The Soft Power of the Korean Wave: Parasite, BTS and Drama 2021012520, 2021012521, 9780367609122, 9780367609115, 9781003102489

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THE SOFT POWER OF THE KOREAN WAVE

At this fascinating historical moment, this timely collection explores the new meaning of the Korean Wave and the process of media production, representation, distribution and consumption in a global context as a distinctive and complex form of soft power. Focusing on the most recent phenomenon of Korean popular culture, this book considers the Korean Wave in the global digital age and addresses the social, cultural and political implications in their complexity within the contexts of global inequalities and uneven power structures. The collection brings together internationally renowned scholars and regional specialists to examine this historically significant, visibly growing, yet under-explored current phenomenon in the global digital age. Drawing on a wide range of perspectives from media and communications, cultural studies, sociology, history and anthropology, and including a series of case studies from Asia, the USA, Europe and the Middle East, it provides an empirically rich and theoretically stimulating tour of this area of study, going beyond the standard Euro-American view of the evolving and complex dynamics of the media today. This collection is essential reading for students and scholars interested in Korean popular culture and in film, media, fandom and cultural industries more widely. Youna Kim is Professor of Global Communications at the American University of Paris, joined from the London School of Economics and Political Science where she had taught since 2004. She completed her Ph.D. at the University of London, Goldsmiths College. Her books are Women, Television and Everyday Life in Korea: Journeys of Hope (2005), Media Consumption and Everyday Life in Asia (2008), Transnational Migration, Media and Identity of Asian Women: Diasporic Daughters (2011), Women and the Media in Asia: The Precarious Self (2012), The Korean Wave: Korean Media Go Global (2013), Routledge Handbook of Korean Culture and Society (2016), Childcare Workers, Global Migration and Digital Media (2017) and South Korean Popular Culture and North Korea (2019).

Internationalizing Media Studies Series Editor: Daya Kishan Thussu

The Korean Wave Korean Media Go Global Edited by Youna Kim Mapping BRICS Media Edited by Kaarle Nordenstreng and Daya Kishan Thussu Contemporary BRICS Journalism Edited by Svetlana Pasti and Jyotika Ramaprasad China’s Media Go Global Edited by Daya Kishan Thussu, Hugo de Burgh and Anbin Shi Location Technologies in International Context Edited by Rowan Wilken, Gerard Goggin and Heather A. Horst BRICS Media Reshaping the Global Communication Order? Edited by Daya Kishan Thussu and Kaarle Nordenstreng Digital-Age Resistance Journalism, Social Movements and the Media Dependence Model Andrew Kennis The Soft Power of the Korean Wave Parasite, BTS and Drama Edited by Youna Kim

For a full list of titles in this series, please visit https://www.routledge.com/ Internationalizing-Media-Studies/book-series/IMS

THE SOFT POWER OF THE KOREAN WAVE Parasite, BTS and Drama

Edited by Youna Kim

First published 2022 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN and by Routledge 605 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10158 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2022 selection and editorial matter, Youna Kim; individual chapters, the contributors The right of Youna Kim to be identified as the author of the editorial material, and of the authors for their individual chapters, has been asserted 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 utilised 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. British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Kim, Youna, editor. Title: Soft power of the Korean wave : Parasite, BTS and drama / edited by Youna Kim. Description: Abingdon, Oxon ; New York : Routledge, 2022. | Series: Internationalizing media studies | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2021012520 (print) | LCCN 2021012521 (ebook) | ISBN 9780367609122 (hardback) | ISBN 9780367609115 (paperback) | ISBN 9781003102489 (ebook) Subjects: LCSH: Mass media—Korea (South) | Korea (South)—Popular culture. | Mass media—Social aspects. | Civilization, Modern—Korean influences. Classification: LCC P92.K6 S64 2022 (print) | LCC P92.K6 (ebook) | DDC 302.23/095195—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021012520 LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021012521 ISBN: 978-0-367-60912-2 (hbk) ISBN: 978-0-367-60911-5 (pbk) ISBN: 978-1-003-10248-9 (ebk) DOI: 10.4324/9781003102489 Typeset in Bembo by codeMantra

CONTENTS

Notes on contributors Acknowledgments Introduction: popular culture and soft power in the social media age Youna Kim

ix xiii

1

PART I

Parasite

39

1 Producers of Parasite and the question of film authorship: producing a global author, authoring a global production Dong Hoon Kim

41

2 Parasite and the global arrival of Korean cinema: notes from the underground Charles K. Armstrong

54

3 The transcultural logic of capital: the house and stairs in Parasite Yoon Jeong Oh

67

4 Gender and class in Parasite Kelly Y. Jeong

79

vi

Contents

5 One-inch-tall barrier of subtitles: translating invisibility in Parasite Jieun Kiaer and Loli Kim

90

PART II

BTS

105

6 BTS and the world music industry Kyung Hyun Kim

107

7 BTS, the highest stage of K-pop John Lie

118

8 BTS, alternative masculinity and its discontents Gooyong Kim

129

9 Transnational cultural power of BTS: digital fan activism in the social media era Dal Yong Jin 10 BTS as cultural ambassadors: K-pop and Korea in Western media Sarah Keith

142

155

PART III

Drama

169

11 K-dramas meet Netflix: new models of collaboration with the digital West Hyejung Ju

171

12 Mediating Asian modernities: the lessons of Korean dramas Lisa Y.M. Leung 13 The rise of K-dramas in the Middle East: cultural proximity and soft power Yes¸im Kaptan and Murat Tutucu

184

196

Contents vii

14 Korean dramas, circulation of affect and digital assemblages: Korean soft power in the United States Ji-Yeon O. Jo

208

15 North Korea and South Korean popular culture in the digital age Youna Kim

220

Index

235

CONTRIBUTORS

Charles K. Armstrong was formerly the Korea Foundation Professor of Korean Studies in the Social Sciences at Columbia University. He is the author, editor or co-editor of five books on Korean and East Asian history as well as many journal articles, including “The Origins of North Korean Cinema: Art and Propaganda in the Democratic People’s Republic,” Acta Koreana ( January 2002) and “The Cultural Cold War in Korea,” Journal of Asian Studies (February 2003). His most recent book is A History of Modern East Asia, 1800 – Present (Wiley-Blackwell, 2021). Kelly Y. Jeong teaches Korean studies and comparative literature at the University of California, Riverside. Her areas of research include modern and contemporary Korean literature, Korean cinema, popular culture, postcolonial studies and critical theory. She is the author of the book Crisis of Gender and the Nation in Korean Literature and Cinema: Modernity Arrives Again (Lexington Books, 2011). Her recent research and writing focus on several themes and issues in Korean cinema such as gender and popular film genre, revenge narratives, propaganda cinema and postwar melodrama films. Dal Yong Jin  is Distinguished Professor at Simon Fraser University, Canada.

His research interests are digital platforms and digital games, globalization and media, transnational cultural studies and the political economy of media and culture. He has published numerous books, journal articles, book chapters and book reviews. His books include Korea’s Online Gaming Empire (MIT Press, 2010), New Korean Wave: Transnational Cultural Power in the Age of Social Media (University of Illinois Press, 2016), Smartland Korea: Mobile Communication, Culture and Society (University of Michigan Press, 2017) and Globalization and Media in the Digital Platform Age (Routledge, 2019).

x Contributors

Ji-Yeon O. Jo is Director of the Carolina Asia Center and Associate Professor in

the Department of Asian Studies at UNC–Chapel Hill. Her research focuses on the post/Cold War experiences of the Korean diasporas as minorities in diaspora and South Korea. Her first monograph Homing: An Affective Topography of Ethnic Korean Return Migration (University of Hawai’i Press, 2017) addresses various issues of contemporary migration and highlights their affective dimensions. Her second monograph, tentatively titled Unsettling: Korean Diaspora Cinema and the Circulation of Affect, investigates aspects of affect and spatiality in the films directed by Korean diaspora filmmakers. Hyejung Ju is Associate Professor of Mass Communication at Claflin University, USA. She has researched on transnational television industries, audience cultures and the impact of digital media on both distribution and consumption of non-Western media. She has published research articles in International & Intercultural Communication, Continuum: Journal of Media & Cultural Studies, Journal of International Communication, Communication, Culture & Critique and Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Communication. She is the author of the book Transnational Korean Television: Cultural Storytelling and Digital Audiences (Lexington Books, 2020). Yes¸im Kaptan is Assistant Professor in Communication Studies at Kent State

University, USA. She was a visiting scholar at the Center for Advanced Research in Global Communication at the University of Pennsylvania and Aarhus University, Denmark. Her research focuses on transnational media, audience reception, global popular culture and consumerism. She has published articles in International Journal of Communication, Popular Communication, Journal of Consumer Culture, Global Media Journal and also Turkish media journals and books. Murat Tutucu, the co-author, is a doctoral student in the Department of Journalism of Anadolu University, Turkey and also works as a screenwriter in a governmental institution. His research examined popularity of Korean dramas and their remakes in Turkey. Sarah Keith is Senior Lecturer in Media and Music at Macquarie University, Sydney, Australia. Her research areas include popular music studies, East Asian popular culture and the music industries. Her recent research has explored K-pop fandom and multicultural understanding in Australia, supported by a grant from the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade’s Australia-Korea Foundation, and digital disruption in the music industries. Jieun Kiaer is Young-Bin Min Foundation Associate Professor in Korean Language and Linguistics at the Oriental Institute of the University of Oxford. Her research interests include cross-linguistic and cross-cultural questions of translation. She has published in Korean language, linguistics and translations and published Korean Literature with Korean Wave (Routledge, 2019). She is working

Contributors  xi

on film translations and completing Understanding Korean Film: A Multi-Modal Translational Perspective (Routledge). She is the Series Editor for the Routledge Studies in East Asian Translation. Loli Kim, the co-author, is a DPhil researcher at the University of Oxford, with

a professional background in design communication. Her research explores the translation of multimodal meaning in Korean film and the development of a semantic approach to Multimodal Film Discourse Analysis for understanding specifically Korean film. Dong Hoon Kim is Associate Professor and Associate Department Head of Cinema Studies at the University of Oregon, USA. His research interests include visual culture, early cinema, film and media spectatorship, East Asian film, media and popular culture. He is the author of Eclipsed Cinema: The Film Culture of Colonial Korea (Edinburgh University Press, 2017) and is currently working on a book on North Korean cinema. He has been engaged with a variety of activities in the field besides his academic research, directing short films, working for film festivals and serving as consultant to film company. Gooyong Kim, with a Ph.D. in Cultural/Media Studies from UCLA, is Assis-

tant Professor of Communication Arts at Cheyney University of Pennsylvania. His research includes critical studies, cultural/media studies, media aesthetics/ criticism, media literacy, political economy of the media, cultural politics of neoliberalism and social movements. He is the author of the book on K-pop’s broader economic, cultural and social implications, From Factory Girls to K-Pop Idol Girls: Cultural Politics of Developmentalism, Patriarchy and Neoliberalism in South Korea’s Popular Music Industry (Lexington Books, 2019). Kyung Hyun Kim is a creative writer, scholar and film producer, who is currently Professor in the Department of East Asian Studies and the Visual Studies Program at UC Irvine. He has worked with internationally renowned directors such as Hong Sang-Soo, Lee Chang-Dong and Marty Scorsese as well as with American film producers Jason Blum and Steven Schneider. He is the author of Virtual Hallyu: Korean Cinema of the Global Era, The Remasculinization of Korean Cinema and Hegemonic Mimicry: Korean Popular Culture of the Twenty-First Century, all published by Duke University Press, and a Korean-language novel In Search of Lost G. He has co-produced and co-scripted two award-winning feature films, Never Forever (2007, Sundance Film Festival’s US Main Competition) and The Housemaid (2010, Cannes Film Festival Main Competition). Youna Kim is Professor of Global Communications at the American University of Paris, joined from the London School of Economics and Political Science where she had taught since 2004. She completed her Ph.D. at the University of London, Goldsmiths College. Her books are Women, Television and Everyday

xii Contributors

Life in Korea: Journeys of Hope (Routledge, 2005), Media Consumption and Everyday Life in Asia (Routledge, 2008), Transnational Migration, Media and Identity of Asian Women: Diasporic Daughters (Routledge, 2011), Women and the Media in Asia: The Precarious Self (Palgrave Macmillan, 2012), The Korean Wave: Korean Media Go Global (Routledge, 2013), Routledge Handbook of Korean Culture and Society (Routledge, 2016), Childcare Workers, Global Migration and Digital Media (Routledge, 2017) and South Korean Popular Culture and North Korea (Routledge, 2019). Lisa Y.M. Leung  is Associate Professor of Department of Cultural Studies,

Lingnan University, Hong Kong. She is Programme Director of the Department’s Masters in Cultural Studies Programme. She has researched and published extensively in the area of minority and migration studies, and co-authored the book Understanding South Asian Minorities in Hong Kong (Hong Kong University Press, 2014). She has published on the transnationalization of Korean dramas and the reception of local audiences. Her other research area focuses on the role of social media in social movements. John Lie  is C.K. Cho Professor of Sociology at the University of California,

Berkeley. His main scholarly interest is social theory. His books include Han Unbound: The Political Economy of South Korea (Stanford University Press, 1998), Modern Peoplehood (Harvard University Press, 2004), K-Pop: Popular Music, Cultural Amnesia and Economic Innovation in South Korea (University of California Press, 2015) and The Dream of East Asia: The Rise of China, Nationalism, Popular Memory and Regional Dynamics in Northeast Asia (Columbia University Press, 2018). Yoon Jeong Oh is Assistant Professor of Korean Studies in the Department of East Asian Studies at New York University. She is currently completing her book manuscript, Translingual Interventions: The Melancholic Other of Japanese Colonialism, Postcolonial Korea and Transpacific Cosmopolitanism, which engages with translation theories, psychoanalysis and postcolonial studies to investigate the notion of singularity in translingual and transmedial practices of diasporic writers. Her research interests also include urban aesthetics and the links between text, media and culture.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

This book is an extension of my previous volume published in 2013, The Korean Wave: Korean Media Go Global (Routledge), after Psy’s “Gangnam Style” became a global sensation and one of the most viewed videos on YouTube. In 2020, the Korean film Parasite won the most awards including Best Picture and Best Director at the Academy Awards; the K-pop group BTS topped the US Billboard music charts and Korean TV dramas go global through streaming services such as Netflix. This timely book captures the unprecedented historic moment and reflects on the meaning of the Korean Wave that has now become a truly global and powerful phenomenon. I am very grateful to my publisher at Routledge, Natalie Foster, for the successful publication of my previous volume and for her immediate interest and ongoing support for this volume as well. It has been a pleasure to work with her on the exciting and meaningful projects – personally and intellectually. Back in London in 2005 when I first published a book, Women, Television and Everyday Life in Korea: Journeys of Hope (Routledge), no one predicted Korean television drama, film and music would become a “globally” popular cultural force. However, many graduate students from China were fascinated with this subject when I taught at the London School of Economics and Political Science. My book launch at the LSE bookstore was celebrated by, among many others, enthusiastic students, colleagues, friends and my mentor who read the manuscript with interest and advised writing two pages every day to continually engage with emerging projects. As always, I am grateful to Anthony Giddens for his valuable advice and friendship, as well as his timely encouragement for the current moment: “The Korean Wave has real meaning now and on a global level.” I remain appreciative of my colleagues and friends back in London, now here in Paris and elsewhere, Chris Berry, Kathleen Chevalier, Nick Couldry, James Curran, Jonathan Gray,

xiv Acknowledgments

Koichi Iwabuchi, Christian Joppke, Sonia Livingstone, Kent A. Ono, Terhi Rantanen and Daya Thussu, for their inspiring works, delightful meals together and encouraging conversations when much needed. Heartfelt thanks also to my PA and friend Diane Willian for her generous assistance, always remembered and appreciated wherever she is. Despite a pandemic challenge, the contributors in this book have collaborated so willingly and effectively. Thank you all. Youna Kim Paris

INTRODUCTION Popular culture and soft power in the social media age Youna Kim

In 2020, the film Parasite from South Korea (hereafter Korea) won the most awards – Best Picture, Best Director, Best International Feature Film and Best Original Screenplay – at the Academy Awards. Western critics commented that 92 years of Oscar history were shattered when this Korean film became the first non-English language film to win the award for Best Picture, indicating that Hollywood’s traditional overreliance on White stories by White powers, AmericanEurocentric cinema and gaze, may finally be ebbing (New York Times 2020a; Washington Post 2020c). Because the film is from Korea, not from the USA, Donald Trump denounced Parasite’s Oscar victory during his nationalistic political campaigning urging to make America great again: “How bad were the Academy Awards this year?… Can we get Gone with the Wind back, please?” (CNN 2020). The acclaimed director of Parasite, Bong Joon-Ho, told international audiences: “We never write to represent our countries… Once you overcome the one-inchtall barrier of subtitles, you will be introduced to so many more amazing films” (BBC 2020). To the surprise of 50-year-old Bong who does not do any social media, Twitter, Facebook or Instagram, his collective of global fans, referred to as #BongHive, have championed his movie on social media and made him a viral celebrity. Parasite’s unprecedented historic success has attracted attention to Korea once colonized and overshadowed for centuries by powerful countries. It has drawn an unfamiliar spotlight on the power and influence of Korean popular culture. The creative energy and attractive power of popular culture are heightening Korea’s visibility around the world and capturing the imagination of a new generation in the social media age. As another historic success, the Korean boyband BTS has topped the US Billboard music charts with their popular albums including “Love Yourself ” and had sold-out world concerts at the Rose Bowl Stadium in Pasadena, the Wembley Stadium in London and so on. This rapid ascent and widespread appeal is DOI: 10.4324/9781003102489

2  Youna Kim

remarkable in its speed and influence, attracting people beyond K-pop’s traditional regionalized constituency. BTS has become the first K-pop group to speak at the United Nations (UN), helping to launch a UNICEF campaign “Generation Unlimited” that promotes education, employment and empowerment for young people globally (BBC 2018; CNN 2018). The UN member states have agreed to create development goals designed to conquer poverty, inequality and other international problems, while simultaneously expressing their current concern: “The development goals are set to be completed in 2030 and most Heads of State coming to the General Assembly are 60-plus years old. We need the next generation to follow through” (a senior diplomat, CBS 2018). The UN has stressed the need for the younger generation to get involved, and thus invited this popular K-pop boyband that attracts and influences the 15–25 age global community, coupled with fast-moving digital technologies and networked communications. As productive cultural agents, BTS’s devoted fans called ARMY all over the world passionately promote and spread their idols’ stories and values via social media: “In our LOVE MYSELF campaign, we talk about the meaning of true love. We encourage every young person to find the love from within themselves and spread that love to others” (BTS, BBC 2018). The Korean Wave popular culture is emerging not only as a core component of the nation’s economic competitiveness but also as a powerful resource for social influence and cultural diplomacy at a global level. The Korean Wave was originally initiated by the export of TV dramas since the late 1990s, and it has become more visible through creative intersections with K-pop music, film, animation, online games, smartphones, fashion, cosmetics, food and lifestyles (Y. Kim 2013). While its popularity in the past was mainly concentrated in neighboring Asian markets, now it routinely reaches the Americas, the Middle East and Europe. Television drama, as an expressive form deeply tied to national culture and national viewership, has become a global phenomenon in its reach and allure. Recent Korean dramas such as Kingdom (2019, 2020) and Crash Landing on You (2019) have captured the hearts of broader audiences, and the rise of global streaming services such as Netflix has widened the reach and popularity of Korean dramas. Netflix has been co-producing and adding K-drama series, both recent and nostalgic, because of an increase in popular demand from international audiences. Besides, subtitle files are voluntarily made by K-drama fans almost as soon as dramas are aired and songs released. Fan-subbing, or amateur subtitling, has been critical to the growth of the Korean Wave as dispersed fans contribute their linguistic competence, genre expertise and time for the greater work of the collective. This organically formed, collaborative culture of linguistic translations, for a language that holds a peripheral status in the global media industry, is suggestive of fans’ voluntary labor and affective investment built around shared values and imaginations. Fan experiences of Korean popular culture and related social media spaces are performative, co-creative and affective practices that potentially create cracks and fissures in the dominant social imaginaries and competing ideological significations of the way the world is or

Introduction  3

should be. Popular culture is a terrain on which the politics of signification is played out in attempts to win people to particular or different ways of seeing the world (Storey 1997). The Korean Wave is not simply a planned flow that originates from Korea and transnational corporations, but more by accident it is a multi-directional flow and a highly interactive collaborative process that is created, and possibly sustained, by digitally empowered fan communities. The global expansion of the Korean Wave can be attributed to the power of the digital fans’ participatory culture and affective labor in prompt uploading, remixing, forwarding or sharing with wider audiences, while shaping the (re)production, circulation and reception of the Korean Wave. Dedicated and transformative fans of younger generations are the mediating contributors to the shaping of de-Westernizing media flows and the Korean Wave’s sustainable power in the affective economy. The media field’s fun, playful and exuberant nature (Booth 2017), with the Internet’s simultaneous place as playground and factory (Scholz 2013), and the ubiquity of popular pleasure on the social web lead to eroding distinction between play and work, including unpaid fan labor, which may unintentionally profit transnational corporations in neoliberal affective capitalism. Media fandom today is increasingly moving from the margins of subcultural celebration to a mainstream identity (Booth 2018; Click and Scott 2018) and potentially de-centralizing the global hegemonic culture market as digital co-creation and spreadability plays a key role in enabling the shifts. International audiences, not simply as consumers of pre-constructed content but as co-creative grassroots participants, are playing an active role in shaping the flows of media for their own purposes in an increasingly networked culture of spreadable media ( Jenkins et al. 2013). Media content does not remain in fixed borders but circulates in unpredicted and often unpredictable directions, through the bottom-up disruptive practice of digital fan labor, both material and immaterial, which encourages fellow fans and new users to participate in transnationally imagined communities. Popular culture, which was once considered as emotional and low culture in Korea, is now a potent global force providing significant underpinning for the generation of high value and meaning for the nation. As a pronounced example of the crossover of culture, economy and politics, the Korean Wave is seen to be an integral resource for the creation of a dynamic image of the nation through “soft power,” the ability to attract and influence international audiences without coercion (Nye 2004, 2008; Y. Kim 2013). Focusing on the recent phenomenon of Korean popular culture, Parasite, BTS and drama at this unprecedented historic moment, this book explores the multifaceted meaning of the Korean Wave at micro and macro levels and the process of media production, representation, circulation and consumption in a global context as a distinctive and complex form of soft power. A country’s popular culture, as a soft power resource, can increase its overall attractiveness and its potential influence on the global stage, albeit in unquantifiable, often commercial, capitalistic, unpredictable and even paradoxical ways, involving both state and non-state actors and international

4  Youna Kim

networks in a digitalizing world. The digital spreadability and symbolic potency of popular culture may extend to economic interests, national image-making and cultural diplomacy in international relations. Soft power can be “high,” directed at elites in a country, or “low,” aimed at the general public, and it can stem from governments and non-governmental actors including businesspeople and popular culture stars (Kurlantzick 2007). The term “popular culture” is used to describe mass-produced cultural products or media “distractions,” and popular culture is always defined, implicitly or explicitly, in contrast to high culture, dominant culture and thus viewed as a residual category, texts and practices that fail to meet the standards to qualify as high culture. More than merely distractive, trivializing, playful culture unworthy of serious studies, popular culture intersects with the important micro-macro politics of identity (Storey 1997; Y. Kim 2005, 2008, 2019; Brandt and Clare 2018). Popular culture amounts to something more than mass-produced capitalistic entertainment and leisure activity, since relations of power/politics are inescapably intersected with the culture/ ideology landscape that is always subject to negotiation, contestation and tension. This book considers the Korean Wave in the social media age and addresses the social, cultural and political implications in their complexity and paradox within the contexts of global inequalities and uneven power structures. It does not necessarily deny the obvious imperialist power of Western, particularly American, media infrastructures and dominance over the international culture landscape and the continuing significance of Western media imperialism, despite the preference to see social media and digital platforms as a new force for radical change (Fattor 2014; Boyd-Barrett and Mirrlees 2020). This book explores the Korean Wave and the emerging consequences of the postcolonial, alternative and competing power. Popular culture as a soft power resource in light of the digital evolution has been recognized in Korea (Y. Kim 2013, 2019), India (Thussu 2013), Japan (Iwabuchi 2015) and China (Voci and Hui 2018) as these Asian media industries have created visible, regional and global flows of pop music, television drama, film, animation and online games increasingly challenging the dominant power of Western media culture. The globalization of media content from once subalternized or peripheral nations is a facet of de-centralizing multiplicity of global cultural flows today, emerging as subversive soft power resources that challenge the hegemony of dominant ideas, values and ways of life. Collaborative creativity “from above” (nation-states, institutions, media industries) and “from below” (digital fans as grassroots intermediaries, producers-consumers, publics) and the combination of top-down and bottom-up forces generate hybrid, formal and informal networks of circulation and interaction, although the bottom-up actors do not necessarily operate in concert with the top-down actors in a coherent manner. The soft power of attraction is co-determined by the receivers as well as the senders, and is socially constructed (Watanabe and McConnell 2008). The global attraction of the Korean Wave has often grown out of a collective social energy that operates across creative culture industries and connects official content creators and performers to the multiple non-official hubs of digital fan

Introduction  5

communities that exist in an elusive liminal state between complicity with and resistance to the industries. It represents a distinctive cultural terrain of globalization “from below” based on proliferating digital platforms for dialogic and dynamic interaction that may consciously subvert and challenge enduring structures of power in all spheres of influence.

