diluting, or erasing ppong on the sound level. This is the reason ppong is hardly audible, for example, in SM Entertainment songs, but exists in those produced by less-globalized and more domestic-oriented companies, such as DSP Entertainment (i.e., songs by SS501 and KARA), Pledis Entertainment (i.e., songs by Son Dambi and  Orange ­Caramel), and Core Contents Media (i.e., songs by Davichi, T-ara, and SeeYa). In a sense, ppong works as a musical seismograph for the rate of globalization in K-Pop songs. The more ppong, the less global a song is. This formula, at least, seems to underlie the work of K-Pop producers. Similar to kimch’i, which has developed through a long process of fermentation and aging before it is eaten, ppong is the fermented sound, percolated through Korean music history, that gives the Korean flavor to the globalized music of K-Pop.

Visuals

Group Dances K-Pop is a highly visual phenomenon. Visuality is a defining component of many pop music genres, although in K-Pop, it is also the capital force in shaping the global imaginary and attracting domestic and foreign audiences. The significance of K-Pop’s visual dimension is evident in the abundance of K-Pop music videos swirling on numerous Internet platforms. Music videos are the genre’s central media of transmission. Their growing presence is also illustrated by the fact that, in December 2011, the video-sharing website YouTube launched a K-Pop channel on its portal, an exclusive section dedicated to K-Pop music. In line with the Korean government, YouTube’s parent company Google approved of such a channel to help spread Korean

Producing the Global Imaginary  109 cultural content by giving Korean production companies a more effective advertising tool for their products. By that time, users had already uploaded more than five million K-Pop videos on YouTube (Chosun Ilbo, 2011). In the following sections, the visual dimension in these videos will be briefly addressed in terms of their kinesthetic and figurative aspects. The former relates to dance choreographies and the latter to the spatial imaginaries depicted in the videos. The biggest appeal in these videos in terms of visuality comes from the dance choreographies of K-Pop groups. These group dances rely on choreographies that can be easily learned by non-professional dancers and include signature dance moves and multi-top formation (i.e., constantly rotating front dancers). With the increased online distribution of K-Pop videos, shot in high cinematic quality and featuring a new generation of idol groups, fans were quickly hooked and began to produce those easy-to-imitate cover dances. Either in their private rooms or on public places in so-called dance flash mobs, fans around the world started to learn and perform the choreographies of their beloved groups. They filmed their own performances and uploaded the video clips in response to the original music videos. This fan practice, which began to sprout in 2009, especially with the music videos of Girls Generation (“Gee”), Wonder Girls (“Nobody”), Super Junior (“Sorry Sorry”), and 2PM (“Again and Again”), has turned the cover dance into K-Pop’s most popular visual trademark. Production companies capitalized on this success by bringing more idol groups to the market and by cultivating group dances and strengthening the focus on distinct and memorable dance routines for each video. Production companies and the Korean tourism industry began to utilize this dance trend for promotional purposes. For example, as a part of the tourism campaign “Visit Korea Year 2010–2012,” the organizers held a K-Pop Cover Dance Festival, which drew more than 1,500 fan videos from 64 countries; the winners could travel to Korea to meet their K-Pop idols and to showcase their talents on a national television program (Visit Korea, 2011). K-Pop dance competitions and battles have mushroomed as entertainment events on very different occasions and levels, ranging from private parties, fan club meetings, after work business gatherings, and college graduation parties to major public events held by companies, public organizations, or communal institutions. Additionally, the sports and health industry in K-Pop affine countries seems to benefit from this trend, as can be assumed from a particular K-Pop dance lesson advertisement published on a Singaporean YMCA website, which praised the K-Pop dance as being beneficial to youngsters who could express their emotions, vent their frustrations, and stay healthy and fit. It promised “muscular flexibility from the stretches and bends,” “muscular strength when your muscles are forced to resist a body movement or weight,” “endurance when you manage to dance for longer periods of time without fatigue,” and “confidence and self-esteem after the completion of each dance routine” (YMCA Singapore, 2012).

110  Configuring K-Pop K-Pop dance can be described as a mixture of different dance styles, especially hip-hop, often simplified to more minimalistic dance patterns, choreographed for group performance, and combined with characteristic gestural movements, so-called signature moves. Hip-hop dance has gained a strong foothold in Korean pop culture since early hip-hop groups, such as Seo Taiji and Boys, pervaded mainstream pop (Morelli, 2001). Its significance be read not only from the remarkable success story of Korean b-boys, who have advanced to international fame and national icons (Boniface, 2007), but also from the fact that hip-hop styles have become an integral part in the dance lessons of idol aspirants. The global dimension in the production of K-Pop dance is represented not only by its appropriation of hip-hop stylistics, but also on the level of labor forces, that is by the increased influx of foreign choreographers. Similar to foreign K-Pop songwriters, successful dance choreographers in American mainstream pop music have been gradually recruited by Korean production companies for single music video productions. One such example is the  Okinawa-born and Los Angeles-based female dancer Rino Nakasone Razalan, who gained fame as a dancer and choreographer for American pop stars such as Janet Jackson, Britney Spears, and Gwen Stefani. She was contracted by SM Entertainment first in 2008 for the dance choreography in the music video “Replay,” which became the debut single of the five-member boy group SHINee, and she later also worked with other SM Entertainment artists. In developing a distinct and elaborate dance choreography for SHINee’s music video, which features a delicate combination of flailing arms and stomping and sliding footwork techniques, her expertise contributed to the group’s image as a high-profile dance group. As being someone with considerable star power in the international dance scene, her collaboration also signals SM Entertainment’s image as a global company.

Signature Dance Moves The core elements in K-Pop dances are the so-called signature dance moves. These are short gestural and visual cues in the bodily performance of a dancer or musician, which become most characteristic to a song or to a performer. Michael Jackson’s seminal moonwalk dance21 during his performance of the song “Billie Jean” in the 1983 American TV show Motown 25: Yesterday, Today, Forever is probably the most popular signature dance move in pop music history. It not only became his own visual trademark, but also introduced the role of signature moves and of dance in general, as paramount to the success of pop songs, and it popularized the hip-hop related popping technique to a worldwide audience. Michael Jackson’s influence cannot be overestimated, as his symbiotic dance and singing style had a severe impact on generations of pop singers and dancers across the continents and also on the performance-oriented approach of K-Pop songwriters and producers.

Producing the Global Imaginary  111 A paradigmatic example of signature moves in K-Pop dance is the hand gesture in the refrain part of Super Junior’s 2009 music video “Sorry Sorry” that is known among fans as the “palm-rubbing” sequence (Figure 3.8; bottom). While singing the essential hook line “sorry, sorry, sorry, sorry,” all thirteen group members bend their bodies slightly forward and have their hands folded and their palms rubbing to the beat to visualize the submissive attitude exposed in the lyrics. As already noted above, Yoo Young-Jin, the composer and producer of the song, mentioned in an interview that he used distinct gestures to emphasize the strong musical parts in a song (Kang, 2010). In many cases, K-Pop composers have already imagined a signature move when they get the musical idea or hook line of a song. Signature dance moves work as gestural hooks in a song and have almost become a prerequisite for K-Pop music videos. Other illustrations of well-known signature moves can be found in the so-called chin pose in TVXQ’s 2008 title “Jumon: Mirotic” (Figure 3.8; top left) or in the sideway-moving sequence in Girls Generation’s 2009 song “Gee,” which has become known as crab leg dancing (Figure 3.8; topright).

Figure 3.8  Signature moves (clockwise, from left): Chin pose in “Jumon: Mirotic” by TVXQ; Crab leg in “Gee” by Girls Generation, Palm-rubbing in “Sorry Sorry” by Super Junior.

112  Configuring K-Pop Signature moves at the heart of K-Pop dance choreographies have become an effective means to promoting K-Pop to international audiences. The growing practice of watching K-Pop music videos and mimicking the dances reveals that fans, especially non-Korean speaking fans, see the dance as a tool that helps them circumvent language barriers and memorize the songs. Gaya, a writer for a K-Pop online blog, explains the significance of the K-Pop dance as follows: There are many things I love about K-Pop, but the number one thing would have to be the dances. As a person who tends to recall things through [visual] cues, and someone who loves to dance (albeit very badly), choreography speaks to me in a way that is unique and not unlike the way music speaks to other people. In fact, the power of dance is seen very clearly in the international K-Pop community—it’s hard to sing along to a song in a language you only vaguely understand, but you can always do a dance cover for that song; no Korean skills [are] needed for that. (Gaya, 2012) Die-hard fans spend hundreds of hours reproducing the original dance moves to learn each tiny gesture and facial expression of their idols, to organize themselves in peer-groups, and eventually to perform the cover dances on private or public occasions. These fan practices demonstrate that the K-Pop dance elicits active participation through its kinesthetic qualities. Cover dancing enables fans to entrain to the particular groove of a K-Pop song. It shapes and consolidates a process that Charles Keil in his work on “participatory discrepancies” described as “kinaesthetic listening,” that is “feeling the melodies in their muscles, imagining what it might be like to play what they are hearing” (Keil, 1995, 10). It can be assumed that this kinesthetic aspect of connecting the dancing body with the musical sound, of understanding the music through dance, and also of imagining a real body behind the music, is of great importance to audiences, as it also seems to compensate for the fact that real musicians are hardly ever visible in K-Pop—either in stage performances22 or in music videos.

Space in Music Videos K-Pop music videos emphasize the choreography and signature moves of idol groups, mostly at the expense of narrativity. In exhibiting a rather non-narrative structure, these music videos bring to the fore not only the bodily movements of the dancers, but also the setting in which the dancers perform. This section addresses the setting in K-Pop videos in relation to the involved spatial imaginaries. Most striking of the spatial configurations in the vast majority of K-Pop videos is the preponderant lack of real places and environments. The settings depicted in these videos largely fall into the two categories that Carol Vernallis described as “extension of a

Producing the Global Imaginary  113 performance space” and as “schematic representation of a familiar type of site” (2004, 83). The first category places the idols on a stage or in contexts that involve a kind of performance. This is in K-Pop not so much to evoke “liveness” of the stars (i.e., by using footage of live shows as used in the rock and heavy metal genre) but to stress the dance character of a song and to display the idols’ bodies. Real performance settings as well as real audiences are rarely found in music videos; Rain’s 2004 single “It’s Raining” is among the few exceptions. In this video, the main setting is the stage of a night club on which Rain and his background dancers perform in front of the club audience. In contrast, the framing sequences depict Rain sitting inside the container of a semitrailer truck, while being escorted to the performance venue (Figure 3.9). While the night club is depicted as a real place, the inside of the truck, which serves as a green room, is highly imaginative and glamorous. Completely decorated with mirrors and garnished with white sofas, it is an illusionary space—a space with canted walls and blunted angles that appear to exceed the boundaries of the Euclidean space and is difficult to be grasped by the viewers.

Figure 3.9  Stills from the music video “It’s Raining” by Rain.

Typically, K-Pop videos appear as de-localized and de-temporal, as they avoid any references to real specific or generic places and historical times. Idol groups almost always appear in an extended performance context, where they are either placed against plain or multicolored backdrops (Figure 3.10) or embedded into digitally produced virtual spaces, both of which are dislocated and self-referential (Figure 3.11).

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Figure 3.10  Video stills (clockwise, from left): “Lollipop” by Big Bang & 2ne1, “Breathe” by Miss A, “Overdose” by EXO-K.

The spatial imaginary embedded in these videos recalls the concept of nonplaces, as proposed by Marc Augé: The space of non-place creates neither singular identity nor relations; only solitude, and similitude. There is no room there for history unless it has been transformed into an element of spectacle, usually in allusive texts. What reigns there is actuality, the urgency of the present moment. (Augé, 1995, 103f) What Augé observed as the typical spatial mode of supermodernity—the absence of identity, relation, and history in anonymous places, transit zones, shopping malls, etc.—bears not only alienating, but also deliberating, effects for the individuals, as he described at the beginning of his essay with the airy feeling of a passenger on a plane. Most K-Pop videos share this aspect of non-place, but unlike Augé’s concept, they do not feature real places, but rather use radically abstract, virtual, and non-real places. The lack of identity and reference as depicted in these videos not only enables K-Pop

Producing the Global Imaginary  115

Figure 3.11  Video stills (clockwise, from left): “Jumon: Mirotic” by TVXQ, “Hurricane Venus” by BoA, “Visual Dreams” by Girls Generation.

videos to work on a global level, it also prevents them from being trapped in parochial concepts of locality and exoticism. The second category, the “schematic representation of a familiar type of site,” can also be found in many K-Pop videos, although often combined with the performance space. Typically, these are stylized settings, where the idols perform within artificial sceneries that represent real sites, for example a fashion boutique, a shopping street, a cabin of a plane, or a fashion parade (Figure 3.12). Videos are shot in a studio rather than in outdoor settings. These settings embody Augé’s concept in a more direct sense, as they symbolize and represent real non-places, which are not specific enough to bear an identity. As depictions of transit zones—either in the geographical sense (i.e., plane, street) or in the temporal sense (i.e., nursery, classroom, clinic)— they largely remain anonymous and thus bear the same dialectic of alienation and deliberation inherent in the previous category. Moreover, these settings may serve as atmospheric backdrops or as metaphors for generic issues, such as traffic, consumption, and childhood, and are likely to open up spaces for multiple interpretations and intertextual references.

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Figure 3.12  Video stills (from top left): “Gee” by Girls Generation (boutique), “So Hot” by Sistar (catwalk), “Nu ABO” by f(x) (shopping street), “Shady Girl” by Sistar (plane), “Bbiribbom Bbaeribom” by Coed School (psychiatric clinic), and “Like This or That” by 5dolls (classroom).

Producing the Global Imaginary  117 In music videos, where the settings are less stylized and more specific, the references to real places and historical times become more concrete. Since Korean music companies have started to make inroads into foreign markets and seek to attract American audiences, it can be observed that the imageries of music videos (i.e., not only the setting, but also props, fashion, hairstyles, etc.) increasingly draw from the historical repertoire of American popular culture. This is evident in the visual references to Motown singers, to American football, to Saturday Night Fever disco music, etc. (Figure 3.13).

Figure 3.13  Video stills (from top left): “Shy Boy” by Secret (50s diner), “Oh” by Girls Generation (cheerleaders), “Nobody” by Wonder Girls (Motown), “Bang!” by After School (marching band), “Yayaya” by T-ara (Native Americans), and “Roly Poly” by T-ara (disco).

The space of illusion, which Michel Foucault addressed as a principle of heterotopias in that it “exposes every real space” (Foucault, 1986, 27) and that in Korea’s music culture may be most thoroughly realized in the noraebangs, the karaoke boxes, is the dominant function employed in the settings of most K-Pop videos. Foucault defines heterotopias as: real places—places that do exist and that are formed in the very founding of society—which are something like counter-sites, a kind of

118  Configuring K-Pop effectively enacted utopia in which the real sites, all the other real sites that can be found within the culture, are simultaneously represented, contested, and inverted. (Foucault, 1986, 24) In a sense, music videos can be seen as heterotopic sites, as each opens up a new space, a phantasmagoric space, by combining, overlaying, interspersing, fragmenting, and distorting the images of real places. Transferred to the realm of K-Pop music videos, heterotopias (by referencing other places) and, even more radical, non-places (by being self-referential) seem to be a proper means to break free from realistic depictions of Korean locality. This escapist function is partly due to the genre conventions in dance pop—and thus different from alternative genres, like rap, where real locations (i.e., the street) warrant authenticity—and partly due to the globalization strategy pursued by Korean production companies. More than movies and TV dramas, the music video format makes it easier for producers and directors to circumvent spatial images of real locations and daily life situations in past and present South Korea. The fact that videographers make ample use of these discussed alternative spaces has also a pragmatic reason, as video shooting in the studio is much cheaper, faster, and easier to produce than on location filming. On a more subtle level, it seemingly reflects the country’s postcolonial legacy, in which it seems hard to find proper images for representing Korea’s identity. In this sense, the American retro images, for example, are likely to serve as substitutes for Korea’s own pop cultural repository, which was disrupted under authoritarian rule in the 1970s and ‘80s; they seem to mirror the nostalgia for a historical past that never existed. According to Fredric Jameson, this “nostalgia mode” and “the fragmentation of time into series of perpetual presents” (Jameson, 1988, 28) indicate the aesthetics of a postmodern consumer society. It is these notions of postmodernity or supermodernity as Augé calls it that are involved in the spatial imaginaries of K-Pop music videos. This chapter describes K-Pop as a multitextual, discursive, and performative phenomenon. It seeks to delineate K-Pop’s genre boundaries by discussing various parameters that are involved in or affected by the production of a global imaginary. This global imaginary is shaped and reflected by multiple practices and textures, as have become evident, for example, in the flexibility of language use, in the multi-dimensional attractivity created by a 360-degree idol star system, in performance-centered songwriting, hook songs, ppong melodies, and in choreography and music videos. Rather than a mere product of imitation, a simple copy of Western pop music, K-Pop signifies a complex and relational process of re-configuring, re-arranging, and re-packaging existing concepts and styles. It draws from a rich diversity of sources and influences, for example, by combining strands from the Japanese idol production system, American hip-hop recording practices, European Disco, and Korean ppong sounds. It has merged these into a new and

Producing the Global Imaginary  119 distinct phenomenon and into a cultural trend that represents the latest stage of postmodern consumer aesthetics. As this chapter has discussed the formative components of K-Pop as a genre, the following chapters will focus on the asymmetrical relationships involved in the transnational flows of K-Pop. Notes 1. During my research in 2009, many Korean fans with whom I spoke were not aware of the term K-Pop. A former producer of Lee Juck’s Ten Ten Club (Yi Chŏk-ŭi t’ent’enk’ŭllŏp), a pop music radio show on the national broadcaster SBS (Seoul Broadcasting System) that targets teenagers and adolescents with an eighty percent rate of Korean titles, told me that he prefers the term “kayo” over K-Pop, since the word “pop” is still too quickly associated with “pop song,” which has been limited to Western pop music. The prevalence of the term “kayo” is also mirrored by SBS’s weekly idol pop TV show, which runs under the title Inkigayo (The Music Trend). 2. According to Google Trends, the average worldwide traffic of the term K-Pop has increased more than 40 times between 2009 and 2014. It can be assumed that the amount of websites has exploded in a similar manner. As of October 1, 2014, the total number of Google search results for K-Pop was about 320 million. 3. In the context of Japanese pop song lyrics, Moody and Matsumoto (2003) use the term “code ambiguation” to refer to the creative usage of words with possible meanings in two languages. “This blending, or ambiguating, of the two codes is often done at the written level, while at the aural level there does not appear to be any blending” (Moody, 2006, 218). 4. TVXQ was launched as a five-member boy group by SM Entertainment in 2003. The group has gained enormous transnational stardom in Asia with album releases in Japanese and in Korean languages and with live performances in Chinese speaking and in South East Asian regions. They are well known for their representation of soft masculinity (Jung, 2009), their vocal skills (i.e., their capability of a cappella singing), and for having the world’s largest fan club with more than 800,000 members (as stated in The Guinness Book of World Records). In 2010, the group split after three members fought legal battles against SM Entertainment. Thereafter, they launched their own trio JYJ while the remaining two members maintained their activities as TVXQ. 5. The group is a challenge to everyone who tries to categorize or search their albums. They defy common classification within the alphabetical system, as can be seen in the different ways record shops in Korea store their albums. Depending on the script system they use, one can find their name written either in Roman or Hangŭl letters or abbreviated as DBSK. Japanese and Korean albums are lumped together or are separated, whereas their Japanese albums sometimes appear in the section J-Pop with the group name written in Kanji letters or simply as TVXQ. Music online services share the same problem, although they most often write TVXQ if they are directed to international consumers. 6. Kim Chae-Jung (김재중), for example, the leader of the group, is known by his English and Japanese stage name Jejung (ジェジュン) and by his Korean stage names Hero, Chae-Jung (재중), and Yŏngung Chae-Jung (영웅재중). After fans

120  Configuring K-Pop found out that he was adopted, they also started using his birth name Han Chae-Jung (한재중). 7. See discussions on English code-switching in J-Pop (Moody, 2006), Mandarin Pop (Wang, 2006), and Cantopop (Chan, 2009). 8. English translation provided in Jung, 2006,119; cf. Kim, 2001, 216. The song is written and composed by Seo Taiji. It was released 1995 on the album Seo Taiji and Boys Vol. 4, Bando Records (BDCD–028). 9. The song is written and composed by Kenzie. It was released 2004 on BoA’s fourth Korean album My Name, SM Entertainment (SM–089). 10. These strategies of language border crossing from the production side include the translation of booklets, the re-packaging of albums, and the release of different music videos sung in the languages of the target markets (i.e., Japanese, Chinese, English). 11. This was the case with the majority of German K-Pop fans I had the chance to talk to during fan meetings and public flash mob events. Whereas only a few had received Korean language training through private study or language classes, most of them were Korean illiterates and helped themselves with Romanized transliterations of the Korean lyrics. Fansubbed transliterations in music video clips from YouTube helped them to memorize the lyrics and to practice them in the real time of the music video. The same communicational practice based on patterns of oral language and trial-and-error learning was observed among Thai youth by Siriyuvasak and Shin (2009, 123–24). 12. The group New Kids on the Block has become memorable for its enormous success in South Korea and also for a tragic incident that happened during their first concert in Seoul in 1992. During the show, a panic-driven stampede broke out in which one fan died and dozens of fans were injured. 13. A pseudonym is used in this section. 14. The constant and massive output of music releases can be read, for example, from the Wikipedia discography of the group Girls Generation, which listed for the first four years of their existence (2007–11) a total of 110 music and video releases (fourteen regular singles, three EPs, four studio albums, and two ­re-packaged albums). 15. Korean media began to use the term hook song in the wake of Wonder Girls’ hit-single “Tell Me” (2007), which gained its outstanding hook character—the stuttering “te-te-te-te-te-tell me” vocals in the chorus—from a short sample of American pop singer Stacey Q’s 1985 hit single “Two of Hearts.” 16. Other typical examples of this breaking-the-flow model can be found in abrupt tempo shifts in Lee Hyori’s “U-Go-Girl” (2008), in Davichi’s song “8282” (2009), and in Girls Generation’s “I Got a Boy” (2013). Instrumentation and stylistic shifts can be found in “I’m Your Girl” (1997) and “Twilight Zone” (1999) by S.E.S., in “Ya Ya Ya” (1998) by Baby V.O.X., in “Haegyŏlsa” (Troubleshooter) (1998) by Shinhwa. Rhythmic shifts can be found in Rain’s music video “I Do” (2004). 17. The song was written by Chi-Nu, Yi Min-Su, Kim I-Na, and Miryo, and it appeared on the group’s third studio album Sound G. produced by Mnet. 18. The song is a collaboration between male hip-hop duo LeeSsang (composed of Kang Hŭi-Gŏn and Kil Sŏng-Jun) and female rapper Yoon Mi-Rae, and male singer Kwŏn Chŏng-Yŏl of the indie band 10cm appeared on the group’s seventh studio album Asura Balbalta (2011). It was on top of the charts for several weeks and was awarded best rap/hip-hop song of the year at the 2011 Mnet Asian Music Awards.

Producing the Global Imaginary  121 19. According to Kyle Adams (2009), metrical techniques refer to the placement of rhyming syllables, the placement of accented syllables, the degree of correspondence between syntactic units and measures, and the number of syllables per beat, whereas articulative techniques comprise the amount of legato or staccato used, the degree of articulation of consonants, and the extent to which the onset of any syllable is earlier or later than the beat. 20. The syllables are given in Romanized letters and largely follow the written form of Korean syllables. Different shadings are given to mark (groups of) rhyming syllables and to distinguish them from each other. The lyrics, which openly address heterosexual desire and romanticism with a humorous undertone, can be translated in this part as follows: In my eyes, the lines of your body are more beautiful than anything else / I melt in the unique scent of your dark hair / Sometimes I imagine naughty things and it makes me greedy / Even when I watch TV, when I walk, I want you all the time / I can’t suppress it, how can I only hold your hand? / Don’t talk so formally, it’s you who made me stiff / I love you so much, I want to give all of me / And I want to have all of you / I want to hold you closer / I want to wet my body and pat your hip. 21. With this technique, the front foot is held flat on the ground and slides smoothly backward past the back foot, which first remains in tip-toe position and then is lowered flat while becoming the front foot. In repeating this pattern, this technique creates the illusion of the dancer gliding backwards. 22. The main field of activity for K-Pop idols is stage performances on TV shows. Different from earlier times, when orchestras, big bands, or individual musicians accompanied the singer on stage, real musicians in K-Pop are absent and playback singing has become the rule. K-Pop idols either sing live to the pre-recorded music, for which Korean TV producers use the term MR (music recorded), or they lip-synch to full playback, which is called AR (all recorded).

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Part II

Complicating K-Pop Flows, Asymmetries, and Transformations

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4 Temporal Asymmetries Music, Time, and the Nation-State

In November 2010, a concert by K-Pop girl group Girls Generation in ­Taipei was cancelled after a Korean official was allegedly involved in disqualifying a Taiwanese Taekwondo fighter at the Asian Games in Guangzhou, China. This incident spawned anti-Korean sentiments among Taiwanese people, which finally led the concert organizers to cancel the invitation of the girl group due to the upsurge in national sensitivities, despite the group’s enormous popularity in Taiwan at that time (Kim, 2010). In February 2012, K-Pop boy group Block B issued a formal apology video to its audience in Thailand for reportedly insensitive comments that singer and group leader Zico had made in an interview on Thai media about the victims of a flooding that had devastated Thailand. Confronted with the subsequent critique against the group by the Thai public and to counteract nationalistic resentments, the lead singer shaved his head to show his remorse, and all members took a full ninety-degree bow in the video directed to their Thai viewers (Ho, 2012). In 2005, a Japanese comic book titled The Hate Korean Wave (Kenkanryū) sold more than 300,000 copies in the first three months after its release (Vogel, 2006, 80) and was followed by more anti-Korean Wave comics (Nam and Lee, 2011). Anti-Korean Wave campaigns and street protests against hallyu stars such as Bae Yong-Joon and Kim Tae-Hee burgeoned in 2011 with the inflamed dispute between South Korea and Japan about sovereignty over Dokdo Island. In China and Hong Kong, protests against the high screening rate of imported Korean dramas and movies led the China State Administration of Radio Film and Television to cut the quota of Korean dramas by half in 2006. China Central Television (CCTV) decided to limit the broadcasting time of Korean dramas in order to diversify its ­programming and to support the Chinese movie and television industry (Park, 2006). In a similar move, Taipei’s Government Information Office called for limiting Korean TV dramas in favor of promoting Taiwan’s own media industry (Chosun Ilbo, 2006). This backlash against Korean pop culture in different parts of East Asia vividly demonstrates that K-Pop (as any other pop culture and music ­phenomenon), despite its international popularity, does not move in a world free of borders (as romanticist views on music as a global language would suggest) but rather evokes counterforces and re-emphasizes and re-articulates

128  Complicating K-Pop national boundaries. The national backlashes against Korean pop products are variously framed and underpinned by the specific historical and political relationships between Korea and its neighbors (i.e., Chua, 2010; Liscutin, 2009; Yamanaka, 2010; Yang Fang-Chih, 2008), but what binds them together is a common anger at or anxiety about South Korea’s increasing cultural and thus presumably geopolitical influence in Asia and about a potential weakening of other countries’ economies and cultural identities. What Ryoo Woongjae described as a concern for Korea’s “inverted or quasicultural imperialism” (2009, 148) basically rests on the expansion of the Korean media industry through the aggressive exporting and marketing of its goods into the neighboring Asian markets. Ryoo noted, “[S]preading the Korean Wave through unilateral investment simply based on economic logic rather than a cultural exchange seems to spark resistance and animosity from local audiences toward South Korean Pop Culture” (Ryoo, 2009, 148). The capitalist logic in the Korean companies’ activities has been justified in the name of national interests, for the South Korean government has been strategically supporting the domestic culture industry since the beginning of the Korean Wave in the late 1990s. Once the government discovered domestic pop culture was valuable in bolstering the nation’s economic growth and national pride, it began building up and fostering a home-grown contents industry. Korean pop idols have constantly been utilized for state-official representations as cultural ambassadors or adjuncts of Korean politicians in bilateral meetings, while the state-corporate nexus became a pertinent factor in the strengthening of the domestic cultural industry and in sustaining the Korean Wave and K-Pop overseas. The backlash against the Korean Wave can be seen as specific instances of the “bumps and blocks, disjunctures, and differences” that according to Appadurai (2010, 11) impede the free movement of cultural flows. Here, I mention them as a starting point for investigating the role of the South Korean nation-state as part of the forces that have produced those bumps it seeks to eradicate, as well as the flows of Korean pop cultural goods themselves. In this chapter, I shed light on the political economy of Korean pop culture and music since the 1990s and on their cultural significance in the Asian region. I will discuss two intersecting aspects: the role of the nation-state in nourishing and promoting K-Pop and the shifting temporalities involved in the reception of Korean pop by its Japanese audiences. The Korean Wave represents South Korea’s rise to an export nation of popular culture in the East and Southeast Asian region, and this inter-Asian flow is a symbol of South Korea’s economic development, as well as of the shifted asymmetrical political and economic relationship with its geographical neighbors. While this flow has shaped new connectivity among pop music consumers from different countries, I argue that it has also altered the asymmetries regarding the perception of time and notions of past, present, and future. Hence, K-Pop appears as one of the most visible markers of Korea’s movement

Temporal Asymmetries  129 from a place of nostalgia to one of modernity and is thus closely engaged in reconfiguring Korea’s geopolitical role in Asia by reordering its cultural and temporal distances from and proximities to Japan (and to other East Asian countries). The first section of this chapter briefly introduces the spread of the Korean Wave and K-Pop in Asia. The second section discusses the South Korean government’s globalization agenda, the state-national interests and strategies in enhancing Korean pop (considering cultural policy changes and aspects of cultural diplomacy and nation branding), and its effects on media and market development. The third section discusses the Asia Song Festival as an example of governmentally supported events to show how K-Pop is utilized for state-national representation and cultural exchange. The fourth section leads over to audience receptions of Korean pop in other Asian countries, discussing aspects of “timely coevalness” (Fabian, 2002; Iwabuchi, 2002), synchronicity, nostalgia, and modernity in relation to the Korean Wave. Discovering and Regionalizing Korean Pop Culture: The Korean Wave and K-Pop in Asia The term Korean Wave, or hallyu 한류 in Korean, is said to be coined by the Chinese media in 2001 (Lee, 2008, 176) after South Korean pop products and stars had become popular in China. The two Korean TV dramas Sarangi mwŏgillae (What is Love?) in 1997 and Pyŏrŭn naegasŭme (Star in My Heart) in 1999 gained unprecedented success on Chinese television and thus increased the demand for Korean TV dramas in countries such as Hong Kong, Taiwan, Singapore, Vietnam, and Indonesia. Around the same time, the regional music television program Channel V had featured Korean pop music videos and turned idol boy band H.O.T. into a chart-topping act in China and Taiwan. Following the group’s on-screen popularity, H.O.T. held a sold-out concert in Beijing in 2000 in front of 13,000 fans, thus paving the way for other Korean groups, such as CLON (hugely successful in Taiwan), NRG, Shinhwa, Baby V.O.X., and S.E.S., to break into the ­Chinese-speaking markets. In 1999, the Korean blockbuster Shiri (Swiri) (the name refers to a tiny fish that can only be found in the freshwater streams of the Korean peninsula) marked another cornerstone event, for it symbolized a break in the long-lasting dominance of Hollywood and Hong Kong movies in Korea and a shift toward domestic blockbuster productions. With 5.78 million domestic viewers and estimated $27.5 million box office grosses in Korea, Shiri surpassed the domestic box office record held by Hollywood movie Titanic, coining the phrase “the small fish that sank Titanic” (Shin and Stringer, 2007, 57). Shiri and the movie Joint Security Area, which followed in 2001, received critical acclaim and high audiences in Japan, Hong Kong, Taiwan, and Singapore. Henceforth, Korean movies

130  Complicating K-Pop became regular fixtures in cinemas across Asia and subsequently spread to North America and Europe. Major U.S.-based distribution companies, such as Fox and Columbia, included Korean movies in their global distribution networks, and Hollywood studios started to buy remake rights to Korean films (Shim, 2006). Stemming from this initial period around the millennium, the Korean Wave gained momentum with the TV dramas Kyŏulyŏnga (Winter Sonata) creating a boom in Japan and Taejanggŭm (Jewel in the Palace) creating a boom in the Chinese-speaking regions. Discourses on the Korean Wave have since then sustained and proliferated, often following the wave-metaphor in observing and proclaiming alternating high and low tides. Around 2010, after the Korean girl groups KARA and Girls Generation had performed successful live concerts in Tokyo and were promoted on the national television program NHK, the Japanese media coined the term “Neo-Korean Wave” (ネオ韓流) to indicate a substantial shift in the Japanese reception of Korean pop products. The new craze for Korean pop no longer centered on drama-addicted middle-aged housewives, as was the case before, but on Japanese teenagers. It no longer focused on Korean actors but on girl groups with long legs, not on the TV drama format but on pop music, and not on television and music records but on concerts and live shows. Korean official discourses welcomed and quickly adopted the terms “Neo-Korean Wave” or “New Korean Wave” (KOCIS, 2011) for marketing purposes to signal the Korean Wave as an ongoing phenomenon and to newly validate the continuous strength of Korea’s cultural products. It is worth noting that many forces in the Korean public sphere have contributed to sustaining the Korean Wave saga in terms of national success, including state-officials, the media sector, and pro-governmental academics. Although this discourse has suggested the Korean Wave to be an all-embracing phenomenon that principally includes all kind of formats and is attractive to audiences around the globe due to an alleged strength or even superiority of Korean culture, the Korean Wave is in fact limited to constraints of the medium, as well as those of geography and culture, as Chua Beng Huat (2010) pointed out. Format-wise, the Korean Wave is based on TV dramas and movies (and to a lesser extent on pop music), and it refers to audiences that belong geographically and culturally to what Chua called the East Asian zone, which includes the culturally proximate Northeast Asian countries (PRC, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Japan, Korea) as well as the ethnic-Chinese population in Southeast Asian countries. Korean pop culture is consumed by these foreign audiences not as their staple, but in addition to their regular diet of local language-based pop cultural goods and programs (Chua, 2010). Reasons for the emergence and maintenance of the Korean Wave, especially for Korean TV dramas, have been discussed in scholarly accounts (Chua, 2010; Chung and Lee, 2010; Choi, 2006; Lee, 2008; Ravina, 2009; Shim, 2006; Sung, 2008) and mainly revolve around a number of points. The first is the techno-economic strand, which refers to the relatively high

Temporal Asymmetries  131 quality of productions with well-crafted plots, imagery, and sounds that appeal to diverse audiences in modernized and urban contexts across Asia. The high production value of Korean TV dramas, movies, and songs is said to be reflective of Korea’s technical and industrial development and to have shaped the country’s new and attractive image as a clean, modern, and advanced country. This argument is often utilized in neoliberal and nationalistic discourses, which like to connect the rhetoric of technical innovation and economic power with national achievement and pride. The second point relates to the economic decline in the wake of the Asian financial crisis of 1997, which led Asian buyers to prefer cheaper Korean media products. Korean TV dramas were a quarter of the price of Japanese productions, and a tenth of the price of those from Hong Kong in 2000 (Shim, 2006), which led to extensive increases in Korean television programming exports. The third point relates to the commonly shared Asian values and sentiments, the cultural proximity between East Asian countries on the basis of linguistic and historical closeness, especially common Confucian traditions, which remained alive in everyday practices and attitudes. Korean TV dramas draw explicitly on these issues in their narratives by depicting familial practices or intense romantic passion without overt sexuality. The lack of explicit sexuality seemingly makes Korean TV dramas distinct from Japanese and Western TV dramas and has drawn broad resonance from Korean Wave audiences in East Asia as well as from those in the Middle East and Latin America, where displays of physical sexuality are conceived as immoral and easily provoke public protest and legal sanctions (Ravina, 2009). ­Additional reasons for the Korean Wave’s popularity have been mentioned. For example, the expressed self-confidence and nationalism in Korean pop culture is said Furthermore, pop to have attracted Taiwanese audiences (Sung, 2008). ­ music is said to have contributed to the Korean Wave’s longevity because of its amalgamation of Western styles recreated in a Korean way through fashion and performance, as has the Korean government’s promotional role toward the domestic culture industry (Chung and Lee, 2010). Pop music has long remained marginal to Korean Wave discourses, even though Korean idol stars and groups have constantly achieved overseas success since the beginnings of the Korean Wave in the late 1990s. The Korean media and tourism sectors did not fail to include music stars in their promotional agendas, but governmental as well as scholarly interests on the Korean Wave had more or less neglected pop music in their discussions in favor of films and TV dramas. This has to do with the simple fact that TV dramas have the highest economic value compared to other formats. TV dramas have dominated the media content market with 64.3 percent (USD 12 million) of the industry revenue in 2001 and 91.1 percent (USD 105 million) in 2008 (Chung and Lee, 2010). In accordance, TV dramas are supposed to have the greatest outreach and most significant impact on overseas consumers and thus drew the primary focus of scholarly attention on the Korean Wave (Chua, 2010).