Parasite and the global rise of Korean culture industry Korea has a vibrant film industry that has challenged the dominant power of Hollywood. After the USA, China, Japan and the UK, Korea has the fifth largest film industry in terms of box office sales and the retention of a roughly 50% domestic market share (BBC 2020; Financial Times 2020). In the late 1990s Korean commercial cinema – ironically, a Korean pastiche that emulated much of Hollywood aesthetic – began to build its audience base as Korea’s growing middle-class younger generations preferred to watch domestic films that were genre-savvy, visually sophisticated and entertaining (Paquet 2009; K.H. Kim 2011). Since then, a vibrant national cinema culture has evolved into the most dominant cinema in Asia and one of the most successful film industries in the world. Korean cinema marked its 100th anniversary in 2019; the global success of Parasite stands as the culmination of the centennial development of the film industry into an international cultural powerhouse. Parasite’s historic victory at the Oscars in 2020 is not really the moment Korean cinema finally made it, but rather it is just the first time Hollywood and the West decided to take notice (Washington Post 2020c). The Korean film industry has played a significant role in the rise of the Korean Wave, constituting a key component of the country’s cultural exports. The Korean culture industry was developed as a national project competing within globalization, not against it, for socio-economic, cultural and political reasons in the late 1990s (Y. Kim 2007, 2013). Globalization had long been accompanied by the fear of Western and Japanese cultural invasion, but the sense of postcolonial anxieties coming from the opening of the market to the West and Japan has rather strengthened and benefited the Korean culture industry. Since the 1997 IMF financial crisis, the Korean government has thoroughly re-examined the process of modernization and targeted the export of popular media culture as a new economic initiative, one of the major sources of foreign revenue vital for the country’s economic survival and advancement. Korea, with limited natural resources, sought to reduce its dependence on a manufacturing base under competitive threat from China and promote a chimney-less industry. Trade experts called for the nation to shift its key development strategy to fostering overseas marketing for culture, digital technology and services, including films, TV programs, popular music, online games and distribution services. The government has striven to capitalize on Korean popular culture and given the same national support in export promotion that was once provided to electronics and cars. The Korean Wave started from the efforts of private sectors, but state-led

6  Youna Kim

developmentalist nationalism has played a key role in the speed of growth. Systematic operation by the governmentality of the developmentalist state and institutional strategies by the industry have combined to produce the condition for the rise of the Korean Wave. The creation of a status comparable to that of Hollywood was enabled by state-capital power of the government policy and the capital investment of conglomerates (chaebol) such as Samsung and Hyundai in the film industry of the 1990s. The Korean film industry had always been the object of a government focus and historically an extension of its industrial policy; therefore, Korean films reflected the industry’s orientation toward quasi-industrial production, the economy at a critical moment of transition (the post-IMF crisis) and this economy’s material embodiment ( Jeon 2019). The film industry experienced a renaissance during this era as conglomerates began investing in entertainment, while chaebolfunded films were also criticized as another version of Hollywood for their focus on violence and sexuality, the commercially driven standardization of cultural expression. There is constant interplay between the nation and cinema culture and the realities that traverse it as part of wider dialogue of the transnational working against an essentialist discourse of the national (Taylor-Jones 2013). Asian cinema cultures in the neoliberal era are constitutive of competing forces of national, regional and global imaginations. The longstanding power of Hollywood as a dominant source of global imagery has been challenged by other hubs and sources of transnational imagery and changing consumption practices. Audience experiences and the popularity of film tourism in Asia demonstrate that global tourist flows can no longer be characterized as a colonial phenomenon in which the Western White tourist consumes the exotic otherness (Kim and Reijnders 2018). The Korean Wave cinema and film tourism – links between filmic form and transnational commerce – generate a new Asian affective economy as the region becomes increasingly disconnected from the painful histories of the colonial and Cold War past that shaped affective experiences (Choe 2016). Historically, Korea faced Japanese colonialism (1910–45), the arbitrary national division by the USA and the Soviet Union into opposed states, North and South (1948), the Korean War (1950–53), and the military rule and successive authoritarian regimes (1961–93) with dual processes of modernization and democratization that have involved socio-political turmoil, infringements of freedom and inequalities in all spheres of life. In the colonial period, the cinema of Korea was not a national cinema, but a hybrid construct at the discursive juncture of national, colonial, regional and global cinemas as Japanese, Hollywood and European films variously impacted on colonial film culture (D. Kim 2017). In the postwar era, the national – whether cinema, culture or identity – was formed in the global flow of images, capital and discourse, and particularly by the wealth of the neocolonialist American influence and popular media that inundated Korea after 1953 (Chung 2014). As in non-Western and postcolonial societies, Korea’s experience of popular culture was not as an organically developed set of cultural aesthetics and practices, but as a hybrid form that was mediated by a foreign

Introduction  7

political presence. Anticolonial nationalist ideology was deeply embedded in postcolonial society and cultural productions that transcoded the dominant, nationalist view of history into accessible narrative and imagery for Korean film viewers (An 2018). The Golden Age of Korean cinema of the 1960s produced more than 100 films annually, including Kim Ki-Young’s The Housemaid (1960) that inspired Bong Joon-Ho’s Parasite. The Dark Age of the 1970s under the authoritarian regimes experienced two decades of increased censorship fueled by heightened Cold War ideology, anti-Communism and state-led developmentalist modernization. Radical films by independent filmmakers in the authoritarian era addressed oppressive state violence and oppositional movements, and many of one-time anti-state filmmakers opened up alternative yet ambiguous cinematic spaces recognized by corporate sponsors and the state in post-authoritarian Korea (Park 2015). With the support of democratic civil government, the New Korean Cinema of the late 1990s was a renaissance as filmmakers found new cultural terrains for freedom of expression, innovative forms and widely appealing commercial film culture (Shin and Stringer 2005; Yecies and Shim 2016). The emergence of the Korean Wave is a story of what happened when filmmakers finally escaped their confinement from the authoritarian regimes, and became more autonomous to realize a politically and socially informed cinema, but also to look beyond this to a new era when films were no longer obligated to speak for their nation and people. Korean cinema is one of the most successful commercial cinemas operating now outside Hollywood. The Korean Wave films appear to constitute a countercinema that seeks to resist the global cultural standardization by Hollywood power and create a unique space. Yet at the same time, many Korean filmmakers have blended Hollywood styles and genres with characteristically Korean stories and themes, such as the division of the nation, the Korean War, Confucian values and struggles in extraordinarily compressed modernity, which uniquely appeal to international audiences. Cultural identity in the precariousness of Korean cinema’s success is an ambiguous signifier, increasingly facing a dilemma in reconciling issues around the construction of national and local identities, while simultaneously trying to sustain a viable and popular film industry in the face of competition from Hollywood, capitalism and neoliberalism. By fully embracing Hollywood, rather than rejecting it, successful transnational Korean films display hybridity that engages both national identity and global aesthetics, art and commercialism, subversion and conformity in the midst of the blurring of the boundaries between Hollywood and the generic conventions of non-Hollywood products (K.H. Kim 2011). Bong Joon-Ho has a peculiar way of hybridizing the familiar Hollywood conventions with distinctively Korean socio-political realities that often deny the reassurances of the happy Hollywood ending (N. Lee 2020). Though restrained by the logic of global capitalism and Hollywood hegemony, Bong Joon-Ho represents a new type of auteur that is not just antithetical to media capitalism but takes tactical advantages of it to sustain his global auteur

8  Youna Kim

status and artistic control (Dong Hoon Kim, Chapter 1 in this volume). The international acclaim for Parasite underscores Korea’s emergence as a global cultural power, affirmation of the popularity and success of Korean cinema in the Anglophone world. It is a reminder of the long and vibrant history of the Korean film industry, as reflected by Bong: You can say that this is the exception for Korean cinema, or on the other hand, you can say that the Korean industry has been gradually preparing for this moment by maintaining a very robust industry, so the moment that was meant to come has finally come with Parasite. (Utichi 2020) Parasite is a disturbing social satire on the growing disparity between the haves and have-nots, infinite darkness of capitalism and class warfare. The plot juxtaposes three families of vastly different economic positions in neoliberal Seoul – the miserably impoverished Kim family who can barely afford to live in basic dignity with a precarious job and whose patriarch asserts it is best to have “no plan” that never fails; the excessively wealthy Park family who are too comfortable to imagine the lives and struggles of the poor; and the Parks’ housekeeper and her husband hidden in the house’s basement bunker, whose lowest status signifies an invisible working class in society. Through a resourceful but illegitimate tactic, one by one the poor Kims gradually infiltrate themselves into the wealthy Park household as tutor, driver and housekeeper in their hopes of ascending in hopelessly unequal society. The two working-class families rely on the rich Parks for fractions of work and income and aggressively compete with each other in a struggle for survival, which leads to destructive intra-class violence and ends in bloody tragedies. The title Parasite has a metaphorical double-articulation, referring not only to the poor family infiltrating into the rich house but also to the rich family exploiting the cheap labor of the poor in a symbiotic relationship of capitalistic structure. Korea boasts of being the fourth largest economy in Asia and the 12th largest economy in the world, yet the irony is that Parasite offers a brutal commentary on enormous income inequality and immense class tensions that are always present beneath the surface calm of this wealthy society (Washington Post 2020a; Guardian 2020b). Centering on the widening gap and conflicts between the rich and the poor, Parasite exposes the paradox at the heart of Korea better known around the world for its high-tech prowess, rapid economic growth, the Korean Wave, and the glamorous image of K-pop music and drama in Seoul’s fancy neighborhood. Korea has achieved fast capitalist industrialization, a compressed modernity that has taken place in an incomparably short period of time, enabled by a tight alliance between the developmentalist state and the big business chaebol, by repressing labor and excluding it from the benefits of economic growth (Kim and Vogel 2011). Income distribution gaps, widening socio-economic inequality and the perceptions of deteriorating life and work conditions for the majority of

Introduction  9

people have been emergent problems in Korea, where much of the spectacularly visible wealth produced by the rapid economic and capitalist growth is concentrated on a minority of the affluent privileged and the family-owned business chaebol (Hart-Landsberg et  al. 2007; D’Costa 2015). Neoliberal Korea has increasingly witnessed class polarization, a shrinking of the middle class, downward social mobility and a large majority suffering from job market insecurity (Yang 2018), despite Korea’s education fever and the highest rate (70%) of participation in tertiary education among OECD countries (OECD 2019a). Koreans have developed a distinctive class consciousness, which has been expressed in diverse forms of cultural, organizational and institutional activities to resist the dominant structure of social control and inequality (Koo 2001). Parasite can be understood within intersecting contexts of neoliberalism and the accompanying emergence of a global precariat, as well as memories of the repressed in modern Korean history, including the economically marginalized sectors of society and the subversive “underground” of divided Korea (Charles K. Armstrong, Chapter 2 in this volume). Ironically, the production of this seemingly subversive anticapitalist film was financially backed by a conglomerate, CJ Group that has built an entertainment empire since 1995. Parasite appears to be a distinctively Korean film for its defining feature, local visuals and narratives, but its dissection of the class division and the deep sense of social inequality is perceived to be relevant and common on a global scale. The film has resonated with international audiences as it spotlights a potentially universal theme of the absurdity of neoliberal capitalism, greater inequality and perpetual precarity happening now. The process by which wealth is accumulated and distributed contains powerful forces pushing toward an extremely high level of inequality never before seen (Piketty 2014). Parasite is a convoluted cinematic version of the “impossibility” of overcoming or dismantling neoliberal capitalism (Gabilondo 2020). In Parasite, houses and stairs are used as powerful visual metaphors to demonstrate class distinction and the impossibility of transcending the boundaries between contrasting socio-economic worlds – the wealthy family’s spacious minimalist modern house with numerous stairs; and the poor family’s roach-infested cramped semi-basement home in which the only sunlight comes from a ground-level window. Bong Joon-Ho explains a mixture of hope and fear in the living space: “Semi-basement means you’re half above the ground, half beneath it. They still want to believe that they’re over ground, but carry this fear that they could fall completely below. It’s that limbo state that reflects their economic status” (Sims 2019). The vertical movement from top to bottom, such as the descending effect of the stairs, the semi-basement home and the disaster of dirty, torrential rain water, symbolizes the class difference and the explosive despair of the poor. In contrast, the charming wealthy house and stairs represent a form of Western bourgeois lifestyle and Western modernism infiltrating all levels of everyday life in neoliberalism (Yoon Jeong Oh, Chapter 3 in this volume). Parasite depicts class struggle through the vertical, spatial visuals and the smell of the lower-class body. It is impossible to escape the body odor which comes from

10  Youna Kim

the damp semi-basement living conditions and marks them as poor, and which invokes distaste and repulsion in the rich. Smell is as out of their control, out of their agency and intention, as their poverty (Ram and Chennur 2020). The unintentional transgressive potential of the body, specifically of smell, ultimately causes the eruption of class consciousness and violence in a finale of Parasite. Parasite is not without its limits; albeit a critique of capitalism and inequality, the film plays on stereotypes of class and gender and reproduces dominant ideology of capitalism and patriarchy by repurposing the familiar. Its reductionistic representation of the working class, such as their vulgarity and the dangers of trusting the working class, fails to examine the system that creates such deep class divisions and exploits the poor (Guardian 2020a). This Korean film is made to feel both original and oddly familiar, the product of the “male gaze” that still holds sway in misogynistic Hollywood like so many men with their wish fulfillment fantasies and women who are silenced (Washington Post 2020b). Parasite exposes not only class hierarchy but also gender inequality, revealing the grim truth of women’s worth and limited power that is derivative of that of the men in their lives (Kelly Y. Jeong, Chapter 4 in this volume). A more rigid form of patriarchy is exposed by the upper class – the matriarch who embodies naïve, fragile and docile femininity, performs her dutiful role as a mother and wife, and leads a sheltered life by depending on her husband. This status-conscious matriarch is the most capitalist of all characters, obsessed with Western commodities and English-speaking culture. In contrast, the 20-something daughter of the poor family, who embodies the idea of “do-it-yourself ” individualization, is not submissive or controlled by the powerful, but she ends up fatally wounded and dead. Given postcolonial Korea’s hypersensitivity regarding issues of the nation, long tradition of Confucianism and gender hierarchy, Korean cinematic culture is a deeply male-identified, contested site fraught with ambiguities (Jeong 2011). The male-centric discourse in popular culture and society forces women to properly belong to the patriarchal order. Women who brave conflicting forces are endangered by, and dangerous to, the integrity of the masculinist discourse of nationalism (Kim and Choi 1998). The under-representation of women and the normative femininity remain largely unchanged. Meanwhile, the representation of masculinity in Korean cinema has undergone mutations and diversifications in configuring itself to mold a modern subjectivity or to free himself from institutional repression and familial responsibilities (K.H. Kim 2004). For younger generations today, a crisis in gender relations and misogyny against women constitutes an equally pressing issue as the class divide in Korea and beyond. Audiences around the world appreciate the reality of life reflected in the Korean-language film Parasite, despite the one-inch-tall barrier of subtitles. Even though the film has subtitles, its universal moral themes of human conditions and a common humanity in a deeply unequal world of capitalism are resonant and experientially understood. A unique sentiment specific to Korean culture and society strikes a resounding chord with viewers across national borders that experience their own forms and mechanisms of inequality. An entertaining

Introduction  11

hybridity of thriller, black comedy and family drama, Parasite connects with diverse audiences by enabling the accessibility of versatile genres and emotions. The subtitle translator, Darcy Paquet, explains that translating humor is particularly challenging as foreign viewers need to understand it immediately, and that timing for subtitling is so important to make them laugh at the exact moment when the actor’s voice delivers the punch line (H. Lee 2019). Translating the multimodal, verbal and non-verbal, expressions in Korean films into English subtitles presents challenges as culturally specific “invisibles” describe systems and contexts that exist in the original language but not in the target language ( Jieun Kiaer and Loli Kim, Chapter 5 in this volume). Although Parasite’s Oscars triumph has sparked the perennial issue of subtitles and raised awareness about the importance of overcoming the linguistic barrier, popular culture is an AmericanEurocentric, English-language world with so much English entertainment to choose from. In America where the cultural parochialism of Hollywood prevails and commercial gatekeepers have enough American entertainment, the market for non-English subtitled films is limited and economically unviable; 80% of what is being bought and rented from Pay TV services is Hollywood movies (Hollywood Reporter 2019; O’Falt 2020). Mainstream audiences and average movie fans tend to show aversion to subtitled films that are perceived to be exotic, or an art form for upscale connoisseurs. Reading subtitles, not to mention paying money for such labor, is considered to be burdensome when popular culture is expected to be purely entertaining. The emergence of streaming services such as Netflix is expanding opportunities for international content distribution and creating new realms for cultural disposition. Younger generations – who were born into the digital netizen era and have grown up with smartphones, YouTube, social media, Japanese manga, anime and online games that routinely incorporate subtitles – may have developed a differentiating marker of identity through an open and cosmopolitan consumption practice transcending different languages and cultural prejudices. The rise of social media-oriented, individualized, mobile yet networked generations creates a diverse, outward-looking, eclectic and distinguishable taste for transnational popular culture, deliberately disembedding themselves from the local cultural conventions of previous generations. The popularity of Parasite has globally generated a self-identifying collective of fandom called #BongHive, which outpoured support for the film and a host of memes on social media throughout the awards season of the Cannes and the Oscars while encouraging people to watch more non-English films. A central attribute of Internet memes is their sparking of user-created derivatives articulated as parodies or remixes in this new hypermemetic era of bottom-up expression that can blend popular culture, politics and participation in unexpected ways (Shifman 2014). The younger, #BongHive and Asian American fans may share a communal experience and conscious voice around the #OscarsSoWhite campaign against the White power of Hollywood, systematic racism and discrimination in society. Fans of popular culture or celebrity have often been stereotyped as obsessive, gullible and vulnerable followers

12  Youna Kim

who are controlled and manipulated by commercial corporate capitalism; but for a better understanding of fans it is necessary to pay attention to the everyday lived experiences of fans and the nature of fans’ relationships with the subject of admiration (Wohlfeil 2018). Popular culture is a complex and dynamic resource through which mundane and vernacular forms of pop cosmopolitanism are developing, albeit more conspicuous as consumer subjectivity and possibly limited within the realm of global consumer culture (Y. Kim 2011, 2013). The cosmopolitan outlook and openness is defined by intention, not necessarily by the greatest amount of foreign cultural products consumed (Cicchelli and Octobre 2018). Pop cosmopolitans’ embrace of transnational popular culture and of cultural difference represents an escape route out of the parochialism of their local communities in order to enter a broader sphere of cultural experience, articulate social reality in question, and imagine socio-cultural and political transformation. On a political level, however, anti-cosmopolitanism or the stunning repudiation of cosmopolitan ideals is equally signaled not only in Europe and America but also in populist and nationalist movements spanning the globe calling for the thickening of national borders (Ward 2020). In today’s digital age, transnational popular culture has become part of everyday local experiences, and the dialectic force of globalization and nationalization has brought the world of imagined cultural cosmopolitanization and its discontents, both growing desires and deepening anxieties.

BTS and the global power of K-pop Korea has the sixth largest music industry in the world that is creating a cool national brand and a vital source of revenue for the Korean economy. K-pop music has evolved from a niche genre to an elaborate global industry, with the BTS ecosystem contributing $4.9 billion to Korea’s GDP (Elberse and Woodham 2020). BTS’s popularity is the largest source of revenue in the genre, dominating the fiercely competitive K-pop industry. Compared to Korean cinema and TV drama, K-pop music is a much more deliberately planned industry targeting international audiences from its start. Most K-pop stars are not accidentally discovered but have been recruited and systematically produced by entertainment management companies and their “star system” that was born in the early 1990s and consolidated in the mid-1990s (Shin 2009). The construction of pop bands in the West similarly exposes the endeavors of the culture industries to create stars, and stardom is recognized as a manufactured phenomenon (Gregory 2019). However, the degree of intensity and integration in the manufacturing process of stardom is unique and critical in K-pop construction. K-pop is not just a random response to neoliberal globalization, but a systematically planned, monitored, manifestation of “entrepreneurial self.” Young talents have been recruited, sometimes from an age of early teens, and trained to become multi-purpose, transnational performers who “can do everything” through Spartan training. Years of intense training include singing lessons, perfectly synchronized dance moves,

Introduction  13

acting, learning foreign languages and Korean language training for group members recruited from China, Thailand, Japan and so on. The success of the training regime is driven by Korea’s Confucian ethics of hard work, endurance, the disciplined body, obedience to higher authority and affective labor in the neoliberal culture industry. The lingering roles of Confucian and patriarchal managerial practices are operating for the success of K-pop as a neoliberal economic innovation (G. Kim 2019). The family structure rooted in Confucianism is extended to the K-pop industry. Inside a K-pop company, trainees are said to become members of the company’s family, and executives and senior staff are commonly referred to and treated as parental figures or older family relations whom the trainees are expected to obey, respect and even love (H. Lee et al. 2019). The irony of love and affective labor is evident in K-pop’s relentless pursuit of newness, perfectionism and capitalism. K-pop is a genre of excess, a result of intense formulaic practice and a fast-evolving machine producing products that are used and easily disposable (S.Y. Kim 2018). Like manufacturing cars and televisions, this training regime is criticized as an assembly line of similar, robot-like performers whose every word and move is pre-scheduled, rehearsed and monitored by entertainment companies. Behind the scenes, some of the K-pop’s largest success stories have been built on the back of slave contracts that tie trainee stars into long-term exclusive deals, with little financial reward, little personal freedom and impossibly high standards of appearance and behavior (BBC 2011; Guardian 2020c). The year 2012 marked a historic moment when unformulaic unconventional musician Psy’s “Gangnam Style” unexpectedly became a global sensation beyond K-pop’s regional popularity. While K-pop construction has traditionally been dominated by “Big 3” entertainment companies (SM, YG and JYP) since the mid-1990s, BTS of Big Hit Entertainment since their debut in 2013 has created a global phenomenon that is more widely recognized and influential. The success of K-pop bands, such as Girls’ Generation, Super Junior, Big Bang, EXO, TWICE, BTS and Blackpink, is a direct outcome of the star system’s intense training to deliver a very polished and easily identifiable show. K-pop is not just music but a complete show, close to total entertainment that is uniquely appealing to international fans. With an emphasis on cinematic or fantastical visuals, K-pop is sensory music to listen to, watch, feel and participate through parody, which is not common in Western music. K-pop performers exemplify sort of pop perfectionism – catchy tunes, good singing, attractive bodies, cool clothes, mesmerizing movements and other attractive attributes in a non-threatening, pleasant package (Lie 2012). This pleasurable experience can make international fans feel how difficult it is not to enjoy it, even when they may be fully aware of its addictiveness and extremely photogenic, visual illusion. K-pop is perhaps the most hybridized cosmopolitan consumerist form of the Korean Wave, or a futuristic pastiche that sounds like a utopian blending of all contemporary musical genres. Its intertextuality, fusion, mutation and transformation in specific Korean contexts make K-pop a distinctive site of global cultural flows (Song

14  Youna Kim

2019; Anderson 2020). K-pop’s development into a globally recognized culture owes much to the historical and cultural contexts from which it emerged, and K-pop idols are not simply copycats of Western or Japanese pop stars (Fuhr 2016). The phenomenon of K-pop invites insights into contemporary Korea with the terrain of the past – traditional Korean music, colonial and postcolonial Japanese influence and the impact of American popular music (Lie 2015). K-pop is characterized by the transcultural hybridity of popular culture, which is influenced not only by odorless global elements but also by traditional national elements ( Jung 2011). K-pop’s global popularity has relatively little to do with the aesthetic cultural values that can be identified as uniquely Korean, although K-pop’s representative stars and the Korean Wave are treasured national sources of soft power promoted by the nation and cultural nationalism (Y. Kim 2013). The Korean Wave is in essence all things hybrid – a fusion of local, regional and Western cultures, forms, styles, genres, narratives or identities – accelerated by digital technologies and social media, yet without necessarily eliminating the best of Korea’s distinctive traditional values, emotional aesthetics and expressive performances. Having accommodated foreign cultures from China, Japan and America for a long period of time, Koreans have historically acquired an experience of embracing, appropriating and re-inventing cultures into their own flair at a conscious and subconscious level. Such a process can create a new, dialogical space where intercultural practices, discourses and representations are variously articulated and continuously negotiated in tensions and interactions of differential power. Today’s digital technologies potentially alter power and “positionalities,” the shifting, asymmetric and path-dependent ways in which the futures of places depend on their interdependencies with other places (Graham 2019). The digitalization of goods, productions and services is crucial to an ever-increasing amount of economic value creation in global production networks, which does not necessarily mean that enterprises can all use digital technologies and connectivity to alter their positionalities or level playing fields in the same ways. K-pop’s global expansion has integrated production and promotion of stars through digital technologies and social media such as YouTube, Twitter, Facebook as well as smartphones (Lee and Nornes 2015; Jin 2016). K-pop has not established a routine presence on the mainstream media including radio, but connects with audiences through social media and streaming services that are less controlled by traditional gatekeepers and that accelerate instantaneous access to content in the post-ownership economy. Twitter reveals that K-pop was the most tweeted about music genre worldwide, with more than 6.1 billion tweets in 2019, and BTS were the most tweeted about artists for the last three years (New York Times 2020b). YouTube is a major driving force of K-pop, and a pandemic has further boosted demand for streaming services. Digital fandom, as one of the most distinguishing aspects of K-pop, becomes a virtual knowledge community that is encouraged to connect with their idol, produce their own vernacular discourses and build the idol’s brand community on social media. Fan culture exhibits an

Introduction  15

autonomous terrain in its own right and imagination, apart from Korean entertainment companies and state-led national branding strategies. K-pop fan bases have a diverse, cosmopolitan profile including underrepresented and invisible groups. For instance, K-pop fandom is formed primarily by girls and young women of non-White, minority or working-class backgrounds in Sweden, who consciously seek out something that is not American, not British, not Western and not White (Hubinette 2018). The phenomena of K-pop fandom in America (Ohlheiser 2020) and Australia (Keith 2019) are created largely by Asian diasporas and young people of color who occupy marginal subject positions and are interested in other aspects of Asian popular culture as alternatives to the mainstream hegemonic discourses that continue to privilege White representation. Today’s diasporic communities ritualistically appropriate transnational ethnic media and digital communication networks to maintain ties back to homelands or proximate identification, while engaging in complex cultural exchanges and negotiations in host societies in the face of social exclusion and banal racism (Y. Kim 2011, 2017). Popular culture is a complex site for negotiating relations of power, difference and identity in the users’ situated experiences. Music fan culture in the West has historically become part and parcel of the average teenage experience, offering alternative ways to explore their gender, sexuality and youth and embrace their gender-nonconformity or identify as non-binary (Ewens 2020). The Korean Wave may allow fans to reflexively imagine new identities and practices at the heart of their social realities, hierarchies and inequalities (Y. Kim 2013). Digital fan communities can be seen as alternative spaces of identity in which a different voice can be raised and a self can be expressed, contested, re-articulated or re-affirmed in relation to global cultural Others. K-pop and its fandom among digitally connected consumers can be a statement about their dispositions, dis/likings and aspirations, not just reflective of the actual, present self but also formative of the desired, future self (Choi and Maliangkay 2015). Empowered by one of the most active fan communities in the world, the septet BTS consolidate the cultural power of Korea and remake the K-pop history – the first Korean artists to top the US Billboard album charts, to speak at the UN and to be named as “Next Generation Leaders” on a TIME magazine cover. Despite the changes to music access in the digital age, songs in language other than English rarely chart in Anglophone countries as pop songs lag behind other industries in globalization and diversity (Hawkins and Walsh 2020). BTS’s spectacular rise in the global pop world is more than just a digital social media phenomenon but can be attributed to the fact that it is not only a visually pleasing group, but also one that seriously pays attention to music (Kyung Hyun Kim, Chapter 6 in this volume). BTS have deviated from the conventional model and practice of the K-pop industry in terms of the relative power, freedom and creative autonomy of musicians. Whereas K-pop is traditionally associated with long-term exclusive contracts that give the talent little financial reward and little control over their own lives, the company behind BTS seeks to foster a balanced,

16  Youna Kim

less restrictive and less hierarchical relationship with the superstar act (Elberse and Woodham 2020). Like other K-pop groups, BTS members were recruited and manufactured through the years of intense training to deliver a total entertainment, K-pop’s formula of catchy melodies, perfectly choreographed dance performances and extremely polished visual images. Yet at the same time, BTS formulation disrupts the K-pop regime by having a distinguishing attitude toward individuality and authenticity ( John Lie, Chapter 7 in this volume). Rather than simply automated performers produced by the company, BTS as artists play key roles in producing and writing lyrics to be the personal voices of the experiences of youth. They tell their own stories and the societal pressures placed on teens in Korea, challenging the competitive education system and exuding the positive spirit “Love Yourself ” to young people who have no dreams or no plans of their own. Both the film Parasite and the music of BTS delve into the dark side of human life, widening social divisions and inequality. Korea’s notoriously competitive education system encourages the ranking of ability at a very early stage, and does not play a positive role in reducing inequality or preparing people for inclusive economic growth (Asian Development Bank 2012; Hsieh 2013). The value of attaining the highest educational achievements accompanied by familial expectations has conditioned and dominated the life experiences of youth, generating developmental issues of mental health but largely resisting Western psychotherapy for their anxieties and depression because of the cultural stigma of mental illness in the Confucian and postcolonial society (Yi 2013; Yoo 2016). Korea has the highest suicide rate (29.1 per 100,000 persons) among OECD countries, more than twice the OECD average of 12.4 per 100,000 persons (OECD 2019b), which is a by-product of rapid industrialization, educational competition, familial expectations and social pressures to succeed in the hypercompetitive society. Popular culture is a mirror to the society and social realities that are often unspoken. Against the culture of silence, BTS expressed their goal: “We started to tell the stories that people wanted to hear and were ready to hear, stories that other people could not or would not tell… to create this empathy that people can relate to” (TIME 2018). They are superstars but expose a vulnerable human side by talking openly about the struggles and anxieties of their career and life trajectory, the stress of stardom, their own mental health and depression. Sharing the minutiae of their mundane lives and raw emotions on social media, BTS build up authentic characters for themselves and resonating connections with fans. The key to BTS’s global success is the emotional resonance at a precarious time of aspirations for selfempowerment and self-discovery as well as social inclusion of minorities and the youth generation everywhere in the world. The universal themes of their music and the openness to express their vulnerable emotions constitute part of BTS’s universal appeal, despite the limits of a non-English language pop group in the hegemony of Anglophone pop music. K-pop is seen to be visually stunning, fun and happy, with an image of cosmopolitan openness, and BTS’s visual effects and body politics are significant

Introduction  17

factors of their global appeal. BTS’s visual image subverts traditional gender politics and Western forms of masculinity defined by physical strength, power and the suppression of emotions. One of the common masculine templates in American popular culture is toxic masculinity, the representation of powerful, hypermasculine and aggressive men as influenced by sports and music culture (Keith 2017). BTS’s deliberate choice of gender nonconformity and individuality redefines the hegemonic notions of masculinity that are unemotional and controlling in a hypersexualized world. Opening up possibilities for imagining less stable markers of identity, they project the performative character of masculinity that is fluid, versatile and soft. The unthreatening, androgynous and often ambivalent sexuality (e.g. delicate, cute and boyish looks) is an embodied feature of K-pop male stars, and such characters are imagined to transcend gender boundaries and gender-related cultural power. Signifying in-between men and women in the body and affect, the phenomenon of “flower boy” (a young man as delicate and beautiful as a flower) has emerged in the Korean Wave, most visibly in K-pop music and drama, since the late 1990s. The younger generations of Korean women, tired of strongly masculinist and patriarchal men, project their male fantasy – a soft appearance, caring personality and gender equality – onto the androgynous, non-heterosexual or non-misogynistic male body in their fandom community (Kwon 2019). Korea’s gendered socio-economic and cultural conditions are frustrating everywhere, in the dualistic labor market, with non-regular workers accounting for a third of employment, and the underemployment of women and youth as well as the gender gap in female earnings (64%, the largest gap in the OECD), which increase unevenness in the distribution of life chances and reveal the “illusion of the language of choice and individualization” for women (Y. Kim 2011, 2012, 2016). While it is commonly assumed that connections and relationships between parts of this global world are closer than ever before and that the lives of men and women are becoming more similar, the new articulation of capitalism and patriarchy is hegemonic and gendered socioeconomic inequality deepens exclusion (Evans 2017; Daly 2020). The constructedness of popular culture or celebrity can be interpreted as a desired discursive symptom of cultural change, and the conduit for comprehending cultural values around gender, youth and class (Turner 2014; Marshall and Redmond 2016). In the West, the gender neutrality of boybands, their open expressions of vulnerability and the ease with which they express their emotions invite women to partake in the culture of pop masculinity (Gregory 2019). BTS defy gender norms by distancing themselves from the conventional expectations of body appearance, fashion and beauty standards for men. They embrace “flower boy” looks through gender-neutral or sometimes more traditionally feminine dressing (e.g. flowery patterns, blouse-like shirts, frills and skirts), bright and soft makeup on hairless faces, accessories and pastel-colored hairstyles to express their music and self. This new aesthetic showcase of masculinity resembles an experimental fashion show attracting global fashion brands and virtually consuming audiences. The alternative, beautified and affective

18  Youna Kim

version of masculinity is commodified and marketed to global youth culture that is subject to neoliberal consumerism and self-refashioning practices (Gooyong Kim, Chapter 8 in this volume). K-pop idols, their bodies and sexualities are neoliberal commodities manufactured by the culture industry and legitimized by the state in the name of economic competitiveness (G. Kim 2019). BTS and the commodification of alternative masculinity function as a new cultural and ideological force for the production of self, diversity and inclusivity, or a neoliberal version of inclusive cosmopolitanism that may be broadly accepted and ambiguously celebrated. Active consumers in the West, girls and young women, unwittingly become neoliberal subjects through exercising their purchasing power to acquire commodified ideals of gender neutrality or gender equality of female empowerment, however within the confines of the capitalist market that supports the maintenance of patriarchal gender inequality (Collins and Rothe 2020). Popular culture is a contradictory space wherein one’s imagined empowerment through self-refashioning consumption as a strategy can both subvert and unintentionally reinforce existing inequality and asymmetrical power. BTS fans, known as ARMY (Adorable Representative MC for Youth), are dedicated, strategic and collaborative in supporting their idols on social media and elevating the band’s visibility by casting millions of online votes in music charts and awards. The power of digital fandom is a driving force behind the success and attractiveness of BTS. Historically, the rise of celebrity culture and fandom in the West is a result of contemporary socio-political conditions – including an affective deficit in modern life, public data about “statistical” men and women without personalities, the diminution of direct social relations and a loss of community as human relations attenuate and fragment under the pressure of socio-political conditions (Turner 2014; Rojek 2016). The paradox of connection through digital technologies is the consciousness of “alone, together,” making people feel, at one moment, in possession of a full social life, and, in the next, curiously isolated or utterly alone, in tenuous complicity with familiar strangers (Turkle 2011). A greater investment in celebrity culture today can be understood as a compensatory means of constructing para-social interactions, presumed intimacy and a new dimension of community through popular culture. Partly replacing a “community of beliefs” that offered a sense of belonging in the past, today’s fandom such as ARMY is a “community of taste” that shares passionate and sometimes faith-like feeling for the admired object in the looming presence of consumer capitalism ( J. Lee 2019). Some fans engage in more active and participatory practices than others, while passive fans may also construct their identity and belonging by accessing an imagined community of fandom or by seeing an alternative culture represented on screen (Keith 2019). Fandom is slowly being acknowledged in the mainstream, in part for the money and power it generates for a changing music industry in the West (Ewens 2020). An organized network of fandom is considered to be a vital source of affective labor which is based on participatory fan activity and its free and voluntary labor in the digital sphere, and which may also allow corporations to exploit the

Introduction  19

neoliberal commodification of affect and the affective economy. Driven by affective investment, BTS fans share free and voluntary labor to translate lyrics, music videos, social media posts and news stories about the band, organize promotional campaigns, produce and circulate stories about BTS content. Affective labor, as a mundane form of social media practices and storytelling, mediates fans’ greater desire to interact with and intimately know about their stars, potentially blurring the boundary between stars and ordinary people/fans and creating an illusion of intimacy. The possibility of interaction and the illusion of intimacy between fans and celebrities open up the possibility to play out a fantasy within a mediated environment that may feel real or authentic, but may ultimately be illusory (Alperstein 2019). Social media continually require a higher level of disclosure of self on the part of the stars, who thus appear to be approachable, emotional, friendly or not hierarchically positioned above their fans, in contrast to traditional celebrities practicing a sense of mystery and distance from their audiences. In the social media age, celebrities are expected to display themselves unedited as “real” people with “real” issues, as the public fame of the celebrities is premised on feelings of connection and interactive responsiveness and is thus coconstructed through a community of interested viewers on the Internet rather than by the mere mechanisms of the traditional entertainment industry (Abidin 2018). The storytelling infrastructure of digital platforms such as YouTube, Twitter and Facebook invites ordinary people to feel their own place in current developing stories, respond affectively, invest their emotion to these stories, and contribute to developing narratives, which leads to the formation of “networked affect” and discursively connected “affective publics” (Hillis et al. 2015; Papacharissi 2015). Agency, intent and affect on the network facilitate “soft” structures of engagement, imagination and various forms of civic mobilization. Networked political fandom in the domain of popular culture signals a new force for digital activism exercising collaborative cultural power to challenge dominant power and the dominant media. Fans appropriate social media as guerilla tactics for spreading socially conscious messages against divisive rhetoric and action particularly at a time of increased political polarization. Social media appear to be the latest wave of innovation in political communication and campaigning, and BTS fans are recognized for their political activism (Dal Yong Jin, Chapter 9 in this volume). They hijacked racist hashtags on Twitter, circulated petitions for victims of violence and coordinated a #MatchAMillion campaign to match BTS’s $1 million donation to the Black Lives Matter movement. There is also a perceived risk of fandom and digital activism being repurposed by, or co-opted into, certain political interests, given the cultural power of celebrity and massive fandom. K-pop in itself is not particularly political but a largely commercialized, non-political realm of leisure in Korea, although some of expressive lyrics can be self-empowering, socially conscious and occasionally appropriated in political activism. The K-pop industry has a history of de-politicized, light and disposable popular culture, propelled by democratization of Korean political system in the 1990s and the arrival of “new generation dance music” in the emerging consumer

20  Youna Kim

market for middle-class youth (Fuhr 2016; Shin and Lee 2017). Intended to satisfy the market rather than fulfill some deep political urge of the people (Lie 2015), K-pop generally repudiates engagement with politics but adheres to a visually entertaining, de-political formula as a global leisure commodity. Young people around the world are at the forefront of the digital world of consumerist culture, wherein celebrity power and consuming fandom can potentially create collaborative agents of social transformation. With their unique capacity to generate wide press coverage, digitally connected fandom and global impact on social media, popular stars use their celebrity power in an arena of celebrity diplomacy to draw the world’s attention to international issues going beyond the entertainment world. Celebrity diplomats combine the assertive individualism characteristic of the West with an appreciation of universal or cosmopolitan values, and the mode of operation is decidedly populist (Cooper 2016). Celebrity diplomacy in the West is usually operated through international governmental organizations or non-governmental organizations, not explicitly through governmental interventions. As part of the country’s statecraft, K-pop stars are summoned by the government to play a supporting role in a realm of diplomacy among world leaders, and are appointed as honorary ambassadors for the country to use their brand power in cultural promotion abroad. As cultural ambassadors, BTS have extended their influence and reach to a political level, representing not only culture but also developing cultural power (Sarah Keith, Chapter 10 in this volume). The Korean Wave celebrity can help the state to soften diplomatic tensions, re-fashion and re-brand the once colonized nation as a “cool Korea” brand for the global public. Celebrity in this context can be understood as part of a political, institutionalized phenomenon. The world today has become a “celebrity society” with its own distinctive, constantly changing social practices and structures as well as construction of identity, as social, economic and political life is being increasingly organized around celebrities possessing multifaceted “celebrity capital” (Van Krieken 2012; Gunter 2014). The economic significance of celebrity is enormous, and the crossover between the realm of celebrity and politics appears to be intensifying, with politicians needing to function in the same way as celebrities and increasingly relying on their association with celebrities for their political effectiveness and connection with the public. Compared to established democracies in the world, Korea shows very low trust in political institutions and politicians (Diamond and Shin 2014). In the context of the public crisis of trust, celebrities are more likely to fill the void in public trust vacated by the political classes, even if their goals remain elusive. Celebrities from non-English–speaking, non-Western countries seem neglected, leading to the question of a built-in Anglo-sphere bias in celebrity diplomacy (Cooper 2016). Transcending the traditional boundary between the world of entertainment and politics, BTS as celebrity diplomats have engaged in the “LOVE MYSELF” campaign in cooperation with UNICEF’s #ENDviolence program, by linking an emotional development to celebrity culture and spectacular visibility.

Introduction  21

The increased visibility of BTS under the international spotlight also attracts the scrutiny of the White gaze that attempts to reduce and control them with racist and xenophobic rhetoric. K-pop acts, Asian men or people of color in general have always been subject to racial reductionism in the Anglo-American music industry that has traditionally been dominated by White Western stars in “the racialization of space and the spatialization of race” (Lipsitz 2011). In American music awards, popular Asian acts are relegated to separate and marginalized categories; much of K-pop exists outside mainstream channels; and BTS, though the largest pop group in the world, are excluded from airtime on the radio in America and still face racism (Washington Post 2019). Even if hybridization is the inevitable process of musical change over time in Britain, America and beyond, racialized labels and categories, as well as references to origins and place, are routinely used to identify and categorize musicians and describe the aesthetic value of their music (Haynes 2013). Popular music, given its flexible mobility, is one of the most dynamic sites for hybridization and transnationalization, yet paradoxically the contemporary salience of race is produced, consumed and reproduced through popular music. Well-meaning Other-love can turn out to be its opposite, part and parcel of the dynamic of capitalist exploitation; hybridity “sells” difference as the logic of multiplicity and as the marketing of Asian musics, while the hybrid visibility of Asian cultural forms has not translated into any significant socio-economic redress of racial exclusion (Hutnyk 2000) within the full force and power of the White spatial imaginary (Lipsitz 2011). Functioning as both a symptom and a critique, the hyper-successful and hyper-visible racial Other such as BTS in the Western popular imagination may ambivalently lead to a new neoliberal version of Orientalism that sells more readily available cultural difference, accentuates racialized hierarchies and reproduces cultural distance. Unlike its British and French predecessors or colonial empires, a new style of American “consumerist Orientalism” in an interdependent global capitalist system is more covert than its predecessors, much of which has to do with popular visual images such as Asian cultural forms, sellable exotic commodities and racialized notions of Asianness (Iwamura 2011; DelPlato and Codell 2016; Booker and Daraiseh 2019). The greater visibility of the Korean Wave in a transnational world can unintentionally reinforce the existing unequal relations of power and deeprooted racial imaginings in representational spaces and everyday practices (Y. Kim 2013). The transnationalization of popular culture is not necessarily about the erosion of racial or national difference. On the contrary, racialization has historically been part of cosmopolitanism (Nava 2007), and transnational popular culture often produces a distorted understanding of racial or national difference rather than a nuanced appreciation of cultural difference and national specificity, while it also represents a first significant step toward global consciousness ( Jenkins 2006) and heightened, critical reflexivity in everyday life (Y. Kim 2005, 2008, 2013).

22  Youna Kim

K-drama and the power of everyday reflexivity Riding on the worldwide presence and impact of K-pop music and film, the popularity of Korean TV dramas is becoming a global phenomenon beyond an Asian regional cultural economy. The first major, yet unplanned and accidental, impact of the Korean Wave started in the 1990s with the export of Korean TV dramas that were not produced for international audiences but for domestic audiences. Unlike the deliberate international marketization of K-pop music, K-drama power was created by accident. In the 1990s, Japanese “trendy” dramas on modern urban middle-class lifestyles were the rage on TV screens across East Asia, but were replaced by Korean dramas that became routine in daily television programming and a regular component of the viewing habit of regional audiences (Chua 2012). Since the late 1990s, the Korean government has played a role in the co-evolution of the culture industry including film, drama and music in the context of neoliberal reforms and deregulation, whereby the subordinate relationship of Korean broadcasters to the government and the co-evolving marketization have stimulated K-drama’s fast entrance into international markets ( Jeon 2014; Berg 2015). The culture industry is an innovative driver of economic growth and employment, and thus promoted and supported by the developmentalist state (Kwon and Kim 2013). Korean dramas, typically mini-series of 16–20 episodes, are easily digestible, less sexualized and violent than American dramas, and delicately expose universal themes of love. The successful manifestation of K-drama includes the “pure love” melodrama Winter Sonata (2002) that captured the hearts of Japanese female audiences; the historical Confucian drama Jewel in the Palace (2003) that was sold to over 120 countries; the youth romance Boys Over Flowers (2009) that became a hit around the world including North Korea; the military romance Descendants of the Sun (2016) that was translated into 32 different languages; the romance Crash Landing on You (2019) featuring unlikely love between a North Korean soldier and a South Korean heiress; and the historical supernatural thriller Kingdom (2019, 2020) co-produced and distributed by Netflix. Outdated Korean dramas of the 2000s are newly appearing as popular nostalgic content on Netflix. Western streaming services such as Netflix have played a role in K-drama’s global ascension, expanding its production, distribution and consumption in the global market (Hyejung Ju, Chapter 11 in this volume). Morphed from a national media company to an international one between 2010 and 2016, the Internet-distributed television service Netflix is significantly changing the spatial dynamics of global television distribution and the fundamental logics through which television travels, introducing new mobilities into the system, and challenging the power of international conglomerates (Lobato 2019). Netflix’s audience-taste–driven narrowcasting appeals to disparate groups of people across the world without a unified cache of content, by using its sophisticated algorithm and seemingly endless resources to buy, develop and distribute as many different types of content to as many micro-targeted audience groups as possible (Barker

Introduction  23

and Wiatrowski 2017). By making the products of small countries more available outside their home markets, Netflix appears to be a facilitator of frictionless digital trade, but nevertheless its cross-border distribution strongly advantages the US-origin products (Aguiar and Waldfogel 2018). While most drama productions in Korea still value the local market and want to attract more viewers in the home country, some production companies seek to diversify platforms for their works to reach global viewers since Netflix as co-producer covers a large portion of production cost and showcases dramas in more than 190 countries. In the Western market, Korean dramas are circulated through a curated library of content on Netflix, Amazon, Hulu, Viki and so on. The global circulation of Korean television drives not only the flow of various kinds of content but also interchanges of diverse levels of human, financial, technological and cultural elements ( Ju 2020). Powerful streaming services like YouTube and Netflix intensify the fragmentation of television audiences into ever-smaller pieces, as relatively independent modes of production and distribution thrive outside the control of traditional channel gatekeepers ( Johnson 2018). Television content is no longer a static cultural object inherently tied to the television set, but is often received via laptops or other mobile devices that transnationally enable how television viewing is self-structured and disrupting dominant power of the television industry. Audiences in the digital streaming age have more control and choice to self-schedule television online independent from uniform television schedules and modify the schedules based on their own desires and needs, although the audience control does not necessarily translate to substantial shifts in power ( Jenner 2018). As the world today becomes more secular, global, insecure or overwhelming, some audiences may question progress of the modern world, re-evaluate the past and its juxtapositioning with the present, and prefer nostalgic consumption of previously circulated content or idealized old memories. Netflix fuels and is fueled by audience desire for nostalgic content, as both a platform for audiences to re-watch beloved content from the past and a creator of original content with nostalgic impulses, while simultaneously connecting audiences to issues of diversity (Pallister 2019). As part of diverse representation, Korean drama becomes both a unique producer of modernity and nostalgia and an emotional access point for self-reflexive and nostalgic responses. The extent of the Korean Wave overseas initially presented a surprise, and even local Koreans had trouble explaining the sudden interest in Korean popular culture. However, a key reason for its popularity is that Korean TV dramas are emotionally powerful and self-reflexive (Y. Kim 2005, 2013). Popular TV drama provides topical material for everyday talk and functions as an emotional, revelatory, self-reflexive and shared cultural resource, almost like a ritual social event. One of the key pleasures that women find in drama is the validation of their own kind of talk. This validation works well because drama tends to use the same forms of talk that women use in everyday language, and also because its discourse provides common knowledge of the characteristically female patterns of social interaction and interest – the personal, intimate, emotional and familial