132  Complicating K-Pop The local music market suffered from digital piracy, thus forcing music ­ roduction companies to realign their business models along a star system, p cross-promotion, and exports to create new revenue sources to compensate for the decreasing physical music sales at home. Although Korean pop musicians regularly performed abroad, the Korean Wave discourse had ­ no perennial impact on their careers. The first generation of idol stars and groups, such as H.O.T., An Chae-Uk, NRG, Shinhwa, CLON, Baby V.O.X., and S.E.S., were heralded as Korean Wave stars, but their outreach was ­limited to the Chinese-speaking markets, and they all disbanded until the early 2000s. The subsequent generation, however, which started in the early to mid-2000s—including BoA, Rain, Se7en, and TVXQ— extended the geographical scope and have managed to continue their careers until today. Their production companies tried to market them as Asian stars and later as global stars or world stars (Shin, 2009), but not as Korean Wave stars. It is noteworthy that BoA and TVXQ were established by their production company as self-contained and full-fledged Japanese artists in Japan. Rain was promoted as a Korean Wave star but mainly by the Korean Tourism Organization (KTO), which hosts a Korean Wave hall and appointed him as cultural ambassador. Asian audiences perceived Rain as a Korean Wave star, not due to his role as a singer and dancer but due to his activities as an actor in the successful TV drama Full House. Se7en sought to enter the U.S. market after he gained stardom in Southeast Asia and in Japan, as the Korean Wave label may have appeared to be limiting his marketing options. The regionalizing efforts of Korean production companies in marketing pan-Asian stars during the mid-2000s was obviously influenced by the popularity of then-established and regionally operable marketing labels, such as Asian Pop and Korean Wave. However, it is noteworthy that Korean music companies never felt the Korean Wave to be a suitable label for their artists. For example, one of the executives at JYP Entertainment made the following statement on Rain and the Korean Wave: It’s kind of ridiculous sometimes. Governmental people were always saying there is hallyu or something like that. But we did Rain before! It’s all about Rain’s own character, not hallyu. [We] are not as interested in Korean hallyu because we think that we are just like global people. (personal communication, May 27, 2009) K-Pop managers tend to reveal a self-concept as individuals and creative workers based on a sense of cosmopolitanism and globalism, as they also try to promote their idol protégés as global artists with a unique personality. From this viewpoint, the Korean Wave label appears too restrictive and somewhat parochial to their understanding of globalization. The regional flow of K-Pop based on the transnational industrial ­networks of Korean music companies in Asia has little overlap with the Korean Wave business that is rather centered on the domestic audiovisual

Temporal Asymmetries  133 and broadcasting industry, on direct financial aids by the government, and on the promotional agendas of tourism and related branches. Yet K-Pop benefited much from the promotional role of the Korean nation-state toward popular culture and from the various political and cultural shifts that had taken place under the banner of globalization. The discovery of popular culture as a resource of economic value and national wealth and its transformation into a strategic export-oriented industry make the Korean nation-state a pertinent agent in the field of K-Pop, as will be discussed later. Globalizing Korea, Promoting Culture: The State, the Media, and the Music Market

The Korean State and its Concept of Globalization Globalization in South Korea was instigated by the state. At the end of the Cold War, the Korean state transitioned away from authoritarianism and state developmentalism toward democracy and a liberal free-market economy. Facing greater external forces and fiercer competition brought about by the changing conditions of the world market, the Kim YoungSam government (1993–98), which was headed by the first civilian president since 1961, promulgated a sweeping top-down reform program of Korea’s national economy under the slogan segyehwa (globalization). In January 1995, Kim’s administration established the Globalization Promotion ­Committee (segyehwa ch’ujinwiwŏnhoe) in order to conduct extensive structural reforms across six major areas (education, the legal system and economy, politics and mass media, national and local administration, environment, and culture). With a particular focus on the reform of financial and economic sectors (including corporate deconcentration and economic liberation), Kim’s version of globalization emphasized the idea of competition and served the central purpose of increasing national competitiveness in a globalizing world (Gills and Gills, 2000; Shin and Choi, 2009). Hence, Korean globalization serves a national interest and thereby reveals a dialectical nature based on the belief that globalization could only be realized through maintaining a strong national and cultural identity. This was also propagated by President Kim Young-Sam, who noted: Koreans cannot become global citizens without a good understanding of their own culture and tradition […]. Koreans should march out into the world on the strength of their unique culture and traditional values. Only when the national identity is maintained and intrinsic national spirit upheld will Koreans be able to successfully globalize. (Kim, 1996, 15) Culture turned into an indispensable and effective means for globalizing the nation. The valorization and instrumentalization of culture under a

134  Complicating K-Pop state-led globalization agenda was directed toward the overarching objective of enhancing the national economy. Shin and Choi pointed out that the meta narrative of Korean globalization disclosed and unfolded a social Darwinian perspective, which enabled its protagonists to view “the world as an arena for fierce struggle among nations” and to employ globalization as a “weapon that the nation can wield in its struggles” (Shin and Choi, 2009, 257). Even though the implementation of the segyehwa policy remained limited under Kim Young-Sam’s presidency, the overall directives and ­ ­specific dynamics of Korean globalization were sustained and intensified and materialized under the subsequent governments. It was under the Kim Dae-Jung government (1998–2002) that Korean globalization received a substantive boost. Facing the ramifications of the financial crisis of 1997 and the demands by the IMF, Kim’s government strongly pushed forward the country’s economic and social restructuring under the state program “Rebuilding Korea” and toward increasing international competitiveness. While continuing economic liberalization, Kim DaeJung’s presidency gave particular emphasis to dual emerging and intersecting trajectories aimed at securing Korea’s future and being characteristic cultural features of Korean globalization: the economic value of culture and the creative knowledge-based nation. The economic value of culture was pronounced by Kim Dae-Jung more strongly than by his predecessor, especially by taking the cultural industry as a new rationale for public support of the arts. Kim Dae-Jung, who labeled himself “President of Culture,” stressed the promotion of the domestic cultural industry as an important policy objective and exerted significant legal, organizational, and financial changes that contributed to the economic growth of the cultural industry. Most notably, by establishing the Basic Law for the Cultural Industry Promotion in 1999, the government defined its role in the deregulation and encouragement of the cultural sector, rather than the authoritarian government control present in earlier times. The Ministry of Culture and Tourism, which had the Cultural Industry Bureau under its roof since 1994, gained two new organizations at its side to systematically strengthen the cultural industry: the Cultural Industry Promotion Center and the Game Industry Promotion Center, both established in 2000. The government’s budget for the cultural sector relative to its total budget increased from 0.23 percent in 1980 to 1.24 percent in 2001. In 1999, the first year of Kim’s presidency, the budget for the cultural industry sector rose sharply, 495 percent compared with that of 1998 (Yim, 2003). The creative knowledge-based nation signals a larger discourse about delineating Korea’s path toward a post-industrial economy based on creative knowledge and information. Central to the state official rhetoric under Kim Dae-Jung, the term described the government’s political vision in prioritizing information and communication technologies (ICT) as necessary means to increasing global competitiveness. The narrative of the creative knowledgebased nation was mirrored in a number of significant policy objectives1 and

Temporal Asymmetries  135 in a wide range of socio-economic processes that transformed the ICT sector into a main pillar of the national economy. With a shifting emphasis toward immaterial goods and services, IT-driven production, and intellectual property rights, the cultural sector (along with other public sectors) has been closely tied to technology-related discourses, as key terms such as “culture content” and “culture technology” (CT) demonstrate (Lee, 2011). Culture content (munhwak’ont’ench’ŭ) and CT (munhwagisul) were introduced by a group of professors from the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST) around 1999, and they quickly became buzzwords in Korean cultural industry and in cultural policy discourses. Culture content has been used to stress the growing affinity between culture and information technology and to subsume various cultural forms under the category of digitalization. In this respect, “content industry” became a popular umbrella term in diverse cultural sub-sectors, such as film, broadcasting, music, game, animation, and character, and has been widely used, instead of terms such as “cultural industry,” “entertainment industry,” or “creative industry,” which are more commonly used outside Korea. CT refers to a set of complex technologies that are involved in the different stages of the production of value-added culture content (from planning, commercialization, and loading to media platforms and distribution). The Korean government declared CT the sixth core technology for the economic growth in the twenty-first century, in addition to the already existing biotechnology (BT), environment technology (ET), nano technology (NT), space technology (ST), and information technology (IT) (MCT, 2005; Park, 2001; Lee, 2011). Culture technology was also adopted in K-Pop business. K-Pop producer and chief executive officer of SM Entertainment Lee Soo-Man explicitly referred to the term CT on various occasions when explaining his company’s strategy. According to him, CT contains all aspects of systematically creating idol stars—from planning to publishing, from music to make up—and it builds the theoretical base for a three-stage development, of which the first step is to “export a cultural product, second step is to expand its presence in the market there through teaming up with local entertainment companies and singers, and finally to create a joint venture with local companies to share with them the know-how of CT and the added value generated from it” (Chung, 2011). The processes of redefining culture and technology as resources for economic prosperity and national wealth were instigated and promoted under Kim Dae-Jung’s government and intensified under the subsequent government led by Roo Moo-Hyun (2003–7). With particular emphasis on the “3Cs” (creativity, culture, content) and proclaiming the triple goal to turn Korea into one of the world’s top five cultural industries, a Northeast Asian tourism hub, and a Top 10 leisure sports-industry nation by 2010, the Roo government continued fostering the nation’s technological development in the digital era (MCT, 2005). Roo himself was the first to owe his

136  Complicating K-Pop presidency to a large number of young Internet users and thus gained the nickname “Internet President.” Large investments and government subsidies for the ICT industry and infrastructure turned Korea into a technologically advanced and highly media-saturated country with mobile and high-speed Internet network penetration rates of more than 95 percent. The economic value of culture and the knowledge-based nation became two key narratives in the new paradigm of Korean globalization that were introduced and fostered under the various democratic governments of the mid-1990s and 2000s. The tremendous and long-lasting effects include the ongoing redefinition of the Korean cultural identity (i.e., by including pop culture and music), the protection and promotion of the domestic cultural industry, and the digital convergence of cultural forms and content.

Cultural Policy, Media Liberalization, and Content Industry Promotion Cultural identity has been a key rationale in cultural policies since the end of Japanese colonialism. Against the varying historical backdrops of J­apanese colonialism, national division, and the random influx of Western culture, Korean governments in the past defined Korean culture in terms of traditional culture and arts and mobilized it as a strong instrument for nation-building purposes, which included anti-communism strategies and state-led ­economic development strategies (Yim, 2002). Western and ­Westernized popular culture and music were conceived as threats to those mobilizing purposes for purportedly harming traditional cultural identity and morality and were thus put under tight control. The Park Chung-Hee regime (1962–79), for example, categorized Western popular culture as unhealthy and therefore as a subject of governmental censorship and banning. The naturally arbitrary distinction between healthy and unhealthy culture remained an important base in cultural regulation until the end of the authoritarian era in the early 1990s. Thereafter, it vanished as a cultural policy factor and gave way to a significant shift in the instrumental value of culture, namely, from “the value of culture as motivation factor” to “the exchange value of culture” (Yim, 2002, 43f) taking place in the light of increased globalization and media liberalization. Korea’s opening to foreign cultural industries in the late 1980s, resulting from international trade negotiations among GATT (General Agreement of Tariffs and Trade) member countries, prompted a great and uncontrolled influx of Western media products, especially of movies and television programs. In the past, the Korean media market was protected from foreign competition; for example, only domestic film companies were allowed to distribute foreign movies in the market. Since 1988, the Korean government allowed foreign distributors to import and distribute movies directly to local theaters. As a consequence, domestic movie productions fell from 121 in 1991 to 63 in 1994, and the market share of Hollywood movies increased from fifty-three percent in 1987 to eighty percent in 1994 (Shim, 2006).

Temporal Asymmetries  137 Similarly, the number of imported television programs increased after the government eased the quota system, helped by the advent of new terrestrial and cable television channels (Jin, 2007). In addition to the deregulation of the media market, the Korean government inaugurated its open-door policy toward Japanese culture by lifting the ban on Japanese films, videos and publishing in 1998, on the Japanese performing industry in 1999, and on animation, pop music, music recordings, games, and broadcast programs from Japan in 2000 (MCT, 2000). Facing media liberalization and the rapid expansion of foreign media imports, mainly from the U.S., many Koreans at that time perceived domestic entertainment products as inferior, imitative, and boring. A turning point in the local reception of Korean entertainment arrived by the mid-1990s after a government report submitted by the Presidential Advisory Board on Science and Technology in 1994 highlighted the cultural industry’s potential role in enhancing the national economy. The report gained broad public attention for a comparison of the total revenue of the Hollywood blockbuster movie Jurassic Park to the foreign sales of 1.5 million Hyundai cars. As Hyundai cars were a symbol of Korea’s economic prosperity and national pride, this comparison had an eye-opening effect on the Korean government and public, insofar as they began to consider the cultural industry as a potentially prolific and strategic national industry. As a consequence of this “Jurassic Park factor,” coined by media scholar Shim Dooboo (Shim, 2006), the government began its broad offensive in creating and ­promoting a domestic cultural industry. For example, by enacting the Motion Picture Promotion Law in 1995, the government promoted large media companies and attracted big business groups in Korea, called chaebŏl, such as Hyundai, Samsung, and Daewoo, to expand into the local film industry. Corporate capital and export-oriented business led to a rapid, though short-lived, growth in the number of local productions and to an increase of production quality and consumer acceptance. Even though the economic crisis of 1997 disrupted this development and brought significant transformations in the media market (i.e., regarding the financescape, the chaebŏls were forced to withdraw from their business in the entertainment sector and were replaced by venture capitalists and investment firms), the Korean public’s demand for domestic media entertainment was stirred and seemed irreversible, as evidenced in the government’s promotional cultural agenda, which was to progress in the new millennium. Motivated by the positive reception of Korean pop culture abroad, the government encouraged the diversification of product sourcing, by which many independent producers entered the market (Jin, 2007). With the rapid growth in the number of independent production companies, which mostly consisted of young creative locals and overseas Korean returnees, the number and quality of domestic productions continued to increase. For example, big Korean network broadcasters, such KBS, MBC, and SBS, aired (and also exported) many television programs produced by independent

138  Complicating K-Pop producers and thus could lower their own production costs. By the end of 2002, the cost per production hour for independent producers was $20,000, whereas for network broadcasters it was $63,000 (Yang, 2003, cited in Jin, 2007). In addition, co-production strategies between Korean broadcasters and broadcasters in other East Asian countries contributed to the diversification of product sourcing and helped circulate Korean productions in East Asia through the partner companies in their own countries (Jin, 2007). The government has also provided financial support to Korean production companies to cultivate overseas markets. For example, in 2004, the government subsidized 473 million Won to independent producers and cable channel PPs for participating in international content markets, and it also established international market events to lure international buyers, investors, and media professionals into the Korean content market (Shim, 2008). At the end of the decade, the fostering of the domestic content industry remained an ongoing and ambitious task. The Korean Wave success motivated the Korean government not only to expand its scope of support by promoting other economically promising cultural sectors, such as cartoon, animation, and characters, but also to improve its national image abroad. In 2009, the Lee Myung-Bak government created the Presidential Council on Nation Branding, which established a ten-point action plan for strategically bolstering Korea’s national brand image. Through different avenues, including popular culture (i.e., by adopting a Korean Wave program), ­language, traditional cuisine, arts, and sports, Korea was positioned to become more and positively visible in the global community (Markessinis, 2009). The idea that nation branding could effectively help improve Korea’s national economy (i.e., through boosting tourism, trade, and foreign investments) meant Korea’s influence in the international community stirred discourses on soft power and cultural diplomacy in Korea (Lee, 2009; Kim, 2011; Kim and Ni, 2011; Jang and Paik, 2012; Nye and Kim, 2013), which grabbed the attention of ­ inistry of Culture, Sports, and government officials. A representative of the M Tourism (MCST), for example, stated: Culture and contents industry, including music, is considered to be a very important strategic industry that will affect future national competitiveness. I think it is necessary to intensify weak industrial infrastructures and support overseas expansion in order to promote national branding and competitiveness. (personal communication, July 8, 2009) According to him, the MCST’s political agenda focuses on three main objectives: the building and developing of industrial infrastructures, the revitalization of the domestic market, and the strengthening of international competitiveness. A wide range of governmental activities, mainly exerted under the MCST’s sub-agency Korea Culture and Content Agency (KOCCA),2 had been undertaken to secure and enhance the sustainability

Temporal Asymmetries  139 of the domestic cultural industry through the provision of financial, legal, and policy support to the cultural industry; subsidies to the exportation of culture products; support of content creation and cultural technology (CT)related businesses; human resources development; international content market research; preservation of historical materials and archiving projects; organization of events, festivals, and showcases; and support of individual artists and productions. With the liberalization of the media market and the strategic promotion of an export-oriented content industry throughout the 2000s, the Korean government contributed significantly to the growth of the domestic audiovisual market (Figure 4.1) and to the spread of Korean cultural products in East Asia. 16,000,000 Broadcasting 14,780,000

14,000,000 12,000,000

Game 10,880,000 10,000,000 Character 8,210,000

8,000,000 6,000,000

Film 4,840,000

Music 4,410,000

4,000,000 2,000,000

Manga 760,000 Animation 540,000

0 2005

2006

2007

2008

2009

2010

2011

2012

2013

Unit: 1 Mio Won. Source: Adapted from MCST and KOCCA, 2011, 50f and KOFICE, 2014, 428f.

Figure 4.1  South Korea’s content industry revenue (2005–2013).

Music Market Overview The Korean music market was similarly affected by these overall political transformations and the government’s promotional agenda toward the ­cultural industries, but it faced a different situation than that of film and broadcasting. The music market saw tremendous shifts after the late 1980s with a rapid decline between 2001 and 2005 and a subsequent recovery in the late 2000s. With the opening of the Korean market in the late 1980s, multinational music recording companies such as the “big five” labels—EMI, Warner, Sony, Polygram, and BMG—entered the music market.3 Mainly operating as distributors of Western pop music and classical music, they remain marginal players in the market today. Korean companies have dominated the market of

140  Complicating K-Pop domestic pop music production. Most of them were privately owned, smallto-mid-sized (entertainment) companies. Around the same time, S­ amsung, LG, and other chaebŏls diversified into the music market but withdrew from their music businesses in 1997, due to the nation’s economic crisis. Similar to film and television, the government in the post-IMF era encouraged the diversification of music product sourcing. A regulative change, which simplified the conditions for registering new companies, brought a significant increase in the number of music companies on the market, by more than ten times between 1997 and 2005 (Kim, 2011; Shin, 2002). Although the size of the recorded music market diminished a little during the financial crisis, it reached a peak of USD 203.3 million in 2001 (Figure 4.2). 250.0 Digital Sales Physical Sales 200.0

103.2

150.0

109.4 103.2

100.0

183.4

172.4

202.4

203.3

69.4

133.9

88.3

70.1

164.2

69.8

106.5

50.0

93.4

84.7

68.0

56.3 45.0

74.8 70.8

85.2 89.0

105.6

98.0

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05

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02

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13 20

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Unit: 1 million USD. Digital sales included from 2006. Sources: IFPI, 2010 and IFPI, 2014.

Figure 4.2  South Korea’s music market size (1997–2013).

Between 2001 and 2005, physical sales declined rapidly due to the spread of broadband Internet and illegal music downloading. Despite the overseas success of some K-Pop artists, the domestic market for recorded music nearly collapsed. According to the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI), the Korean music market plummeted during that period from the fifteenth to the twenty-ninth biggest music market in the world. After digital music services emerged in 2001, physical sales decreased continuously by seventy-eight percent and physical retailers had to close eighty-five percent of their businesses (IFPI, 2010). While MP3 and other digital storage files replaced the CD as the preferred music format, mobile and online networks, such as the three major Korean telecommunication companies SK Telecom, KTF, and LG Telecom, became new powerful players in the music market. The mobile music market with ringtone (pelsori)

Temporal Asymmetries  141 and ringback tone (k’ŏllŏring) services accounted for the biggest growth in the first half of the 2000s. After the mobile market was largely saturated by 2005, the digital service providers penetrated the growing market of online music distribution and music production. New online services— such as background music, which allowed users to decorate their own home pages on online portal sites and subscription models—emerged as lucrative revenue sources. After lawsuits were successfully filed against Korea’s two biggest illegal download services Bugs and Soribada, online piracy diminished significantly and gave way for commercial music online businesses to expand in the market. In contrast to the worldwide trend of declining music sales, Korea’s digital music market has constantly been growing. In 2006, Korea was ranked the fourth digital music market after the U.S., Japan, and the UK and was considered the first country in the world where digital sales surpassed sales of physical formats (IFPI, 2008; Figure 4.2, this volume). The Korean music market was about to quickly recover due to the increasing digital music sales and was thus elevated to the eleventh largest music market in 2011 (IFPI, 2012). The IFPI Digital Music Report 2012 stressed the government’s role in improving the copyright landscape, along with new legitimate business models and a strong repertoire as the driving forces behind the significant market growth. Following a series of legislative amendments to the Copyright Act since 2007, the MCST and the Korea Copyright Commission (KCC) established a range of measures to systematically fight digital piracy. For example, online service providers were required to block illegal transmissions of copyrighted materials upon requests from rights holders. Websites of unauthorized P2P services and overseas blogs could be targeted with a blocking program. Gradual response measures were introduced, allowing authorities to suspend Internet user accounts and shut down message boards, blogs, and forums for copyright infringement after having sent out three recommendation notices to service providers requiring them to tell infringing users to stop breaking the law. The improved legal environment is said to have yielded new investments in the domestic repertoire, encouraging Korean companies to invest again in new talent, marketing, and A&R, as well as incurring a growth of physical sales (IFPI, 2012). In 2014, the entire music market size, including revenues from concerts, events, and noraebang (Korean karaoke bar) business, was more than 4.4 trillion Won, with an average annual growth rate of about 9.7% during the previous seven years (Figure 4.1, this volume; KOCCA, 2012; KOFICE, 2014). The trade value of recorded music sales increased by 9.7% year-onyear, from 211.8 billion Won to 232.2 billion Won (211.3 million USD), with 51% digital sales and 47% physical sales. Among the digital sales, ­subscriptions (85%) made up the biggest portion, compared to downloads (6%) and other formats (9%) (IFPI, 2014). According to a music consumption survey conducted by KOCCA (2013), Korean pop music was the dominant genre (70.5%) among Korean listeners, compared to ­American Pop (8.6%) and Japanese Pop (1.1%) (see Table 4.1).

142  Complicating K-Pop Table 4.1  Favorite music genres Year (respondents)

Korean Pop

2010 (1,200) 2011 (1,226) 2012 (3,318)

81.7 95.5 70.5

Drama/ Movie OST 5.3 – 10.5

US Pop

Classic

9.3 3.4 8.6

Japanese Other Pop

2.3 – 3.7

1.1 0.4 1.5

0.4 0.7 3.1

Unit: %. Source: Adapted from KOCCA, 2013, 246.

It is most significant that, in the wake of the newly growing music market, the amount of music exports has exponentially increased, by 135.5% in 2011 and by an annual average of 150.4% between 2009 and 2011 (Table 4.2). Japan has become the largest export market for Korean pop music, which has tremendously extended since 2010 following the Japanese craze for K-Pop girl groups, such as Girls Generation and KARA. Whereas the main export region for Korean music was Asia, music imports largely came from Europe, Japan, and North America (Tables 4.3 and 4.4). Table 4.2  Korean music industry by numbers Number of Number of Revenue Companies Employees (Mio. Won) 2011 yearonyear rate

37,774 0.4%

78,181 2.0%

Added Ratio Value of Value (Mio. Added Won) 3,817,460 1,597,663 41.85% 29.0% 39.8% 3.23%

Export (1000 USD)

Import (1000 USD)

196,113 12,541 135.5% 21.3%

Source: Adapted from KOCCA, 2012, 123.

Table 4.3  Music export by region Japan 2009 2010 2011 ratio year-on-year rate annual average rate

21,638 67,267 157,938 80.5% 134.8%

Southeast Asia 6,411 11,321 25,691 13.1% 126.9%

170.2% 100.2%

China 2,369 3,627 6,836 3.5% 88.5%

North Europe Other Total America 351 299 201 31,269 432 396 219 83,262 587 4,632 429 196,113 0.3% 2.4% 0.2% 100% 35.9% 1,069.7% 95.9% 135.5%

69.9% 29.3%

Unit: 1,000 USD. Source: Adapted from KOCCA, 2012, 154.

293.6% 46.1% 150.4%

Temporal Asymmetries  143 Table 4.4  Music import by region Europe 2009 2010 2011 ratio yearon-year rate annual average rate

Japan

6,768 5,455 7,213 57.5% 32.2%

2,428 2,135 2,427 19.3% 13.7%

3.2%

0.0%

North China America 2,151 98 2,166 93 2,246 99 17.9% 0.8% 3.7% 6.5% 2.2%

Southeast Other Asia 53 438 52 436 58 498 0.5% 4.0% 11.5% 14.2%

0.5%

4.6%

6.6%

Total 11,936 10,337 12,541 100% 21.3% 2.5%

Unit: 1,000 USD. Source: Adapted from KOCCA, 2013, 155.

So far, I have discussed the Korean government’s interest in and strategies for creating and sustaining a strong domestic cultural industry. As sweeping effects of Korea’s state-national globalization agenda, legislative changes and promotional policies closely tied to the greater transition to a digital economy have contributed to the emergence of a vibrant domestic content market with high export-rates. K-Pop itself and the recovering music market in general are the result of these ongoing transformations in the government’s stance toward popular culture. I will discuss how the government now utilizes K-Pop to represent Korea as an advanced nation, drawing on an implicit notion of cultural evolutionism. Furthermore, I will ask how K-Pop’s popularity in Asia has shifted the perception of cultural and temporal distances to Korea from the perspective of Japanese K-Pop consumers. Placing Korea at the Center of Asia: The Asia Song Festival Since the emergence of the Korean Wave and the Korean government’s discovery of the cultural industry as an important economic growth engine, a multitude of government agencies, non-governmental organizations, private and public institutions, and mainstream media have sought to create and convey a positive image of Korea toward its Asian neighbors and to the global community. In the following sections, I will take a closer look at the Korea Foundation for International Culture Exchange (han’gukmunhwasanŏpkyoryujedan) (KOFICE), which is one example of a government agency that utilizes K-Pop to present the image of Korea as an economically and culturally advanced country. KOFICE was launched in June 2003 and operates as a subsidiary of the MCST and in close relationship with the Korea National Tourism

144  Complicating K-Pop Organization (KNTO). According to the description on its website, KOFICE seeks to create “mutual understanding of culture” and to “promote friendship” by serving as a facilitator for cultural exchange between Korea and foreign countries with a particular focus on popular culture and Asian cultural industries. Its main business consists of conducting overseas market research and surveys, giving policy recommendations for Korean Wave promotion, organizing forums and seminars for cultural industry workers and experts from Asia, and (co-)hosting public relations events, such as the Asia Song Festival, and exchange events with diverse Asian countries, such as the Pattaya International Music Festival in Thailand, which presents K-Pop idols next to other Asian pop idols. A key project of KOFICE is the Asia Song Festival, organized and hosted as an annual pop music event since 2004, which presents the chart-topping pop music artists from diverse Asian countries. In 2008, for example, the concert was co-hosted by the Seoul Metropolitan Government and held under the slogan “Asia is One” at the Seoul World Cup Stadium. The concert was joined by twenty-three idol groups from twelve Asian countries and by about 50,000 people in the audience. It was disseminated to more than thirty countries in Asia and to Finland, Romania, and Bulgaria via the Korean broadcasting network SBS. With this enormous media exposure and a financial budget of more than USD 1.5 million, the Asia Song Festival was a musical mega event that not only attracted pop music fans across national borders but also worked as a spectacle of the Korean nation. Its depictions neither relied on blatant nationalistic symbolism nor on cultural heritage imagery (except for a Korean traditional percussion ensemble that performed as a supporting act to the regular show program) but were carried out through the stylish and glitzy appearances of the idol stars, their meticulous dance performances, and their addictive dance pop songs. The simple fact that the Korean government hosts a large-scale international festival of idol stars is already a striking example of Korea’s new self-representation as a dynamic cultural powerhouse and tourist hotspot in Asia, indicating a notable change to earlier forms of touristic self-representations with its sole emphasis on ancient royal sites, folkloristic arts, and traditional music (kugak) styles. From the initial stage of the Korean Wave, Korea’s new image as a pop nation not only aroused sympathy and fascination, but also yielded the danger of national backlash in the receiving countries (as I mentioned at the beginning of this chapter). Cho Hae-Joang described the Korean government’s problematic stance toward the Chinese response to the Korean Wave in that early period: The government moved quickly to increase the national culture industry’s budget, to station government specialists in large cities in China and elsewhere and to set up a “hall of the Korean Wave.” In response, there were reports of the Chinese government’s displeasure and fear that the South Korean government was acting too aggressively. The

Temporal Asymmetries  145 government, which so anxiously leapt into this field, realized that, with no experience in the field of popular culture, it might now be in over its head and that it should refrain from direct interference. The government became aware that that it could provoke a backlash from its partner governments and jeopardize the penetration of Korean products into foreign markets by being too visible as promoters of the Korean Wave. (Cho, 2005, 160) Facing an internal conflict at the intersection of its own economic and ­geopolitical interests, the Korean government was and continues to be in limbo between promoting the Korean Wave in Asia and counteracting notions of cultural dominance as likely by-products of aggressive exportation by Korean media companies. Resulting from this diverging interest to the private sector, the Korean government has since sought to act more cautiously and to avoid a culturally imperialistic image of Korea that may appear as threatening to its Asian partner governments. KOFICE is a good illustration of the government’s cautious stance as well as its internal conflict toward the Korean Wave. In an interview with Mr. Pak Sŏng-U,4 the general director, and Mr. Kwŏn and Mr. Kim, two assistant managers of the exchange program at KOFICE, I quickly became aware of their agenda of acting cautiously and friendly toward people interested in Korea. Not only did they provide me with enormous amounts of merchandising materials on K-Pop and the Korean Wave and offer me a private sightseeing trip through Korea in Mr. Pak’s car (which I had to reject for several reasons), they also gave me ample time to ask all of my questions and even started the conversation with the plea to “first do some small talk before having the interview,” a surprising request given the fact that nearly all of my other Korean interview partners including schoolchildren (but excluding indie musicians) gave me the sense of being in a rush and not having time to waste. The term “mutual understanding” (sangho ihae) was the word most often used by Mr. Pak during our talk, although its meaning remained strangely opaque. He noted: Korea very much appreciates people who received the Korean Wave and who have an interest in Korean culture, but our foundation does not want to be one-sided, just pushing out Korean cultural phenomena abroad. You know, culture is more like a mutual understanding; there has to be some opportunity to get to know each other. If there is one culture only moving just one-way, people outside may react positively but others may say “we want to keep our culture and values!” That’s why our foundation uses pop culture to get in contact with many countries, such as Japan, Mainland China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, and Vietnam. (Pak Sŏng-U and Kwŏn O-Jŏng, personal communication, June 18, 2009)

146  Complicating K-Pop The emphasis on mutual understanding and the rejection of one-way flow is obviously in line with the government’s cautious agenda toward the Korean Wave. In fact, proving if and how mutual understanding between countries has been realized—on which levels, by which agents, and to what degree—remains problematic. It is also difficult to judge whether the Asia Song Festival creates new alliances and real exchange among fans or among artists from diverse countries or whether they remain isolated within their respective consumption or production spaces. Apart from these questions (which may be subject to further research), it is sufficient to realize that the KOFICE focus on mutual understanding and cultural exchange (munhwa kyoryu) serves a strategic purpose. This is even true with the concept of culture employed by Mr. Pak during our conversation: Q: Do you have different strategies for promoting hallyu in different countries? Mr. Pak:  When I promoted K-Pop in other countries—it’s like when we imported wine from France; wine was not only a beverage at that time, we also received a kind of French culture—so I thought, “ok we can sell our traditional culture, like these days we sell our cars to the world so that our culture is coming along with them.” We’re thinking the effective way; we give some of our culture, such as music and drama, and we get some of their culture. In the future— it’s like the EU—there will be no meaning to the boundaries and borderlines; there will be no meaning of the territory anymore because every culture will just be swapping and changing. At that time, we made mistakes. I want to see more positive things, not just “is it a Korean thing, a Japanese thing or a German thing.” The point is to get together and stimulate exchange. I don’t want to make up a strategy to promote hallyu in special countries; every culture has its own way; we just want to see it flowing like water. (Pak Sŏng-U, personal communication, June 18, 2009) Here, Mr. Pak’s talk suggests that he views culture as a trade object, not as behavior or social activity but like wine or cars, products that can be sold to and bought from other countries. These can serve as vivid signifiers of national identity. Again his implicit notion of culture is very much in line with the overarching redefinition of culture as an economic factor that took place during Korea’s state-led globalization process. In 2008, the Asia Song Festival was accompanied by the Asia Music Industry Leaders Forum, a side event hosted by KOFICE, where music business representatives discussed the present stage of and future plans for a growing Asian music market. This shows that the cautious mode and discourses of mutual exchange notwithstanding, KOFICE plays a supportive role to the private sector and engages in regionalizing efforts toward a panAsian cultural industry. This was also revealed in the talk with Mr. Pak:

Temporal Asymmetries  147 Q: What is the aim of bringing together Asian musicians in the Asia Song Festival? Why is this kind of cultural exchange necessary when stars like BoA were already successful in the international market? Mr. Pak:  [KOFICE] aims for an exchange of popular cultures and the revival of the Asian music industry. Beyond the short term promotion of Korean singers, it intends to expand the pan-Asian market, to develop a more interactive field of exchange, to promote singers in each nation in Asia, and to provide opportunities to develop together. If investment is made across all areas in Asia, production is preceded by the discovery of characteristic human resources, and distribution is made in each nation. An Asian star can be easily found. If a meeting in the representative music industry for each nation through Asia Song Festival happens, and coinvestment, discovery, and distribution are accomplished, training and development of stars suitable for the four billion people in Asia can be more easily accomplished. Korea also has a vision of forming a hub as the intermediary market to open the door to the field [my emphasis]. (Pak Sŏng-U, personal communication, June 18, 2009) Mr. Pak’s geo-cultural perspective, in which Korea is envisioned as a hub of the pan-Asian cultural industry, mirrors the new economic mantra about Korea as a “Northeast Asian hub of trade and technology,” which has pervaded governmental rhetoric and public relation programs in the new millennium.5 The government’s pretension of Korea’s becoming a self-assertive middle power and a geo-economic and geo-cultural mediator in Northeast Asia is even subtly present in the title of the Asia Song Festival. Whereas music festivals are usually named after the location in which they take place, even if they present international artists in Asian countries (i.e., Pattaya International Music Festival, Tokyo Summer Festival), the title evokes the impression of having rotating host locations in Asia; in fact, Korea is the only host country, which projects a regional Asian imaginary with Korea at its center. This becomes even more obvious when looking at the festival’s line-up. Not only does Korea outnumber foreign countries in terms of artists presented in the festival’s line-up, but ironically, each year, a Korean idol singer or group is awarded the festival prize in the category Best New Asian Artist. Given the fact that the festival is not a contest (like the Yamaha Popular Song Contest or the Eurovision Song Contest) and prizes are not based on transparent decision-making processes, the message of these procedures is clear: Korea makes the best pop artists in Asia. What is underlying this representation of Korea as Asia’s new cultural powerhouse is the ideological nexus of economic superiority and cultural modernity, which is widespread in official discourses about the Korean Wave and K-Pop, and which also became apparent in my conversation with

148  Complicating K-Pop Mr. Pak and Mr. Kwŏn. Besides the Asia Song Festival, KOFICE organizes a range of exchange festivals with partner countries, such as Japan, Thailand, Taiwan, Uzbekistan, and Mongolia. The following transcript gives an example of the cultural evolutionist rhetoric that accompanies KOFICE’s idea of cultural exchange: Q: When these festivals take place outside of South Korea, what is your role? Do you give financial support, or are you involved in organizing them? Mr. Kwŏn:  Normally we share the budget for events abroad; I don’t know the percentage, but for example, when we bring a Korean artist we pay the performance fee and cover the airfare, accommodation, and transportation. The stage, sound, and light system, and the engineers and the performance fee for other artists are covered by the partner host. So we make some MoU [Memorandum of Understanding] for defining the shared duties. Q: So is it individually negotiated depending on the event? Mr. Kwŏn:  Yes, exactly. For example, Mongolia or other under-­ developed countries cannot afford it. Q: So people from Mongolia come to you and ask you? How do they know? Mr. Kwŏn:  We have correspondents in fourteen countries. They send us reports every week on how things are going—cultural things in the local news. There are no branches, since the correspondents work part-time; they are just local people, so they can send us more valuable news than people from the diplomatic section. We also heard that the country needs to arrange this kind of concert, and they really wanted to invite Korean artists because they see Korean dramas every day, but the problem is the Korean Wave is about profit, so agencies don’t want to go there. So we are in the middle of it and try to promote and support them. (Kwŏn O-Jŏng, personal communication, June 18, 2009) On the increased popularity of K-Pop, Mr. Kwŏn stated the following: Everywhere Korean singers have fan clubs, but we didn’t do anything about it; they built them up because they wanted to. Actually, we don’t know exactly why K-Pop is now realistic in Asian market or why fans are so enthusiastic about the music. Referring to the aspects you mentioned, we don’t want to compare with Vietnamese pop music or others because every country has its own pop music. We made K-Pop only for Korean people, but we didn’t know that Japanese people would start liking K-Pop or that Vietnamese people would listen to it. Now we’re saying, “oh, wow, why is K-Pop so unique?” We suspect maybe it’s because of the visuals, their good looks and dancing and the quality

Temporal Asymmetries  149 of the music. K-Pop is very modern. If we compare it to Japanese pop music or Vietnamese pop music, it’s more modern. But they are also using the same R&B. (ibid.) These statements imply the equation of economic development and cultural modernity. They draw on the ideology of advanced and developing countries, in which Korea can show its prowess as a culture nation toward “less well-off” countries, such as Mongolia. The perception of K-Pop as very modern or even “more modern” than other music stresses not only the idea of music as a national category but also the idea of competition between the nations that is part and parcel in the production of K-Pop. The idea of competition, which gained a substantive boost during Korea’s state-led globalization, has become the prevailing logic in many sectors of social life. Even a musical event, such as the Asia Song Festival, that foregrounds friendship and exchange among the nations by the means of idol pop music, is ultimately a result of the competitive dynamics unleashed by Korea’s globalization project. In 2010, the Asia Song Festival was officially held as a cultural side-event to the G-20 summit—the meeting of the group of twenty finance ministers and central bank governors—of which Korea was for the first time the host country. Various K-Pop idols even recorded a collaborative single CD to promote the Asia Song Festival as a G-20 concert. The CD contains one song “Let’s Go” in Korean and English and was freely distributed to festival visitors. K-Pop is not a mere object of consumption, free of political interests; it is rather embedded in the geo-cultural and geopolitical strategies of government officials and utilized as a specifically cultural form of national representation. The work of KOFICE exemplified these strategies. The Asia Song Festival is a spectacle of the nation where Korea is presented as an economically advanced and culturally modern country. At the same time, the festival and KOFICE’s work represent Korea’s turn to and relationship with Asia in its attempt to create a peaceful exchange and to synchronize with other Asian countries to create a regional bloc (i.e., pan-Asian cultural industry). Within this tensional aspiration of leading and sharing, K-Pop plays a crucial role in representing Korea’s positioning as a cultural mediator at the center of Asia. Shifting Temporal Asymmetries: From Nostalgia to Modernity The cultural evolutionist ideology and rhetoric that underscores the attitude of Korean officials toward Korean culture, K-Pop in particular, is illustrated in the view of KOFICE representatives and widely shared by Korean peo­ oreans’ ple. Shin Gi-Wook and Choi Joon-Nak collected survey data on K

150  Complicating K-Pop perception of globalization and observed that “Koreans understand globalization from an instrumentalist view influenced by social Darwinism and embrace globalist attitudes” (Shin and Choi, 2009, 265). In the same manner, as globalization is viewed as a Darwinian struggle where only the fittest can survive, many Koreans define culture in terms of competition and development. The rising popularity of Korean cultural products abroad endowed Koreans with a self-assertive view of their own culture and their country. Similarly, Lee Jung-Yup noted that, “Regardless of the real performance in numbers, cultural exports excited Koreans in spirit because they really provided the sense of being among the more advanced countries, and being competitive and equal in terms of culture just as in terms of economy” (Lee, 2011, 133). Conflated discourses of economic growth and cultural development and the desire to see Korea compete successfully are prevalent in the Korean public, as can be read from daily media reports on Korea’s positioning in international rankings on nation branding and on other topics, and they are attached to and present in K-Pop discourses as well, as we have seen. The temporal notion in these discourses is evident: K-Pop is utilized by officials to portray or imagine Korea as a nation that is no longer lagging behind but has caught up with other advanced nations. While the popularity of K-Pop and the Korean Wave in Asia has provided Koreans with the sense of being modern and living in the same temporality with other Asians, it can be argued that the perception of cultural and temporal distances between Korea and other Asian countries has also shifted from the perspective of other Asian K-Pop consumers. In this regard, I will briefly mention how K-Pop’s reception is tied to the reorganization of Korea’s postcolonial relationship with its Asian neighbor Japan in terms of temporality. The notion of temporal asymmetry is not only prevalent in contemporary discourses about economic and cultural development, but it also played a decisive role in the critique of scientific anthropology. In his seminal book Time and the Other: How Anthropology Makes Its Object, first published in 1983, Johannes Fabian analyzed the role of time as a condition for p ­ roducing ethnographic knowledge. His use of terms such as “schizogenic use of time,” “allochronism,” and “denial of coevalness” refers to anthropology’s inherent logic of presenting the Other as spatially and temporally distanced from the ethnographers’ present (despite the anthropologists’ sense of sharing the same temporality with their interlocutors during the period of fieldwork). Fabian defined denial of coevalness as, “a persistent and systematic tendency to place the referent(s) of anthropology in a time other than the present of the producer of anthropological discourse” (Fabian, 2002, 31). This temporal asymmetry, constituted and upheld by classical anthropology, marked the discipline’s ideological blind spot toward legitimizing Western colonialism by essentializing the Other and subordinating it under the notion of a civilized West. Fabian’s analysis of time as a constituent of power asymmetry (i.e., between the West and its colonies) was influential in postcolonial media studies and triggered questions on how new media technologies and the

Temporal Asymmetries  151 reception of media texts shape and intersect with the reordering of time. Wilk, for example, observed that the advent of satellite television in Belize in the 1980s undercut the ideological foundation of (neo-)colonialism manifested in what he called “Colonial Time”—a temporal system in which time, geographic distance, and cultural difference (between colony and metropole) were merged. According to Wilk, the synchronizing function of television provided Belizeans with a new sense of temporality (TV Time) significantly visible in the shift in Belizean popular music production since the arrival of satellite television and MTV. He noted: There was no longer a lag between the popular music played in New York, London, and Los Angeles and that played in Belize or Orange Walk; the same bands and the same songs were everywhere at once. […] Local products are seeing something of a resurgence because they are no longer pale imitations of the real thing, mimics stuck “behind the times.” Now they may be inferior or superior, dear or bargain, but they can be assessed qualitatively without the extra burden of acting as symbols of time and history. (Wilk, 2002, 182) Applied to the reception of Asian pop culture, Koichi Iwabuchi’s study (2002) is most notable, for it revealed the asymmetrical perception of TV dramas between Japanese and Taiwanese consumers. Iwabuchi observed that the Taiwanese reception of Japanese TV dramas rested on a sense of coevalness—“the feeling that Taiwanese share a modern temporality with Japan” (Iwabuchi, 2002, 122)—through which Taiwanese consumers feel culturally proximate to the Japanese depicted in the dramas. In opposition to the sense of coevalness projected in the Taiwanese consumption of ­Japanese TV dramas, Iwabuchi also observed that the Japanese consumption of imported Asian TV dramas was based on a denial of coevalness fused with a sense of nostalgia by Japanese consumers. He noted: Now, modernizing Asian nations are nostalgically seen to embody a social vigor and optimism for the future that Japan allegedly is losing or has lost. This perception, revealing as it does Japan’s refusal to accept that it shares the same temporality as other Asian nations, illustrates the asymmetrical flow of interregional cultural consumption in East Asia. (Iwabuchi, 2002, 159) In a later essay on the Japanese reception of the Korean Wave, in particular of the Korean drama Winter Sonata, Iwabuchi (2008) identified a slightly different mode of nostalgia at work, which was “projected less onto the social vigor Japan allegedly has lost than onto the personal memories and sentiments in terms of emotion of love and interpersonal relationships”

152  Complicating K-Pop (Iwabuchi, 2008, 130). Different causes and projections notwithstanding, the nostalgic mode seems to be characteristic of the Japanese consumption of other Asian pop cultural products and sheds light on Japan’s complex postcolonial relations with its cultural neighbors. According to Iwabuchi, Japanese consumers’ appreciation of the Korean Wave and their emphasis on temporal differences from Korea (in the form of a nostalgic yearning for allegedly vanished personal sentiments), reflect their ambivalent stance toward Korea by showing their willingness to share the same cultural products but not necessarily the same temporality with Koreans.