24  Youna Kim

relationships. Through deep engagement with the meaning of TV drama and its integration into the everyday, women viewers can find the means to understand their social roles, their relations to others and the possibilities for social action. This viewing quality can be explained in terms of “A-ha! emotion,” an emotional resolution and closure in the experience of the relevant and recognizable forms of popular culture (Y. Kim 2005). Surprisingly triggering and stimulating thinking, A-ha! emotion becomes a point of immediate recognition of popular drama that is particularly relevant to women’s lived experience. This is not to suggest that TV drama is a therapy genre, but that there is a certain therapeutic quality in the emotional way in which women talk about characters and circumstances in drama with particular relevance to the conditions of their own lives. Popular TV drama has the unique capacity to create a rare, sometimes therapeutic, space where women’s emotions could be voiced in available language codes as a process of self-discovery. The therapeutic culture, which had predominantly been restricted to America, is now a global phenomenon, as it is mediated through popular culture genres including self-help TV in neoliberal consumer society (Madsen 2014). What makes Korean TV drama popular has to do with a pleasure of recognizable human experience with powerful emotional responses, a felt sense of the texture of life that reaches not only the intimate sphere but also the heart of the reflexive self (Y. Kim 2005, 2013). The media are central to everyday reflexivity – the capacity to monitor action and its contexts to keep in touch with the grounds of everyday life, self-confront uncertainties and understand the relationships between cause and effect, yet never quite control the complex dynamics of everyday life. It is via the increased exposure to global cultural Others and reflexive capacities that people make sense of life conditions which differ from their own, and come to question the taken-for-granted social order (Y. Kim 2005, 2008). What is emerging here can be the problematization of society itself, the increasing awareness of its structural rigidity and discontents as well as the interrogatory attitude toward the surrounding world. Ordinary people may not destabilize the whole system, but the transnational media can prompt them to critically reflect on the legitimacy of their own social system and imagine new possibilities within the multiple constraints of their social context. Popular drama functions as a “cultural public sphere” (McGuigan 2010), wherein viewers identify with characters and their problems, talk and argue with friends and colleagues about what they should and should not do, and think reflexively about their own lifeworld situations and how to negotiate their way in and through systems. Ideas of good life and such rising expectations are mediated mundanely through popular media discourse. Korean TV dramas are infused with urban middle-class scenes as representations of modernization, yet affectively portray youthful sentimentality and provide an imaginary for approachable modernity. Unlike American and Japanese dramas, Korean dramas are perceived by Asian audiences to embrace the reality of Confucian tradition and alternative modernity (Lisa Y.M. Leung, Chapter 12 in this volume). In Malaysia, K-drama’s representations of modern femininity

Introduction  25

(Syed et al. 2019) and male openness with emotions, albeit only in the private sphere (Weng and Abdul 2017), are attractive to audiences although resistance to the state-defined constructions of identity does not necessarily change gender inequality (Ainslie 2017). Similarly in China, individual pursuits of free love and career success intersect with women’s engagement with K-drama (Shao 2020). In the urban centers of Asia, there are many young viewers whose desires and aspirations overlap with the way Korean dramas are presented – the beautiful urban environment, young and single professionals, aestheticized lifestyles and the pure love which is still possible. The emotional purity or the raw emotion conveyed in Korean dramas, primarily through a sensitive male or “flower boy” character and soft masculinity, is imagined to be a unique expression of Korea’s modernity by female audiences. This feminization of masculinity, to some extent, employing feminine aesthetics, caring and new masculine identities, may challenge the hitherto clearly defined gendered order in Asia while reflecting an imaginary empowerment of women within patriarchal society. The phenomenon of transnational marriages (Vu and Lee 2013), transnational intimacy and traveling to Korea (M. Lee 2020) has emerged with Asian fans’ romantic and intimate desires for Korean men as influenced by Korean dramas. The emotional level of investment in human relations and social realities constitutes a major source of popular pleasure that continues to hook women into Korean dramas. TV dramas are often seen as a source of aspiration and reflexivity in transitional society, and globalized dramas can serve the function of extending the space for reflexivity (Y. Kim 2005, 2008, 2013, 2019). Popular media culture has historically played a key role in negotiating the ongoing and changing internal tensions of gender and modernity, not only for the nation-state but above all for the everyday lives of people, especially women, as cultural participants (Driscoll and Morris 2014). In a transitional Asia, when local media productions fail to respond to the changing socio-economic status and desire of people – women and youth in particular – it is transnational media culture that is instead appropriated for making contact with the diverse formations of culture and for making sense of what it means to be a modern self (Y. Kim 2008). Korean drama lends well to the exploration of identity constructions at different junctures of gender, age, sexuality, class and nationality (Park and Lee 2019). Korean drama extends the space for critical reflexivity in geographically distant, globalized communities including the Middle East where people still hold resentment against coercive Western ideas and colonial power. Since the mid2000s, increasing flows of Korean dramas have captured the hearts of Middle Eastern audiences, particularly young middle-class women, as Korean dramas’ delicate and affective depictions of love, sexuality and family values resonate with their own moral codes (Yeşim Kaptan and Murat Tutucu, Chapter 13 in this volume). Controlled by autocrats, the mainstream authoritarian media have long dominated the popular imagination of citizens, while the self-identified liberals of younger generations seek to spread new messages of personal liberty for all human beings without discrimination, inequality of men and women

26  Youna Kim

(Braude 2018). Women in the Middle East utilize diverse media platforms for democratization of everyday life, self-expression and peaceful resistance to the structures of domination. The use of social media including Twitter, Facebook and YouTube and the more contact with the outside world make women more critically aware of their socio-economic positions, gendered relations and spheres (Al-Rawi 2020). Digital technologies have ensured that popular culture is transnationally shared and discussed in online spaces and that the larger scale of knowledge and information is made available, resulting in unpredictable patterns of identification and reflexive learning of self. Fans in Israel engage with Korean dramas as an emotional exploration of new places (Lyan and Levkowitz 2015); Saudis join the growing phenomenon of Korean language learning to expand their knowledge without having to read subtitles (Arab News 2019); young female fans in Iran yearn for cultural change and forge a sense of solidarity with other women through social media (Koo 2020). Popular culture matters significantly in the imagination of social transformation as it is constituted in powerful but not always obvious, political ways that may undermine the nation’s stability and unified understanding of identity. Under the influence of neoliberal capitalism today, the popular culture of the Middle East has never been more diverse – to the point that the term “Arab world” is now useful primarily as a rhetorical convenience, rather than as a label for some actually existing phenomenon (Booker and Daraiseh 2019). The increased circulation and appeal of the Korean Wave in the region has been enabled in part by voluntary fans who take on the empowering and complex roles of cosmopolitan cultural experts, educators and grassroots cultural ambassadors to promote a positive image of Korea in their home societies and to enhance their own self-image that has been stigmatized by the Orientalist view of the West (Lyan 2019). Korean producers do not pay particular attention to a global formula for the success of TV drama, but nevertheless they have found its affective form useful to touch the sensibilities of disparate audiences. This does not mean that any audience in the West can find Korean drama appealing to their tastes. In France, where high arts and literature have long served as global cultural attraction, mainstream French audiences may not find Korean drama suitable because it is “too emotional, with too many crying scenes” (Francezone 2011). The affective impact, which may be assumed to be universal and transparent, is neither uniform nor even, as it cannot escape culturally coded constraints (Tan 2011). In the American market, initial consumers of Korean dramas were culturally proximate, Asian immigrants who would appropriate cultural resources to negotiate their status as marginalized and racialized minorities. Racism and neo-colonialism are very much part of contemporary daily life in America and such images continue to appear in the dominant mainstream media (Lacy and Ono 2011) and Anglophone digital media sites in spectacular and quotidian ways (Titley 2019). Until major shifts in the dominant structure of cultural production occur, the residual effects of racialized historical representations of Asians and Asian diasporas will continue into the future; therefore, it becomes necessary

Introduction  27

to recognize the alternative ethnic media (Ono and Pham 2009), participation in interconnected networks and everyday cultural practices (Lopez and Vincent 2017). Popular pleasure of Korean dramas is mediated by American viewers’ affective dispositions toward contents and images circulated through digital spaces assembled by K-drama fans ( Ji-Yeon O. Jo, Chapter 14 in this volume). Online discussions about Korean dramas and Korean distinctiveness among non-Korean speakers function as a multilingual and multicultural learning community but also re-inscribe Koreans as a global Other (G.M. Kim 2019). The phenomenon of the Korean Wave is one of imagined cosmopolitanism in the realm of global consumer culture. Consumption of a wide range of globalized media products constitutes integral part of the cultural lives and imaginations of digital mobile generations who look for diverse sources of entertainment, culture and identity, not necessarily American or European. In Latin America, where telenovela melodramas have historically been associated with a much desired modernization, fans’ engagement with the Korean Wave constitutes a heightened, critical awareness vis-à-vis gender (Koeltzsch 2019), class and social mobility (Han 2019) as both a self-reflexive expression of despair in the reality and an essential fabric of modernity. The impact of South Korean popular culture has reached into communist North Korea, fueling a yearning for a taste of freedom, modernity and freemarket fantasies (Youna Kim, Chapter 15 in this volume). It is important to recognize an intersection between South Korean popular culture and the mobilization of inner self and possible social change to emerge within North Korea, where real-life situations are felt to be particularly constrained and mobility in a variety of capacities and forms becomes all the more important (Y. Kim 2007, 2019). North Korea remains the most closed and repressive media cultural environment in the world. The state-produced culture of the socialist utopia yet-tocome reinforces ideological structures that control people (Howard 2020). Despite tight control set by the regime, copies of South Korean dramas, movies and music are increasingly smuggled across the border with China into North Korea, also through digital technologies, and surreptitiously consumed. Portable media devices such as Notels (combined “notebook” and “television” multimedia players), mobile phones, DVDs and USBs containing South Korean popular culture are found in black markets all over the country. These illicit flows of banned, attractive culture are quietly transforming how North Koreans selfreflexively see the outside world, their country and the conditions of their lives. The spread of the global media intersected with popular consumer culture has profoundly influenced the aspirations, attitudes and imaginations of citizens inside the closed societies of Eastern Europe and North Korea (Mattelart 1999; Drakulic 2016; Y. Kim 2019). Nations with totalitarian regimes cannot be confident any longer of their immunity from the globalized influence of ubiquitous cultural flows and the possibility of bottom-up change. Low-level dissent or criticism against the regimes may emerge as the circulation of outside culture, consumer capitalism and new cultural awareness grow in the digital age. The rise of

28  Youna Kim

cultural weaponization means that in addition to soldiers, tanks, battleships and aircraft deploying violence to impose a political order on people, television, motion pictures and digital media technologies deploy the entertainment to bring about the same goal through long-term cultural engagement (Fattor 2014). The growing forces of transnational popular culture and such soft power resources stand a better chance of moving the hearts and minds of people and potentially fostering social change than does more immediate and coercive action.

Soft power of popular culture The Korean Wave changes foreign perceptions of South Korea which had been viewed as an industrial powerhouse and whose achievements had been overshadowed by the military threat of North Korea, or often ignored by attention paid to the neighboring countries, China and Japan. Asia has long been under the influence of Western and Japanese cultural products, and there is a lingering anticolonial sentiment in many parts of the region. Anti-Japanism is a symptom of historical trauma of the Japanese empire and its legacy, although young people’s consumption of Japanese popular culture and commodities does not mean that they are becoming Japanese (Ching 2019). The Korean Wave is seen to be a less problematic source of power and ideological threat than American cultural imperialism and “Japanese odor” (Iwabuchi 2015) that Japanese cultural producers try to remove from their products to soften anti-Japan sentiment. Implicitly, an intriguing reason behind the successful phenomenon of the Korean Wave is the nation’s historical colonial victimhood – a combination of Korea’s tragic history, the intensity of Korean emotive culture and the perceived non-threatening nature of its people in a current postcolonial situation (Y. Kim 2013). Arising as part of the historical milieu of decolonization, the significance of the Korean Wave is reflective of a key site of decolonization work that may self-reflexively interrogate and unsettle the global hegemony of Euro-America. The popularity of the Korean Wave can be understood by the dynamics of global power relations and political sensitivities, while the political conflicts and sociocultural tensions of the divided nation have been used to good effect to create emotionally powerful contents. Korean culture reflects the nation’s unique sensibility “han” – a deeply felt sense of oppression and deep-seated grief. Often, the ambivalent nature of foreignness in imported Western and Japanese cultural products can be perceived by two extremes – fascination and threat – but the threat is less manifested in the way the Korean Wave is received and affectively invested by audiences. As a participatory pilgrimage practice, the interest in the Korean Wave has triggered an increase in the number of foreign tourists visiting the locations where favorite television dramas, movies and acts have been filmed. Place promotion is mediated through Korean popular culture in fetishized ways, boosting the tourism industry and capitalizing on consumers’ emotional engagement (Oh 2018). As each city competes with others for global tourists, national or city identity is reconfigured in the “hyper-spatial,” the stretching of space and time to

Introduction  29

accommodate the accelerating flows of capital, ideas and desires that characterize the world of neoliberal capitalism (King 2018). Relationships between tourism and creative culture industry sectors are mutually constitutive, synergistic, yet contested (Long and Morpeth 2016). The Korean Wave has also prompted an interest in learning the Korean language, culture and the country as popular culture is ideal for developing fluid forms of linguistic expression and transmedia storytelling among young people (I. Lee 2018; Suarez 2019). The global popularity of the Korean Wave has heightened a market awareness of Korean products and become integral part of Korea’s affective, attention economy built around affective relationships and digital connections with audiences to shape desires, preferences and aspirations. In the past, national images of Korea were negatively associated with the demilitarized zone, division and political disturbances, but now such images are giving way to the vitality of trendy, transnational entertainers and cutting-edge technology. A key feature of the rise of the Korean Wave is the role of the nation-state focusing on the creation of a cool national brand, inevitably reinforcing a commercialized pop nationalism or “cultural nationalism” that appropriates popular culture to promote political and economic interests (Y. Kim 2013). 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. The Korean government appropriates popular culture as an effective way to create and sell a dynamic image of the nation through “soft power,” a cultural weapon to entice, attract and influence international audiences without coercion (Nye 2004, 2008; Y. Kim 2013, 2019). Soft power is the ability to make others act in a way that advances desired outcomes through attraction, rather than threat or coercion, without the use of military or economic force. It is the ability to achieve general, milieu goals based around long-term diffuse effects rather than short-term immediate effects. The soft power of a country rests primarily on three resources – the attractiveness of its culture; its political values, when it lives up to them at home and abroad; and its foreign policies, when they are seen as legitimate and having moral authority (Nye 2004). Attractive culture – the set of universal values and practices that create meaning for a society – is one of the soft power resources creating general influence in international relations. Although the concept was introduced in the field of international relations focusing on states, soft power is not restricted to states or to international relations but applies to a much wider range of actors and contexts in the social media age. Universalistic popular culture can attract people and produce soft power in the sense of desired outcomes, depending on the context where it is received and made sense of by people. The Korean Wave is not just a cultural phenomenon but fundamentally about the creation of soft power, nation branding and sustainable development through transnational meaning-making processes in the digital age (Y. Kim 2013). The culture industry has taken center stage in Korea, with an increased recognition that the global circulation of media cultural products not only boosts

30  Youna Kim

the economy but also enhances the national image and soft power. Like Japan’s popular nationalism, Korea has been among the most successful in propagating its popular culture internationally and is at the forefront of national branding projects (Sakamoto and Epstein 2021). The government, along with the private sector and the academy, has worked on the re-creation of its national image and cultural identity for multiple diffuse effects of soft power. Going beyond the traditional state-centric diplomacy, the government has not only promoted the Korean Wave to create positive dispositions toward the nation, but also utilized the cultural diplomacy of the Korean Wave celebrities to mobilize the politics of attraction within the commercially driven digital social media that provide a multitude of connections to global audiences and global public spheres. The classic definition of diplomats as agents of the state and the national interest excludes celebrities, just as it does all non-state actors; this restrictive view does not reflect the degree to which celebrities have gained recognition as actors in global affairs (Cooper 2016). Celebrities generally avoid the hard power issues of security, while concentrating on the soft power issues pertaining to cultural and socio-economic conditions. Aided by sophisticated experts with whom they surround themselves, celebrities know how to work with the mainstream and social media, and celebrities’ cultural diplomacy elicits considerable amounts of press and public attention. Likability of the Korean Wave celebrities or emotional engagement with the Korean Wave has a significant influence on the national image of Korea (B. Lee et al. 2015; S. Kim et al. 2019; H. Lee et al. 2020). In Asia, there is a general shift in the official thinking toward the role of popular culture in the political life of states as the political economy of global media culture has forced nation-states to consider the possibilities for attaining soft power and persuasive communicative acts that ignore national boundaries (Chua 2012; Hayden 2012; Otmazgin and Ben-Ari 2012). The contemporary focus on culture by governments in Asia is the product of a neoliberal ideology espousing a global free market and the linking of globalized consumerism to individual freedom and social well-being (Berry et  al. 2009). Culture – particularly, popular media and consumer culture – transcends national borders with such frequency and intensity as to constitute an irrevocable and irresistible force that regionalizes, globalizes and possibly transforms identity. It is this power that nation-states in Asia seek to promote through the articulation and legislation of cultural policy and the promotion of culture industries, with a renewed focus on identity, culture and nation branding as an essential component of international relations and foreign policy thinking. In Japan with its heavy burden of colonial history and violence, globalized practices of soft power and nation branding have given greater emphasis to the use of popular culture including manga and anime to enhance the image of the nation and promote pop-culture public diplomacy (Iwabuchi 2015). For the Chinese, soft power means anything outside of the military and security realm, including not only popular culture and public diplomacy but also coercive economic and diplomatic levers like aid and investment (Kurlantzick 2007). While China has overtaken Japan as the world’s

Introduction  31

second largest economy, its cultural influence, especially in the realm of popular culture, lags far behind Cool Japan and the Korean Wave (Ching 2019). China’s soft power has become a key issue in the reform of its media culture industry, but has been deficient or failing because China’s undemocratic policies are too controlling to unleash the talents of its society, although the ideas of dream and power as imagined by culture cannot be singularly dominated by the state (Voci and Hui 2018). Government cannot and should not control culture; the absence of policies of control can itself be a source of attraction (Nye 2004). Popular culture becomes competitive resources for soft power with its distinctively national characteristics and different conditions for its operation. In the social media age, collaborative creativity “from above” (nation-states, institutions, media industries) and “from below” (digital fans as grassroots intermediaries, producers-consumers, publics) – albeit the intersections of the two forces are unpredictable – can appropriate popular culture to make its origin nation, language and culture attractive to international audiences and open possibilities for soft power. Not only the top-down approach but also the bottom-up, voluntary and affective participation plays a significant role in spreading popular culture and mediating soft power, although the bottom-up actors or their natural, horizontal, cultural influence do not necessarily operate coherently with the top-down governmental or media actors. Digital technologies have ushered in affective politics, new strategies for mobilizing and capturing affect and emotion that have become central engines driving media culture and politics in the digital age, contrary to the traditional dogma of rational political actors (Boler and Davis 2021). The politics of emotion, or propaganda by other “soft” means, is not new but has become strikingly apparent in digital diplomacy especially when popular culture or the symbolic meaning of celebrity is involved. Today’s rapid media globalization and the mundane use of digital technologies and social media present unprecedented opportunities for soft power as well as challenges. In a force of globalization, digitalization and interdependence, the Korean Wave is no doubt building a bridge of cultural connectivity and Korea’s strongest form of soft power, however with limitations and complexities. With the involvement of the government, the Korean Wave has been constructed within nationalistic discourses and policies, and imagined as cultural nationalism – a form of hegemony masked in soft power. At the heart of this process is the intimacy of global capitalism with national hegemony, as the state intervention in the Korean Wave fits in the globalized market economy. This Korean version of nationalistic and expansionistic culture has a tendency to develop into another form of cultural imperialism. The Korean Wave, as a resource for soft power that emerged from a postcolonial and somewhat peripheral nation, can ironically generate a new version of cultural imperialism that is deeply embedded in cultural nationalism and an ideological position that undermines cultural diversity and soft power of attraction (Y. Kim 2013). Globalization and its associated digital technologies have made possible new forms of global nationalism which spread far beyond the borders of traditional nation-states (Starrs 2013), and it is important not to

32  Youna Kim

underestimate the power of the historical traumas of the past which animate global nationalism today (Kingston 2016). The dialectic nature of globalizing and nationalizing forces is a key feature of popular culture, given the centrality of the nation-state to the promotion of media cultural flows across national boundaries. Linking culture to the nation-state carries a risk of impeding, rather than promoting, international cultural exchange; culture should be independent of political power to cultivate a common global awareness (Ogoura 2006). Going beyond the national interest, there emerges a call for reciprocal cultural flows and mutual understandings, rather than asymmetrically presenting cultural nationalism based on the market-driven cultural economy. The heightened visibility of the Korean Wave has been criticized by the mass media and the public overseas as a colonial-esque cultural invasion of Korea. Popular culture can be an effective instrument of soft power, yet the meaning or desired outcome of popular culture is contingent upon the appropriation and negotiation by target people or consumer power. What the Korean Wave signifies, what meanings are represented in the Korean Wave and how far these representations map on to established and dominant cultural formations have to be decided by the indeterminacy and fluidity of meaning-making by people under their contexts (Y. Kim 2013). The success or limitation of soft power attraction is highly contextual among different communities (Nye 2004). The consequences are complex, both intended and unintended. On one hand, the Korean Wave has changed the dynamics of the media cultural landscape, challenging the characterization of globalization as a Western-centric cultural force. The growing visibility of the Korean Wave is a prime example of the subversive contra-flow emerging to service an ever-growing diverse consumer market against a one-way flow from the West to the peripheral rest. Yet simultaneously, its increasing volume and velocity has generated a sense of discontent and tension in some communities, giving rise to a backlash of anti-Korean sentiment. This tension is evident in antiKorean Wave movements and xenophobic animosity online in Japan, China and Taiwan (Chua 2012; Chen 2017; Park et al. 2019) and the developed Southeast Asian nations of Thailand, Malaysia and the Philippines (Ainslie et  al. 2017). It is usually confronted with non-consumer communities reinforcing reactive nationalist discourses with the complicity of local media productions and the state. However, a paradox is that the floating signifier of Korean cultural nationalism – newly expressing self-confidence, pride, imaginary of Koreanness, cultural authenticity, inner passion and energy through popular culture – is also the reason why the Korean Wave has powerful appeal across the rapidly digitalized, porous world today ( Jeong et  al. 2017; Park and Lee 2019; Forbes 2019). This is a reflection of a nation’s yearning for an independent cultural force, a particular speaking position in the struggle for national cultural identity amidst the threatening presence of the mediated sphere of the West, given that the borders of the nation have increasingly become vulnerable to Western hegemony of globalization (Y. Kim 2008, 2013). Implicitly or explicitly, uneven flows of transnational popular culture are often perceived as expansionist

Introduction  33

cultural imperialism, consequently invoking national and cultural protectionism in a post-national world order in part enabled by digital technologies. Nation-states contend with the erosion of their institutional sovereignty through regulatory regimes as the growth of transnational cultural flows coupled with the rapid dissemination of participatory technologies like social networking platforms alter traditional communication-based foundations for nation-state power and challenge the ideational monopoly once enjoyed by the nation-state (Hayden 2012). A future of a nation and its identity is being re-imagined and re-learned through de-centralizing alternative cultural flows, such as the Korean Wave, and this imagining and reflexivity is not just a sign of a newfound self-confidence but also a sign of heightened anxiety in a globally mediated world. Today’s multidirectional flows of popular culture and digitally networked communications give rise to the de-territorialization of culture and identity politics transcending national boundaries and engaging with power, cultural difference and diversity in unpredictable ways.