From Nostalgia to Coevalness: The Japanese Reception of K-Pop The nostalgic mode also dominated the Japanese reception of Korean pop music in the past but seems to have vanished in the recent consumption of K-Pop. Three consecutive stages can be identified in this shift. The first stage is characterized by the denial of coevalness and can be illustrated by the marketability of Korean enka singers in the Japanese music market until the late 1990s. There had been only a few Korean musicians well known to Japanese audiences, even though many musicians of Korean ethnicity played a pivotal role in postwar Japanese popular music. Against the widespread view that enka is a uniquely Japanese popular music style performed by Japanese singers, many singers, among them iconic enka, stars such as Miyako Harumi and Misora Hibari, were in fact Korean Japanese (Lie, 2004). That the Japanese public was oblivious to the Korean ethnicity of popular singers reflects, in a wider sense, the situation of Korean Zainichi minorities in Japan who were principally forced to hide their Korean identity and ancestry due to Japan’s strict assimilation policy and social marginalization (Iwabuchi, 2008). In the 1980s, well known Korean singers, such as Yi Sŏng-Ae, Kye Ŭn-Sŏk, and Cho Yong-P’il, successfully established careers as enka singers in Japan. Most notable is the fact that these singers were celebrated as enka singers in Japan, whereas in Korea, their stylistic repertoire was much wider. Cho Yong-P’il, for example, is a famous pop star and national icon in Korea whose songs span a wide range of genres including rock ‘n’ roll, disco, soul, and pop ballads, as well as Korean traditional folk music. In Japan, his image was restricted to that of an enka singer. This uneven perception of Cho Yong-P’il between Japanese and Korean audiences is, according to Yoshitaka Mori, an effect of the Japanese postcolonial nostalgia that underlies and accompanies Japanese stereotyping of Korean singers as enka singers: [T]he example of Cho is suggestive in understanding the stereotypical image in Japan of Koreans and the apparently contradictory position that enka seems to create between Korea and Japan. … Korean-styled music has been conventionally associated with enka in Japan. Yet the situation is not as paradoxical as it might seem, since, although enka is

Temporal Asymmetries  153 also regarded, as suggested above, as the music of the Japanese spirit, the Japanese people look to their colonial past and find in it a lost history and a lost identity. As a result, Korea and the Korean Peninsula come to be regarded in a very nostalgic way. By listening to enka music from Korea, the Japanese are trying to remember something lost after World War II, what Paul Gilroy might identify as “postcolonial melancholy.” Accordingly, people unconsciously try to hold on to what they have already lost because they do not—and cannot—understand the fact of this loss. This nostalgia is the other side of the coin of prejudice and discrimination against Korean people. (Mori, 2009, 223) In this sense, the Japanese media construction, as well as the self-promotion of Korean singers as enka singers, caters to the same desires in the Japanese public that are grounded in the nostalgic reception of Asian TV dramas, such as Winter Sonata, by Japanese housewives. The Japanese feeling of a lost past is projected onto the image of Korean singers. Implicit to this stereotyping is the unconscious act by which the Japanese were denying Koreans the same temporality and placing them into Japan’s colonial past. The second stage can be described as a transitory phase in which Korean singers use strategies of camouflage and double identity to place themselves in the Japanese market. Korean female singer BoA illustrates the case. After initial success in Korea, her management company SM Entertainment established her second career as a J-Pop singer in Japan. In the late 1990s, when the official banning of Japanese culture in Korea was lifted, cultural exchange and mutual sensibilities between Korea and Japan were reconsidered and gave way to new business relationships and collaborative networks and to increased cultural traffic between the countries. SM Entertainment took advantage of this climate change by forming a partnership with the Japanese record label Avex Trax in 2000 to launch then-fourteen-yearold BoA into the Japanese music market. BoA dropped out of school and was sent to Japan where she received intensive Japanese language, dance, and vocal training by renowned professionals in the Japanese media business. In 2002, Avex Trax released her Japanese debut album Listen to My Heart with all songs (except one) written, composed, and co-produced by ­Japanese staff. It was the first album of a non-Japanese artist that peaked on the Oricon charts. BoA’s near-native fluency in the Japanese language, her recordings following Japanese production standards, her media exposure on Japanese TV and radio shows, and her promotion and marketing as a J-Pop singer led many Japanese consumers (at least at the beginning of her career) to think that she was Japanese. BoA’s strategy of camouflaging her Korean identity in terms of marketing was part of SM Entertainment’s localization strategy and thus differed from the hidden identity of ethnic Korean singers in the enka or J-Pop industry, who faced social marginalization in Japan. BoA’s Japanese artist identity did not result as a necessity from the same

154  Complicating K-Pop social realities that shaped the lives of the ethnic Korean minorities in Japan. Whereas Zainichi singers usually kept their Korean ethnicity secret from the Japanese public (to escape the prejudice against Koreans), BoA’s Korean identity was not strictly concealed by her management company. Her star persona was instead managed more flexibly and was principally open to emphasizing her Korean identity. This was the case, for example, during the 2002 soccer World Cup tournament co-hosted by Japan and South Korea, where she was promoted as a transnational star and as a pop cultural ambassador for close cultural relations between Korea and Japan. Similarly, she served the image of a cultural envoy in 2003, when Japanese Prime minister Koizumi invited her to the Korea-Japan summit dinner party with Korean President Roh. Since she continued a very successful dual career in Korea and in Japan, her identity as a transnational star is also different from that of Cho Yong-P’il. Due to her image as a Japanese artist that camouflaged her Korean identity, she was able to evade the nostalgia trap that earlier Korean singers had experienced. Due to her dual identity, she was able to distinguish herself from other J-Pop artists and disclose and capitalize on her Korean identity whenever necessary. In this respect, BoA was a success model for her management company, which soon pursued the same strategy with the five-member boy group TVXQ. With BoA, the temporal gap in the Japanese perception of Korean pop singers began to close, but that could only happen by camouflaging her Korean identity (which was a precondition for her entering the Japanese market) and by an ambivalent play with her Japanese and Korean artist identity. In the third stage, the postcolonial nostalgia effects seemed to have vanished in favor of coevalness between Japanese consumers and Korean artists. This is illustrated by K-Pop groups in the late 2000s, such as KARA, Girls Generation, and 2ne1, who were heralded by the Japanese media as the spearhead of the New Korean Wave. Their Korean identity was evident to the Japanese public and has stirred a growing interest among Japanese in everything Korean. This not only includes an interest in Korean food, language, touristic sites, and history but also an interest in the Korean people living in Japan (although the effects on the Korean minorities are yet unsettled). From media reports and personal interviews with Japanese K-Pop fans, it is fair to say that Japanese consumers no longer tend to appreciate Korean singers in terms of a nostalgic desire for the good old times or for something lost during or after Japanese colonialism, as was the case with the reception of Winter Sonata and Korean enka singers (Iwabuchi, 2008; Yano, 2004). Hence, Japanese K-Pop consumption is neither grounded in nor accompanied by a sense of Japanese cultural superiority. Neither is it embedded in a discourse of temporal relegation. It rather provides an example of celebrating difference and presence. Japanese fans debate on various topics and differences between Japanese and Korean idols, as for example, Aiko, a twenty-eight-year-old female fan of Korean boy groups SS501, states: “Japanese idols look different. The boys are mostly cute, but K-Pop

Temporal Asymmetries  155 idols are tall and brawny. I don’t think that K-Pop is influenced by J-Pop” (personal communication, October 23, 2010). They evaluate the difference in terms of personal taste, aesthetic features, production quality, cultural, and geographical distances, and so on, but they do not seem to evaluate the difference in terms of a temporal gap between Japan and Korea. The fact that K-Pop groups have strategically penetrated the ­Japanese market—they are able to sing and to communicate with their fans in Japanese; they hold live concerts and appear in TV shows; they are promoted via television and Internet—has shaped new conditions under which Japanese consumers have developed the sense of sharing the same temporality and being culturally proximate to their Korean neighbors. Conclusion: Governing the National Imaginary, Creating Cultural Proximity K-Pop and the Korean Wave are symbolic markers of a new national imaginary nurtured and utilized by the Korean authorities under the selfproclaimed conditions of a state-led globalization agenda. The government’s paradigmatic shift from an authoritarian to a promotional stance (Cloonan, 1999) concerning domestic popular culture and music enabled the emergence and endurance of a strong and competitive domestic content market with high export rates. Legislative changes and promotional policies have fostered Korea’s economic transition into a digital economy in which culture became redefined as content and music (along with other forms) and became a subject of national economic interest. The perseverance of Korean cultural identity is at the heart of the government’s globalization agenda and has been defined as a key policy objective. Cultural identity, from the government’s stance, is no longer bound to specific genres and forms entwined with concepts of authenticity and origin, as was the case with the healthy/unhealthy divide of earlier times, but is now closely tied to the idea of developing the national economy. In this sense, the Korean governments’ interest and strategies in creating and sustaining a strong domestic cultural industry is to secure and maintain a Korean cultural identity. It is in this regard, and in contrast to the observation that K-Pop is a conglomerate of international styles, that K-Pop is nevertheless part of a national project. The nation-state is not only a promoter but also a beneficiary of the overseas’ success of K-Pop and the Korean Wave. Pro-government officials and agencies utilize K-Pop to represent Korea as an advanced and modern nation. The Asia Song Festival is one example of how K-Pop idols and music are functionalized to represent Korea as a leading cultural nation in Asia. Developmentalist ideology and rhetoric of cultural evolutionism underscore this image and have been detected in the discourse of KOFICE workers who organize the festival. At the same time, the festival and KOFICE’s work

156  Complicating K-Pop represent Korea’s turn to and relationship with all of Asia in their attempt to create peaceful exchanges and synchronize with other Asian countries to create a regional bloc (i.e., pan-Asian cultural industry). KOFICE’s strategy reflects the government’s basic tension in defining Korea’s geo-cultural role in Asia. In order to prevent a national backlash and anti-Korean sentiments in the target nations of K-Pop and the Korean Wave exports, Korea’s nationalist aspiration of becoming a cultural leader in Asia (apparent in the Korea as a Hub discourse) is softened by another aspiration, namely to promote mutual exchange, to share know-how, and to create networks with other Asian countries. K-Pop’s intra-Asian flow and the intention to create a panAsian music industry are supposed to foster a regional economic bloc in Asia and to create cultural proximities between Asians. From the government’s view, K-Pop is a significant vehicle that represents Korea’s positioning as a cultural mediator at the center of Asia. In representing Korea’s new image as a self-assertive nation that exports not only cars, ships, flat screen TVs, and cellphones but also pop cultural products, K-Pop’s popularity in Asia is suggestive of a substantive shift that has taken place in the perception of cultural and temporal distances between Korea and other Asian countries from the perspective of foreign Asian K-Pop consumers. K-Pop indicates a reordering of temporal asymmetries that underlie the mutual albeit uneven perception of East Asian consumers resulting from the long-lasting power asymmetries of Japan’s colonialism in modern East Asia. The shifted Japanese consumption of K-Pop singers ­illustrated the case. In the past, the relationship between Japanese consumers and Korean singers rested on a denial of coevalness in Fabian’s terms because the Japanese industry tended to stereotype Korean singers as enka singers, and the Japanese audience appreciated them in terms of a postcolonial nostalgia. With the inflowing trend of K-Pop (and Korean culture in general), the Japanese refusal to share the same temporality with Koreans seemed to have vanished. K-Pop transmission through the Internet and live shows made realtime consumption possible and seemed to enable further cultural proximity between Japanese and Koreans. This is not to overestimate the impact of pop music (and soft power in a wider sense) on the geopolitical constellations in East Asia and in particular on bilateral relations between Japan and Korea, which still keep many conflicts unresolved. It does suggest that K-Pop and the Korean Wave have create a consumer space in Japan (and also in other East Asian countries6) in which Japanese people are able to reconsider the image of Koreans and reflect on the similarities and dissimilarities that modernity has brought to Japan and its Asian neighbors. Iwabuchi noted: Belief in Japan’s superiority over the rest of Asia […] remains firmly rooted in society, but such attitudes are being shaken as countries in Asia become more and more interconnected through popular cultural flows. Revived emotions induce self-reflexive attitudes in audiences and drive them to search for a better past, present and future. (Iwabuchi, 2008, 130)

Temporal Asymmetries  157 K-Pop prominently exhibits Korea’s new image toward its Asian neighbors and triggers reflections on cultural, spatial, and temporal differences among its Asian consumers. This image is embedded in political strategies. As this chapter discussed, the Korean nation-state contributed to the rising cultural significance of K-Pop in Asia. The nation-state as a cultural promoter is the most obvious marker of the national in K-Pop. In the following chapter, I examine another configuration of the national by discussing the role of imaginary places, in particular of the U.S. and Korea, in the transnational production of K-Pop. Notes 1. It is central to the government’s initiative Cyber Korea 21 (1999) that served as a master plan for developing a nationwide IT industry and information infrastructure and as a blueprint for further IT-related policies. Its main objectives included the fostering of telecommunication networks and e-commerce, of national database management systems and e-government services, the improvement of the Internet use environment and computer literacy (under the slogan “One PC Per Person”), and the creation of new jobs (in and via the IT industry) (MIC, 1999). The cultural industry and the creativity of the people were key to the knowledgebased nation and were thus stressed by the Kim Dae-Jung government as important cultural policy objectives, for example, in the Plan for Cultural Policy of the New Government (1998), the Five-year Plan for the Development of the Cultural Industry (1999), the Cultural Industry Vision 21 (2000), and the Cultural ­Content Industry in a Digital Society Vision 21 (2001) (cf. Yim, 2003). 2. KOCCA was established in August 2001 and replaced the Cultural Industry Promotion Center under the Ministry of Culture and Tourism. In 2009, it was renamed KOCCA to signify its reorganization into a governmental superbody that, by combining five organizations (i.e., the Korean Broadcasting Institute, the Korea Culture and Content Agency, the Korea Game Development and ­Promotion Institute, the Culture & Contents Center, and the Digital Contents Business Group of the Korea SW Industry Promotion Agency) and covering all areas of content, was aimed to provide comprehensive support to the content industry. 3. In 1988, EMI entered the Korean market by forming a joint venture with the Korean company Kyemong and Warner Music by establishing a wholly owned subsidiary. In 1989, Sony Music Korea was launched. In 1990, Polygram formed a joint venture with the Korean company Sungŭm. In 1991, BMG started direct distribution (MIAK, 2006 cf. Kim, 2009). 4. Pseudonyms are used in this section. 5. In 2004, for example, president Roh inaugurated the Presidential Committee for the Hub City of Asian Culture, which formulated a master plan for promoting the southwestern city Gwangju to a Hub City of Asian Culture. The program included the constitution of cultural headquarters for interchange, creation, research, and education together with an infrastructural development plan and various pilot projects related to Asian performing arts and culture. Another example is the Incheon International Airport Authority, which introduced its new mascot Huby—an imaginary animal with wide eyes—to stress the airport’s ambition to become a hub in Northeast Asia in 2001.

158  Complicating K-Pop 6. Audience studies of the Korean Wave in Taiwan for example confirm a shifted perception of Korea’s national image by Taiwanese people. The kind of modernity portrayed in Korean dramas and pop music let Taiwanese consumers realize that Korea and Taiwan are covalent in terms of sharing the same qualities of a capitalist consumer society (Kim, 2005). With the advent of Korean Pop, formerly negative impressions of Korea by Taiwanese people gave way to a combination of admiration and desire to emulate it (Sung, 2010).

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5 Spatial Asymmetries Imaginary Places in the Transnational Production of K-Pop

This chapter discusses recent debuts of South Korean singers and musicians in the U.S., with regard to aspects of musical alterity and cross-border transformations. Far from being homogenous or standardized, this transnational flow of Korean pop music is a complex, multi-layered and at times contradictory phenomenon entangled in multiple strategies, contingencies, and attempts to reference and construct places through musical and visual imaginaries. After successfully crossing borders in Asia and driven by the desire to expand their businesses toward the Western hemisphere, some artists have recently been targeting the American music market. In detail, this chapter analyzes production, promotion, visual, and sound strategies of four musicians and singers: dance artist BoA, pop group Wonder Girls, rock band YB, and reggae singer Skull. Since each represents a distinctive approach in the overseas endeavor by unfolding a characteristic set of transformational features and discursive strategies, these artists are key to understanding the conjunctures and disjunctures between South Korean and global pop music production. “Best of Asia, Bring on America” was the promotional slogan that Korean female artist BoA and her management agency SM Entertainment used in a press conference in September 2008 for the official announcement of BoA’s U.S. album debut (Han, 2008). Derived from her Korean name Kwon Boa (Kwŏn Po-A), her given name has been utilized during her career as an abbreviation for “Beat of Angel” and, due to her ever-growing international success, “Best of Asia” and “Bring on America.” Acronymized artist and group names are widespread in Korean pop music (see Chapter 3), as they offer strategic and flexible branding that is open to multiple interpretations and suggestive of vague notions of cosmopolitanism. What in terms of marketing seems to be a wily and self-assertive re-inflection of her stage acronym, BoA comprises questions and conceived struggles around the production and meaning of locality in global pop music. In spanning this simple binarity, Asia and America denote more than mere geographical places; they also evoke a wide range of discourses about economic areas, histories, cultural practices, and imaginations. In the following sections, I argue that pop music products are not simply determined by a single-sided and static power asymmetry as has

Spatial Asymmetries  163 been widely assumed between the hegemonic West and Asia, but are enmeshed in a multiplicity of dynamic and shifting asymmetrical relationships. Places like America, Korea, and Asia are relevant and flexible categories in the musical process. They are highly entwined with issues of identity and imagination; as such, they are constantly re-interpreted, re-constructed, and re-negotiated. Musical border-crossing seems to make these re-negotiations necessary. I am particularly interested in the modes and strategies that players in the field of music production apply to musical products to adjust and confine them to the (new) American audience. When and how do they utilize, appropriate, or even avoid images of Asia? How do these concepts or strategies shape musical products and contribute to their commodification? When do ideas of Otherness and musical alterity emerge? How are they put into practice? Are they a successful concept in placing Korean pop on a global stage? Unlike studies on fan cultures that exclusively identify the consumer as sole powerful agent in the appropriation and re-location of popular music, this chapter also emphasizes questions of production and representation in the sense of an “interpretative approach to the production of culture” (Jensen, quoted in Rutten, 1991). In tracing the “social life of sounds” (Born and Hesmondhalgh, 2000, 46) and embracing different stages of its processing through imagination, produc­ tion, distribution, and consumption, I consider musical products as objects of changing and overlapping discursive projections and (re-)interpretations. By focusing on the constitutive role of place in the formation of the “musical imaginary” (Born and Hesmondhalgh, 2000, 37ff), this chapter contributes to the abundant literature in popular music studies that connects musical practice with place-identification (see Stokes, 1994; Whiteley, Bennett, and Hawkins, 2004; Biddle and Knights, 2007). Unlike the majority of works, it does not investigate a specific local or micro-community to promote the local as humanized and oppositional to the anonymous globalized production of music, in the sense of what Biddle and Knights coined “idealization of place” (Biddle and Knights, 2007, 2).1 Place, as I understand it here, does not stand for a physical space that gives meaning to musical practice. It is rather an imaginary, closely tied to desire, fantasy, and imagination, and activates specific modes of musical processing and interpretation in both producers and consumers. By limiting my focus to Korean singers, I have to neglect comparisons to and relationships with other East Asian singers, for example, ­Taiwanese singer Coco Lee, Japanese vocalist Utada Hikaru, or hip-hop group ­Teriyaki Boyz, who are also forging ahead to the American music market. ­Nevertheless, it is remarkable that there has been a long, albeit hidden, history of East Asian singers in the American music charts, which, in terms of success and influence, has been widely regarded as a history of failures (Amith, 2008). It is not my aim to analyze the failure or success of Asian stars in the Western market. Instead, I consider how different players interpret and negotiate

164  Complicating K-Pop success itself as a category. I am interested in how their considerations trigger certain images of Asia or the West, which are in turn incorporated into the process of musical production. Between Orientalism and Pop Globalism: BoA Female K-Pop idol BoA is a musical heavyweight in the Asian market. With fourteen number one albums and more than twenty million sold copies (Frater, 2009), she is the most successful artist of her long-standing record and management agency SM Entertainment. Scouted at the age of eleven, she was first trained in singing, dancing, and in Japanese and English languages for two years before she released her Korean debut album in 2000. She fit perfectly into the trans-national strategies of SM Entertainment and its founder Lee Soo-Man, who, after extensive market analysis, sought out an under-thirteen-year-old female singer with dance skills that would appeal to the growing domestic and foreign teenage market. In 2001, SM ­Entertainment formed a joint venture with the Japanese record company Avex Group, whose capital, managerial, and marketing power immensely helped BoA to become a chart-topping singer and media star in Japan. Through clever marketing that shaped and played on her double-edged identity as being a native Korean fluent in Japanese, and through different album releases in Korea and Japan, she can be regarded as the prototype of a “hybrid” star (Siegel and Chu, 2008). This success formula, based on localization strategies via adopting and capitalizing on aspects of multi-linguality or even multi-­ethnicity, served as a template for other SM Entertainment acts, such as TVXQ or Super Junior (Siegel and Chu, 2008; Kim, 2006). In October 2008, after expanding business in Chinese-speaking areas and setting up branches in Beijing and Hong Kong, SM Entertainment opened its U.S. headquarters to prepare for and conduct BoA’s debut album release. Her self-titled English album is the result of a highly diversified work process by an internationally staffed production team. It marks a shift in the production history of BoA’s albums, as her company, instead of employing the same members of her well-proven Japanese-Korean production team, hired a range of top-hit producers, such as Bloodshy and Avant, Sean Garrett and Brian Kennedy, all of whom are experienced in the U.S. music market. Their task was to help make BoA’s music compatible with the new American target audience. The pre-released lead single “Eat you up” is a song co-­written by the Danish songwriter duo Remee and Troelsen; produced by Henrik Jonback from Sweden; recorded and mixed in Bangok, Copenhagen, and Stockholm; co-published by Avex Trax in Japan; and digitally distributed on music portals and as ringtones through mobile services in thirty countries. By the end of 2008, the song had reached number eight on the Billboard Hot Dance Club Play Charts and had sold 28,000 downloads. The album, released on March 17, 2009, debuted at number 127 on Billboard 200.

Spatial Asymmetries  165 Although SM Entertainment and the press in South Korea celebrated BoA’s debut as a success, critical fans remained rather unconvinced (Seoul Beats, 2009). Prior to the single release, two music video versions of the song had been circulating on Internet portals, thus raising speculations among fans about different target markets. Although the company simply labeled them as version A and version B, fan bloggers thought they were intended for two different markets and quickly renamed and uploaded them as the Asian version and American version. The first was produced by Korean videographer Cha Ŭn-Taek in Japan, Korea, and the U.S.. It highlights performance aspects and portrays BoA as a vibrant dancer in a tomboyish hoody look exploiting well-known visual and gestural styles of urban American hip-hop within the narrative of a dance audition—citing 1980s Hollywood movie Flashdance—whose judging panel ends up being blown away by BoA’s explosive moves (Figure 5.1).

Figure 5.1  Video stills from “Eat you up (Asian version)” by BoA, directed by Ch’a Ŭn-T’aek.

This video shows no references to anything explicitly Korean or Asian but rather conforms to aesthetic rules characteristic of mainstream genres that use a corpus of signs and sounds easily acceptable by an international mainstream audience. This version was thus widely accepted by fans and praised

166  Complicating K-Pop for its powerful and coherent style. On the other hand, version B, re-labeled as the American version, was produced by star director Diane Martel in Los Angeles. It unfolds a multi-faceted presentation of a more feminized and sexualized BoA who is placed in the virtual setting of a computer-animated moon landscape.2 Authorized clips on the Internet reveal the production process of that video and of Martel’s intention to display multiple characters of BoA (BoAmusicUSA, 2008) in which she is modeled to standards of sexual and racial stereotypes predominant in American media.3 Long flowing hair, red lips, heavy make-up, and lascivious yet innocent posing effectively contribute to that orientalist image under a Western gaze that transforms BoA into the mysterious, exotic, and seductive object of desire (Figure 5.2). Fans quickly reacted dismissively to that version as they felt it a mismatch of image and sound and a serious assault upon the integrity of their adored artist who was hitherto enbued with a morally less-offending, girl-next-door image. The following fan comment (pseudonym Shiori) from an Internet blog is a clear example: I really dislike the U.S. version; they are trying to make BoA look like a slut. The video is really not artistic, and there is more of her posing and trying to look hot than dancing. The backgrounds were terribly bland. (Shiori on acbuzz, November 1, 2008)

Figure 5.2  Video stills from “Eat you up (American version)” by BoA, directed by Diane Martel.

Spatial Asymmetries  167 In order to clarify the confusion among fans about different markets, an executive of SM Entertainment stated in an interview that the two versions were not intended for different regional markets but were aimed at promoting the single worldwide (JK News, 2008). This reveals that the management had been facing uncertainty in choosing the most proper and successful presentation of BoA. Both videos served as a trial run in anticipating fan reactions, and they were evaluated and eventually reincorporated into the production process of a third version (simply labeled the new version) a cross-cut combination of the two former ones.4 Another point of strong fan criticism relates to the transformation of sound and specifically to the extensive use of voice manipulation, as most prominently demonstrated in the album’s opening track “I Did It for Love.”5 The overuse of the auto-tune effect6 that renders BoA’s voice synthetic provoked discontent among her fans for causing a lack of artistic credibility: [G]ive me your real voice girl?? I don’t like your autotune. Show me what you can sing? This is not BoA’s music [...]. She never looks like herself ... like in “Eat You Up” .., doesn’t look like her in this vid. (iamcharlenechoi0217 on allkpop, August 26, 2009) And for the obvious attempt of concealing her non-native English pronunciation: I wish she would stop with the techno stuff. She has a strong voice, and I think she should show it off, I think the autotune is a way to disguise her accent. (JrSweet22 on allkpop, August 26, 2009) It seems odd that critics did not acknowledge the autotune device as a means of artistic expression contributive to the artist’s creativity and identity, as has been the case with many other singers who popularized this effect, such as Cher, T-Pain, or Rihanna. The fact that pitch-correction tools not only belong to standard equipment in today’s recording studios but also have been employed in a vast number of productions—including those of various singers in South Korea makes BoA’s case even more suspicious. Why did many of her fans despise the autotune not only as artistically inept but more significantly blame it as a failed attempt to overcompensate for her Korean accent? Inevitably, the fan discourse revolved around debates on her ethnicity, origin, and language and was linked to common notions of Americanization, loss of identity, erasure of race, and the assumed truism that it is hard for a Korean singer to make it in the American pop business. This not only reflects the generally accepted power asymmetry between the American music industry and its margins but is also a critical response to the overly exerted attempts of BoA’s management to render her debut a successful symbiosis of American and Asian components. The following

168  Complicating K-Pop fan quotes about BoA’s promotional strategies reveal how the category of success is connected to discourses about Asianness. They were taken from an online forum where K-Pop fans are able to comment on their favorite artists anonymously: [B]oA is trying too much to look like an American. America showbiz is full of this kind of hip-hop artist, and some of them are better than BoA. She needs something special to stand out from the crowd. She should show something more Asian and not become one of the Americans. (kyon on allkpop, September 11, 2008) [I] think the reason all these artists who are popular in Asia fail to make it in the American industry is that […] they don’t think of themselves as artists first; they think of themselves as Asians first, and that […] is emphasized in their promotions and whatever. [...] From the perspective of a total westerner her song is pretty good. If Madonna or Britney had sung that, it would have been an instant hit for sure. It’s great!! What’s wrong is the whole emphasis on her Asianness. [...] WE DON’T WANT TO HEAR ABOUT THE FACT THAT SHE’S FROM ASIA, IT’S SO ANNOYING!! What has she got to offer us? Good music? Or is she here to remind us constantly that she’s from Asia? WE KNOW. We can SEE that she is Asian; it’s really obvious! We want a beautiful human being who can sing, not someone who goes on and on about being Asian!! (Lily on allkpop, September 20, 2008) BoA—not as a private person, but as a discursive formation or a configuration of representations related to her star persona—adopts and evokes the imagination of cultural differences organized along East-West binaries. The transformation process retains and unfolds patterns of orientalism in its double meaning in the sense of what Stokes in his study on Turkish arabesk coined as “reverse essentialism” (Stokes, 2000, 229). This can be understood as a mode of expelling and re-integrating representations of the East, similar to what Tobin grasped as “self-exoticization” and “self-orientalism” (Tobin, 1992, 30). The former relates to the appropriation and emulation of Western standards, whereas Asians “make themselves as Western as possible” (Tobin, 1992, 30). In BoA’s entire production campaign self-­ exoticism has been expressed through the blatant attempt to catch up with global pop production from the Korean angle with all its systemic consequences, that is, highly diversified labor processes, the assignment of topranked international producers and songwriters, or the transformation to a de-localized and de-nationalized sound that is shaped within the cultural boundaries of musical genres like R&B, hip-hop, and dance pop. It can also be detected in the perceived overload with technical devices like the

Spatial Asymmetries  169 autotune and synthesizers that were assumed to erase ethnic identity and exceed the boundaries of the artist’s authenticity and credibility. Critical fans who devalued BoA’s album as overproduced, too clean, and impersonal and thus point out the alienation effect in BoA’s image processing suggest that the inherent desire for a modern sound that might be acceptable to the American audience bears a certain danger of overshooting the mark by becoming too modern or more Western than the West itself. Self-orientalizing occurs when Asians “consciously or unconsciously make themselves into, or see themselves as, the objects of Western desire and imaginations” (Tobin, 1992, 30). This takes place on the level of visualization when BoA is portrayed as a sexualized Asian beauty or when she performs a fan dance or is dressed up in a hanbok, the traditional Korean dress. Either way, BoA’s America campaign and fan discourses adopted and reiterated the binarity of setting Asia in opposition to America. This is also illustrated in the programmatic cover photo of her 2009 compilation album, Best & USA, depicting two complementary profiles of BoA, one in a darker, boyish style and the other in a brighter feminine style. BoA’s westward initiative reveals two conceptual strands. On the one hand, it follows the principles of manufactured mainstream teenage pop music with its internationalized production system (based on division of labor and multiple authorships), uncontroversial lyrics, and the incessant visual metamorphoses of bodily and facial representations. Since the ­permanent re-invention of the star image is an integral part of today’s pop production, BoA perpetuates standardized production methods of Western pop and prior production modes and experiences of the Asian market. On the other hand, BoA underwent a range of transformations on her American debut album. Besides fully adopting English lyrics, her sound, once characterized as a “mix of urban-sounding pop, slickly produced ballads, and upbeat dance tunes” (Hickey, 2009) that evoked the colorful and unspoiled worlds of Asian teenage consumers, had been transformed into more synthetic sounds of harder and darker R&B and techno pop. Sound creation is modeled within genre boundaries and seeks to avoid any relationship with locality, nationality, or ethnicity. Since de-localization is a key feature in the production of global pop in order to reach and satisfy the biggest audience possible, BoA’s sound suspends any obvious r­ elationship to her Asian origin. As fan debates in online portals have demonstrated, negative response relates to the over-ambitious and excessive use of technical devices, like autotunes. Although its usage may suggest an inherent desire for a modern sound from the producers’ perspective, fans rather received it as a tool for alienating and undermining BoA’s authenticity. Furthermore, on the visual level, BoA’s promotional and visual strategies heavily relied on East-West dualism and patterns of orientalism and cultural essentialism. Thereafter, critical fans quickly took on the propelled discourses about Asian and American identity and responded dismissively toward BoA’s being an object of stereotyping.