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PART I

Parasite

1 PRODUCERS OF PARASITE AND THE QUESTION OF FILM AUTHORSHIP Producing a global author, authoring a global production Dong Hoon Kim

The night belonged to Bong Joon-Ho at the 92nd Academy Awards ceremony as the acclaimed filmmaker’s Parasite (2019) enthralled the world by garnering four Oscars and becoming the first non-English film to win Best Picture. Repeatedly appearing on the stage, Bong received enthusiastic responses from audiences with his witty speech, humility and homage to veteran American filmmakers present at the Dolby Theater in Hollywood. The night, however, ended with a speech not by the filmmaker but by another member of the Parasite team who came up to the stage to receive the Best Picture award. Following producer Kwak SinAe’s emotional acceptance speech, another staff member, encouraged by Bong, grabbed the mic to calmly talk in English about how much she loved Bong and his films. Without introductory captions, it was unclear to most viewers who she was, and it later turned out the woman with the last word was Miky Lee, the film’s executive producer, who is the founder of CJ Entertainment, now a film division of CJ E&M that produced Parasite, and CJ Group’s Vice Chairwoman in charge of the South Korean (Korean, hereafter) conglomerate’s massive media and entertainment business. Amid excited responses to Parasite’s success, Lee’s acceptance speech drew criticism in Korea, as many questioned whether it was appropriate for her to conclude the historic night and whether she even had a right to be on the stage with the staff. The public was more forgiving with Kwak, the CEO of Barunson E&A, who was involved with the day-to-day operation of the film’s production, but film critics, journalists and fans alike expressed disapproval toward Lee’s presence on the Oscar stage. Though it is a practice that producers and CEOs of production companies are recipients of best pictures at the Oscars and other film festivals, Lee’s critics labeled her as a mere investor and suggested that the creators should have received the credit, not the investor and that it would have been better if “she’d quietly remained as ‘invisible hand’ all along” (Suh 2020a). DOI: 10.4324/9781003102489-1

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Parasite, which narrates a grueling story of the impoverished Kim family that forms an unusual symbiotic relation with the wealthy Park clan, is now a major reference point for the impressive success of contemporary Korean filmmaking, a stylistic and thematic expression of social disparity spread across the globe, and the culmination of Bong’s authorial art. The accolades the film has received make it tempting to read the film’s poignant representation of class divides in Seoul as well as its varied achievements as connotations or symptoms of our historical moment. The film’s scrutiny of new class sensibilities in the overdeveloped world, its strong resonance with global and local politics about social injustice, its sophisticated style and visual metaphors, and the genius of Bong who pieced together all these components have been exhaustively discussed in attempts to unpack the film’s historic achievements. What strikes me about the epic finale for the Parasite saga at the Oscars, however, is not just the epoch-making accomplishments of the film but the anonymity of the producers despite the instrumental role they played in the film’s achievements. In fact, what happened toward the end of the ceremony and its aftermath appears to be emblematic of the overall place of film producers in film history and criticism. Despite their seminal position in the film industry, their roles have been pushed to the margins of film history, and we seldom hear stories or theories about film producers. Noting the scarcity of scholarly studies of producers, Andrew Spicer, Anthony McKenna and Christopher Meir observe, “The financial side of art has always proved problematic for academics and critics alike… this apparent distaste for money matters within the academy could go some way to explaining the producer’s relative absence from Screen Studies literature” (Spicer et al. 2016: 1). Recognizing the commercial aspect of filmmaking and granting due credit to producers becomes an even trickier issue for a film like Parasite that is deemed a great cinematic achievement created by an artist as the public’s attempt to disapprove Miky Lee’s contributions to the film evidently showed. The indifference to film producers, along with efforts to empower the director as a true force behind the production of Parasite, leads us to revisit questions of who creates a film and who deserves credit for film production – a set of questions that has been exhaustively examined and debated in relation to film authorship or auteurism that considers the director as the author of the film who is responsible for the film’s artistic qualities more than anyone else on the staff and that has been an influential approach to film criticism since the 1950s. This chapter investigates how Parasite came into being, focusing on how the film and its director Bong were both produced to be a globally appealing film and auteur respectively. It specifically uncovers accounts of producers who have been marginalized not only in the Parasite saga but overall in critical ruminations of the global emergence of Korean cinema for the last three decades. This interrogation of the producer also entails an examination of Bong’s involvement with Parasite as producer. Instead of merely perceiving the filmmaker as the author of the film who oversees the film’s creative aspect, the chapter will probe the

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seldom-discussed role of Bong as producer and how it contributed to the film’s global circulation. In an effort to relocate the inordinate attention placed on the text and filmmaker to the industrial context to read Parasite in a broader industrial and cultural context, the first half of the chapter takes the form of industrial studies, examining CJ’s production and distribution of Parasite and Bong’s other works in relation to the company’s globalization strategies. The next section of the chapter transits into a more theoretical analysis which engages in the question of film authorship. As this chapter will demonstrate, CJ’s and Bong’s producership actively employs the auteur for the production and distribution of their films targeted at the global market, which influences not only the way a film is produced, distributed and received but how Bong’s auteur persona is constructed. Through examining changing relations between the producer and the auteur, the auteur’s producer role and the industrial appropriation of film authorship as demonstrated in the case of Parasite, the chapter seeks to reconceptualize film authorship and bring to light other sets of critical questions that have been sidelined by celebratory, enthused or symptomatic accounts of Parasite.

Parasite, film industry and media globalization Everyone has a theory about how Parasite made history at the Oscars, and Ted Sarandos, a Netflix co-CEO, also has one. In his interview about Netflix’s recent global expansion, Sarandos claimed that Netflix deserves credit for Parasite’s success because Netflix’s global business that brought a great number of international titles to an American market offered American viewers a lot more opportunities to be exposed to international films and get to appreciate them (Low 2020). Sarandos further alleges that Roma (2018), a Spanish-language Netflix original that put the streaming platform on the Oscar map, “opened the door for Parasite to be as successful as it was” (Ibid.). In fact, there are some notable connections between Parasite and Roma. Directed by Mexican-Hollywood filmmaker Alfonso Cuarón, Roma had a historic success of its own at the 2019 Oscars as it took home three Oscars. Both Bong and Cuarón are highly regarded auteurs today and are among a handful of non-Hollywood filmmakers who are favored by Hollywood studios and are respected in US film circuits. Both Roma and Parasite marked the directors’ returns to their home countries after successfully establishing themselves in Hollywood with their respective Hollywood projects. Even their subjects appear to be similar as both films explore issues in social disparity. Considering their success in Hollywood as international films directed by non-American filmmakers, Sarandos’s claim that Netflix played a meaningful role in lowering the barriers for international productions in the American market and that Roma deserves credit for Parasite’s success sounds reasonable. Interestingly, however, there is another important similarity between the two films the Netflix co-CEO did not mention: They were the products of two powerful film and media groups that ran aggressive promotional campaigns, including Oscar campaigns.

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It is not a secret shared only among those in the film industry that Hollywood studios run Oscar campaigns as the Oscars is considered an effective way to market their films. Oscar campaigning targets over 8,000 eligible voting members of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences through screeners, parties, mailers and ads: “The campaign trail for the Academy Awards is expensive, exhausting, and not really about the movie,” and campaigns are run like political campaigns in lobbying votes, and studios hire consultants as politicians do (Wilkinson 2019). This practice started in the 1990s, but campaign budgets have drastically increased in recent years with the advent of Netflix running aggressive Oscar campaigns. It is estimated that studios now spend up to $15 million to lobby Oscar votes, but Netflix’s campaign for Roma raised eyebrows as it was considered extreme even for Hollywood standards. With an astonishing budget of $25 million, Roma’s “historically expensive” Oscar campaign resulted in ten nominations and three Oscars (Epstein 2019). Oscars are now not only the most prestigious but “most valuable” (Kenyon 2020), and thus it would be naïve to think that Parasite’s success was thanks solely to the genius of an individual filmmaker. CJ ran its own Oscar campaign for Parasite under Miky Lee’s supervision, spending about $10 million, which is close to the published $11 million budget for the film. What is noteworthy here is that CJ is well versed in Hollywood practices and owns enough financial prowess with which it can compete with the Hollywood majors. CJ’s Oscar campaign also demonstrates that the executive producer’s work did not simply end when it wired the money to the production firm or at the release of the film at cinemas. Indeed, its major task commenced when the film was completed. Though the history-making performance at the Oscars garnered a lot of media spotlight, the Korean powerhouse ran a much longer global campaign for the film that began at another major film festival in May 2019 – the Cannes Film Festival. The film premiered at Cannes where it earned the Palme d’Or, becoming the first Korean film to receive the festival’s highest prize, was released in Korea in July to a strong box office response, and finally came to the American shore in October, an ideal time for Oscar contenders to be released. It was at Cannes where Bong and CJ hired Hollywood PR agency ID-PR that represented them in running the Oscar campaign (Thompson 2020). Between Cannes and the Oscars, Parasite was screened at dozens of international film festivals, and it collected almost 200 awards and distinctions. During its Oscar campaign, Bong, actors and producers toured the United States, doing 600 interviews with the media and participating in over a 100 “taste screenings” and post-screening question-and-answer sessions with voting members and audiences. All these indicate that CJ used film festivals as its major marketing means for the film, but this is nothing extraordinary for film projects pandering to global audiences. Film festivals are no longer just venues alternative to the mainstream, commercial film culture but they are increasingly involved in film sales, distribution and marketing, creating “nodes of global business in which films circulate as commodities and attracting all sorts of players in film business”

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(Wong 2011: 129). Netflix had turned to the exact same strategy in the previous year for Roma that won over 200 awards and honors, another striking similarity to Parasite. Parasite narrates a locally grounded story and was made with Korean staff and cast, but it was inherently a global project like Bong’s previous two films, Snowpiercer (2013) and Okja (2017), and its global marketing, promotion and exhibition plans were principally informed by Hollywood practices. Importantly, it was not just the financial capacity that enabled CJ to promote the film in a Hollywood manner, but CJ’s film business has been fundamentally modeled after the Hollywood system from its beginning. Established in 1995, CJ Entertainment has been a key player in the global emergence of Korean cinema in the 1990s that saw the complete overhauling of film and media business in the nation. There was a growing investment in media industries in both public and private sectors, which gradually transformed Korea from a purveyor of hardware products to a soft power. Such conglomerates as Samsung, SK and Daewoo competitively created film and media subsidies, and venture capital firms invested the money into film productions. CJ Group, a food and food service company, joined in this craze for film business. The timing of this business expansion coincided with CJ’s separation from Samsung that began around the death of its founder Lee Byung-Chul, the grandfather of Miky Lee, in 1987. CJ looked to expand its business beyond food and beverage to transform into what the company describes as a lifestyle company. CJ’s entry into the film business was opportunistic like other film companies that emerged in the 1990s, but unlike its competitors, the very birth of CJ Entertainment was a highly globalized event. CJ surprised everyone in both the Korean and American film industries when it was revealed as one of the two major investors for DreamWorks Pictures, a film studio formed by Steven Spielberg, Jeffrey Katzenberg and David Geffen (Iritani 1996). In exchange for its investment, CJ received distribution rights for DreamWorks’ titles in Asia, except for Japan, and sat on the board of directors. But more importantly, DreamWorks agreed to provide CJ staff with its business acumen on film distribution, financing, marketing and management, which became the basis for CJ’s efforts to build its own system (Go 2016: 28). Miky Lee was the architect of this deal; she initially negotiated the deal for Samsung, but when the conglomerate walked away from the deal, she persuaded her brother Lee Jay-Hyun, Chairman of CJ, to invest $300 million into DreamWorks. After the deal was closed, CJ entertainment was formed in 1995. Miky Lee approached Raymond Chow of Hong Kong’s Golden Harvest to jointly build multiplex cinemas in Korea and distribute DreamWorks films through its theaters in Southeast Asia. CGV, CJ’s multiplex cinema chain co-owned by CJ, Golden Harvest and Village Roadshow of Australia, opened its first multiplex in 1998. The 1997 financial crisis led many Korean conglomerates to fold their film business, but CJ continued to nurture its film business. As this origin story illustrates, CJ’s film and media businesses are fundamentally tuned into media globalization and geared toward the global market.

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To “co-exist with Hollywood,” the company had developed two separate globalization tactics that are distinct from its Hollywood competitors – one specific for the Asian market that takes advantage of the immense popularity of Korean culture, and another one for the entire global market (Go 2016: 126–27). CJ has emerged as a major film operator in such Asian countries as China, Vietnam, Turkey, Indonesia and Russia, running movie theater chains in these under-screened markets and producing local films that cater to respective local audiences. While being a major player in emerging Asian film markets, CJ’s second globalization strategy concerns the production of films that are targeted to global markets especially with a focus on breaking into the American film market. In 2013 CJ financed and distributed Snowpiercer, Bong’s first English-language film, as its first “pan-global” project (Go 2016: 41). What distinguished this dystopian sci-fi blockbuster from other previous films CJ produced and distributed for the international market is that an emphasis was placed on breaking into the North American market. To achieve this goal, the film took the form of a transnational production even though CJ was solely responsible for the entire budget. The film was based on French graphic novel Le Transperceneige, featured such Hollywood stars as Chris Evans and Tilda Swinton, was shot in Barrandov Studios in Prague and included VFX images developed by the American company Scanline VFX. CJ partnered with The Weinstein Company, one of the most powerful film companies in Hollywood, to take advantage of its distributing network, and the American distributor acquired distribution rights to the film in North America, the UK, South Africa, Australia and New Zealand. The film enjoyed both critical and commercial success internationally and became yet another breakthrough film for Bong and CJ in their rise in the global film scene, but the result was not entirely satisfactory as it underperformed in the US market due to the dispute between Bong and The Weinstein Company. As various media outlets thoroughly reported, Harvey Weinstein, CEO of the company, demanded the removal of 20 minutes from the film’s original cut and the addition of voice-over narrations to ensure that the film “will be understood by audiences in Iowa and Oklahoma” (Shaw-Williams 2013). The two parties eventually agreed to release the film without edits, but it received a limited release and was only shown at over 150 theaters for three weeks. What is intriguing about this notorious clash between the US distributor and Bong is that instead of teaming up with Weinstein for more financial gain, CJ supported Bong, siding with the filmmaker to collectively fend off Weinstein’s pressure. This rather unusual alliance between a production company and a filmmaker formed against a distributor is illustrative of the asymmetrical power relations between Hollywood and the global media industry but, more importantly, it demonstrates how differently the auteur is positioned in the Korean film industry. In early theories on film authorship, to underline how challenging it is for an auteur to protect individual creativity in commercially oriented filmmaking environments, film scholars portrayed the auteur as a lone hero who stood against pressures from powerful film studios and producers to fight for artistic vision.

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Naturally, the commercial nature of filmmaking was denounced as a major barrier to the personal expression in auteurism that focused on valorizing the director as artist. The antagonistic relations between the auteur and the film industry established in earlier auteurism remain largely intact, and commercialism and the auteur are seldom associated together. Yet the accommodation of the auteur in the Korean film industry demonstrates that there are more complicated forces at play in the auteur-industry relations. In introducing Miky Lee’s and CJ’s contributions to the Korean film industry, Hollywood Reporter reported: Lee’s efforts also created the infrastructure for Korea’s entertainment industries as a whole while providing a foundation for its homegrown artists to flourish and make waves around the world… it’s possible to draw a direct line between CJ’s investment in the local film industry and the rise of filmmakers like Bong, meaning that without Lee’s support, Parasite might not even exist. (Sun 2020a) It is hard to dispute CJ’s role in bringing local talent to the world, but the trade journal’s assessment is seriously lopsided since CJ does not simply support local filmmakers, but the company and Korean filmmakers have established symbiotic relationships. Since its resurgence in the 1990s, the Korean film industry has strategically utilized auteurism to expand its global business, making the director “the center of creativity in film” (Lee 2020: 19). Unlike Hollywood that recognized the value of the auteur as a marketing brand at best, the Korean film industry strives to create a partner relation with them. This empowered place of the auteur in the Korean film industry often betrays the commonly assumed hostile relationship between producer and director. CJ’s unfailing support for Bong during their confrontation with Weinstein over the US release of Snowpiercer proved how dedicated CJ was to the filmmaker and how central its partnership with the globally lauded auteur was to its first pan-global project. Bong, who collaborated with CJ on four of his last five feature films, is not the only Korean filmmaker the company partnered with for its globalization plans. CJ has been working closely with such globally established auteurs as Park Chan-Wook, Kim Jee-Woon and Lee Chang-Dong. The director-oriented Korean film industry has created a working environment where auteurs could enjoy a greater degree of creative freedom. Bong often commented that he had only ever released “the director’s cut of my films” until his conflict with Weinstein, noting the tremendous control over his films ( Jung 2019). The centrality of auteurs to the film industry even affects the content of their works and their auteur agency as it enables them to freely traverse boundaries between commercial filmmaking and arthouse cinema and allows them to make commercially viable but still politically edgy, thematically provocative and stylistically experimental films. Park Chan-Wook, Kim Jee-Woon and Bong are “hybrid auteur,” adept at both commercially oriented films and arthouse or cult

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films (Choi 2011: 59). This transgressive trait of contemporary Korean auteurs’ opus is noticeable in Parasite whose feat at the festival and critical circuits was matched by the financial success, becoming the most lucrative Korean film in the global market. Another important aspect to consider in the auteur-producer relationship that influenced the making of Parasite is Bong’s participation in the film as producer.

Auteur with extended control: Bong Joon-Ho as producer In many ways, Bong fits an ideal image of auteur. Like many auteurs from non-Euro-American countries, Bong’s auteur status was earned initially at international film festivals. He craves greater creative control over every aspect of his films; he is known for his perfectionism and attention to detail, earning the nickname Bong-tail, a portmanteau that combines his family name with “tail” from the English word “detail.” In a similar manner to Hitchcock, he draws storyboards for his films to visualize camera movement, shot angles, actor’s movement and production design. As he has clear ideas about what to include in the shots and how they should be edited together, he does not shoot coverage for his films. Not only film critics but Bong’s staff members and actors time and again testify how meticulously Bong crafts his works. When asked about how Bong’s relentless pursuit of creative control affected her acting, Tilda Swinton, the titular star of Snowpiercer and Okja, praised the director’s thoroughness by saying working with the editor on the set, as Bong does, means that it is possible to keep track, at every moment, of the exact temperature of the trajectory of the scene – and know precisely what is required to continue, or precede, the action already shot. Like building a giant jigsaw puzzle. (Tauer 2017) The success of Parasite was also attributed to Bong’s “exactitude and fineness” (Yonhap 2020) and “the ruthless precision of his technique” (Scott 2019). He not only sketched out every scene for Parasite himself but used over 400 VFX shots, close to half of the film’s total 960 cuts, to construct the film setting “in strict accordance with the detailed vision of Bong’s script” (McNamara 2020). Bong’s efforts to secure his creative freedom eventually led him to take the producer role for his films. Although Bong did not receive official producer credit for Snowpiercer, he was involved in every aspect of film production and made all the important decisions. He became his own producer for the first time for Okja and once again, he wrote, directed and produced Parasite, closely overseeing the film’s production from the conception stage to the Oscar campaign. Bong’s assumption of the producer’s duties is hardly unique. Increasingly, established filmmakers touted as auteurs endeavor to gain more control over their productions either by establishing their own film productions that finance and/ or produce their own works or negotiate for the producer’s role to ensure more

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creative freedom. Quentin Tarantino, James Cameron, Christopher Nolan, Ang Lee and the Coen brothers are some of those filmmakers who seek to gain unchallenged control over their work. These film auteurs’ efforts to protect authorial autonomy led them to take the producer’s responsibilities as it allows them to have the control over the entire process of film production. Bong is among these filmmakers who take the role of producer as a way to pursue creative autonomy. While Bong worked on Snowpiercer, his two close Korean colleagues were also working on their own global projects. Park Chan-Wook and Kim Jee-Woon were hired by Hollywood studios to direct Stoker (2013) and Last Stand (2013), respectively. Bong took a different path from these two auteurs as he decided to go with CJ for Snowpiercer despite the global nature of the project, as he feared that he might lose his control over the film if working with a Hollywood studio (Lee 2020: 17). Bong’s decision turned out to be the right one although he had his share of trouble with Weinstein, as both Park and Kim regretted their stint with Hollywood. On his work experience on Last Stand, a Lionsgate action thriller, Kim painfully recalled that he always had to wrestle with producers, assistant directors and the insurance company over every decision, and he felt extremely frustrated as “unlike Korean directors, the director’s right is limited in Hollywood” (Park 2013). Therefore, Bong’s selections of production companies were motivated by his endeavors to protect and expand his creative freedom (Lee 2020: 17). This explains his decision to collaborate with Netflix for Okja. Rather controversially, Bong chose to work with Netflix when the company had just launched its business in Asia and only started producing its original content with the release of its flagship original series House of Cards (2013). Yet Netflix, Amazon and other streaming platforms that produce their original content tend to grant media-makers a lot more control, a strategic move to attract more creators by demarcating themselves from Hollywood’s studio-centered production practice. Netflix invested $50 million into Okja even with the producer position as well as a confirmation that it would not even try to change a single line in the film’s script. Bong mentioned that even though working with Netflix prompted boycotts from exhibitors both in Korea and abroad as the streaming company released the film simultaneously on its website and at theaters, he believes Netflix could give many creators, who yearn for creative freedom, a viable option ( Jang 2017). Bong’s drive to gain total control even extended to the construction of his own auteur persona that affects the public reception of him and his work. To augment his auteur image, however, Bong plays down his increasing control over his productions but instead highlights the constraints he must deal with. This may sound paradoxical because Bong has become one of the few filmmakers who enjoy full creative freedom with virtually no intervention from film studios. Yet, constraints in the cinematic, institutional and financial senses are as important as the pursuit of control in the director’s entry into the pantheon of auteurs because the discursive construction of auteur almost always incorporates their stories of overcoming constraints such as pressures for producers, technical limitations and

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financial restraints (Elsaesser 2017). Constraints are integral part of many auteurs, but these were something Bong’s auteur persona had lacked in the past because Bong and many other Korean filmmakers of his generation enjoyed a considerable degree of creative control. As he emerged as a global auteur, however, Bong began to develop his own narratives of overcoming barriers to his artistic visions. Bong constantly positioned himself against Hollywood in fostering his global auteur persona although he had been working closely with Hollywood studios and stars, which substantially raised his international status and reputation. I use the term “global” together with auteur not to simply indicate a global reach of an auteur’s reputation but to employ it in the political-economic sense to connote the resistant or oppositional stances against the hegemony of Hollywood and American media industry. Bong is a powerful figure in the local market and a respected global auteur but constantly reminds the film world that when placed in the global media-industrial context, even he is a helpless director vulnerable to Hollywood influences, partaking vigorously in power struggles with Hollywood. His endeavor to create this image commenced with Snowpiercer, his and CJ’s first global project. Bong was not shy about divulging his exasperation with the American distributor, which in the end turned into a triumph story of the filmmaker that made all necessary sacrifices to maintain the integrity of his work and elevated his auteur status. When the spat between Bong-CJ and Weinstein was leaked to the American public, enraged Bong’s fans started a “Free Snowpiercer” petition to pressure the American distributor to release the director’s cut without alterations at more theaters and show their support for the filmmaker. Consequently, the controversy helped Bong further establish his reputation as a global auteur in the United States, and the film’s favorable reception led to its TV remake aired on TNT. During his Oscar campaign interviews, he eagerly shared illuminating anecdotes about the Hollywood mogul’s attempts to undermine the director’s artistic visions. His picturing himself as the global auteur, who is highly conscious about Hollywood’s hegemony, continued with his next two projects, Okja and Parasite. On working with Netflix on Okja, Bong remarked, The budget was such a burden. There is a limited amount of money available in the Korean film industry, and if I end up using the Korean capital, my fellow filmmakers and actors must cease their work. I determined that I should seek to receive a foreign investment in order not to burden the Korean film industry. ( Jang 2017) Even when he was given an enormous budget with total control over his production, Bong never stopped positioning himself at the “other” side of the hegemonic struggles in the global media landscape, stressing that his decision was driven by his intent to support the Korean film industry. Similarly, about the Oscar campaign for Parasite, Bong emphasized, “Compared to major Hollywood studios and Netflix, our budget was far less, and it was a guerrilla warfare for us…