170  Complicating K-Pop Between Cute Power and Nostalgia: Wonder Girls Another example of entering the realm of American pop business is the five-member girl group Wonder Girls who has been cast, trained, produced, and managed by JYP Entertainment, a Korean talent agency named after singer and producer Park Jin-Young.7 After their Korean debut in 2007 and domestic releases of one full length album, three mini albums, and three chart-topping singles, all in Korean, their move to the U.S. was symbolically marked by the opening of JYP USA, the company’s New York based headquarters, in October 2008. It was established in order to more easily enter American media networks, to find valuable cooperation partners, and to increase the number of media outlets promoting JYP Entertainment’s artists. After initial showcases, the Wonder Girls performed in front of American audiences. An important step in the process of launching and steering their career in the U.S. had been achieved with the conclusion of a contract with Hollywood’s Creative Artists Agency (CAA), a renowned talent agency in the entertainment and sports sector. Additionally, the Jonas Group, a prominent management company, signed the Wonder Girls as an opening act during the North America tour of American teen idol group Jonas Brothers. In conjunction with their brisk live activities they released their first U.S. single, an English version of their Korean hit song “Nobody,” that peaked the US Billboard Hot 100 Charts at seventy-six, the highest rank a Korean artist had achieved to that date. Considering the motivation for their engagement in the U.S., the strategy of JYP Entertainment differs from that of SM Entertainment that moved from Korea via Japan to the U.S. A personal interview with one of the leading managers at JYP Entertainment gives insight into his company’s globalization strategy and its aim to directly target the U.S. market in order to attract potential consumers in Japan: The Japanese market is the second largest in the world, in terms of movies and music. But Japanese people don’t buy Korean CDs of K-Pop, I mean generally—some maniacs only buy CDs of Korean music—usually old women, you know. But the Japanese, they […] love American or British artists. So we make our artists big in the States, so that Japanese people could accept them very easily. (Personal communication, May 27, 2009) This demonstrates that practices in pop music are not necessarily shaped by the imagined power asymmetry along the East-West axis. Instead, asymmetrical relationships also prevail in the East itself, for example, between Korea and Japan. More importantly, they are merged into far more complicated and multi-directed relationships (as was obvious in the previous chapter in

Spatial Asymmetries  171 the national backlash against the Korean Wave). Here, a triangle relationship among Korea, Japan, and the U.S. is effective, and each serves as an imaginary category and thus a driving force for certain action. Interestingly, JYP Entertainment initially intended to promote other Korean singers in the U.S. market, such as Min, G-Soul, and J Lim, who, due to their English fluency and highly skilled Soul and R&B performances, seemed to be more promising in terms of accommodating the expectations of American audiences. This plan was betrayed by the random success of the Wonder Girls. The executive manager explains the reason his company chose Wonder Girls for its foray into the U.S. market: We invited a lot of people from the industry—record labels, management companies, publicists, producers, etc.—and all of a sudden, most of them were so attracted to the Wonder Girls because Wonder Girls have the general virtue, you know, they look so cute and the way of their dancing looks so familiar. Their songs are from the ‘80s actually. So everybody felt so familiar with the music. And all of a sudden, they started talking about the Wonder Girls to us. We were surprised; after that we launched a new song in Korea called “Nobody” and the attention paid to Wonder Girls was twice or three times larger than that of the others. (Personal communication, May 27, 2009) The concept of the Wonder Girls in the U.S. did not differ from the model that was already successful in Korea. Except for adding English lyrics to the American single version of “Nobody,” the sounds and images remained the same. The transformation had already happened with the Korean release of the song, where the Wonder Girls mutated from an innocent, brightly colored, teenage girlie group in 1980s fashion into a more mature, glamorous, and erotic mix of an Asian-looking dance-vocal ensemble with sixties’ aesthetics, resembling Motown girl groups. As the result is also shaped by strategies of orientalism, it not only appealed to listeners but also provoked criticism, as the following fan quote demonstrates: W[onder]G[irls] have their greatest appeal when they are wearing regular teenager girl clothes. With their outfits, make up, and hair ­synchronized, however, they’re just pushing themselves off into the margin of normal […] Indeed, they’re making themselves rather Asian in some stereotypical, American sense. (abcdefg on The Marmot’s Hole, June 29, 2009) Unlike BoA’s music, in which the sound dissolves any linkage to her Asian provenance, Korean listeners tend to perceive the music of the Wonder Girls and of other JYP Entertainment artists as a hybrid mix of American and

172  Complicating K-Pop Korean pop music. This impression was also shared by the producers. Company chief Park Jin-Young, for example, claimed the music of female R&B singer and JYP trainee Min to be “black music with a K-Pop feel” (Chosun Ilbo, 2007). Accordingly, the JYP Entertainment’s officer understands the music of the Wonder Girls as a blend of American pop or ‘80s pop with a Korean style. On Korean style, he explains: The melody of “Nobody” is very Korean […] you know, it’s very cheaply mellow [laughs]. A simple hook and very cheaply mellow. Both, sentimental and mellow and very cheerful. It’s almost the same with the music style t’ŭrot’ŭ in Korea. “Nobody”’s melody is like t’ŭrot’ŭ. Almost, yeah. And very easy for the adults too, over 40 and 50. They are so familiar with the melody. (Personal communication, May 27, 2009) It is obvious that he talks about the ppong melody (see Chapter 3), although he does not use the term here (but he confirmed it after the interview even though he said he could not explain what ppong means exactly, except that it’s related to Korean t’ŭrot’ŭ and Korean sentiments). His statement and the response of Korean listeners I interviewed suggest that the song “Nobody” provides musical significance of Korea through the ppong melody—a subtly composed melodic structure resembling Korean t’ŭrot’ŭ—which is typical for many K-Pop songs. A brief analysis of compositional elements reveals basic similarities to some typical features of Korean t’ŭrot’ŭ songs. The song is written in the Eb-minor key and unfolds over an eight-bar period, which is constantly repeated throughout most of the song and contains many minor chord changes. Although these characteristics are not exclusive to Korean popular songs, we can find them in many t’ŭrot’ŭ and ppong-style K-Pop songs. The melodic contour is not arch-shaped, as we have seen with the typical ppongmelody (see Chapter 3). Instead, it shows many single-tone repetitions and slight upward and downward steps within a narrow ambit, mainly between Eb4 and Bb4. Figure 5.3 shows the notation of the first eight bars of the first verse. The notes are given in a transposition by one ascending half-step into the E-minor key compared to the original recording. Most t’ŭrot’ŭ songs between the 1920s and 1950s were composed on the Japanese modal system yonanuki (mi-fa-ra-ti-do), which also typifies standard Japanese enka songs (Son, 2004; Yano, 2002). Music scholar Sin HyeSŭng even observed a trichord motif with the descending line “mi-do-ti-ra” as was typical for these earlier t’ŭrot’ŭ songs (cf. Son, 2004). Although the modal structure of “Nobody” is undoubtedly heptatonic using the Western cycle-of-fifth harmonic system, the vocal melody in the verse (Figure 5.3) tends to neglect the fourth and seventh notes (except on the weak beats in bar 19 and 22) of the minor scale, as does the yonanuki minor scale (yona nuki means “without the fourth and seventh note of the scale”). Similarly,

Spatial Asymmetries  173

Figure 5.3  Piano sheet of “Nobody” (verse).

the melody shows similarity with t’ŭrot’ŭ’s descending trichord motive (G, F#, E) although without sharing the exact order of steps. Altogether, it may be an overstatement to argue that the melody of “Nobody” rests on the yonanuki scale because the cycle-of-fifth harmonies are dominant, and the otherwise characteristic (exotic) sound of the yonanuki scale is not audible to Western listeners. Nevertheless, it can be suggested that Korean listeners are familiar with the melody of “Nobody” not only because of its tonal organization but also because of the instrumental beat that accompanies the vocal melody. Again, the reference to t’ŭrot’ŭ is not determined but keeps polysemic possibilities in the musical texture. The rhythmic pattern of “Nobody” does not simply adopt the typical 2/4 meter of t’ŭrot’ŭ songs, but it is performed over 4/4 meter as is standard in Western mainstream pop songs. This makes the pattern more familiar to contemporary pop music listeners, whereas the sturdy backbeat itself, added with the two quaver accents and performed by a synth kick drum (on the strong beat) and synth snare drum (on the weak beat), may remind Korean listeners of rhythmic patterns in older t’ŭrot’ŭ songs. The compositional elements of what Koreans understand as a ppong melody remain ambiguous and depend on listeners’ cultural background. Korean listeners, particularly older ones, may find similarities to t’ŭrot’ŭ songs, whereas foreign listeners may rather find similarities with well-known Western pop hits. For example, the harmonic progression of “Nobody” is reminiscent of Gloria Gaynor’s 1978 Disco hit song “I Will Survive,” cowritten by Freddie Perren and Dino Fekaris, and which retains worldwide popularity today, not in the least due to numerous cover versions that other singers have performed on stage or in recordings. We have a minor cycle progression in the song “Nobody” (throughout verses and refrains) that descends in fifths from the minor chord Em to the Cmaj7 chord and then breaks the cycle by descending an augmented fourth from Cmaj7 to F#m7

174  Complicating K-Pop and ends with the B (dominant) chord in bars seven and eight (Figure 5.3). In the song, “I Will Survive,” we find the same progression transposed by a descending fifth (sixth in the recorded song), starting with the Am chord (Table 5.1). Table 5.1  Harmonic progression of “I Will Survive” by Gloria Gaynor Am

Dm

G

Cmaj7

Fmaj7

Bm7(b5)

Esus4

E7

In both songs, we find the harmonic progression repeated in cycles and throughout all verses and refrains. This chord progression makes “Nobody” sound familiar to Western mainstream pop music listeners. The vocal melody, however, bears a contrasting potential because K ­ oreans can easily relate to the older t’ŭrot’ŭ quality. As we have seen, the ppong melody is an integral part of the song that does not necessarily evoke an exotic Other in Western listeners. It is smoothly integrated into the musical texture in a pastiche-like manner, but—different from postmodern readings of world music pastiche—it is not characterized by a “loss of referentiality” (Erlmann, 1995; Manuel, 1996). Rather, as statements of the Wonder Girls’ management demonstrate, musical alterity that references Korea is primarily activated and functionalized in the discourse of promoting the group overseas. Coherent with the star design and its clever marketing, the musical imaginary of Korea is also consequently reflected, or better, gently shimmering through the sound material of “Nobody,” and thus gains musical distinctiveness. Creating and emphasizing but not over-emphasizing the Korean side of the Wonder Girls helps shape a star image that can be distinguished from the mass of mainstream pop groups in the U.S. market. The management is aware that creating a distinctive star image that is supposed to meet the expectations of an American audience means confirming concepts of authenticity and originality, which still remain powerful tropes in Western pop music. However, the recourse to strategies of Othering can be a successful means to this end. The play on stereotypes obviously accounts for the Wonder Girls’ specific appeal. The mix of Asian cuteness, American sixties’ fashion, eighties’ pop sound, and a Korean t’ŭrot’ŭ melody creates a referential frame that evokes nostalgic amusement paired with an exotic flavor in American and Korean viewers, albeit from different perspectives. Between Rock and Cultural Tradition: YB (Yoon Band) The U.S. is a fascinating destination not only for mainstream artists and their agents in the chart-oriented pop business, but also in commercially less profitable music genres, such as independent rock music. In early summer 2009, the four-member rock combo Yoon Band, named after lead singer Yoon Do-Hyun (Yun To-Hyŏn), announced their participation in one of America’s

Spatial Asymmetries  175 biggest punk and alternative rock festivals, the Warped Tour, a two-month touring music and sports festival with more than forty tour stops in the U.S. and Canada (Lee, 2009). The organizers promoted them as the first Korean rock band to join the festival—a benchmark in the band’s history. Since their debut in 1994, the band has released nine albums with more than two million sold copies and has been honored with numerous awards in Korea. They began their outstanding career as an early indie band playing in student clubs in downtown Seoul. In 2002, they performed at the FIFA World Cup, which was co-hosted by Japan and South Korea. In supporting the national soccer team with two anthems, a rock version of the Korean traditional song “Arirang,” and the song “O P’ilsŭng Korea” (Oh, Victory Korea), the band gained enormous popularity not only among domestic fans but also among Koreans living abroad (Fuhr, 2010). Even though the band gained the status of national singers (kungmin kasu), and Yoon Do-Hyun sustained his celebrity as a host of a regular TV and radio show on KBS, the premier public broadcaster, the band’s lifestyle and habitus are devoid of the glamorous and fashionable trends that are common in the world of Korean idol stars. They rather conform to the ethos of independent rock musicians who have authenticity, sincerity, and a socio-critical awareness. Since the structure and financial capital of their production and management company, Daeum Entertainment8, is far below the level of power and influence of major entertainment companies, their entry into foreign markets was not organized through large-scale transnational activities and systematic cooperation, as we have seen with BoA and Wonder Girls, but rather through personal contacts, chance encounters, and small entrepreneurships. The core business of Yoon Band’s management and production c­ ompany lies in record production and artist support. Album distribution and tour management are outsourced to other companies. Overseas activities are thus only possible with the help of cooperation partners in the destination countries, as was the case first in 2005, when Yoon Band toured European clubs with a British rock band under the aegis of their independent label. After gaining initial attention in Europe, they were invited to a rock festival in Austin, Texas, where half of the audience was made up of Korean ­Americans. Since the Warped Tour attracts a majority of white middleclass rock afficionados instead of minority communities, such as Asian ­Americans, Yoon Band’s American tour agency, managed by David Choi, a Korean American friend of the band, saw it as a starting point “that could help launch a longer-term career in the U.S.” (Lee, 2009). In anticipating the potential taste of audiences in the U.S. and Europe, the band sought to increase their attraction by undergoing a range of transformations that mainly revolved around the language issue. As band and management consider English skills a necessity to enter foreign markets, all band members have been taking intensive English lessons. In previous concerts, where the audience largely consisted of people from the Korean diaspora, half of the band’s songs were performed in English, the other half in Korean. For the Warped Tour, they shifted the repertoire toward 80% of songs with

176  Complicating K-Pop English lyrics that were either newly composed or translated versions of originally Korean songs. Most significantly, however, they changed their official band name from Yoon Band or Yoon Do-Hyun Band into its mere initials YB. This can be regarded as a conspicuous act of simplifying, if not disguising, the Korean name to avoid misspelling, wrong pronunciation, or irritation among foreign audiences. Being concise, memorable, enigmatic, and offering puns (Why be?), the initialized name is intended to evoke a flair of internationality. Ironically, in eluding the bulkiness and strangeness of Korean personal names, the group is not obscuring but rather exposing their Korean provenance, since abbreviated artist names are a peculiarity of K-Pop. Another aspect in the transformatory processes of the band relates to questions of authenticity and cultural identity, particularly to the question of how their Korean identity might best be combined with or represented through rock music. In personal interviews, the members of YB and the chief executive officer of Daeum Entertainment stated that expressing Koreanness in the rock music genre and finding a unique Korean rock music style was by no means natural or easy, but was a constantly challenging yet unaccomplished enterprise. YB is tackling this problem most significantly by drawing on kugak, Korean traditional music. In some of their songs, they were experimenting with traditional instruments, such as puk, taegŭm, and kayagŭm9 (Fuhr, 2010). By using techniques of montage or juxtaposition, these traditional sounds were mainly used to enrich and thwart the rockdominated sound texture created through the interplay of powerful vocals, distorted guitars, vibrant bass, and energetic drums. Since the kugak parts appear only for a few seconds, they stay rather fragmented and isolated within the overall rock idiom. This also holds true for the song “88man Won’s Losing Game” of their eighth album Co-existence where the introductory sequence consists of Yoon Do-Hyun’s vocals emulating the p’ansori vocal style, accompanied by samulnori instruments, which were recorded by Yang Sŏk-Chin, a professional kugak player. The relevance of kugak and the difficulty of adjusting it to YB’s music can best be illustrated in the following interview with Yoon Do-Hyun (YD) and drummer Kim Jin-Won (Kim Chin-Won) (KJ): Q: Why are you using traditional elements, like samulnori in the song “88man Won’s Losing Game”? KJ:  Always when we make new songs, we think about how to mix Korean style with original rock style. In this album, it’s only one song. Q: Are you trained in this kind of traditional music, too? YD:  No, we are just Koreans. We never studied Korean traditional music, but we listen to it a lot. When I was a child, my parents really loved Korean traditional music. So on many occasions, I ­listened to that music. Q: You only use it in small parts. Do you think about introducing traditional instruments for a whole song or as a layer?

Spatial Asymmetries  177 YD:  Maybe in the future. It’s not easy KJ:  You know, we are a band with a

for us. drummer, bassist, and guitarist. Maybe the vocalist can sing in a p’ansori-style, but a guitarist cannot play like a kayagŭm so easily. In this album, we had an original player who recorded it. We just arranged the rhythms, and we told the samulnori player, just one guy, who recorded, mixed, and edited it. Actually the original samulnori rhythm is very difficult to mix with the rock rhythm, so we needed editing. Q: Why did you include it when it does not really fit or at least is very difficult to combine? KJ:  You know, the sound and rhythm of the kkwaenggwari (small gong) are very unique; other musical instruments never have that sound. So we wanted to try out that sound in this song. (Yoon Do-Hyun and Kim Jin-Won, personal communication, August 3, 2009) The distinctive quality of kugak instruments, like the kkwaenggwari, results from a popular discourse in Korean society that is based on the close entanglements of traditional sound, Korean identity, and sentiments of sorrow and grief, conceptualized as han:10 Q: Is it just the sound, or is there maybe also a meaning of the kkwaenggwari that links up to the meaning of the lyrics? KJ:  Yes, I think sound has a meaning. For example p’ansori has a very sad meaning, when I heard p’ansori [emulates p’ansori vocals “aehaehae”] YD:  ... It is the soul, Korean soul. ... KJ:  ... It’s so sad. You know the Korean han? It’s very difficult to explain. There is no English meaning. When we hear the kkwaenggwari or samulnori sound, there is a sadness or a kind of han—sad or angry feelings. This song is about many people having no job because of the economic crisis. They have no job, so they are sad; they have han. Q: Is han important in your music? YD:  Yes, sure. We are Koreans, that’s why. (Yoon Do-Hyun and Kim Jin-Won, personal communication, August 3, 2009) The song “88 Manwon-ui Losing Game” connects the collective sentiment of han, often described as the “indigenous ethos of the Korean culture” (Lee,  2002, 21), with the precarious economic situation of South Korea’s lower class and youth, who are facing hardships through unemployment, low income, or unstable jobs.11 YB uses samulnori music to support the socio-critical claim in the lyrics: nŏŭi sippŏlgŏn kŏjinmal talk’omhago hŏttoen kidaedŭl midŭl su ŏpnŭn yaksoktŭl 88 ...

178  Complicating K-Pop haruharu kyŏu saragane hŭimangŭn mŏlli sarajŏnne kusŏkchin kongjangŭi nalgŭn kigyech’ŏrŏm kŭrŏk’e saragane ŏch’ap’i naeirŭn ŏpsŏ chibŏch’ŏ adung padung haebwatcha soyongŏpsŏ 88manwŏn sone chwigosŏ todaech’e mwŏl haeyahana sŭmusarŭi kkumŭn sarajigo tibi tibi chamman chane ŏch’ap’i naeirŭn ŏpsŏ almyŏnsŏ adung padung haebwatcha soyongŏpsŏ A-yo just play the rock ‘n’ roll ŏch’ap’i naeirŭn ŏpsŏ chibŏch’ŏ adung padung haebwatcha soyongŏpsŏ It’s losing game. It’s losing game 88 ... Your crimson lies. Sweet but empty expectations. Unreliable promises. 88 ... Every day we are living barely. Hopes are fading far away Just like worn-out machines in a secluded factory, that’s just how we live. There is no tomorrow after all. Cut it out. It is no use to wriggle out. What on earth can we do with 88 manwon [880,000 KRW] in our hands? Dreams of twenties have dissapeared, and (I) do nothing but to lie on my back and sleep constantly. There is no tomorrow after all. Cut it out. It is no use to wriggle out. A-yo just play the rock ‘n’ roll There is no tomorrow after all. Cut it out. It’s a losing game. It’s a losing game 88 … (88 Manwon-ui Losing Game, written and composed by Yoon DoHyun, translated by Kim Mi-Ryang) It must be noted that the kugak experiments are very spare within the band’s oeuvre. Nevertheless, creating a distinct style by emphasizing Koreanness through traditional music became an ever more important issue for the group in the run-up to the America tour: Q: When non-Koreans listen to this music combined with your rock music style, it may sound very strange. Did you get some reactions from foreigners? YD:  We have no experiences yet, but from listening to our albums they really like it. You know, Korean traditional music is very

Spatial Asymmetries  179 international, very global, serious because when we played South by Southwest [a rock festival in Austin] before our show, Korean people, who helped us, played samulnori on the streets. A lot of westerners really noticed it—whoa—and they got really interested in that, maybe more than in our show (laughs). Our dream, as I told you, is to play with real traditional players. KJ:  I think kayagŭm or Korean traditional music is unique and better than us, better than rock music from other countries, because it’s more special. YD:  You know, all over the world there are so many rock bands, but their style is very similar. In case of the Warped tour, a lot of the bands’ styles are emo-core or punk. That’s it. So we need unique music, so that’s why we tend toward traditional music. We are Koreans. (Yoon Do-Hyun and Kim Jin-Won, personal communication, August 3, 2009) Kugak plays an important part in the processes of identity formation among both producers and consumers and thus shapes the sonic organization of YB’s songs in a way that signifies Korea as a place of suppressed national sentiment. The technique of creating the musical imaginary of Korea is one of assembling or juxtaposing kugak and rock elements, which do not merge into a new musical language but rather stay distinctive and identifiable. Its function can be described as contributing to what Iwabuchi coined ­“cultural odor,” through which the “cultural presence of a country of origin and images or ideas of its way of life are positively associated with a particular product in the consumption process” (Iwabuchi, 2002, 257). The cultural odor of Korea results from localizing strategies of kugak instruments and sounds that have become guarantees of the authenticity of Korean music. It is notable that YB utilizes the han discourse not only to evoke mere nostalgia, but also to link it productively to present social issues. YB’s entry into overseas activities causes transformative processes in song-writing, promotion, and self-concept and leads to an increased awareness and debate among the band members about national identity and the adequate mode of its musical representation.

Escaping Nationalism: Skull Hitherto, all discussed artists embodied a certain notion of Korean or Asian identity when they were crossing over to the U.S., in either their discursive, musical, or visual strategies. A completely different approach is taken by Cho Sŏng-Chin, alias Skull, a reggae artist and former member of the Korean hip-hop duo Stoney Skunk, who launched his solo career in the U.S. in 2007. He made a furious debut with his single release of “Boom di Boom di,” a dancehall fusion song that instantly rocketed to number two

180  Complicating K-Pop in the American Billboard Hip-Hop/R&B Singles Sales Charts. Originally a Stoney Skunk title, the song has been remixed and rewritten in English. It has been digitally released on iTunes, is available in four different versions (original, a cappella, instrumental, TV mix), and has attained high media coverage at radio shows, music magazines, and TV channels, such as MTV, which has generated strong fan bases among urban and Caribbean communities. His presence in the American music industry gained momentum by the enthusiastic acclaim of reggae fans worldwide and the support of individual cultural intermediaries who stand at the crossroads of the grassroots reggae culture and American entertainment industry.12 Interestingly and not without irony, the most intriguing success among Korean artists in the U.S. until PSY’s 2012 hit song “Gangnam Style” was achieved by someone who completely dispenses with references to his Korean identity and with entangled localization strategies. Since reggae music is quite underexposed in Korea, Skull didn’t receive much attention from the local mainstream media or the public. Obviously, his outfit and artistic style— dreadlocks, an oversized tattoo of the African map on his naked chest, slack lyrics, and his snarling voice singing in flawless J­ amaican patois—didn’t conform to the representation standards of K-Pop that relate to the national imaginary. A note from his online profile reveals his deep personal engagement with reggae and seeks to legitimize himself as an authentic artist: I consider Reggae music fighting music. I believe the strong message of Reggae music has the power to change people’s minds and influence how they live. The tattoos on my body reflect my philosophy, faith, and conviction. I met an old Rasta man in Jamaica. He gave me a necklace of a lion and called me his brother. It was so meaningful to me that I tattooed the map of Africa in the shape of lion on my chest. I have devoted my life to Reggae music. (Skull profile, MySpace, 2009) Skull is signed to Seoul-based YG Entertainment, one of the major music companies in Korea to focus on hip-hop artists. His recordings in English outside of Korea are controlled by Digital Riddims Inc., a company based in Los Angeles and run by Morgan Carey, the brother of pop singer Mariah Carey. Carey took over the management task and organized Skull’s launch into the U.S. market. According to Billboard magazine, his strategy focuses on “building Skull’s credibility in a grass-root manner, positioning him as an orthodox reggae singer” (Russell, 2007, 50). Unlike BoA or Wonder Girls, Skull pursues this bottom-up approach through a vast number of small-scale activities—providing records to college radio stations and doing performances at clubs, house parties, festivals, and radio shows throughout the country—that help nourish and extend a sustainable fan base. By

Spatial Asymmetries  181 abandoning all ethnic Asian and national traits in Skull’s marketing concept, Carey seeks to avoid targeting only Asian-Americans audiences: When an Asian artist is promoted in the States they are normally presented to the Asian demographic. From day one, I wanted Skull to be seen as a global phenomenon and not just a Korean or Asian artist. There’s a big Asian artist who wanted to collaborate with Skull, but I told them no because I don’t want the public’s perception to be that he’s just another Asian artist. He’s an incredible talent, has integrity, and a raw sex appeal that resonates across the board. There has never been an Asian artist in history to cross the cultural divide and speak to all people. I believe that Skull will be that artist. (Interview with Morgan Carey, see Shastri, 2007) As an insider in the U.S. pop business, Carey’s remarks reveal the mechanisms of a music market that excludes or at least marginalizes artists from Asian countries. Since many Asian artists failed because they emphasized their national or ethnic origins, Skull’s national identity stays consciously hidden, although people easily identify him as an Asian when they see his face. This gives an additional twist to the marketing strategy and image processing that are built upon the artist’s integrity, his music, personal skills, and creativity. These features comply with accepted cultural standards by evoking the American dream myth in which independent musicians also have to pass through enduring hardship and artistic development to climb up the ladder to the mainstream. Another key aspect in strengthening the fan base refers to the t­ echnically innovative distribution methods of Skull’s management team. Besides placing Skull prominently as a featured artist on MySpace.com, one of the most frequented social network portals for musicians at that time, the management invested in content production for graphic-enabled cell phones. His single release was thus accompanied by a 3D-animated video ring tune clip—the first ever produced within a music genre (Garcia, 2007). It was created by ­VisionScape Interactive, a 3D animation studio in California that manufactures interactive video and online games, cinematics, cartoons, and trailers. By tapping the full potential of cutting-edge media technology and ­delivering music-related content to the thriving mobile market, Skull’s agency sounded a new opportunity for raising profit margins before selling the first album. The video clip consequently assumes a de-nationalizing concept due to the fact that the depicted place does not resemble any real place, and the visual design does not evoke any associations with Asia. Instead, Skull is portrayed as the central figure, with facial features slightly adjusted toward the Caucasian model. He is singing and dancing on a protruded rock amid a small and sunny Robinson Crusoe-like island with palm trees and surrounded by butterflies, birds, and beautiful and sparely dressed young

182  Complicating K-Pop ­ frican women who move their hips to the dancehall beats. One can easily A recognize this virtual place as a utopia of freedom, peace, and unity for celebrating the hedonistic and heterosexual fantasies described in the lyrics.13 It directly visualizes Zion, the promised land in the Rastafarian ideology, that turned into a key subject of reggae music since Bob Marley’s song “Iron Lion Zion” in 1973. In between, the background is covered with an oversized Lion of Judah flag, the royal flag of the Ethiopian empire and symbol of the Rastafarian movement that has been integrated into reggae iconography (Figure 5.4). While Rastafarian ideology is thus pervasive in the video, it elongates the marketing strategies on the visual level and demonstrates Skull’s deep respect toward reggae music, Jamaican culture, and Bob Marley in particular.

Figure 5.4  Video stills from music video “Boom Di Boom Di” by Skull.

Musical imaginaries of Korea or Asia are consciously avoided in Skull’s song, which stands in the tradition of Jamaican dancehall and reggae fusion. The place, as depicted in the animated music video, does not refer to a real, but rather a virtual place referencing Rastafarian Zion. Skull’s production team embarks on denationalizing strategies and a promotional repertoire that is devoid of references to any Asian or Korean identity. Instead, the reggae genre provides alternative trajectories along black and Rastafarian cultures in order to escape Asian regionalism or Korean nationalism. The

Spatial Asymmetries  183 animated music video opens up a visual arena in which these identities are re-negotiated and sharpened by erasing or stressing certain elements. Contesting Cultural Asymmetries This section directs the above examples more specifically to the question of cultural asymmetry and discusses asymmetrical relationships entangled in the play with imaginaries. It follows the chapter’s overarching argument that all examples demonstrate modes of contesting the widely assumed asymmetry between the hegemonic American and the peripheral Korean pop music industry. Asymmetry as an analytical tool can be justified, if we take into consideration that and how asymmetrical relationships are inscribed into the discourses of our informants and how they create agency, how they are operationalized, and how they trigger specific practices. The above examples of Korean pop artists in the U.S. show that patterns of asymmetry between East and West are discursively produced and reiterated between producers, artists, and fans and are thus highly significant to their worldview and activities. Nevertheless, these activities also embody different modes of coping with these asymmetries by contesting, shifting, and inverting inherent stereotypes and imaginaries. The complication of the use of asymmetry as an analytical tool revolves around two questions: How can asymmetries be identified? And what do they mean to whom? These questions are closely tied to the etic-emic difference in anthropology. What seems to be asymmetric for one might not be considered as such by others. If we take a look at BoA’s debut album, many fans based their arguments on the assumption that there are essential cultural differences between Korean, Asian, and American pop music and their markets, systems, preferences, ideologies, etc., which contributed to upholding the widely accepted cultural dominance of the latter in global popular music. For many other fans, although they would agree with the existence of this asymmetry, this aspect would probably not have any relevance or impact on their personal use and evaluation of the album, as they would evidently fall out of the analytical frame. Whether they buy the album or judge the music good or bad is independent of discourses on asymmetry. Furthermore, there are asymmetries of perceptions that shift when we dig deeper into empirical grounds and scale our analytical gaze to microscopic levels. One strand of argument for why the American version of BoA’s “Eat you up” video failed relies on the criticism of self-orientalism and blames her management for rendering an inappropriate image of BoA as too sexualized. From this perspective, we could simply argue that this market launch failed in contesting the power asymmetry between the Goliath-­ like American pop music business and the David-like Korean company. ­However, two questions are raised when we talk about highly labor-divided

184  Complicating K-Pop and elaborated manufacturing processes of pop music products: Who are the responsible actors? Who is the self in self-orientalism? It is revealing in this case that SM Entertainment drew on the insider expertise of American professionals who were exclusively assigned to work out a feasible concept for BoA’s transformation. They had a substantial impact on the decisionmaking processes, as the music business director of SM Entertainment stated in an interview: I don’t think there was much change (laughs). Well, maybe because the staff are all Americans; probably their views somehow affected it. We did lots of monitoring with the Americans and tried to bring out those strong points that Americans see in Asians. At the same time, we did not try to follow Western style, (for instance, we did not make BoA sexy, she is not physically sexy) but rather we showed her Eastern style and those aspects that had already been popular in Asia. But when American staff touched the styles in their own way, then in several ways, we followed their taste as much as we could. (Personal communication, September 10, 2009) Accordingly, we can interpret the failure of that video as a failure in the American imagination of Asia. In synchronizing these images unsuccessfully with the pulse of the transnational fan community, this version was exposed as behind the times. Instead, the Asian version of the video with its vision of global modernity, which might be called the Asian imagination of America, seems to be more in tune with the consumer’s desire for participation in a vibrant presence. What becomes evident in the American image production is a reversal of the asymmetry of perceptions between America and Asia, which is accompanied by the vague notion that the U.S. might not be the leading force in producing cutting-edge products of pop music. This would also explain why Wonder Girls are successful in selling nostalgia to American audiences. They playfully confront American listeners with their own pop history by merging Motown aesthetics, flower power fashion, 1980s disco sound, and rap vocals. Arjun Appadurai notes: Americans themselves are hardly in the present anymore, as they stumble into the mega-technologies of the twenty-first century garbed in the film-noir scenarios of sixties’ chills, fifties’ diners, forties’ clothing, thirties’ houses, twenties’ dances, and so on. (Appadurai,1996, 30) This alludes to one of the principles in the pastiche-centered postmodern cultural production that Fredric Jameson describes as the “nostalgia mode,” a condition under which “we have become incapable of achieving aesthetic representations of our own current experience” (Jameson, 1988,

Spatial Asymmetries  185 198).  Although Jameson cites examples of American nostalgia films, this also holds true for pop music: [W]e seem condemned to seek the historical past through our own pop images and stereotypes about that past, which itself remains forever out of reach. (Jameson, 1988, 198) The fact that Korean artists are providing a medial scenario that easily evokes nostalgic feelings in American pop music consumers indicates a shift in playing with cultural imaginaries in American pop history.14 YB demonstrates another way of contesting the perceived asymmetry by appropriating elements of kugak, Korean traditional music. YB’s reference to kugak has a double function: it warrants Korean identity in a form that the musicians consider pure or authentic, and it easily connects the suppressed sentiment of han with the raucous and pressed vocal timbre in blues and rock music. In juxtaposing rock and kugak, kugak elements become a means to creating unique rock music. Korean cultural tradition thus serves as a source of self-assertion and helps in overcoming asymmetry. Skull pursues a denationalizing strategy in order to escape the West-East asymmetry. His whole appearance conforms to reggae culture and only after a second glance does one recognize his Asian origins. Since reggae culture in Korea is underrepresented as much as the artist from Korea is underrepresented in global reggae music, Skull fills a gap in both markets. From this position and driven by his startling success, he was soon praised by online magazines for his down-to-earth attitude and credited as an icon for Asians and Asian Americans, since he represents an alternative to common stereotypes of Asians in America: Asians and Asian Americans are still not well represented in American pop culture. If you don’t do Kung Fu, make fun of yourself with comedy, be a sexy girl, own a Laundromat, a fruit stand, or be a math geek, you don’t exist as a part of American pop culture. I am grateful to have the opportunity to break that stereotype. (Skull on Asiance, November 2, 2007) The fact that one can become an icon for Asians by hiding one’s Asian identity seemingly belongs to the paradoxes in the American pop music market. Conclusion: Places as Imaginaries in Music It can be stated that the westward initiative of K-Pop is neither realized through a smooth nor standardized process but is rather accompanied

186  Complicating K-Pop by transformations of a more complex and at times contradictory nature. ­Strategies are manifold and mostly organized and negotiated along the discursive trajectories of cultural identity and economic success. The transnational flow of Korean pop products to the U.S. is hardly a process that keeps the music unaltered. Rather, an essential cultural difference between the producer and consumer site is anticipated and incorporated into the production process and thus affects music and visual representations of the respective artists. We can draw four conclusions. First, the way Korean artists present themselves within the American context is accompanied by transformations of their visual and musical representations. Their strategies are diverse and tied to the mechanisms of self-orientalism, traditionalism, and pop globalism. From the perspective of producers, orientalizing Korean stars means a tightrope walk between making them “appealing, but not alienating” to the new audience. What Marta Savigliano describes for the Japanese domestication of tango, seems also true for Korean pop music: [Koreans] have been able to successfully import, incorporate, and transform [Western pop music]; they have not been able to free themselves from their desire for the passion of the West or from seeing themselves, and being seen by foreigners, as exotic Others. (Tobin, 1992, 31) Second, place is an imaginary that triggers and shapes musical and visual transformations. Giddens has pointed out that place is not just a suspended category in the era of globalization, but also one of the consequences of modernity. It is separated from space and shaped by social influences distant from it (Giddens, 1990). However, place itself is also an imaginative and phantasmagoric category not only constructed through music (Stokes, 1994). America, Asia, and Korea, as imaginary places, initialize a wide range of discursive strategies and techniques of visual and musical borrowings, such as pastiche, quotation, juxtaposition, or montage, which are all deeply entwined with questions of identity. Third, these imaginaries are embedded in and result from asymmetrical relationships. The examples demonstrate different modes of coping and contesting these asymmetries. That does not necessarily mean that the American hegemony in pop music production is declining or seriously challenged. However, Korean popular music provides a space in which asymmetries between West and East are contested, re-negotiated, and, lastly, shifted toward more complex relationships. It gives way to multiple perspectives and effects, which are too ambiguous to be pinned down to a simple WestEast axis. Utilizing asymmetry as a concept also means struggling with and writing against its own limitations. This affords the constant reflection on the perspective on asymmetrical relationships, from which angle one applies or detects asymmetry. With moving perspectives asymmetries are also shifting. Hence, asymmetry can only be understood as a relational tool that fixes

Spatial Asymmetries  187 and freezes otherwise moving or circulating poles at specific moments in time. Furthermore, working with asymmetry needs to reflect on its own modes of excluding, suppressing, and violating other forms of asymmetries that are involved in the processes we study. Understanding asymmetry as pluralistic and shifting would help us to overcome its inherent tendencies of essentializing and dichotomizing cultures. Finally, beyond gaining real success or not, the fact that Korean artists are making inroads into the American music market is proof enough of at least two major transformations. First, popular music made in Korea is increasingly affected by dynamics of globalization. Driven by the desire to expand business, the anticipated taste of a Western audience delivers input into the production of music. But, as the overall target is confined to the American mainstream (i.e., a white-male-middle-class audience), and not to Asian or Korean American minorities, it seems obvious that the reading of globalization from the perspective of the discussed artists is mainly a reduced one and complies with hegemonic discourses on global culture. Diane Crane points out: “[G]lobal culture, to the extent that it could be said to exist, is a phenomenon largely confined to particular geographical regions. [...] Global culture is largely confined to First World Countries” (Crane, 1992, 164). The second transformation relates to the American market that always in search of fresh ideas seems to be ready or at least curious enough to integrate voices from Korean artists and to provide spaces for their representations within their commodification machineries. While Korean artists are embarking on notions of orientalism (whether alienating or self-asserting) and global modernity, they can be regarded as experimental enactments of pop cosmopolitanism. Although skeptical voices doubt any real potential that these phenomena may have in transforming the existing power dispositions, we can concede a positive twist to cosmopolitanism, as Henry Jenkins notes: What cosmopolitanism at its best can offer us is an escape from parochialism and isolationism, the beginnings of a global perspective, and the awareness of alternative vantage points. (Jenkins, 2006, 152) It is among the tasks of popular music studies to grasp and uncover these vantage points in order to identify the neuralgic points where realities and asymmetries are shifting. Notes 1. The “local” is an episteme in anthropological and ethnomusicological studies since, in the past, they considered cultures as discrete spaces that had been easily mapped onto places (Gupta and Ferguson, 1992). The engagement with

188  Complicating K-Pop human agency and its modes of re-territorialization tends to support the notion of romanticizing the local (Biddle and Knights, 2007), what might be a scholarly reflex to the modern “separation of space from place” (Giddens, 1990, 18). 2. This version is preceded by a short promo video featuring the different styles and personalities of BoA and is likely intended to present an introductory portfolio to listeners who are not familiar with her. 3. For similar observations about the U.S. reception of Korean stars, such as BoA and Wonder Girls, see Jung (2010, 2013). 4. Finally, the management chose only the Asian version for promotion and uploaded it on BoA’s American website. 5. The song was co-written and produced by American songwriter Sean Garrett who is responsible for several hit songs of artists such as Beyoncé, Destiny’s Child, and Usher. 6. Autotune is a real time audio plug-in that is able to correct intonation problems of vocals and instruments while retaining all other parameters of the original signals. It became prominent through the altered vocal effect in Cher’s 1998 song “Believe” (henceforth also known as the Cher-effect) An extreme pitch correction speed setting let her voice sound automatic. 7. For JYP Entertainment’s globalization strategy on Wonder Girls’ company progenitor Rain, see Shin (2009). 8. The status of a media company in Seoul is also represented by the geographical area of its residence. Unlike big entertainment companies, which are located in Kangnam, one of the most noble and affluent districts of Seoul South of the Han River, Daeum Entertainment is a small company with thirteen staff members domiciled in the Mapo district, which is close to the club and night life area around Hongik University in the West of Seoul. All signed artists are live musicians and singer-songwriters who emerged from the local scene and the personal environment of the company. 9. The puk is a barrel-shaped drum covered with leather prominent in most of traditional folk music (minsogak), whereas the 12-string-zither kayagŭm is common in court and aristocratic music (chŏngak). The taegŭm, a big traverse flute made of bamboo, can be found in folk and aristocratic genres. 10. On the concept of han in music, see Willoughby (2000); in women’s literature, see Lee (2002). 11. The 88 Man Won generation (88 manwon sedae) is the Korean equivalent of the 1000 Euro generation in Europe, and the title of a best-selling book about the young generation in their twenties; 88 Man Won (880,000 Won) is the average income of job starters whose situation is mainly characterized by instability, competition, and winner-take-all. 12. Skull has been featured and invited by local radio jockeys in the West Indies and throughout the U.S. He was the opening act for reggae star Buju Banton and was invited to perform The Marley’s MySpace Secret Show in Florida and the Reggae Rising Music Festival in California. 13. The English lyrics, re-written by Jamaican-born reggae artist Mighty Mystic, are about a man who invites a woman to sexual intercourse, as the chorus demonstrates: “Me ready when you ready me they’ll be no need fa searching girl (Boom di Boom di Boom) / Me have de some fe you some yo me give you de working girl (Boom di Boom di Boom) / Tonight is the night they’ll be no hurting girl. (Boom di Boom di Boom) / Me bring you de pleasure and that will

Spatial Asymmetries  189 be worth it girl. Boom.” Conspicuously, the original Korean chorus is much less provocative and different in content: kŭdaega narŭl tugo ttŏnanda hae purŭnŭn norae / kŭdae chigŭm narŭl tugo ttŏnandamyŏn na ulgo mal kkŏyeyo / kŭdaega narŭl tugo ttŏnanda hae purŭnŭn i norae / kŭdae chigŭm nal tugo ttŏnandamyŏn onŭlto nanŭn cham mot tŭl kkŏyeyo: A song that I am singing because you are leaving me / If you leave me now I’m gonna cry / This song I am singing because you are leaving me/ If you leave me now I will not fall asleep even tonight. 14. As discussed above, the Wonder Girls’ song is a pastiche also composed of elements of Korean pop history, e.g., the t’ŭrot’ŭ-like melody. The nostalgic mode is thus also prevalent in Korean consumers’ perception; it eventually addresses both audiences, which accounts for its special appeal.