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we complemented the lack of resources with the teamwork and passion of CJ, Barunson, Neon, and actors” (Suh 2020b). Bong once again underscored the uneven power relationship between the Korean film industry and Hollywood and the constraints he and his team for Parasite had to overcome for their achievement, underplaying CJ’s $10 million Oscar campaign. All these instances reveal that Bong prompts his specific auteur persona. Not to mention, Bong is not the only filmmaker who engages with the construction of their self-image. Filmmakers, whether they like it or not, are responsible to some degree for creating their self-image, auteur persona or what Michel Foucault (1969) calls “the author function,” a cultural, social and industrial discourse surrounding the author, through media interviews, conversations with audiences, screenings and lectures. But there are auteurs who turn to this maneuver more self-consciously. In her study of Chinese fifth-generation filmmakers who emerged as global auteurs through international film festivals in the 1980s and 1990s, Rey Chow introduces the concept of “the Orient’s Orientalism” in analyzing Chinese filmmakers’ exhibitionist representations of Chinese culture in winning over Western audiences (Chow 1995: 166): Chinese filmmakers created the cinematic images of mythic China that were informed by self-orientalist appropriation of Chinese culture to cater to Western audiences’ orientalist view of China that considers the country as an ancient, underdeveloped and primitive world. Thomas Elsaesser views this “auto-exoticism” as a wide-spread move by global filmmakers who become “a festival talent for hire” in the face of the pressures of globalized authorship (Elsaesser 2017: 29). Elsaesser develops this idea to theorize another common move by auteurs in coping with global capitalism. His notion of “performative self-contradiction” reads the auteurs’ contradictory negotiations with the logics of global capitalism as the inevitable outcome of the auteurs’ efforts to safeguard their authorial status and artistic visions even though they are disgruntled with the commercial-oriented film industry (Ibid.: 36–37). Both Chow and Elsaesser perceive the auteurs’ compromised relationships with media capital as something desperate and inevitable as they struggle to keep their auteur agency intact. The auteur was theoretically construed as the artist opposed to the commercial nature of film production, and this configuration of auteur as alternative creative voice to the film industry and commercial filmmaking resiliently influences theorizations of film authorship even after countless permutations of this major critical framework since the 1950s, as Chow’s and Elsaesser’s takes on auteurism exemplify. Bong’s authorship, however, presents a counter-example that challenges the common perception of auteur as one “who can sustain critically meaningful or artistically transformative stances” despite profit-driven filmmaking environments ( Jeong and Szaniawski 2017: 6). Bong’s auteur agency demonstrates that individual creativity, textual integrity or thematic and stylistic consistency are not the only markers of auteur and require us to reconsider the auteur’s relationship to media capital. Bong is among contemporary auteurs who are “no longer under the heel of the producer” as they serve as their own

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producer to maximize their control over their productions (Bernstein 2008: 187). Bong is not just a director or writer who is only responsible for the creation of his film but executive producer, onsite producer and promoter in charge of the entire production from financing and budgeting to the marketing and promotion. We may call auteurs like Bong an auteur with extended control. He is even very much invested in promoting a particular auteur persona for himself. What is exceptional about his authorship is that he is not afraid of flinging himself into the flows of global media capital and rigorously influences global power dynamics in the global media scene instead of indulging in various forms of negotiations with them or simply despising and distancing from them. While constantly searching for and succeeding in netting better financial opportunities that could satisfy both his creative and fiscal needs, the filmmaker tries to foster his image as traditional auteur who is still restrained by the logic of global capitalism. Bong represents a new type of auteur who is not just antithetical to media capitalism but takes tactical advantages of it in warranting his auteur status and artistic control.

Conclusion CJ’s emergence as a global player that has always involved Hollywood from its beginning curiously evokes Bong’s journey to global auteur. Bong’s transformation from a locally celebrated director to a global auteur benefited considerably from working with Hollywood capital, resources and its global reach, but he always put greater emphasis on struggles with Hollywood in nurturing his global authorship. Despite CJ’s dominant position in local and global markets, its aggressive globalization plans, its close ties with Hollywood studios and growing concerns about its ever-expanding business in Korea, Miky Lee promotes her company as a creator of the national culture and guardian of the local industry against the tides of global media capitalism, emphasizing their mission to “create an environment where all our Korean creators can create various contents” (Sun 2020b) and bring their works to the world to demarcate it from profit-oriented Hollywood business. While embracing Hollywood practices and making alliances with Hollywood studios when necessary, Bong and CJ constantly distance themselves from Hollywood in their own pursuit of producing and distributing global films. In the aftermath of its Oscars success, Parasite was hailed as “a uniquely Korean story” that was “profoundly Korean in many ways” but still transcended borders with its universally appealing theme and led Koreans to be convinced that “now we see we can make things our way and tell our story, and it will resonate worldwide” (Kim 2020). As this chapter has demonstrated, Parasite’s broad appeal does not derive only from Bong’s masterful command of universal genre languages or his film’s transnational textuality, but CJ’s globalization strategies and Bong’s global auteur status were also substantial contributing factors to its global travel. Parasite was crafted meticulously into a transgressive film by its producers who fluidly navigated complex networks of global media and transnational capitalism.

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References Bernstein, M. (2008) “The Producer as Auteur,” in B. Grant (ed) Auteurs and Authorship, Bridgewater: Wiley. Choi, J. (2011) The South Korean Film Renaissance, Middletown: Wesleyan University Press. Chow, R. (1995) Primitive Passions, New York: Columbia University Press. Elsaesser, T. (2017) “The Global Author: Control, Creative Constraints and Performative Self-contradiction,” in S.H. Jeong and J. Szaniawski (eds) The Global Auteur, London: Bloomsbury. Epstein, A. (2019) “Netflix Laughs in the Face of Your Puny Oscar Campaign,” Quartz, 16 January. Foucault, M. (1969) “What Is an Author?” in D. Bouchard (ed) Language, CounterMemory, Practice (English trans. 1977), Ithaca: Cornell University Press. Go, S.Y. (2016) CJ Saenggak, Paju: Yeolimwon. Iritani, E. (1996) “New Name in Lights in S. Korea,” LA Times, 19 August. Jang, J.R. (2017) “Bong Joon-Ho and Okja,” Chosun Ilbo, 21 May. Jeong, S.H. and Szaniawski, J. (2017) The Global Auteur, London: Bloomsbury. Jung, A. (2019) “Bong Joon-Ho’s Dystopia Is Already Here,” Vulture, 7 October. Kenyon, S. (2020) “Oscars Campaigning: How Do Studios Lobby for Academy Awards?” ABC, 6 February. Kim, V. (2020) “South Korea Revels in Oscar Wins of ‘Uniquely Korea’ Film ‘Parasite’,” LA Times, 10 February. Lee, N. (2020) The Films of Bong Joon Ho, New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press. Low, E. (2020) “Inside Netflix’s Quest to Become a Global TV Giant,” Variety, 30 July. McNamara, L. (2020) “How Parasite Uses Brilliant Design and Invisible VFX to Transcend Language,” Frame.io Insider, 13 January. Park, E.G. (2013) “Kim Jee-Woon Director,” Kyunghang Shinmun, 4 March. Scott, A.O. (2019) “It’s Bong Joon-Ho’s Dystopia. We Just Live in It,” New York Times, 30 October. Shaw-Williams, H. (2013) “Weinstein Cuts ‘Snowpiercer’ by 20 Minutes for US Release,” Screen Rant, 6 August. Spicer, A., McKenna, A. and Meir, C. (2016) Beyond the Bottom Line: The Producer in Film and Television Studies, London: Bloomsbury. Suh, J.M. (2020a) “CJ Vice Chair’s ‘Parasite’ Acceptance Speech Raises Eyebrows at 2020 Oscars,” Hankyoreh, 12 February. Suh, J.M. (2020b) “Bong Joon-Ho’s After-work,” Hankyoreh, 19 February. Sun, R. (2020a) “From ‘Parasite’ to BTS: Meet the Most Important Mogul in South Korean Entertainment,” Hollywood Reporter, 7 February. Sun, R. (2020b) “‘Parasite’ Exec Producer Miky Lee’s Post-Oscars Strategy: More ‘Edgy, Diversified Content’,” Hollywood Reporter, 12 February. Tauer, K. (2017) “Tilda Swinton Reunites with Bong Joon-Ho for ‘Okja’,” Women’s Wear Daily, 28 June. Thompson, A. (2020) “Behind the Scenes of Bong Joon-Ho’s Oscar-Winning ‘Parasite’ PR Campaign,” IndieWire, 15 February. Wilkinson, A. (2019) “How to Win an Oscar,” Vox, 21 February. Wong, C. (2011) Film Festivals, New Jersey: Rutgers University Press. Yonhap (2020) “Bong Joon-Ho’s Detailed Directing Works Behind the Scenes,” 14 February.

2 PARASITE AND THE GLOBAL ARRIVAL OF KOREAN CINEMA Notes from the underground Charles K. Armstrong

Year 2019–20 marked the moment of arrival of the Korean Wave in the world, and in the United States in particular. Twenty years after the term Hallyu was coined by Chinese journalists, Korean popular culture scored a remarkable dual success in America: The K-Pop group BTS topped the Billboard charts, performed a sold-out concert at CitiField in New York, appeared on the cover of TIME magazine and made the rounds of TV talk shows; and Bong Joon-Ho’s film Parasite was released to rave reviews, winning the Palme D’Or at the Cannes and the Best Picture award at the Oscars. Parasite was the first foreign-language film ever to win the Best Picture Oscar, a remarkable achievement for a national cinema barely known in the United States just two decades ago. This chapter explores the global success of Parasite within three intersecting contexts – the rise of the Korean Wave, and Korean cinema specifically, over the past few decades; the development of contemporary neoliberalism and the accompanying emergence of a global precariat, which inform both the production and plot of Parasite; and memories of the repressed in modern Korean history, including the economically marginalized sectors of society and the subversive political “underground” of divided Korea since 1945. The global success of Parasite is both a singular achievement for Korean cinema and a mirror to the fractured and profoundly unequal world of the advancing twenty-first century. Parasite centers on the relationship between a poor urban family, the Kims, and a wealthy family, the Parks, with whom each of the four members of the Kim family gains employment through various fraudulent means. Halfway through the film a third family is introduced, the husband living in the sub-basement of the Park house unbeknownst to the home’s current owners, fed and cared for by his wife who works as the Parks’ housekeeper. Throughout the film extreme economic inequality is an overarching theme. This inequality of status DOI: 10.4324/9781003102489-2

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and opportunity has been a growing source of anxiety for South Koreans since at least the late 1990s and increasingly so in recent years. Although the precise expression of this economic gap in Parasite is distinctly (South) Korean, this theme seems to have struck a chord with audiences around the world, including the United States, where inequality was already more acute for some time and has been sharply on the rise. In this regard, Parasite might be considered the definitive film to date of the neoliberal order that has come to dominate the world over the past 40 years, since the Thatcher-Reagan free market revolutions of 1979–80. Parasite remains resolutely within a South Korean social and cultural context, yet has achieved an unprecedented resonance with global audiences, reflecting the film’s considerable artistry as well as its ability to tap into some of the deepest anxieties of the contemporary world. The irony of Parasite is that the crowning achievement so far of global Korean cinema is itself a scathing critique of contemporary South Korean society.

The Korean Wave and Korean cinema: conglomeratization and soft power The rise of the Korean Wave, including cinema, tracks closely with the liberalization of the South Korean economy, especially since the Asian financial crisis of the late 1990s (Yecies and Shim 2016). The term Hallyu (Hanliu in Mandarin), translated into English as “Korean Wave,” was apparently invented in China around 1998, referring to the sudden explosive popularity of South Korean TV drama and pop music in that country (Kim 2013: 1). The Korean Wave seemed to come out of nowhere; while Japanese popular culture dominated East Asia in the 1980s, and Chinese popular culture had a strong following among the Mandarin- and Cantonese-speaking populations of “Greater China” and Southeast Asia, the rise of Korean popular culture was a singularly new phenomenon. The Korean Wave emerged out of South Korea’s post-crisis economic restructuring and has become Korea’s most successful post-industrial export. Some of the scholarship on Hallyu has focused on its development as Korea’s “culture industry,” borrowing the term coined by Max Horkheimer and Theodor Adorno in the 1940s to analyze American popular culture, especially Hollywood cinema (Horkheimer and Adorno 1997; Lie 2015: 154). Adorno (1991) once explained that he and Horkheimer adopted the term as a substitute for “mass culture,” in order to make it clear that this kind of culture was not one that “arises spontaneously from the masses themselves.” The culture industry, by contrast, “intentionally integrates its consumers from above” (Adorno 1991: 98). Adorno’s concept has often been criticized for its overly deterministic, not to say pessimistic, view of modern culture. But if we shift the modifier and modified more in keeping with the “mass culture” term it replaced, “culture industry” becomes industrial culture, which rather accurately describes what South Korea created and perfected from the late 1990s to the present. K-pop, TV dramas and films were promoted

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for export, much like automobiles and mobile phones, and South Korea has become a powerhouse of popular culture as it had been in other more material industries. In the case of film, big conglomerates or chaebol (e.g. Samsung) have played a role and smaller independent companies, sometimes with chaebol connections, have made Korea a global force. The Korean Wave arose out of Korea’s evolution from a more state-directed protectionist economy in the 1980s to a more liberal or neoliberal, globalized economy in the 2000s. In post-financial crisis South Korea, national wealth and global recognition have risen in tandem with societal fragmentation and individual economic instability. In the mid-1980s, the South Korean film industry was in crisis. Under intense pressure from Hollywood, South Korea removed barriers to foreign film distribution that had been designed to protect the domestic film industry. By 1988, US companies were allowed to distribute films in Korea directly and limitations on foreign film imports were lifted (Yecies and Shim 2011: 5; Cho 2019: 52–53). At the same time, the government removed longstanding restrictions on the establishment of private production companies, and with the end of authoritarian rule in the late 1980s also relaxed film censorship, eventually dropping government censorship and introducing a rating system in 1996. Just as filmmaking in South Korea was permitted unprecedented artistic and financial freedom, the Korean film industry faced the prospect of being crushed by the Hollywood juggernaut. South Korean cinema could have been reduced to a small, government-protected niche industry while the country’s screens were overwhelmed by Hollywood and other foreign imports, as was the case with some other national cinemas. But this is not what happened. On the contrary, exposure to foreign films and newfound artistic freedom rejuvenated the film industry, and by the late 1990s a coterie of new directors, with some assistance from the quasi-governmental Korean Film Council (KOFIC), was making creative and highly popular films that were competing successfully with Hollywood for the domestic box office. South Korea by the early 2000s was one of the few countries in the world where locally made films dominated the domestic market. At the same time, Korean films were coming to the attention of foreign audiences as well (Paquet 2009; Choi 2010). The financial crisis that hit South Korea and other Asian countries in 1997 had a devastating effect on the Korean labor market and caused widespread bankruptcy and unemployment but did not undermine the film industry. On the contrary, as more traditional industries suffered, film – and popular culture in general – became new targets of investment for conglomerates and small companies alike. In the early- to mid-1990s a number of established conglomerates, including Samsung, SK and Daewoo, set up their own production companies to make films, mostly romantic comedies (Cho 2019: 55). But after the financial crisis and the liberalization of the South Korean economy, newer and more specialized companies such as CJ Entertainment and Orion entered the filmmaking business. This coincided with the introduction of multiplex cinemas in 1998, vastly increasing the number of screens in South Korea and giving a

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further boost to the film industry. Cinemas and filmmaking are closely linked industries in Korea, with many of the same companies involved in both film production and theater ownership. Three companies (CJ CGV, Lotte and Megabox) are responsible for some 90% of the cinema screens in the country. The South Korean film industry is its own distinct oligopoly (Cho 2019: 58). After the financial crisis, Korean film production shifted from government and chaebol dominance to smaller independent companies (Yecies and Shim 2016: 157–81). Among these new producers, arguably the most successful has been Miky Lee (Lee Mi-Gyeong), granddaughter of Samsung founder Lee Byung-Chul (Pyne 2020; Siegel 2020; Sun 2020). As vice chair of the Samsung spinoff company CJ Group, Lee had been an early investor in Steven Spielberg’s DreamWorks in 1995 and has produced four of Bong Joon-Ho’s films, including Parasite; she gave the speech accepting Parasite’s Best Picture award at the Oscars. Lee’s CJ Entertainment, created by CJ Group in 2011 and now called CJ E&M, became the largest media conglomerate in South Korea (Yecies and Shim 2016: 159); as CJ CGV, the company owns around half of South Korea’s cinema screens. CJ E&M also runs a K-pop “training camp,” M Academy, and manages K-pop artists, music distribution and performances. There are significant parallels and corporate connections, as well as some sharing of star talent, between K-pop and popular Korean cinema. As the sociologist John Lie (2015) points out, in the pre-Korean Wave period it was not at all obvious that K-pop would become an export industry. Korea’s domestic market is not particularly small by world standards and could have sustained a popular music industry on its own (Lie 2015: 114). Much the same could be said of Korean cinema. But the South Korean economy has been geared to produce for export since the rapid industrialization of the 1960s. Export orientation has become the default position of Korean business; it is only a question of what product is to be exported, and where. Within the Korean culture industry, K-pop is perhaps the most obvious case of strategic corporate production and marketing for export, but the Korean film industry has also actively pursued global recognition and market share. Over the course of a decade, from the late 1990s to late 2000s, South Korean film rose from relative obscurity to international acclaim. Korean cinema’s first international hit was Kang Je-Gyu’s spy thriller Shiri (1999), which broke box office records in Korea and became the top film in Japan as well. A slick, action-packed movie along the lines of the James Bond franchise, Shiri was the first domestic film labeled a “blockbuster” in Korea and demonstrated that Koreans could make a Hollywood-style film with high production values that appealed to both domestic and international audiences (Choi 2010: 31). The artistic value of Korean cinema was coming to be recognized as well, with Korean films winning accolades at the world’s most prestigious film festivals, notably Cannes. Im Kwon-Taek’s Chunhyang (2000) was the first Korean film to be selected for the Cannes Film Festival, and Im won Best Director for Chihwaseon at Cannes in 2002. Park Chan-Wook’s Oldboy won the Cannes Jury Grand Prix in 2004, followed by Jeon Do-Yeon’s Best Actress award at

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Cannes for her performance in Lee Chang-Dong’s Miryang (Secret Sunshine) in 2007 (Kim 2013: 9). International prizes and popular appeal formed a virtuous cycle raising Korean film’s global stature, culminating in Parasite’s dual victory at the Cannes in 2019 and the Oscars in 2020. Film scholar Kyung Hyun Kim has noted that Korean cinema in the 2000s was a singularly successful example of imitating Hollywood (Kim 2011: xv). This is certainly true as far as it goes, especially for early Korean Wave films such as Shiri. But over the past decade or so Korean films have gained a reputation all their own – characterized by such features as genre blending, abrupt changes in mood and great kinetic energy – and have come to influence Hollywood and other national cinemas themselves. Sometime in the early 2010s the world came to agree that Korea was “cool” (Hong 2014), and Hollywood itself attempted to ride the Korean Wave, including producing several remakes of popular Korean films such as The Lake House (2006) and Oldboy (2013). Despite initial success in Japan, the new Korean cinema was slow to penetrate the mainstream Western market. Early on, Korean films were a fairly niche item in the United States and other Western countries, attractive to the film cognoscenti precisely because of their novel and distinctive features, especially violent horror films and thrillers of which Park Chan-Wook’s Oldboy was the paradigm. Oldboy captured the attention of critics and film students, but it was Bong Joon-Ho, already one of the leading directors in South Korea, who reached a mainstream American audience with his sci-fi monster horror-comedy-drama The Host in 2006. The Host, having broken box office records in Korea, was one of the first South Korean films to gain widespread US distribution, setting Bong on the path to his own Hollywood stardom. After the further success of Mother (2009), Bong moved into a radically transnational direction with his next two films, Snowpiercer (2013) and Okja (2017). Snowpiercer, based on the French graphic novel Le Transperceneige, is set in a dystopian future in which the last remnants of mankind ride a perpetually moving train around a frozen Earth. The cast is international, including such prominent Hollywood actors as Chris Evans and Tilda Swinton, and the dialogue is mostly in English. Okja, another science fiction-themed film, this time dealing with a genetically modified super-pig, is partly set in the South Korean countryside but places much of its action outside of Korea and also features a largely English-speaking cast. With Parasite Bong returns to South Korea, and contemporary Seoul specifically, but in some ways, it may be Bong’s most transnational film, insofar as it has been embraced by a global audience and a subtitle-resistant American audience in particular. Parasite may have been the most successful Korean film in the US market in recent years, but Yeon SangHo’s zombie-action thriller Train to Busan (2016) and Lee Chang-Dong’s Burning (2018), among others, also garnered favorable reviews and wide distribution in the United States. By the end of the 2010s, Korean cinema was no longer an exotic and specialized commodity but part of the global cinematic landscape, adorned with Hollywood’s and the American moviegoers’ seals of approval. Korean cinema had arrived.

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If the first Korean Wave arose in the late 1990s, a second Korean Wave or “Hallyu 2.0” was visible from about the mid-2000s, spearheaded by K-pop and disseminated through the Internet and social media rather than CDs, DVDs and broadcast or cable television (Lee and Nornes 2015; Choe 2016: 10; Jin 2016). The global popularity of Psy’s “Gangnam Style” in 2012, the most viewed song on YouTube at the time, was the breakthrough event of this second wave, and K-pop has been on a relentless upswing ever since. This second wave had a less direct and immediate effect on film, although Korean films gained steady recognition abroad and streaming services such as Netflix began to acquire, and even produce, more and more Korean content. The second wave, capitalizing on the success of the first, involved more deliberate design and promotion by private companies and strong support by the South Korean government. The Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism sought to identify Hallyu as Korea’s “brand,” promoting concerts and films through overseas consulates and encouraging tourism to South Korea in general and to location sites for movies and dramas in particular. The government and the media spoke frequently of Hallyu as a form or expression of South Korea’s “soft power,” borrowing the influential term from the Harvard scholar Joseph Nye (Nye 2004; Nye and Kim 2013). Writing about the United States amidst the flailing war in Iraq, Nye (2004) defined soft power as “the ability to get what you want through attraction rather than coercion or payments.” In contrast to military or economic power, soft power relies on culture, values and moral authority. Nye’s concept has been taken up by governments from China to Turkey, the EU and Brazil. But in Korea, a country at a historic disadvantage in “hard power” compared to its much larger neighbors, the explosive growth of Hallyu, first in East Asia and then around the world, represented a unique and unprecedented type of South Korean soft power. The meaning and measure of “soft power” has long been debated. It is almost impossible to quantify, compared to military hardware or GDP, and is often viewed instrumentally – as a means to some other presumably more “real” power. Who is the “you” who gains “the ability to get what you want”? Nye’s original focus was on the state. But clearly not only governments gain from the accumulation and use of soft power. Perhaps Hallyu has helped the South Korean government diplomatically by improving South Korea’s image, although any direct connection would be hard to trace. Certainly, Hallyu has made South Korea a more attractive place for foreigners and has been a boom to tourism, thus bringing more foreign income into the South Korean economy. And of course, Hallyu has been highly profitable for the companies that produce South Korean pop music, television, films and video games. It can be argued that Hallyu spurred the “creative economy” in South Korea and thus opened up new employment opportunities and helped push the country further in the direction of a postindustrial, information-based economy and society. However, the importance of Hallyu may be less material or measurable than any direct diplomatic or economic benefits. Hallyu has made Korea more visible to the world, in a positive light, than anything before in Korean history. A country long either ignored or

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identified with war and poverty is now associated with cutting-edge cinema, spectacular pop performances and high-quality TV programs. This no doubt makes Koreans prouder of their own country and culture, which is not insignificant, and has made Korea an important contributor to global culture. For the first time, the world is paying attention to Korean experiences, tastes and histories projected through Korean music, film and television dramas (Chang 2016: 42).