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190  Complicating K-Pop Frater, Patrick. 2009. “Korean Pop Sensation BoA signs with CAA.” Billboard, May 6. Accessed October 31, 2014. http://www.billboard.com/articles/news/ 268707/korean-pop-sensation-boa-signs-with-caa Fuhr, Michael. 2010. “Performing K(yopo)-Rock: Aesthetics, Identity, and Korean Migrant Ritual in Germany.” Inter-Asia Cultural Studies 11/1: 115–22. Garcia, Cathy Rose A. 2007. “Skull Tries Unconventional Way To Win US Fans.” Korea Times, January 3. Accessed November 29, 2009. http://times.hankooki. com/lpage/culture/200701/kt2007010319374711700.htm Giddens, Anthony. 1990. The Consequences of Modernity. Stanford: Stanford U ­ niversity Press. Gupta, Akhil, and James Ferguson. 1992. “Beyond ‘Culture’: Space, Identity, and the Politics of Difference.” Cultural Anthropology 7/1: 6–23. Han, Kyung-Koo. 2007. “The Archaeology of the Ethnically Homogeneous NationState and Multiculturalism in Korea.” Korea Journal 47/4: 8–31. Hickey, David. 2009. “BoA—Biography.” All Music Guide. Accessed October 29, 2014. http://www.allmusic.com/cg/amg.dll?p=amg&sql=11:gzfexqe0ldhe~T1 Iwabuchi, Koichi. 2002. “From Western Gaze to Global Gaze.” In Global­ Culture: Media, Arts, Policy, and Globalization. Edited by Diana Crane, Nobuko Kawashima, and Kenichi Kawasaki, 256–73. New York/London: Routledge. Jameson, Fredric. 1988. “Postmodernism and Consumer Society.” In Postmodernism and Its Discontents. Edited by E. Ann Kaplan, 13–29. London/New York: Verso. Jenkins, Henry. 2006. “Pop Cosmopolitanism: Mapping Cultural Flows in an Age ­ articipatory of Media Convergence.” In Fans, Bloggers, and Games: Exploring P C ­ ulture. Edited by Henry Jenkins, 125–72. New York/London: New York U ­ niversity Press. JK News. 2008. “보아논란, 뮤비 a버전-b버전 네티즌 설전 치열!” [SM Clarifies Confusions]. JKNews, October 25 Accessed October 29, 2010. http://ent.jknews. co.kr/article/news/20081025/7669528.htm Jung, Eun-Young. 2010. “Playing the Race and Sexuality Cards in the Transnational Pop Game: Korean Music Videos for the US Market.” Journal of Popular Music Studies 22/2: 219–36. Jung, Eun-Young. 2013. “K-Pop Female Idols in the West: Racial Imaginations and Erotic Fantasies.” In The Korean Wave: Korean Media Go Global. Edited by Youna Kim, 106–20. London/New York: Routledge. Kim, Soo-Jung. 2006. “A New Trial about the Korean Wave.” Paper presented at the Asia Youth Cultural Camp “Doing Cultural Spaces in Asia,” Gwangju, October 26–29. Lee, Hyo-Won. 2009. “YB to Perform in US Rock Fest.” The Korea Times, June 15. Accessed October 29, 2014. http://www.koreatimes.co.kr/www/news/art/2010/ 05/143_46847.html Lee, Younghee. 2002. Ideology, Culture, and Han: Traditional and Early Modern Korean Women’s Literature. Seoul: Jimoondang. Manuel, Peter. 1995. “Music as Symbol, Music as Simulacrum: Postmodern, PreModern, and Modern Aesthetics in Subcultural Popular Musics.” Popular Music 14/2: 227–39. Russell, Mark. 2007. “Skull Skill: South Korean Reggae Artist Head, Shoulders above Rivals.” Billboard, 9: 50. Rutten, Paul. 1991. “Local Music and the International Marketplace.” PopScriptum: Beiträge zum 4. Theoretischen Seminar des Forschungszentrums Populäre Musik

Spatial Asymmetries  191 der Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin. Accessed October 29, 2014. http://www2. hu-berlin.de/fpm/textpool/texte/rutten_local-music-and-international-market place.htm#nast Seoul Beats. 2008. “Op-ed: Why BoA and Se7en Will Fail in America.” Seoul Beats, December 23. Accessed October 29, 2014. http://seoulbeats.com/2008/12/op-edwhy-boa-and-se7en-will-fail-in-america/ Shastri, Rashmi. 2007. “Skull Breaking Reggae Barriers.” BallerStatus, March 19. Accessed October 29, 2014. http://www.ballerstatus.com/2007/03/19/skullbreaking-reggae-barriers/ Shin, Hyunjoon. 2009. “Have you Ever Seen the Rain? And Who’ll Stop the Rain? The Globalization Project of Korean Pop (K-pop).” Inter-Asia Cultural Studies 10/4: 507–23. Siegel, Jordan, and Yi Kwan Chu. 2008. “The Globalization of East Asian Pop Music.” Harvard Business School Case 9-708-479, November 26. Skull Profile. 2009. “Skull.” Website. MySpace. Accessed March 03, 2010. http:// www.myspace.com/skullriddim Son, Min-Jung. 2004. “The Politics of the Traditional Korean Popular Song Style T’ŭrot’ŭ.” PhD diss., The University of Texas at Austin. ProQuest (AAT 3145359). Stokes, Martin. 1994. “Introduction: Ethnicity, Identity, and Music.” In Ethnicity, Identity, and Music: The Musical Construction of Place. Edited by Martin Stokes. Oxford/Providence: Berg. Stokes, Martin. 2000. “East, West, and Arabesk.” In Music and its Others: ­Difference, Representation, and Appropriation in Music. Edited by ­Georgina Born and David Hesmondhalgh, 213–33. London/Berkeley/Los Angeles: ­University of California Press. The Marmot’s Hole. 2009. “Wonder Girls on Page 1 of Seattle Times.” The Marmot’s Hole Blog. Accessed October 29, 2014. http://www.rjkoehler.com/2009/06/28/ wonder-girls-on-page-1-of-seattle-times/ Tobin, Joseph J. 1992. “Introduction: Domesticating the West.” In Remade in Japan: Everyday Life and Consumer Taste in a Changing Society. Edited by Joseph J. Tobin, 1–41. Binghampton, NY: Vail-Ballou Press. Whiteley, Sheila, Andy Bennett, and Stan Hawkins, eds. 2004. Music, Space, and Place: Popular Music and Cultural Identity. Aldershot/Burlington: Ashgate. Willoughby, Heather. 2000. “The Sound of Han: P’ansori, Timbre and a Korean Ethos of Pain and Suffering.” Yearbook for Traditional Music 32: 17–30. Yano, Christine Reiko. 2002. Tears of Longing: Nostalgia and the Nation in J­ apanese Popular Song. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.

6 Asymmetries of Mobility Immigrant Stars and the Conjuncture of Patriotism, Anti-American Sentiment, and Cyberculture

In the previous chapter, I discussed spatial asymmetries in the complex dynamics of the cross-border activities conducted by Korean artists during their moves to the U.S. While the analysis revealed the imaginative function of places in the transformative processes of Korean pop music products, it focused on the strategies of image and sound production and marketing. In this chapter, I focus on people, considering the reversed transnational flow of immigrant artists to South Korea and the affective responses of local and international fans. Immigrants play a significant role in Korean pop music. They can be regarded as constitutive of K-Pop, since they serve as the most prominent embodiments of the genre’s inherent notions, such as export-orientation and global awareness. Particularly, there has been an increasing flow of s­ econd and third generation overseas Koreans returning to their “home country” since the early 1990s to be recruited into the entertainment and music ­industries. Due to localization strategies in recent K-Pop music production, foreign nationals of non-Korean ethnicity have also been intruding into the domestic star system. By capitalizing on their specific status as cultural ­brokers, they enjoy transnational stardom and are part and parcel of the industry’s “globalization” activities. The limitations of these global efforts and the instability of their success and moral integrity were impressively demonstrated in September 2009 when the public’s national sentiment forced Korean American boy group singer Park Jaebeom to leave the country. His denigrating comments about the Korean people prompted harsh reactions by anti-fans and mobilized public discourses about Koreanness, patriotism, and Internet fan culture (Arirang National, 2009). In this chapter, I will discuss the role of immigrant artists within the overall context of the shifting ethnoscape in Korea’s pop music industry, asking how this “transnational flow of people” to South Korea is organized, where the “obstacles, bumps, and potholes” (Appadurai, 2010, 8) of this flow are, and how they affect the constitution of public opinions about concepts of “Self” and “Other.” A closer look at the “Jaebeom controversy” will shed light on Othering processes in K-Pop and on the multiple entanglements of pop music stardom, identity politics, nationalism, and transnational fandom. Taking the “immigrant star” as the main site of inquiry allows for a

Asymmetries of Mobility  193 perspective that does not ignore the inherent qualities and cultural dynamics of the star phenomenon but rather emphasizes it as a place of contest, cultural conflict, and transformation through which productive and public engagements with notions of Koreanness and foreignness can be expressed in a lively and mediated manner. In accordance with recent studies on stars and celebrities (Rojek, 2001; Turner, 2004; Aoyagi, 2005; Tsai, 2007; Turner, 2010), stardom is neither a property of a specific individual nor the mere product of a manufactured, manipulated, and profit-driven process of commodification. It is better understood as a discursively organized space of representation, as a “result of the compounding effect of media work, cultural formations, technological interfaces, and the flow of commodity and currency” (Tsai, 2007, 137). As such, it bears a specific social function that can best be grasped in its formative processes and the negotiation of cultural identities. In the case of Korea, where the nation-state still figures actively in the identities of people, the trajectories of patriotism and popular culture easily cross-cut and converge into the discourse of stardom. The following section will focus on the music industry’s strategy to incorporate, capitalize, and market “foreign” artists and will give examples of some of those artists’ experiences on their way to the realm of Korean pop music. “Go where you’re celebrated, not where you’re tolerated!”1 ­Immigrants in K-Pop Among the group of immigrants with visible significance within the field of entertainment, we can roughly distinguish between those of ethnic Korean ancestry, mostly Korean Americans, and foreign nationals with other Asian migratory backgrounds. The influx of Korean American immigrants to the entertainment sector in Korea can be traced back to the early to mid-1990s when major economic and political shifts to prosperity and democracy led to the twin emergence of a youth-oriented culture industry and local and transnational media networks. The advent of cable and satellite broadcasters boosted music television channels, and therewith music video, as a new format into the center of the popular music industry. Korean branches of multinational broadcasters, such as MTV Korea and Channel V Korea, and locally owned channels, such as Mnet and Kmtv, were launched between 1995 and 2001 as full-time music television channels, broadcasting twenty-four-seven. These tremendous shifts in the mediascape (Park et al., 2000; Sutton, 2006; Cho and Chung, 2009) interlinked with new business strategies, financial networks, new “cultures of production” (du Gay, 1997), and technological innovations, also engendered new forms of human labor and dynamics of mobility. The increased demand for manpower and knowhow in the fields of entertainment, music television as a new site for music distribution, and music production turned South Korea into an attractive job market for many young kyop’os.2 These are mostly second generation Korean Americans in their twenties who, after growing up in major cities like Los Angeles and

194  Complicating K-Pop New York, decided to revisit their ancestors’ home country.3 As Lee Hee-Eun argues, this “group of salmons” (yŏnŏjok), endowed with ­“cosmopolitan sensibility and linguistic and musical versatilities” (Lee, 2003, 9), played a “key role in introducing new sounds and trends to the local market” and helped to change “the geography of indigenous cultural production” (Lee, 2005, 93). However, in the early period, the way to the Korean entertainment business was not conducted through a well-established system of recruitment; many biographies at that time were shaped by random encounters and serendipities. In a magazine interview, Bernie Cho, media expert and former presenter and producer for various Korean music television channels, tells about the beginnings of his 18-year involvement in the Korean music business: I originally came here in 1993 to attend graduate school. When I crashed a movie launch party one night, I happened to meet an executive who asked me to apply for a job at his new music TV channel. On a whim, I went in for an interview and somehow ended up getting hired. So a week before classes started, I dropped out and never looked back. (10Magazine, 2010) Not only media company staff and music business workers, but also singers and musicians, entered the Korean market by chance. A notable and early example is the group Solid, consisting of three Korean American artists who emerged from the underground hip-hop scene in Los Angeles to become one of the best-selling groups and precursors of the R&B genre in Korea. Growing up listening to “Western” pop and rock music during their school years, the group members immersed themselves in hip-hop music before they started writing songs and helping their friends from the ­Taiwanese American rap group L.A. Boyz. This group was signed to a label that not only organized their album releases and performances in Taiwan, but also held business contacts to film companies and brokers in China, Hong Kong, and Korea. Based on this business connection to Korea and on the successful introduction of hip-hop music to an Asian country, such as Taiwan, Solid recorded their first hip-hop album in the Korean language for the Korean market. Chŏng Chae-Yun, one of the vocalists and the producer of the group, told me that he grew up within a predominantly English-speaking community, and although he spoke Korean with his parents, his Korean language skills were limited when he first stepped into the professional music business in Korea. Being a “1.5 generation” (ilchŏmose)4 Korean American helped him steer the way into the Korean music business but did not necessarily prevent him from experiencing deep cultural gaps when he and his group first came to Korea in 1993. The following quote illustrates his experiences with copycats and the public reception of hip-hop culture during that time: Man, when we first came out here even the cabs wouldn’t stop to pick us up; we looked so different at that time. It was almost like we took a

Asymmetries of Mobility  195 time machine, and we came out here. We’re wearing baggy pants and had weird haircuts and stuff, so people were like, “What are you guys doing?” Korea was relatively conservative at that time. We were just three kids who loved music, and when other labels heard about us they actually called us into their office and they were just studying us, they asked us, “Hey, where did you get that hoodie?” or “where did you get your music equipment?” or “what kind of music equipment do you use?” They would poke at us and figure out what we’re about. And then they turned around and used our sources on their next albums. They would do that all the time. Lee Joon, our rapper in the group, used to carry his cane, an elbow cane. That was his trademark and somebody goes like, “Hey, where did you get this elbow cane?” And he of course said, “Oh, I got it at the store.” The very next album, they had it on their album. It’s always like that, you know? I think we were very naive and innocent, so when people asked us we were just ready to tell them stuff. (Chŏng Chae-Yun, personal communication, December 3, 2010) Local record companies were mostly very small and simply structured. Unlike the chaebŏl, the large-scaled and multi-division conglomerates in other economic areas, record companies only had a few staff members and followed flexible and spontaneous strategies. So-called PD (­Production) Makers, who were responsible for music production, were mostly ­independent one-man companies who were often closely related to the record companies and the broadcasting stations. So it comes as no wonder that the early import of Korean Americans and Solid’s success were more random than based on a systematically organized infrastructure. Chŏng Chae-Yun recalls the absence of any elaborate strategies and systematic planning: The amazing thing is—it sounds funny when I say this—but literally nothing was planned out at that time. It was a true sense of the word “destiny.” We never said in America, “Hey, I think Koreans will love R&B!” No. […] It was never calculated or any kind of planning of the marketing at all. In fact, our marketing team was non-existent; we had just one guy running the show, just like we would get the music all done and say “here it is; get us airplay!” At first we would literally just wear our own clothes and just do our shows. (ibid.) Solid’s success paved the way for other Korean American artists and helped popularize R&B and Afro American dance music in Korea. With the emergence of idol management companies after 1996, the influx of Korean Americans became increasingly systematized. Music companies installed overseas audition units and talent scouts and had talent agency partners in

196  Complicating K-Pop the U.S. who recruited youngsters for the Korean market. If idol aspirants passed the audition, they would come to Korea and spend some painstaking years as trainees at the company before debuting. A former producer at SM Entertainment told me that Korean Americans were attractive for his company since they had “experienced American culture; that was a strong point at that time. But they are also more patient and willing to train hard,” due to their Korean cultural sensibility (personal communication, December 1, 2010). This assumption with its implicit essential difference between the American and Korean work ethic and business culture has been shared by many of my informants. What is here constructed as a “third space” quality of Korean Americans, namely the ability to function as a cultural broker, not only legitimizes the privilege of Korean Americans over other ethnic Americans but also benefits Korean talent agencies. Independent of how much time the artists had really spent in the U.S. or how proper their ­English language skills really were, and independent of how one defines American culture, the talent companies were expert enough to utilize the kyop’o identity of their artists in order to present themselves as a globally operating company. The fact that many idol groups still consist of at least one Korean American member demonstrates their pivotal role in the formation of idol production. A second group of immigrant artists in K-Pop are foreign nationals of non-Korean ethnicity. They became visible in the mid-2000s after talent agencies began to realize market potential in Chinese and Southeast Asian regions. The recruitment of foreign talents from Asia, for example, through auditions held in China, marks a further step in the development of idol production. The maxim of the market-leading companies was the enhancement of the so-called localized star (hyŏnjihwadoen kasu) toward a higher value-added business (kobuga kach’i sanŏp). Prior to that, localized stars had been artists from Korea who were sent off to the target country where they would be trained in the local language and promoted in the local market. Female artist BoA with her dual success in Japan and Korea was the most notable outcome of that strategy (see Chapter 5). In contrast, the improved localization strategy that came into effect with the subsequent generation of idol stars sought to create more flexibility in catering to various outlets and multiple audiences. Based on tie-in as a core model and informed by the governmentally promoted concept of CT (see Chapter 4), the leading talent agencies started to capitalize their know-how as artist manufacturers. Not only the product but also the knowledge of production itself became a value that has been operationalized in the threefold production formula: casting abroad, training in Korea, selling back abroad (to the local market). A prototype of this strategy is the thirteen members of boy group Super Junior that debuted in 2005. One of its members is a mainland Chinese singer and dancer who was cast in an audition in Beijing. The novelty of a Chinese singer debuting in a Korean group garnered a lot of coverage by the Korean media, and regular appearances in TV shows propelled his career

Asymmetries of Mobility  197 to celebrity status not only in Korea but also in China. The group serves as a corporate brand providing a pool of well-trained singers, ­dancers, artists, actors, and models who can be easily deployed for various tasks in different branches as individuals or in groups. Music p ­ erformances of the entire group remain the common denominator, albeit in rotation (members can be replaced, and positions within the group can be reshuffled) and ­fragmentation (sub-units serve different target a­ udiences) have evolved as key principles in order to increase the group’s market p ­ otential and economic value. Among various sub groups the company has created, Super Junior M (M stands for ­Mandarin) has been launched with two additional Chinese-speaking members, although with reduced Korean personnel, in order to cater to a Chinese audience. The intended distribution of localized star products to their home countries has become a driving force in the formation of recent idol groups. Since 2009, more elaborate and diversified examples of how the target market determines the idol cast can be found in girl groups like f(x) and Miss A.  F(x) is a quintet with two Korean members, one member from Mainland China cast in Beijing, one Taiwanese American cast in Los Angeles, and one Korean American scouted in Seoul. Miss A is a four-member girl group with a half-Chinese half-Korean cast. Characteristic to this recent generation of idol groups is the fact that each group possesses language skills in Korean, English, Mandarin, and Cantonese; that its members had been recruited at a very young age (the youngest was discovered by the company at the age of five); and that they have gained long-term experiences in different regional and cultural settings within the entertainment business (i.e., through training in the U.S., cameo appearances in Korean dramas, and modeling for TV commercials in China). They are the most dazzling outcomes of a transnational training and business network that spans Seoul, Beijing, Los Angeles, and New York. Since the Korean entertainment industry is notorious for its ethnic homogeneity, this gradual opening to non-Korean foreigners is ably publicized by the respective talent agencies and thus accompanied by high media coverage and public attention. During my field research in 2009-10, the most ubiquitous face, lurking from poster ads in subway cars, shops, and gangways, and from heavy-rotating music video clips and TV commercials on flat screens in home and public places, belonged to Nichkhun Horvejkul, a member of boy group 2PM. Born in California to a Thai father and a Thai Chinese mother, he spent his school years in Thailand, New Zealand, and the U.S., before he was randomly discovered by JYP Entertainment on the streets of Los Angeles. Vested with American and Thai citizenship, multiple language abilities, and a marketable face that female fans describe as handsome and cute, Nichkhun moved to Korea and entered the company’s training system. During the training process, he was part of the eleven-member group One Day that finally branched out into the ballad-styled four-member group 2AM and the dance beat hip-hop oriented seven-member group 2PM, whose

198  Complicating K-Pop trademark became a b-boy based acrobatic dance style. Despite his comparably weak singing and dancing skills, the company selected him due to his appearance and personality. One of the company executives recalls his first encounter with Nichkhun: He got offers from both, JYP Entertainment and CJ Entertainment. He told me that his grandmother loves Rain, and the family already knew Rain and JYP Entertainment—that’s the reason why he decided to come to JYP Entertainment. But at that point JY [(Park) Jin-Young, the company owner and president] told me, “Hey, why do we have these kids, like Nichkhun and Sohee from Wonder Girls? […]” ‘cause they couldn’t do anything. They were cute, and they were good-­looking, but they couldn’t sing well or dance well. I told him, “Just trust me.” (laughs) […] When I first saw [Nichkhun], I felt he was a nice guy in his attitude and the way of his talking, speaking, and everything. […] Of course, dancing, and singing are important, but the final factor is the attitude. (Personal communication, May 27, 2009) Notwithstanding his personable, fair-minded, and humble attitude that certainly helped enter the company, the preeminent reason for Nichkhun’s recruitment might have been his cosmopolitan background and, in particular, his Thai nationality that rendered new revenue potential for the company in Southeast Asian markets. Soon after 2PM’s debut in Korea, the company released a Thailand Special Edition of their album through Sony Music Thailand, released the album in Malaysia and the Philippines, and sent the group off to perform in Bangok and Pattaya. The group has gained numerous endorsements in Korea and Thailand; among the most notable was their selection as representatives of a Thai government-led tourism campaign. In addition, Nichkhun became the artist representative and cultural ambassador of the Tourism Authority of Thailand (TAT). His career as one of the most profitable foreign artists in Korean entertainment (Money Today, 2011) presupposed a smooth Koreanization process through the appropriation and exposure of certain skills and attributes that were deemed necessary within Korean culture and media. Through his incessant appearances in TV shows, documentaries, performances, and interviews, fans were able to scrutinize his personality and monitor his development. Thus, from dyeing his hair and changing fashion styles and look, to severe discipline in training units, his Korean language progress, and his modest behavior, virtually everything could turn into a subject of fan criticism. Foreign artists, like Nichkhun, can be regarded not only as economically successful examples of the industry’s globalization strategy but also as pivotal marker in the public’s changing perception of Korea. His success demonstrates what until recently was nearly impossible, namely, that ethnic foreigners are able to become stars in Korea. At the same time, it portrays Korea as a country open to multiculturalism. The flip side of this positive

Asymmetries of Mobility  199 image is, however, that they have to adhere to a set of behavioral rules and cultural standards in Korean society and the entertainment business that undermines the possibility of speaking from a critical distance. Furthermore, the concurrent celebration of Korea as a multiethnic nation obstructs the view of the underlying realities with their multiple forms of discrimination against minorities in government policies and everyday practices. In the realm of pop music, an uneven flow of immigrant artists can be seen. According to the shift in cultural production in the 1990s and localization strategies in the 2000s, the music industry now prefers talent from ethnic Koreans, Asians from the U.S., or foreign nationals from Chinese-speaking or Southeast Asian countries. More than nationality or ethnicity, the idol aspirant’s face determines the selection process. A face that signifies Koreanness or Asianness is one of the unspoken preconditions for becoming a K-Pop star. The racial discrimination that underpins the industry’s systemic exclusion of Caucasian and African faces supports the assumption that K-Pop can be regarded as a national project. Lee Hee-Eun has argued that Otherness in Korean music videos (e.g., in the presentation of African American people) is not about racial discrimination but “about opening up the possibility of distancing oneself from traditional ideas of Koreanness, traditional assumptions of uniformity and cultural homogeneity” (Lee, 2005, 125). This argument, as Lee notes, may also refer to the numerous examples of Korean pop singers who present themselves with ever-changing dyed blonde or colored hair instead of their naturally black hair. It is, however, conspicuous that this kind of Otherness has not yet materialized into the cast of idol groups and presenters. The absence of African- or Caucasian-looking performers is proof of the fact that ethnic representation becomes a more serious political and economic matter when it comes to selecting on-screen personnel. Anderson Sutton mentioned the case of VJ David Campbell, alias I Won, a white American male fluent in colloquial Korean who worked for MTV Korea and Channel V. He was replaced by Koreans at both stations as “they honed their broadcast product to be more obviously local; he was informed that they had decided against airing any Caucasian VJ for Korean pop” (Sutton, 2006, 213). Finally, it must be mentioned that there is another line of artists with mixed ethnicity that has increasingly challenged and complicated the notion of ethnic purity in the prevailing identity politics in the entertainment business. Children born to Korean mothers and American soldiers, often labeled as “Korean War Babies,” have long been stigmatized as bi-racial and mixedblood, especially when their facial appearance was regarded as different from the Korean standard. They often suffered from social discrimination and exclusion from many segments of the job market so that many of them were forced to leave the country. Although the entertainment business seemed to be more open to foreigners than other professions, only very few foreigners could make a living or gain success as professional singers before the 1990s. The most prominent example is Kim In-Sun, alias Insooni, a legendary female Soul and R&B singer who was born to a Korean mother

200  Complicating K-Pop and an African American father. Due to her strong and unique voice and her musical talent, she made her way into the music business and debuted in 1978 with the female Disco trio Hee Sisters. Although she was born in Korea, lived most of her life in Korea, and spoke the Korean language fluently, she was always considered a mixed-blood singer (honhyŏl kasu)5 and faced hardship and racial discrimination in the music business. Given darker skin, a face that stood out, and intensely curly hair, she was often banned from TV shows. In interviews, she repeatedly said that every time she appeared with the group, she had to flatten her hair or hide it with a hat or a handkerchief (Joongang Daily, 2010a). The fact that she is now celebrated as a Korean pop diva in mainstream music indicates a shift in the public perception of foreign and Korean identity. The tactic of hiding one’s bi-cultural heritage is, however, still prominent with younger singers of Korean African parentage. For example, female hiphop singer and rapper Yoon Mi-Rae, born Natasha Shanta Reid, tries to avoid talking about her cultural background in public interviews, yet in one of her songs she openly tells about the racial discrimination she experienced when she was a teenager. The song “Kŏmŭn haengbok” (Black Happiness)6 on her eponymous 2007 album may illustrate the situation of people with darker skin facing discrimination and prejudice in Korean society. The following lines show the romanized and translated extract from the song lyrics: yunanhi kŏmŏsŏttŏn ŏril chŏk nae salsaek saramdŭrŭn son’garakchil hae nae mommy hant’e nae poppynŭn hŭginmigun yŏgijŏgi sugundae tto irŏk’ung chŏrŏk’ung nae nun’gaenŭn hangsang nunmuri koyŏ ŏryŏtchiman ŏmmaŭi sŭlp’ŭmi poyŏ My skin was especially dark when I was a child. People used to point at my mommy, my poppy was a black soldier in the army. People whispered behind my back, said this and said that, I always had tears in my eyes. I was young, but I saw my mother’s sadness. Although singers with an African migratory background are rare in the Korean music business, it is conspicuous that they are completely excluded from the realm of idol pop. Following the powerful trope of authenticity in popular music, they turn more to market niche genres of black music than to the more profitable genres, such as dance pop, ballads, and trot. While drawing on the discursive knot between black music and resistance in the history of popular music, hip-hop, rap, soul, and R&B seem to serve as the only musical genres in the Korean context in which they are able to give a critical voice from their subaltern perspective. At this point, it is noteworthy

Asymmetries of Mobility  201 that black music in Korean pop music plays an ambiguous role. On the one hand, most parts of idol pop music have successfully adopted the musical idioms, rhythms, and symbols of Afro American pop music styles even though they tailored a deracialized version that is attractive to Korean singers and audiences. On the other hand, African American artists are marginalized and mostly relegated to less profitable niche and independent music genres. While Afro American popular music sounds have had a tremendous impact on altering the soundscape in Korea since the early 1990s, the acceptance of African American singers and musicians has increased only minimally. It is true that the number of stars with mixed cultural heritage, labeled politically correctly as “multicultural stars” (Jooging Daily, 2010a), has increased in the media over the last years. Nevertheless, the dynamics of exclusion have not dissolved but have rather realigned along new bound­ aries from within, or they have shifted to other fields where they remain quite rigid. The field of manufactured idol pop music, as we have seen, is due to its localization strategies and its obsession with faces and looks that are quite selective. Although it is open to some foreign nationals, it is still ­exclusive toward multicultural talents. Furthermore, among multicultural media celebrities, it seems obvious that the majority have Caucasian ancestors. The politics of skin color in the entertainment business still involve a difference between being half-white/half-Korean and half-black/halfKorean. Besides, the majority of these multicultural celebrities are actors and models in TV dramas, movies, and commercial films rather than singers. Most of them have poor Korean language skills that are, however, sufficient for acting in minor roles but having a good command of singing and speaking in Korean is indispensable for pop singers for two reasons: first, companies send their pop singers regularly to TV variety shows where they can demonstrate their personality and intimately connect with the audience, something that is impossible without language ability; and second, the Korean identity in popular music goes beyond the, however important, fact that songs need to be sung in the Korean language and vocalization itself is affected by the notion of cultural essentialism. Cultural essentialism is expressed by the assumption that only Korean singers can sing Korean songs and express Korean feelings through their voices (Lee, 2005).7 The discussion of a singer’s nationality and ethnicity seems awkward or at least overstated to many people who believe that music is a universal language understandable and enjoyable across nations and races. My interest in issues of national identities in pop music often raised skepticism among some of my informants who believed that nationality is not relevant in music at all. Once, after an interview, a local musician sent me his new album with a personal note including the words “Music has no nation!” It is apparent, and scholarly accounts have extensively shown, however, that music is a product of continuous struggle over power relations within a certain socio-spatial field in which identity categories of its agents remain of high relevance. In Korean popular music, the artist’s origin is a crucial issue not

202  Complicating K-Pop only for the immigrants themselves and for the media industry. Due to the increased influx of foreigners and the high attention given by local media, fans are also well aware of the national and ethnic identities of their appreciated idols. Although this knowledge is mostly secondary to their consumption practices, it comes to the fore and even transgresses the boundaries of fandom toward a wider audience when stars become the subject of cultural conflicts that challenge common definitions of national identity. The incident described below is a meaningful example of the limitations, obstacles, and counter forces in the transnationally organized flow of immigrant stars in the Korean music industry. “It’s Still 1:59. It’s a Scary World!”8 The Jaebeom Controversy In early September 2009, the career of Park Jaebeom (Pak Chae-Bŏm)9 came to an abrupt end after controversies snowballed over a comment that he posted on a social networking site four years earlier. Netizens discovered the following comment on his personal online space: “Korea is gay. I hate K ­ oreans. I wanna come back.” Although this remark was obviously a thoughtless note on private emotions directed at his friend in the U.S. and had been made a long time ago, when he came to Korea as a trainee, it caused an outrage among Korean netizens. They heavily criticized him for making disparaging remarks about Korea and expressed their anger and disappointment on various websites. The news quickly spread beyond music fans and was heavily discussed on Internet portals, such as Daum, one of the most frequented web portals in South Korea. Daum offers a forum service, so-called café, where users can communicate with each other and exchange information. Nearly every musician, group, or fan club runs its own own café. On one of Daum’s main pages, Agora, which is one of the largest I­nternet bulletin boards, netizens filed an online petition calling for the removal of Park from his group 2PM. This was soon followed by another petition, entitled “Jaebeom Should Commit Suicide,” which over 3000 people signed, leaving angry comments, such as “Go back to ­America,” “Yankee go home!” “I’m disgusted by you,” or “I’m disappointed that I ever believed in you,” before the site was taken down by the operating company. Although Park issued an apology and tried to contextualize and explain his comments and admitted that he made a big mistake, the controversy continued and was even boosted due to emerging reports by the mainstream media. Park, apparently ashamed and taken aback by the mass of scandalized anti-fans, quit the group, withdrew from all regular activities (e.g., appearances on TV shows), and left the country, returning to his family in the U.S. On the day of his departure, hundreds of fans gathered at Incheon Airport to show their sympathy and to try to keep him from retreating. This all happened within four days.

Asymmetries of Mobility  203 His management company, which respected his decision and discharged him from the contract, announced that the other members would continue as a six-member group. Even after Park’s departure, the controversy continued, although it took a different turn. Public opinion, which had been critical of Park, turned sympathetic toward him, admitting that the reaction to a personal remark had been excessive. This turnaround was induced by 2PM fans, who started to organize and create forms of protest activities, and by more critical voices from intellectuals and media experts who reflected on the whole discourse and dynamics of the controversy. After Park’s announcement, fans expressed their opinions on 2PM fan websites, filed online petitions in favor of Park (to replace the hate-filled petition), and bombarded Korean entertainment news, blogs, and networking sites. After the PD Notebook, an investigative television news program on the national broadcaster MBC, reported on the case, the number of articles on the program’s Internet forum increased from about 90 to more than 6000. Fans’ reactions ranged from being “sad and heartbroken” about Park’s departure to anger directed at his management company and its president. The company was blamed for letting him go so easily and, what was even more crucial, for not negotiating the case with members of the official fan club. The results were massive protests and transnationally organized fan activities. Following calls from fan websites, hundreds of mostly teenage girls in school uniforms gathered in street protests in front of the management company’s headquarters in southern Seoul’s Ch’ŏngdam ward with posters calling for Park to come back. They vented their anger through product returns, public destruction of CDs and fan merchandise, and defacement of the company’s buildings with stickers. This was paired with the overall refusal to buy the group’s new album, massive cancellations of fan club memberships, and the shutdown of numerous fan club websites. An event that was originally set up for 100 lucky fans to travel overseas to spend five days in Thailand with 2PM’s Thai member Nichkhun in Phuket and Bangkok had to be finally cancelled due to the drastically increased number of participants who had been calling in to cancel their bookings. Internet users uploaded private online video support messages to demonstrate their sympathy with the exiled Park. Among all those fan activities, there was an astonishing contribution from international fans who participated in dance and freeze-in flash mobs, organized by the respective local fan ­ ontreal, clubs. In major cities, such as Singapore, Bangkok, Sydney, Paris, M and a city in Mexico, young teenage fans gathered on public sites to perform the original dance choreographies in 2PM’s music videos. They filmed the events, uploaded them to online video portals and, in this way connected to a broad online community of Park supporters. Furthermore, a range of guerillalike public activities was undertaken by some fan clubs who, for example, plastered Seoul’s City Hall subway station with self-designed posters demanding Park’s reinstatement. Most startling within the online community was an Australian fan whose fundraising activities enabled him to hire an airplane to fly a sky banner around Park’s hometown of Seattle; it was a symbolic act of

204  Complicating K-Pop high fan credibility that gained some attention in local mainstream media and demonstrated the vast dynamic and effectiveness of spatially distanced pop fans who use the facilities of the Internet to quickly connect with each other and conduct concerted actions that become effective in faraway places. Park’s management agency, under pressure and aware of risking a substantial decrease in social reputation and financial revenue, felt the need to smooth the waters. They organized a conference with fan club representatives to clarify the problems. The president of the agency issued an official apology to the fans that gives a hint to the social responsibility talent agencies have toward their artists: We are terribly sorry; we should have been a model and protector to our many young trainees. From now on, we [will] really try to [raise them up] from trainees to stars with more practical and stronger systems so that they will not disappoint anybody. (Park Jin-Young, cited in 2PM Always, 2009) The quote also reveals that artists need to be subjected to strong protection and disciplinary control from the agency side in order to guarantee their reliability and efficiency as stars. Therefore, strong individual personalities seem out of place and counterproductive to the agency’s risk management. Despite the attempt to conciliate the outraged crowd, fans accused the company of concealing the real causes of Park’s permanent withdrawal from the group. This was due to the fact that six months after the quarrel, the company stated the termination of Park’s contract and thus obviated his possible comeback to the group. The company justified its decision on the grounds of another severe misconduct that Park had ostensibly committed, without disclosing more details. Given the company’s opaque communication style and some contradictory comments by the other boy group members, many fans felt even more betrayed, and rumors about conspiratorial forces behind Park’s abandonment began to sprout. In the end, a substantial part of the group’s fan base broke away, and the group’s fame began to tarnish. The whole controversy demonstrates that the close entanglements of music companies, stars, and fans are related to a wider public and to the entwined issues of media and immigration. What makes the complex politics of identity in Korean pop music a matter of (restricted) mobility in globalization is the compound of patriotism, anti-American sentiment, and the vibrant cyberculture of Korean society. The Conjuncture of Patriotism, Anti-American Sentiment, and Cyberculture When the debate over Jaebeom was at its height, I happened to ask one of my informants, a middle-aged male and former producer of a K-Pop TV

Asymmetries of Mobility  205 show, about his view on the controversy and whether he would judge the consequences, Park’s withdrawal, to be right or wrong. Being fully aware that it was a sensitive issue at that time, he responded, “I don’t want to say anything about that. All I can say is I am a Korean!” From the harsh undertone in his voice and his refusal to elaborate further on his statement, it became clear to me that he somehow felt mortified by Park’s comments, although he did not want to be regarded as too nationalistic. His answer revealed, however, his patriotic pride and national sentiment and thus somehow qualified Park’s removal as adequate. But what constitutes national sentiment? Stuart Hall (1992) pointed out that the nation as an “imagined community” (Anderson, 1983) is based on a set of representational strategies, such as the narratives of a nation (stories, images, symbols, and rituals representing shared experiences); the emphasis on origin, continuity, tradition, and timelessness; invented traditions; a founding myth; and the idea of a pure, original people or folk.

Patriotism The collectivistic idea of the Korean nation can best be grasped in the term minjok10 that has the double-meaning of race and nation. Established in the colonial times of the early twentieth century and shaped through the historical formations of postcolonial nation building and cold war politics, it maintained a close relationship to the assumption that all Korean people share the same blood-based ethnicity, language, culture, and history. Shin Gi-Wook has argued that Korea’s ethnic nationalism has not diluted over the decades of rapid industrialization and economic globalization but rather “has intensified in response to the penetration of these transnational forces” (Shin, 2006, 17). The idea of ethnic homogeneity as a product of recent history is, however, not the main cause for the discrimination against foreigners, as Han Kyung-Koo (2007) pointed out, but is rather the embraced idea of civilization and cultural superiority that already existed in pre-modern times. He has shown that Korea of the Koryŏ and Chosŏn period had clear policy principles concerning immigration and naturalization and that the founding myth of Tangŭn as blood-related progenitor for all people living in Korea was an invented tradition of Korean nationalists in the early twentieth century. Ethnic nationalism can thus be read as a countermeasure against the threats of imperial forces, that is, the colonial Japanese propagandist notion of naisen ittai (“Korea and Japan are one and the same”) and the technological, scientific, and industrial power of Japan and the West (Shin, 2006). After liberation, the period of political dictatorships relied on nationalism as a unifying ideology and necessary tool for building the Korean nation-state. The rapid economic growth in the 1960s and 1970s and the democratization movements in the 1980s gave rise to national pride and confidence combined with a sweeping commercialism. The craze for Korean products, in particular among Korean middle-class women, was

206  Complicating K-Pop thus an outcome of an engendered “consumer patriotism” (Nelson, 2000, 167). Although the notion of nationalism had changed, the production of kungmin (a member of the nation) and kungminjok chŏngsŏ (national sentiment) remained a powerful instrument in mobilizing the people and in governmental globalization efforts since the 1990s. The anti-imperialist drive in the concept of nationalism gave way to the celebration of a prosperous Korean nation that stepped into the arena of global competition and strove to join and stay in the ranks of the developed countries. During the financial crisis in 1997, which was considered a national crisis, one of the most striking patriotic acts in public was the so-called “Gold Collection Movement” (kŭmmoŭgi undong). In a nationwide campaign initiated by the Kim Dae-Jung government and organized by major business companies and the media, many patriotic citizens voluntarily sold or donated their personal gold treasures to designated banks, which allowed the government to purchase foreign currency at discount rates rather than purchasing it with the rapidly depreciating Won. Even foreign media reported on this movement and were impressed by the “public self-sacrifice to save an economy in trouble” (BBC News, 1998). Cho Hae-Joang argued that kungmin, next to kajok (family), is the most powerful signifier in the constitution of modern life in Korea and leaves barely any space for other possible subjectivities in public life (Cho, 2007). She states that patriotic acts, such as the gold collection movement and flying the national flag, are not just nationalistic displays but spectacles produced in crisis and organized by groups of patriotic kungmin who feel the need to engage themselves in certain activities to save the nation. The conception of kungmin can thus be identified with the hegemonic view of a particular, yet powerful, group in society, that of a political right-wing and middle-aged male perspective. Cho notes the crucial role of mainstream media in mobilizing kungmin activities during the financial crisis, and she gives an example of how the consumption of popular culture weirdly contradicts the interests of patriots: In public arenas, there are still many “patriots” to the point that KBS announced in their evening news hour that seeing the movie Titanic would cost more in foreign currency than could be raised through the “gold collection” campaign. Just as people who went to see Titanic were treated as criminals, South Korean society is pervaded with an atmosphere of terror in which it is not permissible to say anything that violates the sanctity of the “nation.” (Cho, 2007, 299) This “atmosphere of terror” has obviously provided the same ground for the emergence of the Jaebeom controversy and other such events in which patriots quickly interpret the expressions of individuals as an attack against the nation. Most astounding in the reaction of the patriotic public, as

Asymmetries of Mobility  207 exemplified by Jaebeom’s anti-fan netizens, is the enormous dynamic of a collective affect, demonstrating the people’s Pavlovian reaction to concepts, such as nation and unity (Cho, 2007). This affective patriotism is, however, not the unruly expression of irrational forces in a paranoid society but rather the product of historical and social formations and of political mobilization activities that helped Korean people in the past cope with situations of collective conflicts and crisis. Why did the Jaebeom controversy happen when a national crisis was seemingly not existent? Why did patriotic netizens and media executives fuel the controversy? What justifies patriotism in a time after Korea recovered from the economic crisis and meanwhile ranks among the G-20 major economies in the world? The answer might be the continuous “state of emergency” (Cho, 2007; Kim, 2007b) under which Koreans have been struggling for identity and unity since the days of Japanese colonialism. The recent consumption of Korea’s economy under the imperatives of transnational capital and of export-oriented industrialization had a tremendous effect on Korean society in bringing up new social problems and enlarging asymmetries among class, age, ethnic, and gender groups. Cho has argued that Korea’s society faces the destructive ramifications of “turbo capitalism,” which is compressed temporalities, destruction of the quotidian, and victimization of its citizens, thus leaving its people in an extreme state of physical and mental exhaustion, while making clear that the crisis is permanent and ongoing: I/we live in a society where every week is critical, a society where crisis is chronic, and a society that makes crisis chronic. (Cho, 2007, 308) Ethnic nationalism has remained a powerful concept in legitimizing group mobilization, and it is apparent that it is not bound to certain political groups but cross-cuts diverse social boundaries. In this sense, it is no wonder that Korean youth are also captivated by the dynamic. Lee Sook-Jong (2006) states that young adult Koreans consider ethnic nationalism as assertive nationalism toward the U.S. and toward North Korea, but they prefer peaceful coexistence and are not bound to any particular political ideology. In the last sentence of her article she assumes: [T]he growing, politically vibrant ethnic nationalism of Korean youth seems to be soothed by their immersion into their own pop culture […] or the “cool” American pop culture. (Lee, 2006, 132) The Jaebeom controversy provided a vibrant discursive arena for both patriotic anti-fans and for real fans, whose support activities should not be seen only as a matter of star celebration but also as an implicit counteraction

208  Complicating K-Pop against the blatant patriotism of many netizens. Needless to say, the driving force behind the fan protests was not the agenda of anti-nationalist politics, but rather that of pop fandom whose creative voices successfully conquered the public spheres. Nevertheless, Westernized pop music is not necessarily an antidote to Korean nationalism, as Lee may suggest; it is rather a site of contention where nationalism conflicts with other interests, ideological strands, and representations. Star-studded K-Pop is, thus, not devoid of national representations, although its forms are very different from those of propagandistic national or politicized songs of the 1970s and 1980s. The healthy songs (kŏnchŏn kayo), through which the authorities tried to inculcate Korean people with its pro-governmental forms of patriotism, hard work ethics, and morals, as well as the critical songs of counter-cultural t’ongkit’a musicians and group sound bands, both (yet with opposite intentions) relied on nationalistic ideologies by employing patriotic lyrics, political stances, and national symbolism in the songs or national iconographies on album covers and photos. Although K-Pop songs hardly evoke such an overt patriotism through symbolic and acoustic references, national representation has not vanished. Instead, K-Pop helps shape a national imaginary that tells the success story of economic development and pictures Korea as a country that has caught up with the West and has finally arrived in the global age of postmodern consumer capitalism. When we watch K-Pop dance video clips, we see clean, glossy, hypermodern, urban, and high-tech futuristic utopias—places without histories and without any references to real localities, nationalities, and ethnicities, similar to those transit-zones that Marc Augé (1995) coined “non-places.” These places are filled with vibrant, dynamic, handsome, cute, and fashionable dancers and singers with Asian faces who sing in the Korean language. They embody the work ethic of a perfect worker who is expected to be well educated, modest, diligent, hard-working, and resilient. For male idol stars, such as Jaebeom, who gained popularity, fans and female admirers frequently use the term ŏmch’ina, a shortcut for “my mother’s friend’s son” (similar to “perfect son-in-law,” describing the situation when a mother’s friend brags about her son’s accomplishments while the “lowly” son has to hear about it). It is obvious that foreign and ethnic Korean immigrant celebrities play a peculiar role in contributing to this national imaginary, since they are the most glamorous outcomes and icons of the industry’s globalization activities. They are expected to be cultural brokers and role models in Korean society, but at the same time they are prone to cultural conflicts and most vulnerable to losing their celebrity status. The ambivalent sentiments that many Koreans have toward the U.S., historically derived from post–Second World War politics and America’s global dominance, make Korean Americans a sensitive target to the dialectics of Self and Othering processes in Korea. By sharing the same ethnicity but being different in nationality, they embody an inherent conflict in the concept of

Asymmetries of Mobility  209 Korean nationality (minjok). The Jaebeom case has pushed this tension to the breaking point. The following comment, made by an official on ­Arirang’s TV news program, illustrates the dynamic of discrimination against foreigners, particularly Korean Americans, as a result of fierce competition: This is how the Korean public feels toward Korean Americans. The fact that Korean Americans have been successful in Korean society, despite being not Korean nationals, when they themselves have not made it, despite being Korean [gives rise to a] sense of defeat at being pushed out of the competition, [which] leads to envy and jealousy toward foreigners who have been successful. (Kim Sung-Il, Director Center for Culture and Society, Arirang National, 2009) Jaebeom was not the only celebrity targeted by viral campaigns. Nor have Korean American celebrities been the only or most tragic victims of ­netizens’ anger, inasmuch as those attacks were motivated by envy and jealousy.11 It, however, seems obvious, that once Korean Americans become the object of public threats, these online controversies are the interwoven results of the netizens’ discontent over personal competition and social injustice, conflated with notions of patriotism and anti-American sentiment. In summer 2010, the Korean public witnessed another such case. Yi Sŏn-Ung, better known as Tablo, rapper and leader of Korean hip-hop group Epik High, became the target of massive Internet campaigns alleging that he had falsified his diploma from one of the most prestigious universities in the U.S. Born in Korea, he emigrated with his parents to Canada at the age of eight. His educational background, including attendances and graduations from reputable schools in Canada, Korea, and the U.S., his Canadian citizenship, and his exceptional career as an elite student, writer of poetry, and pop musician made him a much appreciated object of Korean boulevard media and a role model within a society that highly values education. At the same time, it was exactly this image of being a successful cosmopolitan Korean celebrity that turned him into a victim of online defamation. Notable in that case is not the fact that the allegations against Tablo finally proved to be wrong, but the stunning acceleration of how the rumors spread and the netizens’ fervor elevated the case from one of media gossip to an issue of national interest. Within a couple of months, nearly two hundred thousand users signed up to online communities that led the campaign. Netizen groups filed lawsuits against broadcasting networks that supported the singer; he himself filed a libel suit against 22 bloggers; the Central Prosecutors Office in Seoul investigated the case; and the national police finally identified the administrator of the leading Internet site as the originator of the anti-Tablo campaign. As an ironic twist, that administrator turned out to be a male Korean in his fifties residing in the U.S. out of Korea’s jurisdiction and thus protected from punishment (Joongang Daily, 2010b). It is

210  Complicating K-Pop noteworthy that even though the anti-Tablo campaign centered largely on personal defamation instead of blatant anti-Americanism, as was the case in the public discourse of Jaebeom’s anti-fans, latent anxiety and resentment against the U.S. formed a socially explosive atmosphere in which cyber conflict could spark. In order to understand the vacillating role of Korean American pop stars as “love-hate objects” and why they bear a high risk of becoming targets for outraged netizens, we need to realize the historical and present significance of anti-American sentiment in Korean society.

Anti-American Sentiment Anti-Americanism in South Korea (panmi) is a highly debated subject that has spawned a vast number of scholarly accounts since the 1980s.12 Negative sentiments and attitudes toward the U.S., however, date back to the first encounter with Korea in the second half of the nineteenth century. They have substantiated, altered, and complicated the U.S.-ROK alliance since 1945 and have become tied to a wide range of issues up to the present day, such as military and North Korean nuclear activities, military base relocation, wartime operational control (OPCON), and economic issues such as the Free Trade Agreement (FTA) between South Korea and the U.S. Despite the bewildering diversity of analytical approaches and categorizations, it is helpful in our context of popular music to realize, at least, two general aspects many scholars have pointed out: first, anti-Americanism must be separated from anti-American sentiment (Woo-Cumings, 2005; Ryoo, 2004; Park, 2007). Second, negative sentiments in Korea toward the U.S. have not diminished but have increased in recent times (Kim, 2002; Kim, 2010a). Relating to the first point, anti-Americanism is described as an “organized ideology” (Park, 2007) that emerged during and after the Kwangju Uprising in May 1980. It obtained popular support throughout the 1980s as an integral part of the counterhegemonic minjung (mass, people) movement that challenged the U.S.-supported state nationalism and anti-Communism of Chun Doo-Hwan’s authoritarian regime (Shin, 2006). Ryoo Jae-Kap notes: [A]nti-Americanism takes its roots in ideological-bound and radical student organizations and among leftist scholars and journalists, who are known to have a pro-North Korean orientation; anti-American sentiments arise from more pragmatic and moderate people or groups as well as people in general who are episodic and responsive to certain incidents or special issues in pragmatic or emotional manners. (Ryoo, 2004, 48) In 2003, the Foreign Affairs, Defense, and Trade Division of the U.S. ­Congressional Research Service reported on South Korean politics and rising Anti-Americanism. It noted that in the late 1990s, criticism of the U.S. policy moved into the mainstream and became “less ideological and more

Asymmetries of Mobility  211 issue specific” (Manyin, 2003, 8). A Gallup survey conducted in 2002 showed that sixty percent of the respondents viewed the U.S. unfavorably and that ­“anti-Americanism is stronger among young, educated, white-collar ­Koreans” (Shin, 2006, 176f). Reasons anti-American sentiments have grown and penetrated the general public in the 2000s are multiple but can be reduced to four key issues (Kim, 2010a): (1) the increased national confidence (stemming from economic prosperity, democratization, and heightened nationalism) among Koreans who believe that the U.S. is increasingly going against Korea’s national interests; (2) the shifted perception of North Korea from an enemy to a partner of South Korea (reflected in president Kim Dae-Jung’s “sunshine policy”); (3) the abiding impression that the U.S. supported authoritarian rule during the Kwangju massacre; and (4) the demographic change toward an increased number of young people (including Western trained specialists in international relations) that is more skeptical about the presence of U.S. forces in South Korea and the nature of the U.S.-ROK alliance. In 2002, two events instigated a newly burgeoning wave of anti-­American resentment that converged in massive anti-U.S. demonstrations in the streets of Seoul: President George W. Bush’s announcement of a new U.S. policy toward the Korean peninsula, including the denunciation of North Korea as part of an “axis of evil,” and the tragedy of two middle-school girls who were struck and killed by a U.S. military vehicle during a training exercise. Many South Koreans were angered, since they believed that Bush’s new policy put their nation’s security interests at risk by stirring up new tensions with the North. They saw both events as indicative of the U.S. dominance in the unequal bilateral relationship. The entanglement of anti-American sentiment and nationalism has since been reflected in a number of other smaller incidents and has also been addressed in forms of popular culture.13 The massive demonstrations against U.S. beef imports in 2008 impressively demonstrated that anti-American sentiment has not died out but survived as an incident-driven phenomenon that can burst into huge protest activities by the general public. The fear over tainted American beef and the Korean government’s lack of responsibility brought many people together in candlelight vigils that highlighted the participation of formerly less visible groups, such as housewives and teenagers, including the so-called “candlelight girls” (Kim and Lee, 2010; Schwartzman, 2008). Given the historical context of anti-American sentiment in Korea it can be argued that peoples’ high sensitivity and resentment toward U.S.-related issues and the intensely mediatized forms of articulating protest on behalf of national self-reliance have also spurred critical attitudes and at times negative activities against Korean American media celebrities, as exemplified in Jaebeom’s and Tablo’s cases. An earlier case angered the public in an unprecedented manner. Yoo Seung-Jun, alias Steve Yoo, another 1.5 generation Korean American, was a successful K-Pop idol singer and dancer before controversies around his military service conscription brought about his downfall. In 2002, he renounced his Korean citizenship and became a U.S. citizen. His choice of

212  Complicating K-Pop foreign citizenship allowed him to obtain a waiver for Korean military duty that had been scheduled for a period of 28 months. His exemption from military obligation unleashed such huge criticism and public anger that a broad front line, including his record company, broadcasting stations, and contracted advertising companies, eventually forced him to quit his professional career in Korea. His transformation from a role model to a national traitor and “ugly American” filled numerous media reports and reached its controversial peak with the Ministry of Justice that denied his entry to Korea on behalf of the Military Manpower Administration (MMA). The ministry defined him as a persona non grata for being a potential threat to public’s interest and for having a bad influence on young people (Lee, 2003). Yoo’s draft-dodging scandal demonstrates another version of stardom’s fluid boundaries and instabilities in the light of Othering processes, and it shows that many people felt the nation’s security was at stake when a national pop icon evaded its duties as a Korean citizen. The fact that military service conscription has become a central battleground on which male celebrities (and not only celebrities) are tested against the public’s notions of patriotism hints at the importance of military service in the specific historical and political context of South Korea. As Moon Seungsook argues, military service has been a “pivotal component in the state’s mobilization of gendered nationals and the emergence of citizenship in the aftermath of militarized modernity” (Moon, 2005, 9). In this sense, it might not be an exaggeration to view Korean military service as a collective ritual for young men who have to strengthen their bodies and “national minds” to be initiated not only as socially accepted Korean citizens but also as virtuous and respected family fathers, sons, husbands, and company workers. What can be read in the media stories of Steve Yoo and others as a betrayal and a serious assault on the core of Korean national identity is also a heavy attack on the “ideology of patriarchy” (Tsai, 2007, 146) with its principles of patrilineal family structure, patrilocality, filial piety, and heterosexual masculinity. Heterosexuality is a cornerstone of nationhood that underpinned people’s anger over the homophobic notion of Jaebeom’s scandalized message. Mainstream media plays a crucial role in stabilizing and celebrating the notion of militarized masculinity. A popular format, The Youth Report, a primetime weekly TV variety show designed to promote positive images of the military among the public by bringing together conscripts, their mothers and girlfriends, as well as celebrities, combined the powerful mother-son bond with patriotic images of motherhood, filial piety, and heterosexual romance (Moon, 2006). How deeply the military conscription system penetrates the awareness and formal structure of idol pop entertainment can also be seen from the many pop careers being cut off or suspended during service period as well as from the numerous chat boards and fan pages that enlist the names, photos, and service periods of their conscripted stars or from the farewell parties fan clubs organize before their beloved male idol is

Asymmetries of Mobility  213 sent off to a boot camp. Since the conscripted singer has to fulfill an average service period of about two years, mostly far away from his home, his relatives, and friends, it is impossible for him to keep up with a professional pop career during that time and unlikely to resume it afterwards. Talent agencies have to consider this aspect when recruiting male trainees. Since military service can be postponed up to seven to nine years and must be started by the age of 30, most male idols enter the military after the contract with their management company has expired. For example, JYP Entertainment has agreed upon an average contract period of seven years with its artists. After that period, male artists are left to fulfill military service or to go their own professional ways, and the company has a chance to re-contract those who are most profitable under new conditions. Compulsory military service impacts the life cycle of male artists. It is definitely a significant caesura in successful careers that businessmen in the music industry and government officials estimate it to be a severe impediment to the nation’s economic improvement and to its efforts to foster the Korean Wave in the Asian region. In order to maintain and strengthen the export-oriented production and distribution of competitive cultural content, strategic planning discussions have repeatedly addressed the option of exempting male celebrities from compulsory military service (Cho, 2005; Allkpop, 2008; Joongang Daily, 2010b).14 Conspicuously, these discussions (among state officials and industry representatives) neither resulted in any visible policy changes and law amendments nor instigated a broader public debate. This was due to the authorities’ fear over amplifying inequities in the conscription system and thus inflaming people’s anger over such a sensitive topic. The conflict around Steve Yoo reveals that military service conscription marks a nodal point between (foreign) citizenship and national belonging. This becomes critical with emigrants, such as ethnic Koreans with foreign citizenship who are bound to their home country by profession or patriotism. Military service conscription serves as a yardstick for good citizenship and for defining those who are authentically Korean; the notion of citizenship is no longer defined in legal terms alone, but it is also shaped by components of primordialism. Blood-relatedness and national belonging are key principles in the nationalist rhetoric of Korean military discourse. Their increased resonance in the public indicates a shifted boundary between being Korean and being non-Korean that led people and media not only to scandalize formerly celebrated citizens, such as Yoo, but also to celebrate those men who voluntarily attend the Korean military. Moon mentions the curious example of soldiers from Korean immigrant communities who, despite being foreign citizens, voluntarily return to Korea to fulfill, in a patriotic act, their martial duty as Korean men. This is an example of patriotism that “serves to rekindle the powerful myth of the primordial Korean nation […] and transcends the geographical location of one’s permanent residence or the legal status of citizenship” (Moon, 2006, 24).

214  Complicating K-Pop Thus far, the discussion has pointed out that the contentious role of Korean American immigrant artists, as examples of limited and distorted mobility in the realm of Korean popular culture, must be understood in the broader context of political and cultural change in South Korea. Patriotism (with its derivatives ethnic nationalism, minjok, kungmin) and anti-­American sentiment (as an effect of imperialistic politics, militarized modernity, and global competition) are the revitalized and overlapping lines that shape the conjuncture of cultural globalization in South Korea in the first decade of the new millennium. If conjuncture is understood, in citing Stuart Hall, as “the complex historically specific terrain of a crisis which affects—but in uneven ways—a specific national-social formation as a whole” (quoted in Grossberg, 2010, 41), and Korean society is supposed to be struggling over modernity and globalization in a “continuous state of emergency,” popular sites of mass mobilization and public discontent, as can be found in gossiplike media stories around immigrant K-Pop stars, are the articulations of such conjuncture, or better, of its ruptured, conflictual, contradictory, and contested nature. What has to be taken into consideration as another component that intersects and transforms this conjuncture by accelerating the double forces of patriotic and anti-American sentiments is the organizing principle of the Internet as a core digital technology for Korea’s vibrant cyberculture.

Cyberculture At this point, it may suffice to mention the enormous significance that online networks and cyber communities have gained in shaping today’s pop fan culture in Korea. Moreover, netizens have emerged as a powerful agent in influencing the pop music business. The specific dynamics of the public controversy around Park Jaebeom exemplify the empowerment of the netizen in a two-fold manner. In the first stage, anti-fans (provoked by Jaebeom’s comments) had claimed and constituted the public sphere in order to direct their anger toward the pop star and his company. In the second stage, fans reclaimed it through activities in support of their idol star, against anti-fans, and against the management company. Across the ­division and polarization of the public sphere into fans and anti-fans, the management company was, either way, subject to strong criticism. The pressure was so high that the company had to accept the elimination of one of its most profitable faces from its roster and renegotiate its relationship with its fans. The compromising effect of netizens’ increased power over entertainment agencies indicates a substantial shift in the industry’s perception of the consumer and re-organizes the relationship between fans and agencies. In the course of the Jaebeom controversy, the critical debate on Internet fandom stressed the enormous influence of online networks that are supposed to affect social and personal life strongly and quickly. It further

Asymmetries of Mobility  215 suggests that a substantial shift in the relationship between stars and fans has also taken place. The following, somewhat polemic, remark by a commentator illustrates this: While attacks against pop stars during the early days of the Internet were largely intended to mitigate the sense of relative deprivation in reality, the ideology behind the attacks has now entered into a new phase. The powerful teenagers want to create a world and its avatars [stars] in accordance with their design. Internet comments are no longer “opinions” but the Creator’s “orders.” In view of the innate nature of both components, the Internet and teenagers, the cycle of change and duration of popular tastes will grow shorter. After all, popular culture of our time has become a domain of unpredictable changes. (Kim, 2010b) The underlying problem addressed in this creator-avatar metaphor is that of cyber bullying. Although not unique to Korea, cyber bullying has emerged as a flip side to online consumer empowerment. Unique to Korea, however, seem to be the existence and huge popularity of “anti-sites,” the key location where cyber bullying takes place. Kim Hyunhee classifies anti-sites as one of three types of cyber consumer movements (next to information providers and online consumer groups). She points to the empowering function of anti-sites that enable users to claim consumer rights and to express complaints and resistance to certain companies and products (Kim, 2003). Since 1999, when the first anti-site in Korea (called Group of People Who Would Like to Quit Goldbank) was established, anti-sites have proliferated and now embrace a wide range of issues, including criticism against politicians, celebrities, and pop idols. The controversies around Jaebeom and Tablo, along with the significance of the involved anti-sites, demonstrate how far cyber bullying has emerged as a serious social problem in Korea; how the circulation of news, rumors, and malicious messages accelerate, proliferate and eventually lead to irreversible consequences; and how social pressure is produced and imposed on stars and celebrities. This becomes even more relevant when considering the fact that South Korea has the highest suicide rate among OECD countries, and a comparatively high percentage of suicides among celebrities.15 In 2008, the suicide of Ch’oe Chin-Sil, a famous movie and TV drama actress, instigated a debate in the National Assembly over cyber bullying and misinformation on the Internet. As a result, an amendment to the Act on the Promotion of Information and Communications Network Utilization and User Protection went into effect in April 2009, which made Korea the first country to implement the real name registration system. This system requires that websites with more than 100,000 visitors per day need to let their users enter their national registration number before they can post comments on message boards and chat rooms. This regulative act had some exclusive effects, for example on people without a

216  Complicating K-Pop registration number, such as foreigners and users outside the country, and on international website operators who are not able or not willing to disclose personal user information.16 In Tablo’s case, the real name system helped the police to identify those bloggers who pulled the strings in the online defamation campaign. Since the owner of the anti-Tablo site turned out to be a U.S. citizen who had entered the stolen registration number of a Korean citizen, the case showed that this system hardly evades cyber bullying but generates new forms of criminalization. In this section, I have probed the regulating forces that disrupt and interfere with the transnational flow of immigrant stars, by taking Korean American K-Pop stars as a site of conflict. I explained their ambiguous role in Korean society through the lens of media stories around their scandalization, and I attempted to locate their specific meaning within a broader socio-political context. In delineating three trajectories in Korean society, that of patriotism, anti-American sentiment, and cyberculture, I attempted to construct the conjuncture (although in a sketch) that shapes cultural life and the notion of globalization in contemporary South Korea. The controversial role of those immigrant pop idols, the mechanism of their downfall, and their transformation from a role model to a public threat must be understood as a result of and as an entanglement, convergence, and interference with this conjuncture. The following section seeks to understand how personal lives are lived out in this conjuncture. In tracing the biographical routes and experiences of one K-Pop idol who has continuously moved between the U.S. and Korea, the section highlights aspects of cultural difference and migratory transformation.17 Work That Migrant Body!

Brian Joo and the Koreanizing/Othering Machine of K-Pop I met Brian Joo on a sunny day in December. The place he chose for our appointment was a café in Itaewon, a district in Seoul that cannot better symbolize South Korea’s problematic relationship with the U.S.. With the Yongsan Garrison nearby, the largest U.S. Army base in the country, Itaewon has evolved into a notorious resident, shopping, and nightlife area for U.S. soldiers and civilians that, over the time, has also become attractive to other expatriates and tourists. With its high and mixed immigrant population, its bars, night clubs, and brothels, Itaewon is a heterotopic foreigner entertainment enclave in the middle of Seoul. It is South Korea’s contact zone with foreign cultures, a reminder of America’s physical presence in Korea, a gateway for American pop culture, a space of social conflict with high criminalization and prostitution rates, and a place that signifies the freedom and the decadence of Western culture that many Koreans consider with mixed feelings. We sat in a café frequented by affluent city dwellers and Korean high-class families who enjoyed their lunch and coffee in a stylish

Asymmetries of Mobility  217 cosmopolitan atmosphere. The café provides its own car parking service and sells Mediterranean cuisine, French pastries, German baked goods, and Italian ice cream. Light classical music fills the air. Brian Joo is a thirty-three-year-old veteran in Korea’s fast-paced music business and a counter example to all one-hit wonders and short-lived careers in idol pop. His facial and bodily appearance seems ageless and did not resemble the prominent masculinity that emerged from recent Korean pop cultural trends (Jung, 2011). Neither was he the typical Yonsama-like “flower beauty man” (kkonminam) or the Rain “like cute though ­muscled torso male idol.” Nevertheless, he can be called an ŏmch’ina, a well-­ mannered, nice-looking, modest, and talented singer and actor who, despite his fifteen-year career, still ranks among the top selling acts whenever he releases an album. As a Korean American artist, he represents K-Pop’s globalization agenda, and he experienced the ups and downs in show business from the angle of an overseas returnee, a “salmon” at the crossroads of American and Korean culture. Born in California, he moved with his parents and his older brother to the East Coast and spent his childhood and high-school years in New Jersey. He debuted in 1999 as a singer and rapper of the R&B duo Fly to the Sky under SM Entertainment and started his solo career in 2006. Although being a pop idol has certainly trained him as a conversationalist, I am surprised that his talk is not flat, calculated, and distanced (professional in a bad sense) but personal, direct, and down to earth. He frankly talks about his upbringing in the U.S., how he had to adhere to Korean customs, and had to speak Korean with his parents. He talks about his musical socialization with American pop music and admiration for Michael Jackson in particular, how he encountered Korean pop groups, such as Seo Taiji, Deux, and Solid, through his teenage girlfriend’s cousin who brought CDs from Korea. He talks about his initial dream of becoming a musical theater actor on Broadway. He accidentally stumbled into K-Pop with a friend in New York City who signed him up for an audition with Brothers Entertainment without his knowledge. This casting company, a stepping stone for Korean Americans on their way into the Korean music business signed him and later helped him to get an audition and a contract with SM Entertainment. In the end, it was racism in the U.S. that pushed him to pursue a career in Korea. In a later magazine interview, he put it in these words: “When I started off, I realized there was so much racism and prejudice in the States that the U.S. market wasn’t ready for an Asian artist. My vocal trainer at the time was trying to get me a deal, but every label was like, ‘Nah, we’re looking for a black or white artist.’ So I didn’t have a choice” (KoreAm, 2011). After he finished high school, he came to Korea and had six months of training before he debuted with Fly to the Sky, which the music company planned as the first group to break out from the domain of pop idol boy and girl groups. “They wanted us to become an R&B ballad, a ‘group that can actually sing’-type of group” (Brian Joo, personal communication,

218  Complicating K-Pop December 6, 2010). The fact that he was a native English speaker seemed to be very important to the company in terms of future marketing plans. Even though there were some kyop’os in the K-Pop market there weren’t that many kyop’os who spoke English fluently. So that was where they were really happy about that; they saw me and even before I was contracted. “Ok you speak English very well, so that will be a helpful thing for us when we travel internationally for Fly to the Sky, because one member speaks fluent Korean, one member speaks fluent English.” So that was, I guess, a new thing for them. (Brian Joo, personal communication, December 6, 2010) Although the duo never expanded into foreign markets under SM Entertainment, Brian’s kyop’o-status helped to shape the company’s image as a global player in the domestic market. What are the problems, cultural gaps, and transformations a foreign idol aspirant at a young age (Brian was seventeen when he came to Korea) has to cope with when entering the Korean idol industry? Brian’s narrative reveals three aspects of transformation that can be generalized as key subjects around which disciplinary mechanisms in the Korean idol system are organized. Everyone needs to fulfill these requirements to become a pop idol in Korea, but to foreigners they seem more difficult. They appear as cultural barriers and require a process of cultural adjustment to overcome, or as Brian puts it, a “Koreanizing process.” First is Korean language ability. Although Brian spoke Korean with his parents at home, he concedes that his skills were not sufficient for professional entertainment. During the audition, he was asked how well he spoke Korean, “because as kyop’o in this country they want you to speak Korean somewhat. But my Korean at that time was pretty bad, so speech-wise I couldn’t really do it” (Brian Joo, personal communication, December 6, 2010). Hence, Korean language training became part of his regular training. Second, the image of a pop idol is shaped by the imperatives of a capitalist work ethic. “Study/Work hard!” (yŏlsimhi kongbuhae/irhae!) is the prevalent mantra in education- and service-related segments of Korean society (directed to everyone from elementary students to company workers). It has also been implemented in the idol system, as can best be grasped by viewing the rigorous schedule trainees have before they are selected as debutants. Brian gives an impression of the daily routine during his training period: It wasn’t easy. I’d to wake up at seven o’clock in the morning; sometimes I couldn’t even eat breakfast because I was so tired that I didn’t really want to eat. I just want to go to practice. I was at the studio by eight, and in first two hours, we did dance practice, and then probably had a little bit of lunch, and then had two more hours of dance practice, then back to the office for an hour of vocal training, and an hour of speech training. For me, I had to learn how to speak Korean,

Asymmetries of Mobility  219 not like really acting, but how to present myself in front of the camera in Korean. We finished up with a little more dance practice. We had two different dance instructors, one was more choreography, one was more b-boy, freestyle. Then we’d meet a songwriter at night, and he’d hear us sing to see what kind of style we had. So that was the everyday thing; it was pretty much from seven in the morning, and I’d be out of the house until ten or eleven at night. And even when we came home—even though we were tired, we were young, we knew we had to practice, so we went home, took a shower, and practiced again at home, then went to sleep at two o’clock in the morning, and then went back to work again in the morning. (Brian Joo, personal communication, December 6, 2010) A fourteen-hour-day, as Brian describes here, is not unusual for Korean teenagers who have a similarly packed schedule during their high-school years. Although the entertainment sector is generally a competitive field, and painstaking idol training puts pressure on Korean teenagers, it seems obvious that kids who have experienced a different educational system and mentality with less enduring and thorough study time have to make more of an effort to adapt to the Korean learning culture. The third aspect broadly refers to Neo-Confucian principles, such as filial piety (hyo 효/孝) and loyalty (ch’ung 충/忠), and in particular, to the role of paternalistic leadership in Korean business companies. Principles of hierarchy and seniority have permeated many segments of Korean daily life, among them business companies, in which the relationship between employer and employees and among coworkers is defined by hierarchy and age. Brian recalls the behavior of young employees, who are supposed to show respect and loyalty to their bosses and to their older coworkers, as the major difference from American business culture and as the biggest problem with which he had to cope. For me it was kind of difficult because they [the seniors] were like “this guy has only been working in this company for three months, I have been here for a year or two, and he is talking to me like I am his child or whatever.” I didn’t really get into that in the beginning, but then I got used to it, the whole Korean lifestyle. […] In America, even if somebody is older than you, you can goof off, make funny jokes, and stuff like that. Here, when someone is older than you, they tell you because he is older, you shouldn’t say this. You have to respect that person. But in America, it’s not about respect. If you’re comfortable around a person and he’s your friend, you’re allowed to say whatever. That was hard for me in the beginning too because I’d always say something like “What?” [They’d say] “you shouldn’t say that in front of him, he is older than you” or “she is older than you.” I’d say “Oh, I am sorry, I didn’t know.” So you slowly learn; it’s a learning process. (Brian Joo, personal communication, December 6, 2010)

220  Complicating K-Pop He stresses the relational principle in defining one’s social status as a key characteristic of Korean culture. The relation between hubae (junior colleague) and sŏnbae (senior colleague) can complicate the age hierarchy, for it is not necessarily defined by age but by the year one entered the company (or the university). […] The culture is very different. You know in Korea you have the sŏnbae, hubae, you got the hyŏng [older brother], nuna [older sister], but in America you don’t have that, you know? So those kinds of things, even those little things are very important, for example, I have cousins and friends in America who come to Korea and they still don’t get that. Why do I have to treat somebody called the sŏnbae more respectfully? Even if they are the same age, since he is a sŏnbae, you have to treat him like a sŏnbae. In the beginning, it was hard for me to understand that but now my body is used to the whole life. It’s not like I brainwashed myself but now I am used to it. (Brian Joo, personal communication, December 6, 2010, emphasis added) Strikingly, he says “now my body is used to the whole life” to describe the transformative process. It makes clear that he perceives this cultural gap so fundamentally that one cannot bridge it easily. He had to internalize these new behavioral codes over many years. He had to inscribe them into his body as a set of unconscious rules in order to avoid conflicts with other staff members in the company. Brian’s story pays attention to a more general aspect, which renders a systemic obstacle for Korean Americans who work in Korean companies. Although Brian had a Korean upbringing within his family and was thus familiar with filial piety and loyalty to elders, he could not simply translate it into a professional business context. “I was calling my brother hyŏng, but sŏnbae, hubae, I wasn’t really familiar with it. I learned that here” (Brian Joo, personal communication, December 6, 2010, emphasis added). Clearly, the rules of corporate business culture in Korea are different from that of family life. Furthermore, most Korean Americans who enter Korea’s job market after graduation from high school, college, or university in the U.S., face the disadvantage of being cut off from the cultural practice of closing business-oriented relational ties, which many Koreans already start to spin during school days. Finally, it is interesting to see how the adoption of new behavioral rules, conversational skills, and ways of thinking, the Koreanizing process, has given him the flexibility to switch smoothly between two cultures, and interfered and altered his former attitude toward respecting elders. Since I have been here for 12 years, I know what it is to be Americanized, and I know what it is to be Koreanized. So when I am with my Korean friends, hyŏngs, and nunas, I know how to act around them. And when I am with my American friends, I am just more free

Asymmetries of Mobility  221 and open. I can switch very easily, but the one bad thing is when I was in America I didn’t really make anyone call me hyŏng or oppa or have younger people respect older people. But now, since I have been in Korea so long, I go back home and I see the young Koreans and then they call me by my first name, like “Hey Brian!” And I say, “How old are you?” They say “I am 17.” I ask “You know how old I am [but you still say] hey.” You know? I was not that way before, but after living in this country for a long time, it becomes a part of you. (Brian Joo, personal communication, December 6, 2010, emphasis added) Following Brian’s illustrations, Korean language skills, hard work ethic, and the hierarchical and relational value system in corporate business culture are inherent features and requirements that everyone who pursues a career in the K-Pop idol system needs to conform to, yet these are sources of alienation for immigrant artists. Brian’s kyop’o status and his role as a celebrity and cultural broker, as someone who is home in American and Korean culture, has been capitalized on by his music company but also by mainstream media. Most significantly, he appeared as the host of the TV show Homey Korea on Arirang TV, a Korean broadcaster airing to a worldwide English speaking audience. In the show, which was designed to introduce Korean culture to foreigners, he literally appears in the role of a cultural translator, as he introduces, explains, and discusses Korean traditional customs, daily life situations, and phrases with his American friend and TV counterpart. Being Koreanized does not exempt him from becoming a target of discrimination. The Othering dynamics, as we have seen with other pop idols, inundated him around 2002 when anti-American sentiment in the Korean public rapidly surged due to the killing of two teenage girls by a U.S. military tank. Brian recalls the situation and the controversy he sparked. That was a big issue where Koreans told American soldiers to leave Korea, a huge controversy, and I was on a radio program one time and that came up. And of course, since I am from America the DJ at that time was asking me questions, like “how do you feel about that situation?” And I told my honest truth from my heart; I wasn’t taking the American side, and I wasn’t taking Korean side. At that time Korea was mad at America, and I said, “You know what? I do feel even though the guys accidentally killed those two girls you shouldn’t blame one nation for two people’s accident. They should take the blame; they’re responsible for what they did. But because of those two people you can’t hate the whole country. You know?” After I said that—it was a live program—we got emails real time saying, “go back to America,” “we hate you,” “kill yourself”‘ blablabla. It was hard. For six months, I was getting that. Luckily, I stayed in Korea, I fought it through, but it

222  Complicating K-Pop showed me a lot. I have matured from that because I was thinking you do have to be careful what you say in this country. And just because you’re from another country people aren’t gonna treat you like a god, like “ah, you’re special, you’re from America.” No, they just wait and wait until you make one mistake so they can just put you down. [...] If you are not fully Korean, you have to be careful what you say. In America, you have freedom of speech, you can say curse words on TV by accident and people will still like you. Here, it is like you say one thing wrong everyone is going to hate you. That’s the big difference. (Brian Joo, personal communication, December 6, 2010, emphasis added) Brian’s narrative demonstrates, once more, the sweeping forces of patriotism and anti-American sentiment, which leaves the Korean public highly sensitive to issues of Korean nationhood and to affective responses against Korean American celebrities. Alerted by his putatively counter-nationalistic utterances, the public’s switch-over from admiring him as a K-Pop idol to stigmatizing him as a foreigner was only possible through mobilizing a primordial essentialist notion of ethnic identity. But what does it mean to be fully Korean, as Brian puts it? Kim has analyzed the migratory dynamics of young Korean Americans who become cultural foreigners in their ethnic homeland “for having a ‘Korean face’ but lacking facility in the Korean language and history, Confucian norms, and styles of dress and comportment” (Kim, 2009, 307). Brian’s case is remarkable, since he shares all these traits, be it blood-based Korean ethnicity or hard-trained language and behavioral skills. His transformative processes toward being a cultural insider were successful enough to make him a K-Pop idol but not sufficient enough to become fully Korean. His U.S. citizenship and birthplace are not the decisive disqualifying features in defining Korean identity (as also the existence of voluntary immigrant conscripts proves). Rather, it is the nationalist ideology that is indispensably entwined with the construction of Koreanness. Yet, the nationalist ideology is never stable and, although it has taken different forms during Korea’s modern history, it has profoundly re-engaged with U.S. critical attitudes under the liberal governments in the 2000s, and it has permeated into broad anti-American sentiment in Korea’s society. In this sense, being fully Korean means being against everything American. Korean Americans are caught in a discursive crossfire, exposing society’s inner conflict by negotiating both Korean and American identity. Brian Joo is an outstanding example for the Koreanizing Othering dialectics in K-Pop. He is most probably the first Korean American who has sustained such a longstanding career and still remains an active and successful singer in the idol pop business. Preconditions for his success were two entangled aspects: the capitalization of his kyop’o status by emphasizing his foreignness (selling the Other) and overcoming his foreigner status by transforming into an authentic Korean (Koreanizing). The K-Pop system,

Asymmetries of Mobility  223 in particular the training system, is a disciplining machine that shapes, controls, and manages the bodily and mental resources of its teenage trainees. The production of “docile bodies” (Foucault, 1995, 135) adds another notion when immigrant artists enter the system. It becomes a place where immigrants acquire, adopt, and internalize certain skills and values that are (becoming) representative of Korean culture. According to Brian’s experiences, Korean language skills, a hard work ethic, and Neo-Confucian infiltrated business norms are key features for disciplining, transforming, and Koreanizing the migrant body. Despite its transformative efforts, K-Pop remains the public arena where the Othering dynamics do not disappear but erupt in a massive public outcry drenched in nationalistic fervor. Hence, Brian Joo embodies a form of double Othering in a dialectical sense, as someone who initially had to strive to become the Other (full Korean) while being functionalized and at times reminded by the Korean public and media that he is their Other (American). This mechanism corresponds to the double alienation of Asian Americans (as neither real Asian nor real American) and must be located within the broader discourse of migration and racial studies. For that matter, Asian Americans in the U.S. face the problem of being racially stereotyped as Asians and marginalized as “inauthentic Americans” (Kim, 2009, 306), either positively as a model minority, or, more often, negatively as “forever foreigners” (Tuan, 1998), but they are labeled as cultural foreigners in their ethnic homelands. Kim has learned that young Korean Americans who travel to Korea define homeland “as the place of their ethnic roots and ancestors but not necessarily as a place of cultural familiarity and belonging” (Kim, 2009, 321). As a result of their homeland trips and the cultural differences encountered, they finally identify the U.S. as the place where they feel more at home. Brian Joo, however, admits that after living and working in Korea for more than twelve years, Korea has become his home, the place where he feels comfortable. Meanwhile, he has learned how to cope with public threats, stereotyping, and discrimination; he has acquired a soft sensorium for possible cultural conflicts, and he knows how to behave, what to say, and what not to say in order to evade public anger. Caution and self-censorship are the leading principles of this inbuilt security system of his kyop’o celebrity identity. Together with the Othering dynamics and moments of identity crisis that Brian experienced during his career, and despite his familiarity with Korean culture, they seem to qualify him as a “marginalized cosmopolitan” (Park, 2004, 134) who at times may feel alienated or at least suspicious of American and Korean cultures. As Ulf Hannerz states, “The cosmopolitan may embrace the alien culture, but he does not become committed to it. All the time he knows where the exit is” (Hannerz, 1996, 104). In this sense, Brian (and many of his Korean American colleagues) can be called cosmopolitan, but because he has lived through his personal and cultural struggles with Koreans’ patriotric and anti-American sentiments he has demonstrated what it takes not to choose the exit.