Neoliberalism and the global precariat The Korean culture industry thus enters and influences global popular culture at the moment in which market-oriented reforms have come to dominate much of the world, not least South Korea itself following the profound shock of the late-1990s financial crisis. As these neoliberal reforms have progressed over the past few decades, economic inequality has increased around the world, with the United States the most unequal among advanced industrialized countries and the UK second most unequal (Stiglitz 2012). According to the Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD 2020a), income inequality was higher in 2017 among the world’s more advanced countries than at any time in the previous 50 years. The United States is by far the most unequal rich country and has been since the mid-1980s; South Korea has been growing more unequal since the 1990s but by global standards it is still a relatively egalitarian society. It is perhaps not the objective level of inequality but the speed at which inequality has grown that has made it so noticeable in South Korea. The extraordinarily fast pace of change in South Korea’s economy, culture and society under rapid industrialization from the 1960s to the 1990s, followed by liberalization from the 1990s to the present, has been aptly called “compressed modernity” by the sociologist Kyung-Sup Chang (Chang 1999). Possibly no society on earth has developed economically as quickly and as extensively as South Korea, and thus the changes and contradictions of the global economy are especially visible there. Just as the divided Korean peninsula often appeared as a microcosm of the global Cold War (Henderson 1974), so the stark inequality of contemporary South Korea brings into sharp relief the global growth of inequality, in part because South Korea was a much more equal society in recent memory. In the space of half a century South Korean society has traveled from shared poverty to relatively shared affluence to a growing and visible gap between rich and poor. Based on the Gini Coefficient, the standard measurement of income inequality, South Korea ranks the 28th least equal society among the 37 OECD member states, slightly ahead of Britain and the United States and slightly behind Japan, but well behind Canada, Switzerland and the Scandinavian countries (OECD 2020a). South Korea also has the highest suicide rate in the OECD, especially among the elderly (males in particular) and increasingly among teenagers and young adults (OECD 2020b). An underdeveloped welfare state, the breakdown of the extended family on which the elderly previously depended and job insecurity for older males contribute to suicide among the older population; intense pressure

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for educational achievement (especially college entrance) and lack of employment opportunities contribute to suicide among youth. This too is a relatively recent phenomenon; the suicide rate in South Korea was not particularly high before the mid-1990s. As brilliantly exposed in Parasite, South Korea has become a society of tremendous competition, economic insecurity and social division. The pursuit of economic advantage is quite literally a struggle to the death. Parasite not only stays within South Korea, it never leaves the city of Seoul, and with a few exceptions the entire film is confined to two locations – the semi-basement home of the Kims and the hilltop mansion of the Parks. The contrast between the dark, dreary and dysfunctional Kim basement and the stunning, light-filled and ultra-modern Park house is one of the key features of the film, and the Parks’ house in particular – built as a set for the film – is practically a character in itself. The use of domestic space in Parasite hearkens back to Kim Ki-Young’s seminal 1960 film The Housemaid, a film Bong Joon-Ho himself has called “the Citizen Kane of Korean cinema” and a direct inspiration for Parasite (Berry 2019: 147; Ulaby 2019; Klein 2020: 228). Housemaid (Hanyeo in Korean, meaning female servant – literally “woman below” or “lower woman”), which might be called a domestic horror-crime-melodrama, centers on an aspiring middle-class couple who hire a young housemaid to help with caring for their two children and their newly built two-story house. The maid, a recent transplant from the countryside, envies her employers’ middle-class domesticity and seduces the husband, leading ultimately to the destruction of the family (Kim 2004: 140–46). In both The Housemaid and Parasite, members of the lower class embed themselves in the homes of wealthier patrons, and a series of events leads to the violent collapse of class separation and domestic order. But the differences between the two films reflect, among other things, the vast differences between South Korea in 1960 and South Korea in 2020. The Housemaid shows less physical and social distance between economic classes: The husband plays piano for a group of female factory workers, the wife does piecework to make extra money to build their home, and both the workers and the middle-class couple aspire for a better life that seems somehow achievable. In Parasite the upper-class Parks are fully ensconced in their elite status and would not dream of riding the subway, much less visit the dwellings of the poor. The Kims live on the edge of destitution, scraping together a living from disparate gigs and only getting ahead through trickery and deceit. The rich live in a separate world from the poor, while the poor are too consumed with their precarious struggle for survival to realistically dream of, much less achieve, advancement into the upper classes. At the beginning of Parasite, audiences see that the four members of the Kim family are clearly members of the “precariat,” a term that originated in the early 1990s combining the words “precarious” and “proletariat” to describe the growing class of people on the margins of the workforce without stable employment (Standing 2016). The Kims have recently lost their mobile phone and Wi-Fi service, presumably for failure to pay their bills. Their latest gig is folding pizza boxes for a fast-food restaurant, which nearly ends in disaster. The pater

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familias, Gi-Taek, has engaged in a series of failed businesses including working as a parking attendant and running a fried chicken restaurant and a Taiwanese Cake (“castella”) shop. Gi-Taek’s experience is stereotypical of South Korean workers after the 1997 financial crisis, particularly male white-collar workers, many of whom lost job security due to labor restructuring and went into small businesses, especially restaurants, a highly competitive and risky field. Gi-Taek’s wife, Chung-Suk, was once a champion hammer-throw athlete. All four of the Kims are intelligent, resourceful and talented in their own way, but lack the credentials such as university degrees that could enable them to enter the middle or upper classes and have fallen on hard times. In any case, as Gi-Taek remarks, such credentials mean little when a single job ad for a security guard attracts applications from 500 university graduates. By contrast, the four members of the ultrawealthy Park family seem rather dim, except perhaps for the father Dong-Ik (“Nathan” – the use of English or rather American names is a recurrent symbol of cosmopolitan status), a successful entrepreneur. Early in the film, a friend of the Kims’ son Gi-Woo, a college student named Min, offers to introduce Gi-Woo to the Park family and suggests he take over Min’s job of tutoring the Park’s high-school age daughter. In order to make Gi-Woo appear qualified for the job, his sister Gi-Jeong creates a fake diploma from Yonsei University, one of the top universities in South Korea (and Bong Joon-Ho’s alma mater). One by one, each of the Kims finagles his or her way into the Parks’ employment – as tutor, art therapist, chauffeur and housekeeper – through clever and deceitful means. Everything goes well, until it does not. As the audiences learn halfway through the film, a man named Geun-Sae, the husband of the Parks’ former housekeeper Mun-Gwang whom Chung-Suk replaced, has been living in the Parks’ basement for the past four years, unbeknownst to the Park family; the basement was built secretly by the house’s architect and original occupant Nam-Gung. Like Gi-Taek, Geun-Sae also ran a cake shop that failed, but in Geun-Sae’s case his business failure put him massively in debt to loan sharks, from whom he fled to the safety of the Parks’ bunker, hidden and cared for by his wife Mun-Gwang. In the frenetic and violent climax of the film Gi-Taek kills Mr. Park, and in the confusion he flees through the garage into the basement to take the place of Geun-Sae, who has also been killed, as have Gi-Jeong and Mun-Gwang. No one knows where Gi-Taek has gone, and he is declared a missing person. Sometime later Gi-Woo, who was badly injured by Geun-Sae in the climactic struggle, awakens from a coma; he and his mother receive probation for their crimes and return to life in their semi-basement apartment. After spying on the Parks’ former house (now owned by a German family), Gi-Woo eventually discovers that his father has been trying to communicate to him from the basement by manipulating the house lights in Morse code. Gi-Woo writes to his father, promising to someday amass enough wealth to buy the house and rescue him. The audiences see this all take place, culminating in Gi-Taek emerging from the basement into Gi-Woo’s embrace, but it is only a fantasy. There is no realistic hope of rescue, no escape from poverty, and Gi-Taek will,

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the audiences are left to assume, spend the rest of his life in the cellar sending notes from the underground in Morse code.

The Korean underground Like Fritz Lang’s 1927 Metropolis and Jordan Peele’s Us (also released in 2019), Parasite dramatizes the division between the upper and lower classes of society, the latter living literally underground, and opens up the possibility of revenge by the lower on the higher. In Us, the primary division is racial, befitting the American setting (“us” being both the first-person plural object and the abbreviation for “United States”), whereas in Parasite the division is primarily economic. Class division and class conflict, in various ways, feature in most of Bong’s films. In the case of Snowpiercer, class division is distributed horizontally (rich people in the front of the train, poor in the back) rather than vertically, and conflict between rich and poor is bloody indeed. But whereas class difference is just as great in Parasite as in Snowpiercer, the main conflict in the former is not between rich and poor but between poor and poorer, the occupants of the semi-basement and those of the windowless full basement. At one point this becomes a literal, physical fight between the Kims and Geun-Sae and his wife in the Parks’ home while the wealthy family is away on a camping trip. The precariat lives in constant fear of falling even lower down the social ladder, but in the end Gi-Taek’s attempt to improve his and family’s lot in life fails, and he replaces Geun-Sae in his basement prison. Yet for both poor families the Parks are by and large the object of sympathy and admiration rather than resentment or hatred. Gi-Taek remarks that rich people like the Parks are “nice” (chakhae) because they do not have to deal with personal suffering and thus have the leisure for kindness. GeunSae does not resent Mr. Park but is grateful to him for employing his wife and supplying the house, albeit without knowing it, in which he hides. “Respect!” he says repeatedly in English. When Gi-Taek finally breaks and stabs Mr. Park to death in spontaneous rage, the outcome is disaster. Perhaps poor people are not the only secret kept hidden underground in Parasite. The clandestine basement was built, as Mun-Gwang explains, by the house’s architect as a hiding place in the case of a North Korean invasion. This was once somewhat common practice on the part of well-to-do South Koreans. Such underground quarters probably go back to the Korean War if not earlier but are more directly a product of the simultaneous emergence of a wealthy South Korean bourgeoisie in the 1980s and the discovery of tunnels built under the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) to infiltrate North Korean soldiers into the South. “The underground” is thus both a place of refuge (for the rich) and a source of fear and disruption. There is a second reference to North Korea when the Kims are overcome by Geun-Sae and Mun-Gwang and blackmailed with a video that would reveal their fraud to the world. While the Kims are held captive, Mun-Gwang parodies a news announcement in the voice of a North Korean television anchor. Such a humorous reference to the North Korean media

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would have been unimaginable, not to mention seditious, in a South Korean film a few decades ago. North Korea was once seen by South Koreans as a mortal threat, and to some extent still is, but it can also be treated as a joke if not ignored altogether. And part of the fear that North Korea represented was the overturning of the political as well as social order in South Korea, including especially the position of the wealthy elites. Communism, after all, was supposed to break down class barriers and bring about an egalitarian society. For decades, movements dedicated to democracy and social justice were associated with North Korean subversion by the South Korean authorities. Throughout the period of authoritarian rule criticism of the military regime and the class structure that supported it was confined to the underground. In fact, South Korea’s most prominent dissident writer of the 1970s was a poet calling himself “Kim Ji-Ha,” literally “Underground Kim.” But by the second decade of the twentyfirst century the threat of a North Korean attack, to say nothing of a radical underground movement within South Korea, had receded or even disappeared in the consciousness of most South Koreans. The democratic movement that shaped members of Bong Joon-Ho’s generation, South Koreans born in the 1960s, is long past and the prevailing economic order appears unchallengeable. Correspondingly, Bong’s recent films show both the severity of class conflict and the impossibility of overcoming it. In Snowpiercer, the rebel leader Curtis (played by Chris Evans aka Captain America) discovers that lower-class revolutions were designed by the train’s planners to be periodic events that kept the population down, and as with Neo’s rebellion in the Matrix film, rebellion was actually built into the system and can never truly succeed in overthrowing it. Similarly, Gi-Taek’s burst of violence in Parasite only results in chaos and death, including the death of his daughter, and in the end the family is worse off than when the film started. Who are the parasites in Parasite? The Kim family worms its way into the Parks’ home and personal trust, exploiting the clueless wealthy for their own material gain. But they do so through remarkable ingenuity and hard work, and despite the Kims’ deceptive behavior and tragic fate the audiences are clearly meant to sympathize with them. However, the Park family, for all its wealth, is unable to carry out day-to-day activities such as driving, cleaning the house or washing the dishes without the hired help, who are far more resourceful and independent than they. The wealthy are parasitical toward the poor, yet even attempting a small redistribution from the former to the latter ends up a catastrophic failure. Even in the face of natural disaster, such as the human-induced global cooling in Snowpiercer and the torrential rain in Parasite (which may be linked to climate change), the rich maintain their privileged position and the poor are made to suffer. Ten days before the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences awarded the Best Picture Oscar to Parasite, the World Health Organization (WHO) declared the novel coronavirus originating from China to be a “Public Health Emergency of International Concern,” and on 11 March 2020, WHO declared the newly named Covid-19 a global pandemic. By that time the

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virus had already claimed many victims in South Korea, Italy, the United States and other countries. Covid-19 turned out to be the ultimate parasite, infecting, sickening and sometimes killing tens of millions of human hosts all over the world, perhaps the product and symbol par excellence of contemporary globalization. Yet as an agent of globalization, Covid-19 did not erase national boundaries or class divisions; on the contrary, the virus deeply exacerbated them. Countries across the globe closed their borders to halt the spread of the disease, businesses shut down worldwide and unemployment skyrocketed especially among the working poor, who unlike the white-collar labor force could not work remotely. Cinemas, potent vectors for spreading the virus in their crowded enclosed spaces, were closed down all over the world, and the process of making film and television programs was hobbled by Covid-19 as well. Meanwhile, the world’s wealthy grew far wealthier, with the fortunes of the world’s billionaires increasing by some 25% during the spring and summer lockdowns (Neate 2020). The United States maintained the highest rate of Covid victims among advanced industrial countries and suffered a public health and economic disaster unparalleled in the developed world. Bong Joon-Ho’s brilliant, humorous, absurd and terrifying film, firmly situated in the Korean present yet also effortlessly universal, could not have arrived at a timelier moment.

References Adorno, T. (1991) The Culture Industry, London: Routledge. Berry, C. (2019) “The Housemaid (1960),” in S. Lee (ed) Rediscovering Korean Cinema, Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. Chang, K. (1999) “Compressed Modernity and Its Discontent: South Korea’s Society in Transition,” Economy and Society, 28(1): 30–55. Chang, K. (2016) “Compressed Modernity in South Korea,” in Y. Kim (ed) Routledge Handbook of Korean Culture and Society, London: Routledge. Cho, J. (2019) “A Brief History of Korean Cinema,” in S. Lee (ed) Rediscovering Korean Cinema, Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. Choe, Y. (2016) Tourist Distractions, Durham: Duke University Press. Choi, J. (2010) The South Korean Film Renaissance, Middletown: Wesleyan University Press. Henderson, G. (1974) Divided Nations in a Divided World, New York: D. McKay. Hong, E. (2014) The Birth of Korean Cool, New York: Picador. Horkheimer, M. and Adorno, T. (1997) Dialectic of Enlightenment, London: Verso. Jin, D.Y. (2016) New Korean Wave, Chicago: University of Illinois Press. Kim, K.H. (2004) The Remasculinization of Korean Cinema, Durham: Duke University Press. Kim, K.H. (2011) Virtual Hallyu, Durham: Duke University Press. Kim, Y. (2013) The Korean Wave: Korean Media Go Global, London: Routledge. Klein, C. (2020) Cold War Cosmopolitanism: Period Style in 1950s Korean Cinema, Berkeley: University of California Press. Lee, S. and Nornes, A. (2015) Hallyu 2.0, Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. Lie, J. (2015) K-Pop: Popular Music, Cultural Amnesia and Economic Innovation in South Korea, Berkeley: University of California Press.

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Neate, R. (2020) “Billionaire’s Wealth Rises to $10.2 Trillion amid Covid Crisis,” Guardian, 6 October. Nye, J (2004) Soft Power: The Means to Success in World Politics, New York: PublicAffairs. Nye, J. and Kim, Y. (2013) “Soft Power and the Korean Wave,” in Y. Kim (ed) The Korean Wave: Korean Media Go Global, London: Routledge. OECD (2020a) “Income Inequality,” Paris: OECD. OECD (2020b) “Suicide Rates,” Paris: OECD. Paquet, D. (2009) New Korean Cinema, New York: Columbia University Press. Pyne, I. (2020) “Who Is Miky Lee, Driving Force Behind Bong Joon-Ho’s Oscarwinning Film Parasite?” South China Morning Post, 17 February. Siegel, T. (2020) “Super Producer Miky Lee Keeps Rising after ‘Parasite’ Oscar Win,” The Hollywood Reporter, 8 October. Standing, G. (2016) The Precariat, London: Bloomsbury. Stiglitz, J. (2012) The Price of Inequality, New York: W.W. Norton. Sun, R. (2020) “From ‘Parasite’ to BTS: Meet the Most Important Mogul in South Korean Entertainment,” Hollywood Reporter, 7 February. Ulaby, N. (2019) “‘Parasite’ Director Bong Joon-Ho ‘Wanted to Reflect the Truth of the Current Time,’” National Public Radio, 10 December. Yecies, B. and Shim, A. (2011) “Contemporary Korean Cinema,” Acta Koreana, 14(1): 1–15. Yecies, B. and Shim, A. (2016) The Changing Face of Korean Cinema, 1960–2015, London: Routledge.

3 THE TRANSCULTURAL LOGIC OF CAPITAL The house and stairs in Parasite Yoon Jeong Oh

From a YouTube sensation, to a popular jingle, to a ramyeon recipe and to a viral hashtag, Bong Joon-Ho’s Parasite (2019) fascinatingly rides the wave of media convergence in contemporary networked cultures. Starting in from the opening scene where one hunts for free Wi-Fi, the film fluently sets its theme of infiltration within the vernacular of social media language. The audiences first learn of the Kim family, who lives in a semi-basement flat where the toilet sits close to the ceiling than the floor, when the son Gi-Woo goes around searching for an unlocked Wi-Fi signal. Succeeding in his search for Internet access, Gi-Woo shows his family a YouTube video about a fast pizza-box folding technique for their new part-time job. The clip, which is also shared with the audiences, was actually posted in 2015 by an Ottawa woman who found the video of her part-time gig as a teenager on an old computer (Castrodale 2020; CBC 2020). Breanna Gray, the “pro pizzaboxer” in the video, now appears in a number of headlines on the Internet about her making a cameo in the Oscar-winning movie. Furthermore, later in the film, the Korean audiences recognize a familiar song from the 1980s, “Dokdo Is Our Territory,” when Gi-Jeong and Gi-Woo use it to remember the details of the alias Jessica’s fake back-story. The so-called Jessica Jingle was made available to download at the movie’s official website in multiple formats such as a ringtone, MP3 audio track and GarageBand file. Accordingly, global fans of the movie have shared their own remix of the catchy song via social media, connecting to the digital fan-culture of K-pop, while Korean media and the government turn attention to the original song to reprise a territorial conflict with Japan involving Dokdo Island (MBC World 2019; Korean Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism 2020). This chapter examines the self-reflexivity of capitalist culture that surfaces with these media convergence phenomena through the spatial projections in Parasite, where the rich and the poor meet in private, where old and new media DOI: 10.4324/9781003102489-3

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clash, and where producer and consumer intermingle in unpredictable ways. Under capitalism, giving free rein to publics and individuals in neoliberal spheres yields the creation of social agents that self-reflexively circulate the cultural forms and thus largely reinforce the general laws of capital that move independently of the character of a specific culture or the intention of individual actions. The best example of the partnership between convergence culture and the self-reflexivity occurs at a critical moment in the film, when the phone rings to order Jjapaguri, a ramyeon recipe circulated via blogs and broadly popularized, especially for kids, through a Korean TV show called “Dad! Where Are We Going?” (Appa! Eodiga?) in 2013. Yet Bong adds sirloin steak to this mix of two different instant noodles and creates an original recipe for the rich family’s kid (neologized as ram-don in the English subtitles). Fans of the film who tried out and shared the recipe via social media contributed to an over 40% increase in exports of Korean ramyeon soon after the Covid-19 pandemic hit (YTN 2020). The convergence culture that Parasite pieces together had already encountered global networked audiences then in the phenomena of #BongHive. Inspired by Beyoncé’s superfan base Beyhive, the hashtag #BongHive started appearing on Twitter after the film won the Palme d’Or at the Cannes film festival in May 2019 and helped Parasite remain in contention for awards at the 2020 Oscars. All such convergence is hardly new in popular cultures of the Korean Wave. Fans of Korean TV dramas and K-pop have already proven through their diverse communities and activities that the Korean Wave is essentially a media convergence phenomenon (Cho 2015: 154). To some extent, the term Korean Wave or Hallyu already designates the conjunction of culture, the media, corporate production and grassroots consumption before its adoption by the Korean government and trade bodies as the national culture industry. Since the work and play of spectators performed in the new media system are crucial in convergence culture ( Jenkins 2006: 3–4), there may be utopian visions about these new media publics for constituting alternative power dynamics. This participatory culture, however, does not necessarily lead to “any in-depth understanding of the history, culture, and society within which the popular cultural forms are embedded and produced” (Nye and Kim 2013: 39). While Parasite fluently rides the wave of convergence culture and stimulates the audiences to seek out new information and find secret passageways among dispersed media content, the wide reception of the film rather focuses on a universal representation of a class divide. For the critical context and constitutive component of convergence culture is the self-reflexivity of capitalist culture in which the cultural forms appear as social agents. Rather than creating a critical position that engages the production of culture as such, the circulation of these forms focuses on engendering the general consumerist public sphere that abstracts a social totality created by capital in a neoliberal age. De-territorialized media publics then remain in the contested spheres between convergence and self-reflexivity. Capital configures the social imaginaries of a seemingly cosmopolitan public sphere ironically as an extension of the modern

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capitalist nation-state through a spatialization of its conditions. By exaggerating the divisibility and measurability that conditioned the modern nation-state, as in the infinitely divisible time of modernity, exchangeable value and replaceable labor under the capitalist mode of production, capital spatializes the whole structure and process involved in generating a social totality, as if any division could be inserted or not inserted in any place for expansion or contraction. Hence, a social totality is fashioned “in constant motion, that constantly destroys itself in creating and expanding itself ” (Lee and LiPuma 2002: 203). Collective agencies are thus fetishized for capital’s performativity in social figurations, such as the market, public sphere, nation-state and a seemingly cosmopolitan world, for its spatial expansion or contraction. How can one stand in a critical position without being consumed in convergence or self-reflexivity? Where do they collide? Interestingly, Bong’s articulation of cinematic space, taken from actual material spaces, such as the house and stairways, confronts capital’s spatialization (e.g. abstraction) of the public and sheds new light on the private sphere of everyday life in global neoliberalism where convergence and self-reflexivity infiltrate each other. By incorporating these archetypal spaces that embody transcultural capital in the form of dwelling, Bong also addresses the critical moment of shift in capitalist culture that converges and diverges at once the colonial discourse of Western modernity, Korean modernist cinema and contemporary transnational genre filmmaking. The everyday spaces in dialectic motion thus encounter capital’s spatializing logic that emplaces and displaces its self-reflexively created agents within the public sphere. The performative dimensions of Parasite – such as the interplay of genres, the generation of public discourse and the circulation of screening-viewing – intertwine with capital’s transcultural performativity yet, at the same time, re-illuminate a residue in the everyday life of the neoliberal subject. A close inspection of the film’s multidimensional performativity via spatial projection in this chapter will trace the transcultural logic of capital that flows across its own figurations of the national-cosmopolitan continuum and suggest analytical passageways through the contested spheres of seemingly cosmopolitan media publics, national culture industry’s public relations and the neoliberal subject’s private domestic world.

Decalcomania of the house and stairs The house in Parasite readily translates from its local setting into the universal representation of capitalist society. In an article “why Bong Joon-Ho’s Parasite speaks to all of us,” Alejandro González Iñárritu (2019), the head juror at the Cannes and five-time Oscar-winning director, writes: With only two sets, a rich house and a poor house, almost as a theater play, Bong Joon-Ho establishes a ferocious, touching and shameful class war between two mirroring South Korean families, which represents universally one of the biggest challenges that humanity is facing now.