224  Complicating K-Pop Conclusion: Nourishing and Violating the National Imaginary This chapter has probed the multiple forces that organize, control, and distort the transnational flow of artists in Korean idol pop production. It has revealed that immigrant pop idols, and in particular, Korean Americans, have evolved as the most visible markers of the globalization efforts in Korea’s entertainment and music industry. Since production companies and talent agencies have gained expertise in and employed new strategies (e.g., the localization strategy) for capitalizing on immigrant artists for domestic and foreign markets, immigrant pop idols signify a substantial shift in the production of Korean pop music. At the same time, as they represent a transformed ethnoscape often along with a celebratory notion of multiculturalism in Korea’s society, their role as foreign nationals or cultural foreigners serve as popular angles for challenging and re-negotiating the borderline between Korean and foreign identity. In taking a critical look into the formation of idol production and in paying attention to the ambivalent role of Korean Americans, this chapter has demonstrated how the production of ethnicity and hybridity in K-Pop has yielded new forms of exclusion, asymmetries, and Othering dynamics. As a conclusion to this chapter, I want to emphasize four aspects that seem characteristic of the current state of K-Pop’s transnational agenda and connect the mobility discourse of immigrant artists to the production of the national imaginary. The first point, which forms the overall argument of the chapter, asserts that immigrant artists who were absorbed by the Korean entertainment industry have to conform to the national imaginary, which is constructed and nourished by K-Pop. However, K-Pop itself must be regarded as a symbolic regime composed of discursive, visual, and aural strategies. The artists have to transform themselves into real or authentic Koreans by accepting, adopting, and internalizing (Koreanizing) the cultural codes and the inherent nationalistic ideology of modernization and globalization in Korea. The example of Brian Joo demonstrates how the entertainment industry helps inscribe this ideology into bodies and makes them docile and how it organizes and shapes cultural values, aesthetic ideals, and bodily practices. Language skills, capitalistic work ethics, and Neo-Confucian norms are the cultural pillars of a K-Pop career and are complementary to more publicly essentialized features, such as Korean ethnicity and nationality. As the existence of pop idols who are ethnically non-Korean foreign nationals proves, Korean ethnicity and nationality are no longer mandatory features in pursuing a pop career in Korea, thus signaling a tremendous shift away from the ethnical closeness and parochialism of pre-1990s pop music in Korea. Nevertheless, next to this appropriation of cultural values, which have been described as subject to migratory transformations, national belonging (as the expressive side of national ideology) has remained (and probably intensified) as a precondition for becoming a pop idol. The public

Asymmetries of Mobility  225 scandals around Korean American artists have shown that the dynamics of inclusion and exclusion are rooted in the question of national belonging and in those cultural codes that are tied to the national imaginary. If pop stars violate these codes, they become excluded from the community—be it the boy group, the management company, the fan community, the Korean public, or the Korean nation-state. All of these apply to Park Jaebeom. The immigrant artist serves as a prominent site where Self and Othering dynamics are highly effective. Second, ethnicity functions as a promoter and a barrier in the K-Pop business. The existence of Chinese pop idols in K-Pop proves the industry’s relative openness to foreigners. Korean companies utilize their ethnic foreignness in order to present themselves as global players, and they symbolize Korea’s cultural power and aspiration of becoming a hegemonic force in the Asian region. In a similar vein, the celebration of so-called multicultural (or mixed-race) stars seeks to portray the Korean nation as a multicultural society and, thus, as tolerant and open-minded toward foreigners. The selection and representation of immigrant singers, however, evinces the systemic asymmetry of the transnational flow into Korea’s entertainment industry, which is ethnically biased toward people with Asian phenotypes. Ethnicity is a barrier to all those who do not conform to the industry’s identity politics, which are mainly based on skin color hierarchy and stereotyping of the Asian face. This is the reason immigrant singers are either ethnic overseas Koreans (kyop’os) or ethnic foreigners from East or Southeast Asian regions (China, Philippines, Thailand, etc.). In idol pop, they are, for example, never of Caucasian or African ethnicity. The black/white asymmetry, along with the marginalization of black singers, becomes clearly visible among multicultural stars. Those of African ancestry find themselves mostly trapped in subaltern positions within the musical field. It is possible to argue that the idol pop system functions as a Koreanizing machine that transforms immigrant teenagers into representatives of specific economic and political interests, leaving little space for any criticism against the national imaginary. In this sense, the disjuncture between the representation of immigrants in K-Pop and the situation of immigrant people in Korea remains most conspicuous. Migrant celebrities do not represent migrant interests. As they contribute to the national imaginary that presents Korea as a globalized country, they do not speak as foreigners but as Koreans. The reason for this voicelessness may also lie in the class issue, since these artists derive mostly from urban middle-class or elite families in their home countries. While they raise interest in K-Pop and Korean culture in their home countries (e.g., Nichkhun in Thailand), there is no visible effect on the situation of immigrant workers (e.g., from Thailand). Third, the K-Pop industry has involved in the production of hybridity, as entertainment companies benefit from capitalizing and promoting Korean Americans as global icons and cultural brokers. Media scandals around Korean American pop singers have shown that K-Pop is the arena

226  Complicating K-Pop in which the industry’s interests can clash with the nationalistic interests of the Korean public and where the transnational mobility of pop idols can be quickly disrupted. In this sense, K-Pop works as an Othering machine. The Jaebeom controversy has made clear that its causes and dynamics cannot be fully understood within the explanatory frame of the musical field. Instead, it must be seen as a result of specific socio-political forces embedded within a wider conjuncture of historical trajectories that were most effective in the first decade of the new millennium. This chapter has identified the three most substantial socio-political forces. Patriotism (or ethnic nationalism), anti-American sentiment, and cyberculture build the intersecting and entangled strands of this conjuncture that redefines the conditions under which the national imaginary needs to be protected from external threats. It is the interplay of these wider structural forces that orchestrates the mechanisms of inclusion and exclusion and that renegotiates the boundaries between words that may be spoken (or things that may be done) and words/actions that are inacceptable within the social community. The media stories around scandalized Korean American pop idols have demonstrated that seemingly harmless utterances can instantly precipitate public uproars. These outbursts symptomatically testify to the continuous state of emergency and high alert in which Korean people are living. Here, it can be added that Korea’s gendered patriotism, in the form of militarized masculinity, can explain the asymmetrical perception of Jaebeom’s nation-scorning comment. The public discourse in Korea has constituted a cultural difference in the use and reception of the statement “X is gay.” This sentence, although it is evidently a discriminatory one, has become a widespread youth cultural slang in the U.S. and is mostly used to express dislike about anything. However, in Korea it has been grasped first as a homophobic notion. Inasmuch as homosexuality in Korea is largely a social taboo and hardly visible in public spaces, this sentence must be considered a serious assault on the concept of nationhood, which is tightly bound to the notion of heterosexual masculinity. Finally, in taking the immigrant pop idol as the prime site of enquiry, this chapter has revealed that stardom must not be seen as a mere result of individual achievement (and fandom must not be seen as the expression of a pathologic mass). Instead of being alienated, passive, and manipulated by a superior music industry, the Jaebeom controversy shows that music companies, stars, and fans maintain a close and reciprocal relationship. That means the music company is not the dominant agent in that game but has to constantly negotiate and fight in power relationships with other parties. This alludes to the existence and vibrant activities of many fan clubs in Korea that sometimes, despite being part of the talent agency and thus structurally and financially dependent from the company, create their own policies and resistant practices to protect the idol from unduly oppressive management. Beyond that, cyberculture and netizens have emerged as powerful agents in influencing the pop music business. The Jaebeom controversy has shown how netizens claim and constitute the public sphere, how the sphere becomes polarized by fans

Asymmetries of Mobility  227 reclaiming it through counter-protest, and how the circulation of rumors and malicious messages accelerate, proliferate, and eventually lead to irreversible consequences. As a downside of Korea’s vibrant digital economy, cyber bullying has evolved as an influential factor in producing and imposing social pressure on stars and celebrities and is thus able to reshape the constituents of stardom by redirecting, distorting, or even destroying individual careers.

Notes 1. This well-known quote is taken from a personal interview with a Korean ­American musician who mentioned it as his life motto and daily motivation when responding to my question as to which country he feels most comfortable in when it comes to working conditions. 2. The Korean term kyop’o (교포) literally means “a native or descendant Korean residing abroad.” 3. Economic growth and demographic changes were the general pull factors for overseas Koreans and foreign workers to come to Korea’s job market. This was reflected by the open door policy of the Kim Young-Sam administration that started to recognize and promote the rights and interests of Koreans living abroad with the Overseas Koreans Foundation Bill in 1997. Since that time, several amendments have been made to further simplify visa regulations and to solve questions of dual citizenship and gender equality for certain immigrant groups. As of 2010, the Nationality Law Amendment grants “talented” foreign nationals in four key sectors (science, business, culture, and sports) Korean citizenship while retaining their existing nationality (Lee, 2010). Furthermore, the institutionalized racialism in the American entertainment business (Yu Danico, 2011) that systematically excludes members of ethnic minorities, or at least renders their career opportunities in mainstream segments extremely difficult, has served as a strong push factor for young Korean American talent to pursue a profession in Korea. 4. Kyeyoung Park defines the “1.5 generation” Korean Americans “as people of Korean descent, who came to the U.S. as minors (infants, children or adolescents) or are U.S.-born, and who practice aspects of biculturalism/multiculturalism involving Korean and American cultures, often with conflict” (Park, 2004, 133). 5. The terms honhyŏl (literally “impure blood”) and sunyŏl (“pure blood”) are widely used to distinguish foreigners from Koreans. It stands at the core of Korea’s mono-ethnic and pure-blood ideology. Korean NGOs and the United Nation’s Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD, 2007) raised this as a principal concern, i.e., the use of these concepts implies notions of ethnic superiority, racial discrimination, and human rights violation. They are thus inappropriate when trying to improve the situation of migrants and represent the realities of Korea’s multi-ethnic society. The government discarded both terms from its official vocabulary and has, instead, been promoting the term t’amunhwa (“multi-cultural”) to give more emphasis to the notion of mutual exchange with immigrants. The new term is not without controversy, as can be seen in the governmental discourse of the “multicultural family” retaining traditional family values, such as patriarchy and reproduction (Kim, 2007a).

228  Complicating K-Pop 6. The song is written by Yoon Mi-Rae and was released on her third album T Vol. 3 – Yoon Mi Rae, Fantom Entertainment. 7. Evidence of this point may arise from the fact that most immigrant singers in K-Pop are deployed for up-tempo dance pop songs, whereas the ballad genre, with its focus on vocal artistry, is still mainly reserved for Korean singers. Furthermore, techniques of vocal inflection tied to traditional music genres and ideologies of Korean sentiment, as discussed in Chapter 6, contribute to this understanding. Remarkable in this context is also the case of California-based African American female singer Nathalie White alias Pumashock who gained some media attention in 2010 through her online released cover version of a hit song by Korean girl group Girls Generation. She was invited to a TV variety show in Korea where she sang the song in well-pronounced Korean language, giving the audience a glimpse of how a black singer would perform a Korean song. Although she was an exceptional case, it became quickly evident that she represents the exotic Other of Korean society and that the realities of K-Pop seem far from including black singers. This was even more emphasized in one ensuing TV commercial for instant coffee where she was portrayed as an exotic, singing, dancing, coffee-drinking African woman. 8. This quote from an online fan blog (Alive Not Dead, 2009) alludes to Korean boy group 2PM and its first studio album title 1:59. 9. Park Jaebeom is a third generation Korean American rapper and dancer born and raised in the U.S. where he auditioned for the U.S. branch of JYP Entertainment. He was sent to Korea and was trained for four years until he made his debut in 2008 as the leader of boy group 2PM. 10. The word minjok 민족 historically derives from the Japanese word minzoku 民族, a neologism coined in Meiji, Japan. It adopted the notion of the German Volk and came to mean the ethnic nation. From the early twentieth century, minjok became a powerful political concept and the central category for Korean nationalist historiographers, among whom Sin Ch’ae-Ho (1880–1936) is regarded as the pioneer. For further discussion see Em (1999). 11. Local and international media reported on two Korean female entertainers who committed suicide because of malicious comments posted by some netizens: Yi Hye-Ryŏn alias U;Nee in 2007 and Ch’oe Chin-Sil in 2008. 12. It is not my aim to replicate or analyze the academic discourse or the history of this complex phenomenon. For a good overview see Steinberg (2005) and Kim (2010). 13. The 2006 blockbuster movie The Host is regarded as anti-American, since it alludes to the incident in which the U.S. military released toxic chemicals into the Han River. In the movie, the dumped chemicals give birth to a horrible monster that descends from the river to threaten the residents of Seoul. Singer and activist Yun Min-Sŏk wrote the protest song “Fuckin’ USA” in which the lyrics relate to the 2002 incidents. 14. In 2008, the MCST, for example, discussed whether hallyu-stars, such as Rain, could waive their military duty due to their outstanding role as promoters of Korean culture (allkpop, 2008). 15. The OECD Report 2009 states that Korea’s suicide rate has sharply increased within ten years and is the highest among the OECD countries with c.22 deaths per 100,000 persons (OECD, 2009, 126). Korea Statistics, whose report states an even higher rate, sees the growing influence of celebrity culture and the

Asymmetries of Mobility  229 number of suicides among well-known people as one of the culprits behind the increasing rate (Cho, 2010). 16. Google’s Korea Unit, for example, refused to implement the system, citing freedom of expression. Finally, instead of shutting down its video portal YouTube completely, only certain functions, such as video upload and comment capability, were removed. Korean users continued uploading video by switching to YouTube sites in the U.S. or other countries (Oh and Larson, 2011). 17. This portrait seeks to address aspects of cultural transformation and alienation as structural components of wider Korean American migration processes. I was able to reassess and substantiate these aspects, along with the core argument (the dialectics of Othering), through additional interviews and casual talks with Korean Americans who work as K-Pop producers, music business workers, and musicians.

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232  Complicating K-Pop Schwartzman, Nathan. 2008. “Why are Korean Students at Candlelight Vigils?” Asiancorrespondant, May 13. Accessed October 30, 2014. http://asiancorrespon dent.com/22470/why-are-korean-students-at-candlelight-vigils/ Shin, Gi-Wook. 2006. Ethnic Nationalism: Genealogy, Politics, and Legacy. ­Stanford: Stanford University Press. Steinberg, David I. 2005. Korean Attitudes toward the United States: Changing Dynamics. Armonk, NY: M.E. Sharpe. Sutton, R. Anderson. 2006. “Bounded Variation? Music Television in South Korea.” In Korean Pop Music: Riding the Wave. Edited by Keith Howard, 208–20. ­Folkestone Kent: Global Oriental. Tsai, Eva. 2007. “Caught in the Terrains: An Inter-Referential Inquiry of Trans-­ Border Stardom and Fandom.” Inter-Asia Cultural Studies 8/1: 135–54. Tuan, Mia. 1998. Forever Foreigners or Honorary Whites? The Asian Ethnic ­ xperience Today. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press. E Turner, Graeme. 2004. Understanding Celebrity. London/Thousand Oaks/New Delhi: Sage. Turner, Graeme. 2010. “Approaching Celebrity Studies.” Celebrity Studies 1/1: 11–20. Woo-Cumings, Meredith. 2005. “Unilateralism and Its Discontents: The Passing of the Cold War Alliance and Changing Public Opinion in the Republic of Korea.” In Korean Attitudes toward the United States: Changing Dynamics. Edited by David I. Steinberg, 56–79. Armonk, NY: M.E. Sharpe. Yu Danico, Mary. 2011. “Riding the Hallyu (Korean Wave): Korean Americans and the Global Impact of Korean Pop Culture.” Paper presented at the joint conference of the Association for Asian Studies and the International Convention of Asia Scholars, Honolulu, Hawaii, March 31–April 3.

7 Conclusion “Oppan, Korean Style!” An Imaginary Horse Ride around the Globe

In February 2013, while I was sifting through my field notes and data collected for this book, my observations of K-Pop’s globalization drive in the previous years had suddenly come full circle in a quite unexpected way. The apparently collective desire for global success among K-Pop agents expressed, for example, in the self-declared visions and objectives of K-Pop producers to make global music and to conquer global markets, seemed to instantly realize itself in the comical moving image of a chubby thirtyfive-year-old Korean male rapper mimicking a galloping horse. The horseman’s name is Pak Chae-Sang, better known as PSY, whose music video of the song “Gangnam Style” went viral on the Internet and shot him to international fame. Praised as the first video clip that surpassed one billion views on ­YouTube, five months after its release on July 15, 2012, the song became the most watched music video in the history of the Internet and a cultural phenomenon around the globe. It topped music charts in countries on several continents, gained numerous music awards, and sparked an international dance craze, including copious reaction videos, parodies, and public dance flash mobs. While spreading far beyond pop music spheres by the means of social networking sites, the song and its signature dance moves became a ubiquitous point of reference not only for K-Pop fans but also for Western pop stars, such as Madonna, Britney Spears, and T-Pain, as well as several persons and groups in public life (i.e., celebrity politicians, sports persons, entertainers, non-governmental organizations, dissident artists, and political activists),1 who capitalized on the song’s huge popularity and potential for parody. Among the legion of adaptation videos that appeared on the Internet, the most notable ones gained international media coverage, for example, the parody of the American presidential candidate, entitled “Mitt Romney Style!” or the version created by Chinese dissident artist Ai Weiwei to mock the Chinese authorities with the title “Gras Mud Horse style!” A video uploaded by the North Korean government with the title “I’m Yushin style!” mocked South Korea’s then conservative party presidential candidate and later female president Park Geun-Hye, who was a devoted admirer of the Yusin system of autocratic rule constituted by her father Park Chung-Hee during the 1970s. Considering not only its politicized use and stratospheric

234  Complicating K-Pop number of clicks on YouTube, as well as its enormous geographical outreach and cultural effects, it may not be exaggerated to say that “Gangnam Style” has deeply pervaded global mainstream culture. The extent of this pervasiveness became clear to me in an eye-­opening moment sitting in front of my TV set back at home, distractedly zapping through the Saturday night programs on German television channels. My fingers froze on the spot when I switched to a famous German Schlager network show, which has, for the last five decades, featured a venerable German television dance group and singers who perform predictable versions of folksy-schmaltzy German (at the most, European) radio hits, performing its own lively own rendition of the “Gangnam Style” dance. The performance was, except for one artistic interlude, rather conventional and deeply bizarre amid all the German Schlager pop songs, particularly in view of the program’s prime target audience of elderly and rather conservative viewers. That K-Pop would make its way into the Saturday night flagship show of Schlager television and into the living rooms of millions of (conservative) German households was the last thing I expected when I started my research on Korean pop music a few years ago. In late 2014, “Gangnam Style” has become a household name with music listeners in Germany and elsewhere. Although far from being part of G ­ erman mainstream pop, K-Pop still keeps growing in online and niché cultural spaces. More and more teenagers and youngsters waive their s­ ynchronized hips to the videos clips of recent groups, such as EXO, I­nfinite, and Sistar. PSY and his entertainment company greatly capitalized on the ­“Gangnam Style” astronomical click-rates on YouTube and related endorsements. American They successfully intensified their business relationships with ­ high-­profile producers and artists, as is evident in PSY’s latest hit song ­“Hangover,” which features his collaboration with American rapper Snoop Dogg. The globalization drive in K-Pop seems to be unbroken, as well as the martial rhetoric of conquering new territories. A German newspaper lately reported on K-Pop under the headline “South Korea’s ­Generation K wants to conquer the world” (Schneppen, 2014). It is remarkable to see that K-Pop as a label has gained currency within only a couple of years and among music producers, telcos, web operators, government officials, journalists, and fans, as well as academic scholars. A newly emerging flood of conference papers, journal articles, lectures, ­project papers, and student essays that deal with K-Pop and East Asian pop music have washed upon the digital shores of the Internet, and it seems to be growing. While it may be hard to predict whether K-Pop will be able to sustain its popularity in the future, it is safe to say that its appearance marks a significant time-space zone in which international pop music and pop music studies began to shift away from Western centricity and increasingly toward Asian hemispheres, and in particular toward an acceptance of Korean voices. In this study, I examined K-Pop as an ongoing process and the interwoven result of the conditions and effects that increased transnational

Conclusion  235 flows, shifting asymmetrical relations, and the role of the musical imaginary imposed on music production and consumption in South Korea. Given the high ephemerality and fluid boundaries that characterize K-Pop in its formative period, a fixed definition of the phenomenon in strict musicological terms is not possible. K-Pop can thus not simply be conceived as a musical genre determined by certain stylistic or intra-musical features or by geographical or national origin alone; it must be understood as a result of a specific relationship, which I described by considering the particular tension between the global imaginary depicted in K-Pop and the issues of national identity that were underlying, intersecting, and conflicting with that global imaginary. In this sense, K-Pop is closely tied to the changing political and socio-economic dynamics of 1990s South Korea inasmuch as it emerged from the globalization activities of local music production companies that began to strategically expand their target markets beyond national borders. In consideration of these broader cultural dynamics, it was necessary to understand K-Pop as a multitextual, discursive, and performative phenomenon. In the first part of this book, I gave a brief overview of K-Pop’s prehistory followed by a detailed analysis of K-Pop’s multitextual genre system. In Chapter 2, I discussed the changing historical formations of Korean popular music in the light of the shifting political contexts and of Japanese and American political and cultural imperialism during twentieth-century Korea. The chapter revealed that the notion of transnationality is neither new nor exclusive to K-Pop. It has been rather intrinsic to the varying concepts of Korean popular music and its manifold genres, which have proliferated and diversified since the first encounters with Western music took place in the late nineteenth century. K-pop, in the sense of systematically trained idol star production from the mid-1990s, thus represents the latest stage in a long history of complex encounters between transnational and national forces in Korean popular music. It is export-orientation and international popularity on a broader scale that make the K-Pop phenomenon distinct to earlier Korean popular music. In Chapter 3, I delineated K-Pop’s genre boundaries by discussing various parameters that are involved in or affected by the production of a global imaginary. This global imaginary is shaped and reflected by multiple practices and textures, as have become evident, for example, in the flexibility of language use (i.e., in lyrics and group names), in the multi-dimensional attraction created by a 360-degree idol star apprenticeship system, in ­performance-centered song writing, in hook songs, in ppong melodies, in highly synchronized group dances, in signature dance moves, and in the heterotopic dimension of the music videos. Rather than a mere product of imitation or a simple copy of Western pop music, K-Pop signifies a complex and relational process of re-configuring, re-arranging, and re-packaging existing concepts and styles. It draws from a rich diversity of sources and influences, for example, by combining strands from the Japanese idol production

236  Complicating K-Pop system, American hip-hop recording practices, European Disco music, and Korean ppong sounds. It has merged all this into a new and distinct phenomenon and into a transnational trend that represents the latest stage of what Fredric Jameson (1988) called “postmodern consumer aesthetics.” In conflating these different elements in the hybridizing process of K-Pop production, associating music with Korean food culture is likely again. In particular, the making of the Korean dish pibimbap rests on the similar idea of mixing different although well-chosen ingredients. Rice covered by assorted blanched and fermented vegetables, bean sprouts, dried sea weed, and chili pepper paste are usually served in one bowl. Before eating, Koreans would emphasize the necessity of thoroughly mixing everything with a spoon until the mass is a homogenous red chili color. Therefore, the most important element for the unique flavor of pibimbap is not the ingredients, but the mixing itself, because only through mixing the ingredients does a new and distinctive taste develop. The same may apply to K-Pop, where the respective cultural origins of stylistic features seem to be secondary to producers and fans likewise. Instead, as many of my informants pointed out, it is the manner of combining different things that is considered typical Korean. In fact, most of today’s pop music is the result of mixing processes, so that the continuous stress on the Korean way or Korean style may better be considered an effect of the all-pervasive nationalizing discourse. Apart from the pibimbap metaphor on mixing, there are at best few features that may be regarded as uniquely Korean within international pop music production, such as the apprenticeship system, the ppong factor, and of course the Korean language. But what is even more decisive are the discursive and performative contexts in which K-Pop unfolds its cultural significance. These are framed and molded by the basic tension between globalizing and nationalizing forces that typify the formation of modern South Korean cultural identities. For example, the rigid learning culture in Korean society is an important part of shaping these identities and is also reflected in K-Pop, particularly as producers, managers, and idols continuously seek to learn and improve their own abilities and strategies for achieving their highest goals. Rhetoric of superlatives is common (i.e., “Our company will be number one of […],” “He is a top producer,” “We are searching for the best song,” “We are trying to conquer the global market,” “We want to make her a world star”). In this regard, what is instantly striking from watching K-Pop videos is the strong sense of perfectionism on the production side. This is equally visible in the various skills K-Pop idols need to exhibit as all-round entertainers (i.e., singing, dancing, acting, and language skills), in their fancy clothes and accessories, as well as in their abundant displays of immaculate faces and bodies often shaped by hard physical training, strict dieting, and plastic surgery. On the aural level, it is the combination of catchy dance beats and memorable sing-along melodies that typifies K-Pop’s performance-oriented songwriting. K-Pop’s ability to supply its consumers with the perfect pop package—a well-designed bundle of already proven

Conclusion  237 concepts and refined pop arts and crafts—bears a potential advantage over U.S. productions, as Korean American record producer Jae observes. The U.S. may be harder to make a hit song in terms of marketing and the business side, but as far as making a song, Koreans are way more demanding. Why? Because first of all, if you don’t play an instrument and you’re trying to make a song out of a drum machine using samples, it’s not gonna happen in Korea because songs are very melodically driven. So you have to play some sort of instrument to write a song. That eliminates about 90% of the writers in the U.S. Try to get P Diddy [an American rapper and record producer] to write a K-Pop song and make it a hit—I don’t think so. It’s not gonna happen unless he gets a ghostwriter [laughs]. But if you can get a Korean songwriter and go to the U.S. and get the right business partners to back him up, I would bet on that making a hit song in the U.S. over P Diddy or somebody coming over here and making a hit song in Korea. Koreans demand a lot of things. Number one is they demand melody! Number two is they also demand beats, just as much as the U.S. Kids’ ears are more developed now, so they want the beat, they want the look, and they want the melody. They want the whole package! (Chŏng Chae-Yun, personal communication, December 3, 2010) The whole package is what K-Pop producers have learned to create in the last twenty years. They continue to improve their business methods throughout the years, more on a trial-and-error basis than on long-term strategies, and thus have learned how to manufacture a music product that sells successfully to domestic and overseas audiences alike. PSY’s “Gangnam Style” is an exception to idol-centered K-Pop because he neither represents the perfect-looking idol star nor was he trained in the rigid apprenticeship system that typifies K-Pop production. In contrast, the song appears to rather ridicule the sort of perfectionism and aspirationalism presented in common K-Pop, as well as in the materialistic lifestyle of highclass Koreans and wannabes living in Seoul’s wealthy Kangnam district. This critical perspective can be sensed in nuances from the video’s imagery, which depicts the singer as an upper-class wannabe blundering through the ritzy Kangnam world. The lyrics seem to support this nuanced criticism by, for example, picking up the popular stereotype of the so-called toenjangnyŏ (lit. “soy-bean paste girl”). The term describes a girl or young woman addicted to luxury and ready to spend the money saved by eating cheap meals on high-end consumer goods. While the toenjangtchigye (soybean paste soup) represents the cheapest meal in Korea, the coffee, particularly the caffè latte from the widespread American chain store Starbucks, is among the most expensive drinks. The first verse of the lyrics plays on that idea: “nadenŭn ttasaroun in’ganjŏgin yŏja / k’ŏp’i hanjanŭi yŏyurŭl anŭn p’umgyŏk innŭn yŏja / pami omyŏn simjangi ttŭgŏwŏjinŭn yŏja / kŭrŏn panjŏn innŭn yŏja

238  Complicating K-Pop (A girl who is warm and humanly during the day / A classy girl who knows how to enjoy the freedom of a cup of coffee / A girl whose heart gets hotter when night comes / A girl with that kind of twist).” PSY is credited as the song’s main author, producer, and choreographer, which is not the usual case in labor-diversified K-Pop production. Furthermore, he is not a young talent singer, but a thirty-seven-year-old veteran entertainer who has been active in Korean show business for more than fourteen years. What makes him a K-Pop act in a formal sense is, however, the fact he is signed to one of the leading Korean entertainment companies, which has been able to provide him with the necessary facilities, networks, knowhow, and capital to steer his music to mainstream audiences. Apart from potential socio-critical undertones of “Gangnam Style,” which may have not been PSY’s intention when he wrote the song (Reddit, 2012), but which cultural critics like to emphasize in their reading of the song (Fisher, 2012), there is a range of aspects that presumably led to its worldwide popularity. The vast dynamics of social networking sites, such as Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube, paired with the copyright holders’ decision to waive the song’s copyright protection were obvious motors to the worldwide distribution of the song. Given the impression that most of the international listeners neither understand Korean lyrics nor know much about Korean society, it is something different and much simpler that gives global audiences pleasure. Next to catch phrases in the lyrics such as “oppan Gangnam style” (big brother is Gangnam style) and “hey, sexy lady” which are easy to comprehend even for non-English speakers, it is the silly horse ride itself that creates humor and thus works as the most effective border-crossing element. Synchronized in the video with a crew of back dancers, the horse ride signature dance is at the core of what K-Pop at its best is able to offer to its audience: pleasure and participation. The sonic texture of “Gangnam Style” smoothly complements the song’s edgy visuality of glossy and bright colors by adopting the trendy electro sounds used in the latest international hit songs, such as by American hiphop duo LMFAO, or by Korean-American hip-hop collective Far East Movement.2 All of the characteristic aural features, as discussed in Chapter 3, are present here: a vibrantly stomping electro dance beat, easy-to-replicate song style rap vocals, catchy hook melodies, simple chords, reduced harmonies, and key words and rhythmical breaks serving as attention getters. What is missing though is what I called the ppong-factor, that is, the audible signifier of Korean locality and identity to Korean listeners. I pointed out that the ppong factor is highly ambiguous and works as a kind of musical seismograph of the ratio of globalization in K-Pop songs. Here, the lack of ppong qualifies the song as a global pop song from the perspective of the producers because the song appeals to international audiences. K-Pop producers strongly follow the formulaic production standards set by Western mainstream pop songs based on musical “familiarity, simplicity, accessibility, and repetition” (cf. Warner, 2003, 8f), but they combine all the

Conclusion  239 well-known elements in a way that audiences in the East and West equally seem to receive as refreshingly new but also familiar (although their opinion may greatly differ on what exactly they feel is new and what is familiar). From what I learned about K-Pop and from watching K-Pop music videos, I can fully agree with what a K-Pop fan girl from Germany told me: Everything in K-Pop was already there before somehow: the music, the dances, the costumes. Everything is so familiar to me and at the same time it’s new and attractive, such as for example, the group dances. Of course, there were a lot of boy and girl groups successful in the past, but they didn’t dance like K-Pop groups dance—I mean with this high rotation in the choreography. And they were not the professionally trained all-round entertainers that K-Pop idols are. (Anonymous, personal communication, June 1, 2013) As a final product of a highly rationalized commodification process, K-Pop songs are not substantially different from Western mainstream pop songs on the textual level. International pop music listeners may find much in K-Pop with which they feel familiar and hardly anything that reminds them of traditional Korean (i.e., folk or Confucian) culture. From this view, the K in K-Pop works as a marketing label, as a brand, in the sense of Korea’s brand nationalism resulting from the Korean government’s export-oriented policies. The fact that K-Pop has been branded in nationalist terms is a significant element of K-Pop itself, revealing that the idea of national identity counteracts the global imaginary realized in the music and helping to illustrate how this happens. In this sense, K-Pop is much more than the music or the videos. It is the cultural arena in which globalizing and nationalizing forces and imaginations coincide, intermingle, and counteract. In the second part of this study, I took closer inspection of this cultural arena by interrogating the national dimensions and nationalizing forces that intervene in K-Pop’s global imaginary. As discussed in Chapter 4, one dimension of the national in the realm of K-Pop relates to the role of the nation-state, in particular to the Korean government’s commitment to popular culture and music. K-Pop and the Korean Wave are symbolic markers of a new national imaginary nurtured and utilized by the Korean authorities under the self-proclaimed conditions of a state-led globalization agenda since the 1990s. The government’s new role as a promoter of domestic popular culture and music helped create and foster a strong and competitive domestic content market with high export rates. Through legislative changes and promotional policies, Korea’s industrial economy continuously transformed into a digital economy, in which culture became redefined as content, and music became a subject of national economic interest. From the government’s point of view, K-Pop serves as a significant vehicle to represent Korea’s role as a cultural mediator at the center of Asia. With Korea’s new image of a self-assertive nation that exports

240  Complicating K-Pop cars, ships, flat screens, cellphones, and pop cultural products, K-Pop’s popularity in Asia suggests a substantive shift in the perception of cultural and temporal distances between Korea and other Asian countries from the perspective of foreign Asian K-Pop consumers. Chapter 5 highlighted another dimension of the national concept by exploring the significance of imagined places. The role of imagined places has been discussed with regard to the global strategies in the production and distribution of contemporary Korean pop music, which was mainly designed for the U.S. music market. This westward initiative of K-Pop could be realized neither through a smooth nor a standardized process but was accompanied by transformations of a more complex and at times contradictory nature. Strategies were manifold but mostly organized and negotiated along discourses of cultural identity and economic success. The transnational flow of Korean pop products to the U.S. was hardly a process that kept the music unchanged. Rather, an essential cultural difference between the producer and consumer site was anticipated and incorporated into the production process and thus affected the sonic and visual representations of K-Pop idol stars, such as BoA and Wondergirls, and of more independent artists, such as YB and Skull. America, Asia, and Korea figure as imaginary places, which trigger and shape musical and visual transformations. They initialize a wide range of discursive strategies and techniques of visual and musical borrowings, such as pastiche, quotation, juxtaposition, or montage, all of which are deeply entwined with issues of identity. As discussed in Chapter 6, the third dimension of the national in this study relates to the mobility discourse around immigrant stars in K-Pop. It was revealed that immigrant pop idols, and in particular, Korean Americans (next to Chinese and Southeast Asian immigrants), have evolved as the most visible markers of the globalization efforts in Korea’s entertainment and music industry. Since production companies and talent agencies have gained expertise in and have employed new strategies (e.g., the localization strategy) for capitalizing on immigrant artists in domestic and foreign markets, immigrant pop idols signify a substantial shift in the production of Korean pop music. At the same time, as they represent a transformed ethnoscape often along with a celebratory notion of multiculturalism in Korea’s society. Their roles as foreign nationals and cultural foreigners serve as popular angles for challenging and re-negotiating the borderline between Korean and foreign identity. As these discussions demonstrated, the political implications in K-Pop are vast because K-Pop equally mirrors and performs the continuous redefinition processes of Korean national and cultural identities amid Korea’s ­transition in times of globalization, political neoliberalism, and financial crises. While searching for their place in the world, Koreans put effort into globalization activities, and paradoxically, as it seems, they do not lose but rather gain a stronger sense of what Korean national identity might be in the process. The latest facet of Korean nationalism, known as brand nationalism, employs

Conclusion  241 culture as a means of soft power, in particular in view of Korea’s role in the Northeast Asian geopolitical context. Facing Japan’s economic power and China’s massive population and prospect of becoming a world leading economy, Korean authorities have begun to re-imagine and remold their country’s in-between position—“the shrimp between two whales,” as the old Korean saying goes—into a newly emerging middle power within the Northeast Asia region. Whether this remains wishful thinking or turns into factual evidence, K-Pop will be highly affected by these processes in the future. These days, Koreans tend to feel national pride when they see their music spreading around the globe, and there seems to be little to worry about as long as the world continues to ride on K-Pop’s imaginary horse. Notes 1. Among the number of celebrities and groups who, according to international news reports, had performed the “Gangnam Style” dance in public were, for example, the Mayor of London and the British Prime Minister David Cameron (The Telegraph, 2012), the United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon (Huffington Post, 2012), the tennis player Novak Djokovic after he won the annual tennis tournament China Open (Phelan, 2012), the Chinese political activist and dissident Ai Weiwei (Associated Press, 2012), Greenpeace (Baillie, 2012), and the American space agency NASA, who uploaded a parody of the song by its students (Kramer, 2012). 2. The Californian hip-hop duo LMFAO was active between 2006 and 2012 and consisted of the two cousins Stefan and Skyler Gordy. The Far East Movement is a four-member male hip-hop group from Los Angeles formed in 2003 by Kevin Nishimura, James Roh, Jae Coung, and Virman Coquia. Audible similarities can be found between PSY’s “Gangnam Style” and LMFAO’s hit singles “Party Rock Anthem” (2011), “Sexy and I Know It” (2011), and “Sorry For Party Rocking” (2012) and Far East Movement’s “Like a G-6” (featuring the Cataracs and Dev) (2010).

References Associated Press. 2012. “Ai Weiwei goes ‘Gangnam Style’_ with Handcuffs.” Associated Press, October 25. Accessed October 23, 2014. http://bigstory.ap.org/article/ ai-weiwei-goes-gangnam-style-handcuffs Baillie, Mike. 2012. “Going Gangnam, Greenpeace Style.” Greenpeace ­International, December 19. Accessed October 31, 2014. http://www.greenpeace.org/ international/en/news/Blogs/makingwaves/gangnam-greenpeace-style/blog/ 43471/?entryid=43471 Fisher, Max. 2012. “Gangnam Style, Dissected: The Subversive Message within South Korea’s Music Video Sensation.” The Atlantic, August 23. Accessed October 31, 2014. http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2012/08/gangnamstyle-dissected-the-subversive-message-within-south-koreas-music-video-

242  Complicating K-Pop sensation/261462/http://www.globalpost.com/dispatches/globalpost-blogs/ world-at-play/gangnam-style-novak-djokovic-china-open-beijing Huffington Post. 2012. “Ban Ki-Moon Dances to Gangnam Style With Psy (VIDEO).”  Huffington Post, October 24. Accessed October 31, 2014. http:// www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2012/10/24/ban-ki-moon-dances-to-gangnam-stylepsy_n_2007865.html Jameson, Fredric. 1988. “Postmodernism and Consumer Society.” In Postmodernism and Its Discontents. Edited by E. Ann Kaplan, 13–29. London/New York: Verso. Kramer, Miriam. 2012. “NASA does It ‘Gangnam Style’ in Johnson Space Center Video.” NBCNews, December 17. Accessed October 31, 2014. http://www.nbc news.com/id/50230748/ns/technology_and_science-space/#.VFbElL6AS1k Phelan, Jessica. 2012. “Tennis, Gangnam Style: Novak Djokovic Celebrates China Open Win by Riding that horse (VIDEO).” Global Post, October 8. Accessed October 31, 2014. Reddit. 2012. “I am South Korean Singer, Rapper, Composer, Dancer and ­Creator of Gangnam Style PSY.” Reddit AMA Chat Session with PSY, October 24. Accessed October 23, 2014. http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/120oqd/i_am_ south_korean_singer_rapper_composer_dancer/ Schneppen, Anne. 2014. “Im Zeichen der Generation K.” Die Welt, March 26. Accessed October 23, 2014. http://www.welt.de/print/die_welt/article126196733/ Im-Zeichen-der-Generation-K.html Telegraph. 2012. “Boris Johnson: David Cameron and I have Danced Gangnam Style.” The Telegraph, October, 9. Accessed October 10, 2012. http://www.tele graph.co.uk/news/politics/conservative/9596071/Boris-Johnson-David-Cameronand-I-have-danced-Gangnam-style.html Warner, Timothy. 2003. Pop Music: Technology and Creativity: Trevor Horn and the Digital Revolution. Aldershot/Burlington: Ashgate.

Appendix I Korean Glossary

aegyo  애교  (literally: amiability) describes the complex social enactments of female lovability and cuteness performed in private and public displays of heterosexual partnerships among young Korean adults and adolescents. It includes a range of behavioral patterns regarded as arousing attractiveness and desire, for example, acting charming or childish with exaggerated facial expressions and gestures (i.e., pneumatic pout, fingeron-cheek) and voice modulation (i.e., to a childlike high-pitched voice). aidol  아이돌  is the Korean pronunciation of the English word “idol” and denotes the good-looking and systematically trained all-round entertainer in the Korean media and in mainstream pop music. As a product of Korean entertainment companies, the aidol basically resembles its counterpart in Anglo-American pop music (“pop idol”) and in Japanese pop music (aidoru) although showing significant differences in regard to specific local contexts of production and consumption. cho˘ngak  정악  is an aristocratic music genre played at the court and for the intellectual class for honoring the ancestral shrine of the royal family, the royal court, and civil and military authority. enk’a  엔카  (in Japanese 演歌, literally: performed song) is a major J­ apanese popular music genre originating in the early twentieth century. In the wake of Japan’s cultural nationalism in the 1970s, enk’a has been interpreted as indigenous Japanese music, although there are close historical ties to Korean t’u˘rot’u˘ songs, which, in the early period, were also known as yuhaengga. Enk’a songs are primarily sentimental ballad songs appealing to middle-aged and older adults. han  한  is an indigenous aesthetic concept in Korean culture considered as collective sentiment of sorrow and grief in response to heavy suffering and injustice. huk‘u˘-song  후크송  is the Korean spelling of “hook song” and denotes a type of idol pop song that is composed around a musical unit, called a hook. The hook appears as a self-contained form element that is considered short and catchy and is repeated several times during the song. It is consciously written to be extracted and re-utilized as digital ringtone or ringbacktone, which is why the hook usually lasts not longer than thirty seconds. Hook songs popularized in Korea with the Wonder Girls’ hit

244  Appendix I song “Tell Me” in 2007 and thereafter turned into the standard song form in K-Pop. hubae  후배  is an honorific form used to address one’s junior colleague or protégé in educational, leisure, and business environments (i.e., school, university, sports club, company). The inferior status is defined in relation to the speaker and is usually based on lower age or on fewer working years/experience (see also sŏnbae). kayagu˘m  가야금  is a Korean traditional zither-like instrument with twelve silken strings over a soundboard made of paulownia wood, used in traditional genres (kugak) of royal and aristocratic music. kkonminam  꽃미남  (literally: flower beauty man) is a neologism used since the mid-2000s in Korean popular culture to positively denote young men who demonstrate their vanity and great sense of personal style and fashion. These men represent a kind of East Asian metrosexuality or effeminate masculinity, differing from traditional male role models due to their deliberate use of cosmetics, make-up, and wellness products. They are best represented by Korean pop idols, such as by Bae ­Yong-Joon (Pae Yong-Jun), the male actor in the Korean TV drama Winter Sonata. kugak  국악  (literally: national music) is regarded as traditional music that comprises various genres of folk (minsogak), court/ritual (aak), and aristocratic music (chŏngak). kyop’o  교포  (literally: a native or descendant Korean residing abroad) serves as a term of self-designation among Korean migrants for socially distinguishing themselves from non-kyop’o, i.e., members of other migrant communities, foreign citizens, “homeland” Koreans, “halfies,” etc. Internal stratification is drawn generation-wise, mainly between the first (ilse), the second (ise), and the “1.5 generation” (ilchŏmose) of Korean immigrants. minsogak  민속악  is folk music that includes instrumental and vocal genres from different regional areas and with different functions, such as minyo (folk song), nongak (farmer’s music), p’ansori (epic solo song), and muak (shamanistic ritual music). netizen  네티즌  is a portmanteau expression of the two English words “Internet” and “citizen” and is commonly used in Korea for a person who regularly uses the Internet and who is actively involved in online communities. o˘mch’ina  엄친아  is short for o˘mma ch’ingu adu˘l 엄마 친구 아들 (literally: ­mother’s friend’s son), is the Korean equivalent to the colloquial expression ­“perfect son-in-law,” used in describing the situation when a mother’s friend brags about her son’s accomplishments (at work or school) while the “lowly” son has to hear about it. The female equivalent is ŏmch’inttal 엄친딸 (mother’s friend’s daughter), which is less commonly used. oppa  오빠  (literally: older brother) is a kinship term used by a female to address her elder brother. It is also often used to refer to a biologically

Appendix I  245 non-related elder male who is close to or who is in a couple-based relationship with the female. oppapudae  오빠부대  is a compound of oppa (older brother) and pudae (squad) and is widely used in Korea for teenage girls who are engaged in fan activities for male idol stars. The term refers to female fan clubs as being strong followers of their male idols and calling him oppa to express their affection for and their intimacy with him. The term emerged in the 1980s to describe the Korean female fandom of male singer Cho Yong-Pil. A related term is ppasun-i (oppa girl), which is used pejoratively (often in the Korean media) to denigrate female fans as passive and powerless followers. p’ansori  판소리  is a traditional vocal genre that consists of narration, singing, and acting sections performed by one person who is accompanied by a player on the puk (barrel drum). Through a broad set of mimics, gestures, and timbres, the singer and the percussionist create a vibrant atmosphere in the performance that can last hours. ppong  뽕  is an onomatopoeic expression derived from the word ppongtchak (see below) and serves as an audible signifier of Korean national and/or ethnic identity in Korean popular music. Korean listeners, who are familiar with that concept, tell about a song that it has ppong or ppong-kki 뽕 when it uses specific musical parameters that are characteristic of or reminiscent of t’u˘rot’u˘ songs (i.e., minor-based melody, fast harmonic changes, duple-meter rhythm, raucous vocal timbre). In the realm of K-Pop, record producers who consider their music as global music seek to avoid ppong in their songs because it is associated with the music of the older generation and thus with traditional Koreanness. ppongtchak  뽕짝  is an onomatopoetic expression for the 2/4 duple meter rhythm in t’u˘rot’u˘ songs (ppong on strong first beat and tchak on the weak second beat of the measure) and has often been used by critics to derogate the t’u˘rot’u˘ genre (see t’u˘rot’u˘). samulnori  사물놀이  (literally: four objects play) is a traditional percussion genre performed with four instruments: puk (barrel drum), changgu (hourglass-shaped drum), ching (gong), and kkwaenggwari (small gong). Its rhythmic patterns are derived from farmer’s music (nongak) and shamanistic ceremonial music (pungmulkut). segyehwa  세계화  (literally: globalization) is the keyword under which the Kim Young-Sam administration promulgated its globalization policy in 1995 with the purpose of conducting extensive structural reforms in order to make South Korea an advanced nation. sigimsae  시김새  is an aesthetic principle in Korean traditional music (kugak) and can be translated as embellishment or decoration. It refers to the singer’s or musician’s performance of pitch in the context of a melody. Through ornamentation, embellishments, and subtleties in the

246  Appendix I performance practice, the singer or musician aims to give life to the sound of his or her voice or instrument. so˘nbae  선배  is an honorific form used to address one’s senior colleague or mentor in educational, leisure, and business environments (i.e., school, university, sports club, company). The superior status of sŏnbae is defined in relation to the speaker and is usually based on greater age or on more working years/experience. The seniority principle defines the social hierarchy and effects the use of honorific language in Korean society and thus pervades interpersonal relationships in the K-Pop industry (i.e., among and between company staff members, trainees, and idols, and also within and between idol groups) (see also hubae). taejung kayo  대중가요  (literally: mass popular song) is a generic term for local popular music in Korea, first used for the recorded and commercialized popular songs (yuhaeng ch’angga) that began to emerge in the late 1920s under Japanese colonial rule. Principally, the term has been used by Koreans until today to distinguish domestic popular music from Western pop and classical music and from Korean traditional music. t’u˘rot’u˘  트로트  (derived from the word “foxtrot”) is a Korean popular music genre, also known as ppongtchak, that became popular in the 1920s and 1930s. T’u˘rot’u˘ songs are primarily sentimental love songs performed with many vocal inflections thus showing similarities to the Japanese enka genre. Until today, it remains a popular genre in South Korea. yo˘nye kihoeksa  연예 기획사  is the Korean name for the domestic entertainment management company that has been the central player in Korean music production since the 1990s. It offers multiple services for the recruitment, grooming, and marketing of idol stars by combining formerly separate areas of operations under one roof, for example, those of a talent management agency and of a record company.

Appendix II Korean Music Sales Charts 2013

Top 10  Digital Single Charts 2013 (Domestic Market) Title

Artist

Distributor

1

Gentleman

PSY

KT Music

2

Shower of Tears

Neowiz Internet

3 4 5

Itta ŏpsŭnikka (Gone Not Around Any Longer) Bom Bom Bom Tears (Feat. Eugene)

Baechigi (Paech’igi) Sistar19 Roy Kim Leessang

6

What’s Your Name?

4Minute

CJ E&M LOEN Entertainment Universal Music

7

Monodrama

8

Turtle

9

Give It To Me

10

Be Warmed (Feat. Verbal Jint)

Huh Gak, Yoo CJ E&M Seung-Woo Davichi LOEN Entertainment Sistar LOEN Entertainment Davichi LOEN Entertainment

LOEN Entertainment

Production Company YG Entertainment YMC Entertainment Starship Entertainment CJ E&M Doublekick Entertainment Cube Entertainment A Cube Entertainment Core Contents Media Starship Entertainment Core Contents Media

Top 10 Album Charts 2013 (Domestic Market) Artist and Album 1 2 3

EXO: Debut Album Repackage XOXO (Kiss Version) Girls Generation: Fourth Album EXO: Debut Album XOXO (Kiss Version)

Production Company SM Entertainment

Total Sales

SM Entertainment SM Entertainment

293,302 269,597

335,823

(Continued)

248  Appendix II Artist and Album 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

EXO: Miracles in December Cho Yong-P’il: 19th Album Hello EXO: Debut Album XOXO (Hug Version) (Chinese) EXO: Debut Album Repackage XOXO (Hug Version) (Chinese) G-Dragon: Second Album Coup D’Etat SHINee: Third Album Chapter 1 EXO: Miracles in December (Chinese)

Production Company SM Entertainment Universal Music SM Entertainment

Total Sales

SM Entertainment

200,183

YG Entertainment

195,603

SM Entertainment SM Entertainment

185,357 171,546

262,825 250,046 200,870

(Source: Gaon 2013).

Reference Gaon. 2013. Gaon Music Chart. Webpage. Accessed November 1, 2014. http://gaonchart.co.kr

Index

015B (group) 54, 83 1.5-generation (ilchŏmose) 194, 211, 227 n.4, 244 2ne1 (group) 6, 62, 69, 73, 83, 97–98, 114 fig. 3.10, 154 2PM (group) 5, 62, 68, 98, 102, 109, 197, 198, 202–04, 228 n.8 n.9 360 (business) 71, 118, 235 “88 Manwon-ui Losing Game” (song) 177–78 “Abracadabra” (song) 96 fig. 3.3 fig. 3.4 Abu-Lughod, Lila 20, 24 “Aegukka” (song) 40 aegyo (cuteness) 4; see also cute After School (group) 117 fig. 3.13 Ahn Choong-Sik 39 Ai Weiwei 233, 241 n.1 American Forces Korean Network (AFKN) 45 American West Coast gangsta rap 53 Americanization 26, 81, 167; westernization 26 anti-American sentiment 204, 209–11, 214, 216, 221–23, 226; antiAmericanism 210–11 anti-fans; see K-Pop audience Aoyagi, Hiroshi 80 Appadurai, Arjun 16, 18–19, 26, 49, 128, 184, 192 Appenzeller, Henry G. 39 Armstrong, Charles K. 56 n.9 Asia Song Festival 27, 129, 143–144, 146–49, 155 Asian modernity 8 asymmetry/asymmetries 13, 186–7; cultural 183–85; temporal 150, shifting 19–20, 163, 235; spatial 164, 192, mobility 20, 194 audition. See K-Pop idols

Augé, Marc 114–115, 118, 208 autotune 96, 167, 169, 188 n.6 Avex Entertainment 68 Avex Trax 153, 164 Baby V.O.X. (group) 54, 55, 62, 120, 129, 132 Bae Yong-Joon 127 Ban Ki-Moon 241 n.1 “Bang!” (song) 117 fig. 3.13 “Bbiribbom Bbaeribom” (song) 116 fig. 3.12 Biddle, Ian 16 Big Bang (group) 6, 62, 69, 73, 91, 97, 98, 102, 114 fig. 3.10 Billboard 28 n.1, 164, 170, 180 Block B (group) 127 BoA 8, 27, 62, 65, 68, 71, 73, 83, 85–86, 89, 115 fig. 3.11, 120 n.9, 132, 147, 153–154, 162, 164–169, 165 fig. 5.1, 166 fig. 5.2, 171, 175, 180, 183–84, 188 n.2 n.3 n.4, 196, 240 “Boom di Boom di” (song) 179, 182 fig.5.4, 188 n.13 Born, Georgina 15–16 breaking-the-flow model 92, 120n.16; see also K-Pop songs “Breathe” (song) 114 fig. 3.10 Brown Eyed Girls (girl group) 95 “Bubble Pop” (song) 29, 97 bubblegum pop 3, 29 n.5 Burns, Gary 88–89, 97 Byeon Jin-Seob (Pyŏn Chin-Sŏp) 49 Cameron, David 241 n.1 camp towns (kijich’on) 45 Campbell, David (I Won) 199 Carey, Morgan 180, 181 ch’angga (school songs) 39–41, 45, 104 Ch’oe Hŭijun 45

250 Index Ch’ŏngdam 203 chaebŏl 137, 195 Chang Yun-Jŏng 50, 102 Channel V 129, 193, 199 China Central Television (CCTV) 127 Cho Hae-Joang 144, 206 Cho Tong-Jin 51 Cho Yŏng-Nam 47 Cho Yong-P’il 51, 152, 154 “Chocolate Love” (song) 71, 72 fig. 3.1 Chŏng Chae-Yun 54, 103, 105, 194, 195, 237 Chu Hyŏn-Mi (singer) 50 Chun Doo-Hwan 48, 210 Clifford, James 13, 19, 20 climax-oriented 91; see also K-Pop songs CLON (boy group) 55, 129, 132 Co-existence (YB album) 176 “Come Back Home” (song) 53, 63 content industry 7, 135; promotion 136, 139, 157 n.1; revenue 139 fig. 41 Crane, Diane 187 creative industry; see content industry creative knowledge-based nation 134 crisis 15, 20, 26, 55, 131, 134, 137, 140, 177, 206–07, 214, 223 cross-promotion 71, 132 cultural anthropology 13, 20; fieldwork as a core method in 13; crisis of representation 20 cultural: broker 192, 196, 208, 221, 225; evolutionism 143, 155; exchange (munhwa kyoryu) 27, 128–29, 144, 146–48, 153; foreigner 24, 222–24, 240; imperialism 8, 128, 235; see also Americanization; industry see content industry; policy 27, 129, 135–36, 157 n.1; proximity 8, 63, 131, 155–56; sensibility 196 culture: as an economic factor 146; content (munhwak’ont’ench’ŭ) 135; economic value of 134, 136; the exchange value of culture 136; technology (CT) (munhwagisul) 135 custom-made songs; see K-Pop songs cute 2–4, 154, 170–71, 174, 19–98, 208, 217 cyber bullying 215–16, 227 Cyber Korea 21, 157 n.1 Cyberculture 192, 204, 214, 216, 226 Daejeon World Expo (1993) 52 Daeum Entertainment 175–76, 188 n.8 dance beat 2, 29, 93, 95, 96, 197, 236, 238

dance flash mob 5, 109, 233 dance music (taensŭ mjujik) 49–50 Daum (internet portal) 202 de-localized/de-localization 108, 113, 168–69 de-nationalized/de-nationalizing 108, 168, 181 Deux (group) 98, 217 digital music market 67, 141 digital piracy 132, 141 Dissanayake, Wimal 17 Djokovic, Novak 241 n.1 Dragon Ball 54 “Dreams Come True” (song) 84 easy listening (iji risŭning) 45 “Eat you up” (song) 83, 164, 165 fig. 5.1, 166 fig. 5.2, 167, 183 Eckert, Franz 40 Eighth Army (mi-p’al-gun) 44–46, 51 embellishments; see sigimsae enka 39, 41–42, 50, 152–54, 156, 172 entertainment agencies (yŏnye kihoeksa) 55, 214 Epik High 99, 209; see also Yi Sŏn-Ung ethnic: homogeneity 197, 205; Korean minorities in Japan 154; nationalism 26, 205, 207, 214, 226 ethnicity 49, 152, 154, 164, 167, 169, 192, 196, 199, 201, 205, 208, 222, 224–25 ethnomusicology 13–14, 23–25 ethnoscape 28, 49, 192, 224, 240 Europop 105 EXO; EXO-K (boy group) 62, 83, 88, 114 fig. 3.10, 234 export-oriented: business 81, 137; industrialization 207 f(x) (girl group) Fabian, Johannes 27, 129, Time and the Other (1983) 150; “denial of coevalness” 156 Far East Movement (group) 241 n.2 FIFA World Cup 175 filial piety 212, 219–20 flow-oriented 91; see also K-Pop songs Fly to the Sky (group) 106, 217, 218 foreign nationals of non-Korean ethnicity 192, 196 “forever foreigners” (Tuan) 223 Foucault, Michel 117 Free Trade Agreement (FTA) 210 Frith, Simon 13

Index  251 G.O.D. (Groove Over Dose) 62, 68, 84 “Gangnam Style” (song) 28, 180, 233, 234, 237, 238, 241 n.1 n.2 Garrett, Sean 86, 164, 188 n.5 Gaynor, Gloria 173, 174 tab. 5.1 “Gee” (song) 3, 4, 97, 109, 111, 111 fig. 3.8, 116 fig. 3.12 Geertz, Clifford 25 Girls Generation 3, 5, 6, 72 fig. 3.1, 77, 78, 83, 86, 87, 91, 97, 109, 111, 115 fig. 3.11, 116 fig. 3.12, 117 fig. 3.13, 120 n.14 n.16, 127, 130, 142, 154, 228 n.7 globalization: competition between the nations 149; global cultural flows 17, 19; global culture 187; global imaginary 17–18, 27, 55, 59–61, 86, 108, 118, 235, 239; global/local nexus 17–18; homogenization and heterogenization 8; Korean (segyehwa) 15, 133, 134; state-led 134, 146, 149, 155, 239; transnational flows 14, 17–18, 26–27, 119 Gold Collection Movement (kŭmmoŭgi undong) 206 Greenpeace 241 n.1 group sound (kŭrup saundŭ) 45–48, 51, 208 H.O.T. (group) 8, 54, 55, 62, 68, 74, 75, 76, 129, 132 “Haktoga” (Student’s Song) 40 Hall, Stuart 13, 19, 25–26, 205, 214 hallyu; see Korean Wave han (aesthetic concept) 177, 179, 185, 188 n.10 Han Myŏngsuk 45 hanbok (traditional costume) 102, 169 Hannerz, Ulf 9, 223 Hesmondhalgh, David 15, 16, 163 heterosexual masculinity 212, 226 heterotopic/heterotopia 117–18, 216, 235 hip-hop 7, 49–50, 53–54, 69, 73, 75, 79, 83–84, 91–93, 95, 98–99, 101, 194, 236, 238, 241 n.2 Hollywood’s Creative Artists Agency (CAA) 170 homosexuality 226 honhyŏl (impure blood) 200, 227 n.5 hook 29 n.5, 84, 92, 96–99, 103, 105, 111, 172, 238; song (hukŭsong) 118, 120 n.15, 235; song form 88–90 Horvejkul, Nichkhun 197, 198, 203, 225 Howard, Keith 6, 12, 48–49, 54, 75 hubae (junior colleague) 220

“Hurricane Venus” (song) 83, 86, 115 fig. 3.11 Hwang, Okon 12, 42, 44, 47, 49 Hwang Byung-Ki 106–107 hybrid/hybridity 9, 10, 23, 24, 44, 66, 69, 164, 171, 224–25, 236 Hyŏmi 45 Hyun-A (Kim Hyuna) 29 “I p’ungjin sewŏl” (These Troubled Times) 40 “I Will Survive“ (Gloria Gaynor song) 173, 174 ID; Peace B (BoA album) 89 identity/identities 10–13, 24–25, 49, 60, 65, 69, 103, 107, 114, 153, 163–164, 167, 179, 183, 186, 192, 196, 201, 207, 223–225, 240; Asian 179, 185; corporate 69, 73, 82; cultural 7, 13, 24, 128, 133, 136, 155, 176, 186, 193, 236, 240; ethnic 26, 169, 202, 222; gender 107; global 108; Korean 10, 47, 102, 107, 108, 152–154, 176–177, 180, 182, 185, 200–201, 222; musical poetics of (Krims) 107; national 11, 14–18, 59, 201, 212, 235, 239–240; of songs 49; politics 28, 192, 199, 225; primordial essentialist notion of ethnic 222 idol; see K-Pop idols illegal music downloading 140 IMF (International Monetary Fund) 55, 134, 140 In Sun-I (Kim In-Sun) 50–51, 199 “inauthentic Americans” (Kim) 223 industrialization 45, 67, 205, 207 influx of Korean American immigrants 193 “interculture” (Slobin) 17 intra-Asian cultural traffic 8 “Iron Lion Zion” (song) 182 “It’s Raining” (song) 113, 113 fig. 3.9 Itaewon 216 Iwabuchi, Koichi 8, 27, 129, 151–152, 154, 156, 179 J-Pop 61, 119 n.5, 120 n.7, 153–55 “Jaebeom Controversy” 192, 202, 206–07, 214, 226 Jackson, Michael 50–51, 83, 95 tab. 3.2, 110, 217 Jameson, Fredric 118, 184–185, 236 Jang Hyun [Chang Hyŏn] 46 Japanese colonialism 39, 104, 136, 154, 207

252 Index jazz 40–43, 51, 56 n.8, 61, 79 Joo, Brian 106, 216–224 “Jumon: Mirotic” (song) 111, 111 fig. 3.8, 115 fig. 3.11 “Jurassic Park factor” (Shim) 137 JYP Entertainment 67–69, 73, 74 fig. 3.2, 84, 91, 98, 132, 170–72, 188 n.7, 197–98, 213, 228 n.9 K-Pop audience: anti-fans 192, 202, 207, 210, 214; cover dance 109, 112; fandom 5, 23, 28, 192, 202, 208, 214, 226; fansubbing 66–7; label-fan nexus 73 K-Pop idols: artist and group names 62, 162; audition and training 78–81; contract 77–79, 84, 110, 170, 203–04, 213, 217–18; immigrant 10, 17, 26, 28, 192, 193, 196, 202, 208, 214, 216, 221, 223–27, 240; localized star (hyŏnjihwadoen kasu) 68, 196–97; performance 1–5, 29 n.5, 197, 234; trainees (yŏnsŭpsaeng); transnational stardom 119 n.4, 192 K-Pop songs: cover songs 84, remixes, and adaptations 84; custom-made songs 85–6; English code-mixing in lyrics 63–66; licensing 70, 83–85; lyrics 75, 80, 82, 84–85, 94 tab. 3.2, 97, 99, 111, 119 n.3, 120 n.11, 121 n.20, 169, 171, 176–78, 180, 182, 188 n.13, 200, 208, 228 n.13, 235, 237–38; North-European and U.S. composers 83–86; original songs 85; performance-centered 81–83, 118, 235; song dramaturgy 90–93 K-Pop system: higher value-added business (kobuga kach’i sanŏp) 68, 196; idol star system (aidol sŭta sisŭt’em) 10, 67, 70–73, 80, 118; in-house production 18, 69, 70–71; A&R 69, 84, 141; Koreanizing/ Othering machine of 216–223; localization strategy 10, 63, 153, 196, 224, 240; terminology 60–62; training system 55, 60, 68, 75, 78–81, 197, 223 K.P.K. Akgŭkdan 44 kagok 56 n.7, 107 kajok (family) 206 Kang Hŭi-Gŏn 99, 120 KARA 108, 130, 142, 154 kayagŭm 3, 176, 188 n.9 kayo; see taejung kayo

KBS (broadcasting station) 45, 48, 76, 137, 175, 206 Keil, Charles 112 Kim Ch’u-Ja 46 Kim Chae-Jung 119–120 n.6 Kim Chŏng-Hwan 44 Kim Chŏng-Mi 46 Kim Dae-Jung 134–135, 157 n.1, 206, 211 Kim Gun Mo (Kim Kŏn-Mo) 54 Kim Hae-Song 43–44 Kim Hyŏn-Sik 51 Kim In-Sik 40 Kim Min-Ki 47 Kim Nŭngin 56 n.6 Kim San-Wol 40 Kim Se-Hwan 47 Kim Sŏjŏng 56 n.3 Kim Tae-Hee 127 Kim Wan-Sŏn 51 Kim Young-Sam (1993–98) 15, 52, 133–134, 227 n.3 Kim, Youna 9–10, 77, 138 kisaeng 42, 56 n.7 kisŏngsedae (older generation) 52; see also sinsedae kkonminam 217 kkwaenggwari 177 Kmtv 75, 193 Knights, Vanessa 16, 18, 163, 188 n.1 “Kŏmŭn haengbok” (Black Happiness) 200 kŏnjŏn kayo (healthy popular song) 44, 208 KAIST (Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology) 78, 135 KFTC (Korean Fair Trade Commission) 78 KNTO (Korea National Tourism Organization) 144 KOCCA (Korea Creative Content Agency) 7, 87, 138, 139 fig. 4.1, 141, 142–43 tab. 4.1–4.4, 157 n.2 KOFICE (Korea Foundation for International Cultural Exchange) 7, 27, 139 fig. 4.1, 143–49, 155–56 Korean American 28, 175, 187, 192–97, 208–11, 214, 216–17, 220, 222–29, 237–38, 240 Korean music market 139–43 Korean War 43–45, 199 Korean Wave 26–7, 55, 75, 129–32, 138, 143–48, 150–52, 156, 158, 213, 239; backlash against Korean pop

Index  253 culture 127–28, 144–45, 156, 171; Hate Korean Wave (Kenkanryū) 127–29; Neo-Korean Wave 130, political economy of 128 kugak 11–12, 60, 107, 144, 176–79, 185 kungmin (member of the nation) 175, 206 kwŏnbŏn 42, 56 n.7 Kyŏngsŏng Radio Broadcasting station 56 kyop’o 193, 196, 218, 221–27 Kyŏulyŏnga (Winter Sonata) 130, 151, 153–54 L.A. Boyz (group) 194 “La La La” (song) 91 Lee Hee-Eun 12, 74, 194, 199, 201, 212 Lee Jang-Hee [Yi Chang-Hŭi] 47 Lee Jung-Yup 87, 89, 150 Lee Juno (Yi Chuno) 52 Lee Mi-Ja (singer) 45 Lee Mun-Se (Yi Mun-Se) 49 Lee Myung-Bak 138 Lee Soo-Man 67, 75, 83, 135, 164 Lee Sook-Jong 207 Lee Sun-Hee (Yi Sŏn-Hŭi) 49 Lee Young Mee 41 Lee Young-Woo 43, 56 n.8 LeeSsang (group) 99, 101, 120 legislative changes 143, 155, 239 Lie, John 12, 28 n.4, 29 n.6, 152 “Like This or That” (song) 116 fig. 3.12 Listen to My Heart (BoA album) 153 LMFAO 238, 241 n.2 “Lollipop” (song) 97, 114 fig. 3.10 loyalty 60, 73, 219–20 Mnet 75, 120 n.17, 193 Madonna 50–51, 168, 233 Marley, Bob 182 Martel, Diane 166, 166 fig. 5.2 Martel, Frédéric 10–11 MBC (broadcasting station) 1, 45, 48–49, 76, 137, 203 MCST (Ministry of Culture, Sports, and Tourism) 138, 139 fig. 4.1, 141, 143, 228 n.14 media liberalization 136–38 Middleton, Richard 13–14, 90, 103 militarized modernity 212, 214 military service 211–13 minjok 205, 209, 228 n.10 minjung (mass, people) 210 minsogak 188 n.9

Miss A (group) 98, 114 fig. 3.10 mixed-blood (honhyŏl) 24, 200, 227 n.5 Moon Seungsook 212 Moore, Allan Rock: The Primary Text 13, 95, 104 Mori, Yoshitaka 61, 152–53 Motown 110, 117, 117 fig. 3.13, 171, 184 MTV Asia 8 multi-top formation 109 multicultural/multiculturalism 10, 198, 201, 224–25, 227, 240 multinational music recording companies 139 Mun Hee-Ok (Mun Hŭi-Ok) 50 Mun Ilsŏk 56 n.6 musical alterity 27, 162–63, 174 music cafés (ŭmak kamsangsil) 47 music export by region 142 t.4.3 music formats: digital singles 86, 88; mini album 71, 76, 86–87, 170; re-packaged 86–88, 120 n.14 music import by region 143 t.4.4 music market size 140 fig. 4.2 musical border-crossing 163 musical drama troupes” (akgŭkdan) 44 musicology 11–4, 29 n.5, 59; relational 13 mutual understanding (sangho ihae) 144–46 “My Name” (song) 65, 120 n.9 Nakasone, Rino 110 Nam In-Su 56 n.3 “Nan Nŏ Ege” (song) 84 Narayan, Kirin 24 NASA 241 n.1 nation branding 10, 27, 129, 138, 150 nation-state 16–17, 27, 127–28, 133, 155, 157, 193, 205, 225, 239 nationalism 10, 26, 28, 30, 131, 179, 182, 192, 205–08, 210–11, 214, 226, 239, 240 New Kids on the Block (group) 29, 75, 120 n.12 new schools (sinsik hakkyo) 39 NHK (broadcasting station) 77, 130 Ninja (group) 54 “No.1” (song) 85 “Nobody” (song) 117 fig. 3.13, 170–74, 173 fig. 5.3 “non-places” (Augé) 115, 118, 208 noraebang 23, 117, 141

254 Index nostalgia 27, 118, 129, 149, 151–56, 170, 179, 184–85 NRG (boy group) 55, 62, 129, 132 “Nu ABO” (song) 92, 116 fig. 3.12

promotional policies 143, 155, 239 PSY (singer) 28, 28 n.3, 98, 180, 233–34, 237–38, 241 n.2 Puhwal (group) 51

O’Flynn, John 16 OECD 215, 218 n.15 “Oh” (song) 117 fig. 3.13 Okeh Records 56 n.4 n.6 ŏmch’ina 208, 217 “Ŏmona” (song) 102 oppa p’aendŭl (older brother fans); oppa pudae (older brother squad) 51 orientalism 19, 164, 166, 168–69, 171, 187, self-exoticization 168; selforientalism 28, 168, 183–84, 186 Othering 20, 28, 174, 192, 208, 212, 216, 221–26, 229 n.17 ŏttŏnnal (One Day) (group) 51 “Overdose” (song) 114 fig. 3.10

Rain (singer) 63, 68, 113, 113 fig. 3.9, 120 n.16, 132, 188 n.7, 198, 217, 228 n.14 rap flow 91, 98–102 record companies (ŭmbansa) 55, 56 n.4, 67, 70, 195 reggae 7, 27, 53–54, 69, 81, 162, 179, 180, 182, 185, 188 n.12 n.13 remix-style 92; see also K-Pop songs Replay” (song) 110 Riley, Teddy 83, 86 “Rising Sun” (song) 93, 94 tab. 3.2 “Roly Poly” (song) 97, 117 fig. 3.13 Roo Moo-Hyun 135 Roo’ra (group) 54 Ryoo Woongjae 128 ryūkōka; see yuhaengga

p’ansori 107, 176–77 Pae Ho 45 Paektusan (group) 51 Paek Ŭn-Sŏn 44 Pak Nam-Jŏng 51 Pak Sŏng-U 145–48 Park Chung-Hee 47, 136, 233 Park Geun-Hye 233 Park Jaebeom 192, 202, 204, 206–12, 214–15, 225–26, 228 n.9 Park Ji-Hyun 68 Park Ji-Yoon 8 Park Jin-Young 68–69, 82, 170, 172, 198, 204 pastiche/pastiche-like 10, 81, 93, 174, 184, 186, 189 n.14, 240 patrilocality 212 patriotism 28, 192–93, 204–09, 212–14, 216, 222, 226; affective 207 Patti Kim 45 performativity 14 pibimbap 236 political economy of Korean pop culture and music 128 Pom-yŏrŭm-kaŭl-kyŏul (group) 51 pop ballad system 7; pop ballads (palladŭ kayo) 2, 49, 52, 54, 81, 106, 152 pop globalism 28, 164, 186 popular music analysis 13 ppong factor 102, 236, 238 ppongtchak; see t’ŭ rot’ŭ pre-censorship control 53

S.E.S. (group) 54–55, 62, 84, 120 n.16, 129, 132 Said, Edward 19 Samsung Anyband (group) 71, 72 fig. 3.1 Samulnori 176–77, 179 “Saranghae” (song) 106 “Saŭ i ch’anmi” (song) 40–41 school songs; see ch’angga Scranton, Mary F. 39, 56 n.1 Se7en 62, 69, 83, 132 segyehwa (Korean globalization); see globalization Seo Taiji (Sŏ T’aeji) 49, 51–55, 57, 63–64, 69, 81, 83, 98, 110, 120 n.8, 217 Seoul Olympic Games (1988) 52 “Shady Girl” (song) 116 fig. 3.12 Shepherd, John 13, 88 Shin Gi-Wook 134, 149–50, 205, 210–11 Shin Joong-Hyun [Sin Chunghyŏ n] 46, 48 SHINee (boy group) 4, 62, 83, 97, 110 Shinhwa (group) 8, 55, 120 n.16, 129, 132 shinp’a (Japanese theater) 41 Shiri (film) 129 shōka; see ch’angga “Shy Boy” (song) 117 fig. 3.13 sigimsae (embellishments) 106–07

Index  255 signature dance moves 109–11, 233, 235 Sinawi (group) 51–52 Sinch’on Pŭrusŭ (Sinchon Blues) 51 sinminyo 56 n.3, 40–42, 44 sinsedae (new generation) 52 Skull (Cho Sŏng-Chin) 27, 69, 162, 179–82, 185, 188–91, 240 Slobin, Mark 17 SM Entertainment 55, 67–71, 75–76, 78, 81–82, 84–86, 108, 110, 119 n.4, 120 n.9, 135, 153, 162, 164–65, 167, 170, 184, 196, 217–18 “So Hot” by Sistar (song) 116 fig. 3.12 social Darwinism 150 soft power 10–11, 26, 138, 156, 241 Solid (Sollidŭ) (group) 54, 83, 194–95, 217 Son Mogin 56 n.6 sŏnbae (senior colleague) 220 Song Ch’ang-Sik 47 song movement (norae undong) 47 songwriting 78, 82–83, 85, 118, 236; see also K-Pop songs Sŏnu Il-Sŏn 42 Soribada 23, 61, 141 Sorry Sorry” (song) 97–98, 109, 111, 111 fig. 3.8 sound 1, 3–4, 8–9, 12, 15, 27, 46–47, 53, 60, 81–82, 84, 89–93, 96, 98, 101–02, 104–08, 112, 131, 148, 162–63, 165–69, 171, 173–74, 176–79, 181, 184, 188 n.6, 192, 194–95, 201, 236 space in music videos 112–19 Spears, Britney 29, 85, 110, 233 SPEED (group) 54 state-led globalization; see globalization Steger, Manfred B. 14–15 Stokes, Martin 14, 163, 168, 186 stereotype/stereotyping 152–53, 185, 223, 225, 237 sunyŏl (pure blood) 227 n.5 Super Junior (group) 5–6, 68, 83, 97–98, 102, 109, 111, 111 fig.3.8, 164, 196–97 Supernova (Ch’osinsŏng) (group) 103 T-ara (group) 62, 90, 97, 103, 108, 117 fig. 3.13 T-Pain 167, 233 “T.T.L.” (Time to Love) 103, 104 fig. 3.7 t’ŭrot’ŭ 41–42, 44–47, 49–51, 54, 56 n.3, 79, 81–82, 102–03, 106–07, 172–74, 189 n.14

t’ongkit’a 46–49, 51 Taejanggŭm (Jewel in the Palace) 130 taejung kayo (popular music) 11, 41, 60, 246 app.I taepyŏngso (instrument) 53 Tamlyn, Garry 93 Tasi mannan segye” (Into the New World) (song) 91 The Boys (Girls Generation album) 83, 86–87 The Host (movie) 228 n.13 “The Waves of Danube” (song) 41 Titanic (film) 129, 206 “Torawayo Pusanhange” (Come Back to Busan Harbor) (song) 51 Tourism Authority of Thailand (TAT) 198 “TPL (Talk, Play, Love)” (song) 72 fig. 3.1 Tŭlgukhwa (Wild Chrysanthemum) (group) 51 TV variety shows 201, 212 “TVrŭl kkŏnne” (I Turned Off the TV …) (song) 99, 100 fig. 3.6, 101 tab. 3.3 TVXQ (group) 5, 62–63, 68, 73, 93, 94 tab. 3.2, 111, 111 fig. 3.8, 115 fig. 3.11, 119 n.4 n.5 Underwood, Horace 39, 56 n.1 n.2 United Asia Management (UAM) 70 Universal Music Publishing 86 U.S.-ROK alliance; see Anti-American sentiment Vernallis, Carol 112 “Visual Dreams” (song) 115 fig. 3.11 wae-saek (Japanese style) 50 Wallerstein, Immanuel 20 Wang Su-Bok 42 We Hate all Kinds of Violence (H.O.T. album) 75 westward initiative of K-Pop 169, 185, 240 White, Hayden 60 will.i.am 83, 86 Wilson, Rob 17 Wonder Girls (group) 27, 68, 97–98, 105, 109, 117 fig. 3.13, 120 n.15, 162, 170–72, 174–75, 180, 184, 188 n.3 n.7, 189 n.14, 198, 240 work ethics 208, 224

256 Index X-Japan (group) 54 XOXO (EXO album) 88 Yang Hyun-Suk (Yang Hyŏn-sŏk) 52, 69, 82 yangak 11 Yano, Christine 43, 154, 172 “Yayaya” (song) 117 fig. 3.13 YG Entertainment 53, 67, 69–70, 91, 98, 108, 180 Yi Chŏng-Hwa 46 Yi Sŏn-Ung (Tablo) 71, 209–11, 215–16 yonanuki 42, 172–73 Yoo Seung-Jun (Steve Yoo) 211–13

Yoo Young-Jin 82, 92–93, 111 Yoon Do-Hyun/YB (Yoon Band) (group) 27, 162, 174–77, 179, 185, 240 YouTube 23, 28 n.3, 29 n.5, 108–09, 120 n.11, 229 n.16, 233–34, 238 Yu Chae-Ha 51 yuhaengga 11, 39–42, 104; see also t’ŭrot’ŭ Yun Hyŏng-Ju 47 Yun Sim-Dŏk 41 yusin (revitalizing reform) 47, 233 Ziggy (Sigurd Heimdal Rosnes) 85