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The story of the two families was indeed initially for a theater play, according to Bong, but once he imagined the possibilities of a camera upon the shoulder of the poor family infiltrating the rich family’s house, Parasite resided in screen (Bong and Han 2019). The film thus vitalizes the camera’s mobility for its infiltration in each sequence, scene, angle and performance, yet it is noteworthy that the sets of the house’s interior preserve the theatricality in its calculated simplicity and exaggeration to the extent that it ultimately gains universal accessibility. While the banjiha (the semi-basement flat where the poor Kim family lives) received particular attention overseas as a form of Korean housing that speaks to a local reality (BBC 2020; Los Angeles Times 2020; New York Times 2020), the film puts most of the plot in the Western-style multistory house. This stunningly designed set not only frames the Park family’s Western bourgeois lifestyle with taste in art and education but also stands amidst and recalls an intricate network of modern Korean films and transnational aesthetics of contemporary cinema. After winning the Palme d’Or at the Cannes in 2019, Bong mentioned that it would be a meaningful present to the hundredth year of Korean cinema, and it is not just out of courtesy that he paid special homage to Kim Ki-Young (1919–98), a master of psychologically inflected cult films (Hankyoreh 2019). Indeed, a complex genealogy of Bong’s films does “have substantive roots in the Korean Golden Age cinema of the 1950s and 1960s” which hybridizes imported styles with local stories (Klein 2008: 891). More particularly, Kim’s stylistic genre-bending film The Housemaid (1960), which depicts the anxiety of the then newly emerged middle-class family, greatly inspired the spatial structure of the house’s stairs in Parasite. The archetypal appeal of the two-story Western housing (icheung yangok) arises largely from the fact that it demonstrates Korean modernization as swept by transcultural capital, which has been embodied in the form of dwelling since the early twentieth century. With the cultural import of Western modernism, the expression “sweet home” (seuwiteu hom) was popularized in the 1920s during the Japanese colonial period with the ideological discourse of modernization and the practice of a Western bourgeois lifestyle via imported Western-style housing (Kwon 2012). Against the traditional institution of a multigenerational household, where women were separated in the inner rooms from men who were in the outer sections, living in a two-story house complete with a terrace, piano and gramophone signified an ideal home for the newly emphasized modern nuclear family (Baek 2005; Kwon 2012). Whereas in the 1920s, when only a small number of the privileged could live in so-called “cultural housing” (munhwa jutaek in Korean; bunka jutaku in Japanese), due to a rapid increase in population and demand in the 1930s, cultural housing became mass-produced in a cost-effective manner under colonial modernization. The social perception of and preference for Western style housing continued until the 1970s’ New Village Movement (Saemaeul Undong). Meanwhile, the colonial-educated and modern film director Kim Ki-Young shows in The Housemaid (1960) how the “sweet home” turned from a symbol of modernity to one of middle-class privilege since post-war Korea was headed toward industrial capitalism and rapid economic growth. Inspired by the news of a housemaid who murdered her employer’s son, the film tells

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the story of a middle-class family shaken by their new housemaid and sets the narrative in a two-story house that perfectly fits the long-standing description of “sweet home.” The piano sits in the center of the house for the father who is a musician and is supported by a working mother, and the family welcomes a new television set in the middle of the living room. The film even shows them enjoying kareraiseu (curry with rice), which had been introduced as Western cuisine during the colonial period and was in fashion among middle-class families at that time. In the meantime, the housemaid peeks into the piano room from the terrace, has an affair with the father, causes the son’s fatal fall down the stairs and herself dies in dramatic, horrific way on the stairs after being poisoned in the end. Blending the genres of gothic thriller and melodrama, The Housemaid arguably stands amid Korean modernism cinema as a reaction to capitalist modernity. The significance of the stairs has been shown at the Korean Film Archive’s special exhibition “Climbing the Stairs in The Housemaid” in 2017–18, in which Bong Joon-Ho participated as a commentator. The stairs in the house have stimulated cineastes’ imaginations with its theatricality and reality, which specifically resonate with the experience of modernity. The stairways are easily superimposed on the common metaphor of the social world, e.g. the “social ladder” with suggestions of mobility up and down. This two-dimensional image of social space, however, reduces the multiplicity of social determinations to a linear continuum of abstract and homogeneous strata, such as “upper middle class,” “lower middle class” and so on (Bourdieu 2010: 119). The stairs in the house, then, signify less the class infiltration in the domestic world than the infiltration of this spatial reduction into the private sphere. In other words, the cinematic motif of the stairs often shows a space whose three fundamental dimensions are entirely determined by the logic of capital that runs the distribution of the different classes. In The Housemaid, each character’s desire and fear are at once controlled by upward or downward mobility. Another filmmaker of Korean Golden Age Cinema, Lee Man-Hee (1931–75) maximizes the dramatic effect of stairways in The Evil Stairs (Ma-ui gyedan, 1964) while also contrasting its oppressive restriction and mobility in Homebound (Gwiro, 1967). In the latter film, the narrow stairway in the house is filmed in an almost suffocatingly vertical way as the disabled husband, a war veteran, sitting on the second floor, writes novels and turns hysterical, whereas his wife moves about freely, running errands for him and is eventually tempted by a romance with another man. The wife’s mobility extends to the busy stairs at the Seoul station and of the pedestrian overpass in the modernized and developed Seoul of the late 1960s, which contrasts with the husband’s disability from his war trauma under the authoritarian regime. Bong Joon-Ho captivatingly transfers this cinematic employment of the house and stairways in Korean modernist cinema to his own account of reality in contemporary Korea. Parasite restores, above all, a three-dimensional space by disrupting the fictional relations of symmetry. According to Bong, the initial working title was Decalcomania, which refers to the mirroring of two four-person families, each consisting of a couple and their dependent children (Bong and Han 2019). Yet

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the film restructures space and sets into motion a spiral of changes when it adds another family to the underground bunker of the rich house. The threedimensionality of space is reinstated with the film’s performativity in the established theatricality of the house and stairs. The third family, Mun-Gwang and Geun-Sae, not only disturbs the symmetry between the two other families as well as the asymmetry of their classes, resources and power, but also performs the odd element of singularity that relates to all the other elements in unpredictable ways. In doing so, the third family profoundly ruptures the order that only allows two-dimensional movement (upward or downward). Being the only character who had direct contact with the diegetic architect who designed the house, Mun-Gwang knows more about the structure of the space than anyone else. This knowledge transforms into a form of resourceful capital and power to the extent that she secures her husband under the same roof, not to mention that her confident appearance in the beginning makes Gi-Woo naturally assume her to be Mrs. Park. The film’s interplay with genres comes in full swing at the point of her sudden reappearance after being fired because of the Kims’ scheme. The audiences then become aware of their lack of knowledge shared with the rest of characters and are subsequently made to identify with the poor Kim family rather than the Parks since they are driven to follow Mun-Gwang all the way down with the Kims to discover the underground bunker together. This public identification leads the audiences from the Kim family’s seamless performance of contingent social roles within the social space to Mun-Gwang and Geun-Sae’s over-the-top performance that interposes theatricality as another type of reality, while the film relentlessly metamorphoses into a black comedy, mystery, psychological drama, gothic thriller, horror and tragedy. The unpredictable dynamics caused by the third family add depth and multidimensionality to the house. Principally, Mun-Gwang is a figure that opens the door. Bong mentions that the name literally signifies “the door opens, and the crazy person comes” (Bong and Han 2019). It is she who opens the door when Gi-Woo first arrives in the Park family’s house. Halfway through the film, she rings the doorbell in the rainy night and shows up with a completely different look and voice. Ultimately, she is the one who opens the gate to the underground bunker, to the wild half of the story. After her return, the stairways no longer divide onstage and offstage, where the Kim family effortlessly performs their social strata up or down and where they spy on the Park family before making an entrance and reassuming their fake identities. Once Mun-Gwang opens the hidden door to another stairway, the division between onstage acting and offstage reality becomes moot. The fictional symmetry that sustained reality as if it were safe behind language (as in the metaphor “social ladder”) and performance is all shattered since the stairway leads to the utterly unknown, which has been there the entire time, waiting to be discovered. Intriguingly, Henri Lefebvre (2004: 97) describes how the steps in Venice or Marseille serve “as a transition between different rhythms” for the traveler: “More than that of a gate or an avenue, their screaming monumentality imposes

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on the body and on consciousness the requirement of passing from one rhythm to another, as yet unknown – to be discovered.” A domestic staircase may not be able to serve as a passage toward the city or the sea, but Lefebvre’s focus on the stairway as a link between spaces, times and physiological dimensions proves applicable since the underground stairway in Parasite also connects to different eras that are incongruously linked together in Geun-Sae’s bunker. Next to the light switch that Geun-Sae presses frenetically to send out his secret messages to the Park family are posted glorious magazine articles on Mr. Park’s business success along with a worn-out poster of the Korea Scout Association and the Korean Amateur Radio League’s Morse Code. As Geun-Sae confesses to Gi-Taek how he feels comfortable as if he were born there, the camera shows documents of his life time, including his and Mun-Gwang’s marriage certificate, an old photo of the couple, along with empty cans decorated with pictures of historical figures, such as Nelson Mandela, Abraham Lincoln, Kim Dae-Jung (a former president of South Korea), Lee Bong-Ju (a marathoner and Olympic medalist), Park ChanSook (a former basketball player) and Mr. Park again, among others. Geun-Sae’s delusional mix of reality and theatricality reveals a doubleness of reality, which extends to the audiences with the mix of diegetic reality and true history. The decalcomania of the house and stairs, transferred from previous experiments in modern Korean cinema to the new surface of Parasite, thus bares an unpredictable play and collision between multiple dimensions of social reality and of the experience of history.

Transnational media publics and neoliberal subject Bong addresses the question about the Korean elements of the movie and its universal appeal to Western audiences during an interview (Alamo Drafthouse 2020). He states that he became aware of the universal response only after the film was circulated among different audiences in different countries: When directing the movie, I tried to express a sentiment specific to the Korean culture, and I thought that it was full of Koreanness if seen from an outsider’s perspective, but upon screening the film after completion all the responses from different audiences were pretty much the same, which made me realize that the topic was universal, in fact. Essentially, we all live in the same country called Capitalism, which may explain the universality of their responses. Despite its worldwide appeal, what makes this film, which is packed with Bong’s signature genre-blending details, specifically Korean is his frequent collaborator who played Gi-Taek: Song Kang-Ho is someone who can represent the very essence of Korean realism, not someone who operates within conventional boundaries

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of genre movies. In my movies, I juxtapose Korean realism and genre conventions in an enigmatic manner and Song Kang-Ho enters scenes during subtle moments that bridge both worlds and combines them into one. (Alamo Drafthouse 2020) Song plays a struggling but caring father character in Bong’s movies – a loving father who failed in business (Gi-Taek in Parasite); a drug addict and security expert who is inseparable from his daughter in Snowpiercer (2013); a naïve vendor but loving father who fights the monster in The Host (2006) and a simple-minded local detective who turns out to be a family man in Memories of Murder (2003). Song’s acting and performance connect to the performativity of Bong’s films, which interplay with genres and circulate across different platforms and countries. Meanwhile, Korean reality, as an experience of an identifiable character within the normative spheres of family and work, relates to a global neoliberalism that generates public discourse by abstracting individual particularities, as shown in the universal response of Parasite. Participating in the circulation of the film’s social commentary, the neoliberal fantasy about the consumer-subject distances the self from the object of consumption and imagines a subject-position beyond the system. In doing so, however, the neoliberal subjects ultimately secure the circulation of culture in a commodity form that moves independently of any positive individualities. Hence, as transnationally generated mass-cultural publics identify with GiTaek and his family in awe of discovering the other half in the story, the film subtly raises the question of the mass subject’s relation to the specificity of difference. The fundamental feature of the contemporary public sphere is the contradiction within the double movement of self-abstraction and alienation (Warner 2002). To be public, one must abstract oneself from the particularities of the body. This personal abstraction suggests “a utopian universality” that would free people from given realities but leaves no link to the particularities of individual bodies and desires. The rhetorical strategy and logic of this frame has also been a major source of domination that privileges certain particularities, for the subject who has the ability to abstract oneself is suggestive of the normal, literate, propertied, middle-class White male (Ibid.: 165–67). The “unrecuperated particularity” of minoritized subjects, for whom self-abstraction means normalization or masculinization, remains in an impossible relation to the body. Consumer capitalism instead provides “an unminoritized rhetoric of difference” by laying out the endless field of commodity choices where consumption becomes self-expression (Ibid.: 168). To extend this analysis to the transnational publics of Parasite, the viewer as consumer, then, will identify mass subjectivity with the commodity form of culture. The subject’s relation to the body is somehow carried to the cultural consumption that links with the specificity of difference yet balances with a collectivity of mass desire. Nonetheless, the unrecuperated positivity of a body resonates with smell in the film. Gi-Taek’s smell that Mr. Park considers infiltrating cannot be sensed

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by the viewer through the screen. While capital’s performativity surfaces in the figurations of the public sphere and fetishizes the body as the site of embodied cultural capital, the film chooses the sense that can only be visualized on screen through acting and performance. Learning about the smell that the Kim family obviously shares each other, Gi-Taek gets baffled since one does not usually smell one’s own body. What makes him self-conscious, however, is not necessarily the smell itself but the Parks’ reaction to it. Gi-Taek suddenly attacks him at the moment when Mr. Park holds his nose and turns away his head. Even though Mr. Park was reacting to the smell of Geun-Sae, not Gi-Taek or his family, it is precisely the fact that particularities of individual bodies always become nullified that triggers him in a burst of rage. The neoliberal fantasy about the consumersubject whose particularity is imagined to be witnessed through commodity choices becomes unsettled, as the viewer is left to imagine the smell and is reminded of the irreclaimable gap between individual bodies and the utopian promise of the mass-cultural public sphere. Accordingly, the contested, both private and public, spheres of the neoliberal subject demand alternative scopes. The film attracts fan communities to a “Parasite universe” in which they can practice mastering a world. A loved movie that is transformed into a cult object provides a completely furnished world with archetypal elements, quotable characters and separable episodes (Eco 1990). Fans must be able to “break, dislocate, unhinge it” and “make up quizzes and play trivia games” about the movie as if it were their “private sectarian world” (Ibid.: 198). The “Parasite universe” in networked culture expands with an overwhelming force. Fan activities and pop journalism overflow on the Internet, addressing issues from the meaning of the scholar’s rock, to the biblical flood reference, to Bong’s being inspired by the real-life story of the Papin sisters in the 1930s France. Gi-Woo’s mumbling comment about the rock – “it’s so metaphorical” – encourages fans to investigate further the symbolic meaning although the words lose the magic by the time he repeats the same appreciation in front of Da-Song’s painting or at a mere coincidence when he finds the family dining in a driver’s cafeteria as they set upon the scheme of replacing Mr. Park’s driver with Gi-Taek. Korean TV shows happily and tirelessly cite Gi-Taek’s admiration for his son, “So you’ve got a plan!” – regardless of the movie’s sad ending where Gi-Taek admits to having “no plan,” and where Gi-Woo finally returns the lucky rock to nature and makes “a fundamental plan” anew, which confirms that there is simply no other way but to make plans to fail. With countless memes, fan art and merchandise, the cult proceeds to convergence cultures in a neoliberal world. As shown in the beginning of this chapter, the distinction between authors and spectators, producers and consumers, blends in a way they all participate in different modalities of creation and communication. With the disappearance of a traditional public, the work must create enough depth “to prevent closure from occurring too quickly” and experiment with new media systems (Levy 1994: 122; Jenkins 2006: 97). By adapting to the new aesthetics of collective knowledge and convergence cultures, Parasite might suggest a way to sustain oneself without

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being completely consumed. Yet the challenge must also be about how to stay related to all without becoming self-destructive.

Toward the passageways What Parasite offers to films of the Korean Wave is not a new center that reconstitutes global power in the cinema world. Rather, it is the fluidity, or the three-dimensional mobility, that the movie highlights through its performative dimensions by skillfully blending Hollywood genre filmmaking, European and Japanese auteurist aesthetics, Korean film traditions and contemporary media cultures. To be clear, the archetypal house with stairs in the film does not necessarily stress the national cultural history to register in the global context. Along with Bong’s other works, Parasite undertakes a complex textual engagement and transnational negotiation with different filmic traditions. Such an operation “complicates our notions of national cinemas, and national cultures more generally, by forcing us to recognize the transnational dimension inherent in both contemporary and older cinema” as Christina Klein (2008: 895) mentions when she discusses “why American studies needs to think about Korean cinema, or, transnational genres in the films of Bong Joon-Ho,” which directly makes up the title of her article. Transnational cinema does not simply indicate international co-production or collaboration but, keenly aware of the imbalances of power within any transnational exchange, it challenges national cinema in its ideological norms of “the Western, neocolonial construct of nation and national culture” (Higbee and Lim 2010: 10). Bong’s films resist the paradigm of the national or transnational “as a means of understanding production, consumption and representation of cultural identity,” and they move away from a binary approach to the national or the transnational (Ibid.: 8). For instance, according to the paradigm, one might conventionally understand Memories of Murder (2003), The Host (2006) and even Parasite as Korean national cinema. Watching these works, however, an American audience might recognize familiar genres, actions, characters, visual styles and even emotions from Hollywood, just as one might find the Japanese auteurist style of Kurosawa Kiyoshi, Koreeda Hirokazu, Miyazaki Hayao or Kurosawa Akira in them. Some cinephiles might also be excited to notice Bong’s admiration for Kim Ki-Young, Alfred Hitchcock and Claude Chabrol all at once. However, in his other works that seem more straightforwardly transnational in their collaboration with technical and artistic personnel from across the world, such as Snowpiercer (2013) and Okja (2017), Bong not only circulates aesthetic practices but also reveals neocolonial, neoliberal technologies circulated by global capital, which manifest local realities into complex global contexts. Bong’s achievement with Parasite brings to the fore this clash between the paradigms of the national and transnational from its usual location on the margins of dominant film cultures. One might see this as an evolved form of the

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essential features in Bong’s works from the early years. “The clash between life and fantasy, elements of Korean reality versus traits of a genre movie,” says Bong in 2005, “in the end, I think these are the fundamental characters I pursue in my work” (Lim 2005: 25). In such a striking “collision,” as Bong also calls it, a fascinating continuity appears through uniquely projected locales and spaces whenever the question of the unknown is referenced. For example, in Memories of Murder, the unknown is the real life and long unsolved case of Korea’s first serial murderer traced through its crime scenes in rural landscapes; in The Host, the unknown takes a form of monster and shows up in mundane life by the Han river in Seoul; in Snowpiercer, the space of a massive train interrogates the unknown future of the climate crisis – just to name a few. This chapter has shown that, in Parasite, the very unknown sits right in the house, deep down the stairs. The spatial projection that enables imaginaries other than those which have already been configured by capital is significant to present social realities without abstraction. Eventually, the collision between multiple genres and reality, between national and transnational paradigms, creates new passageways. While a social commentary on the class divide gains universal appeal, the stairways in Parasite find numerous paths to move along rather than dividing lines. “This is a story about co-existence,” says Parasite’s production designer Lee Ha-Jun, adding “I’ve never created so many staircases while working on a film” (O’Falt 2019). Without ignoring the “clear contrasts within the terms of that co-existence,” the film compels the audiences to follow all the stairways and confront the unknown in the heart of reality. For the Korean Wave cinema, a task of creating a new center to unsettle the global hegemony always involves the risk of generating new power dynamics. By rethinking the very locales and spaces, where characteristics of different cultures and particularities of individual bodies dash against each other, one might suggest a fundamental passageway for new breakthroughs against regionalism that surface the spatializing logic of capital and neoliberalism. In order to sustain a critical position without being entirely subsumed under capitalism and global neoliberalism’s self-reflexivity, films of the Korean Wave will need to reexamine their public relationship to cultural histories and different film industries and pay closer attention to what might collide or clash with them, not to avoid it but to participate more positively in it. Cultures of convergence and circulation might be beneficial to the Korean Wave in that they can pull the strings further and wider, but their utopian claims of the collective agencies remain on the brink of a constitutional crisis that serves capital’s fetishized public sphere. For the more circulated a culture gets by collective agencies, the more exploitable the culture industry might become in the neoliberal state. To disillusion and liberate the media publics of contemporary popular cultures from the utopian promise of universality or cosmopolitanism, films of the Korean Wave must address the specificity of difference that reminds viewers of individual particularities in collision and remains irreducible to the transcultural logic of capital.

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References Alamo Drafthouse (2020) “Bong Joon-Ho, 2019 Extended Interview on Parasite,” 30 April. Baek, J. (2005) The Origin of Sweet Home [Korean], Paju: Sallimbooks. BBC (2020) “Parasite: The Real People Living in Seoul’s Basement Apartments,” 10 February. Bong, J. and Han, J. (2019) Parasite Screenplay Book [Korean], Paju: Plainarchive. Bourdieu, P. (2010) Distinction, New York: Routledge. Castrodale, J. (2020) “We Talked to the Woman in that Pizza Box Folding Video From ‘Parasite’,” Vice, 12 February. CBC (2020) “Ottawa Woman’s Pizza Box-Folding Skills Make Cameo in Oscar-Winner Parasite,” 12 February. Cho, M. (2015) “Meta-Hallyu TV: Global Publicity, Social Media and the Citizen Celebrity,” in S. Lee and A. Nornes (eds) Hallyu 2.0, Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. Eco, U. (1990) Travels in Hyperreality, San Diego: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich. Hankyoreh (2019) “Full Text of Cannes Film Festival Press Conference: Touched By the Comment ‘Bong Joon-Ho is a Genre unto Himself ’” [Korean], 26 May. Higbee, W. and Lim, S. (2010) “Concepts of Transnational Cinema,” Transnational Cinemas, 1(1): 7–21. Iñárritu, A. (2019) “Why Bong Joon-Ho’s ‘Parasite’ Speaks to All of Us,” Variety, 18 December. Jenkins, H. (2006) Convergence Culture, New York: New York University Press. Klein, C. (2008) “Why American Studies Needs to Think about Korean Cinema, or, Transnational Genres in the Films of Bong Joon-Ho,” American Quarterly, 60(4): 871–98. Korean Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism (2020) “Learn about Dokdo Island with the Jessica Jingle,” Korea.net, 21 February. Kwon, B. (2012) “Haengbok (Happiness), Beyond Its Colonialism and Privatization,” Korea Journal, 52(4): 84–111. Lee, B. and LiPuma, E. (2002) “Cultures of Circulation,” Public Culture, 14(1): 191–213. Lefebvre, H. (2004) Rhythmanalysis: Space, Time and Everyday Life, New York: Continuum. Levy, P. (1994) Collective Intelligence, Cambridge: Perseus Books. Lim, Y. (2005) Bong Joon-Ho: Mapping Reality within the Maze of Genre, Seoul: Korean Film Council. Los Angeles Times (2020) “The Halfway Underground Homes of ‘Parasite’ Are Real Spaces of Desperation and Dreams,” 12 February. MBC World (2019) “The Original Song of Jessica Jingle ‘Dokdo Is Our Land’,” 14 November. New York Times (2020) “For Seoul’s Poor, Class Strife in ‘Parasite’ Is Daily Reality,” 2 March. Nye, J. and Kim, Y. (2013) “Soft Power and the Korean Wave,” in Y. Kim (ed) The Korean Wave: Korean Media Go Global, London: Routledge. O’Falt, C. (2019) “Building the ‘Parasite’ House: How Bong Joon-Ho and His Team Made the Year’s Best Set,” IndieWire, 29 October. Warner, M. (2002) Publics and Counterpublics, New York: Zone Books. YTN (2020) “Due to COVID Situation Ramyeon Exports Increased 41% … Popularity of Jjapaguri Also Played a Part,” 5 April.

4 GENDER AND CLASS IN PARASITE Kelly Y. Jeong

Year 2019–20 was the time of the film Parasite. The film was invited to major international film festivals and won a record number of top awards both internationally and domestically, including the Palme d’Or at the Cannes and the Best Picture and the Best Director at the Oscars. The film set new records for both the South Korean (hereafter Korean) film industry and the film’s director, Bong Joon-Ho. As he mentioned in an award acceptance speech, garnering such unprecedented awards and praises as a Korean filmmaker whose country was celebrating a century of native cinema marked a poignant moment. How was Parasite able to captivate and enthrall global audiences when it is such a local story, full of visual, linguistic details and intonations that only the local audiences might notice? The film’s genre is also hard to identify, and yet it delivers the satisfying pleasures of genre cinema. It begins as a comedy, turns into a horror film with a woman’s reappearance half way through its running time, becomes a thriller and then ends as a tragic fantasy. Audiences know more than some characters, and because of this dramatic irony, the violence that unfolds at the end of the narrative is particularly provocative. One might find the answer to the question of the world audiences’ enthusiastic response to the film in the fact that Parasite is an intricately built text whose socially critical details emerge as more meaningful and sometimes sinister as the narrative unfolds, and also upon repeated viewing. Even though the film undoubtedly tells a Korean story, it is also about two universal themes of class and gender. This chapter will focus on the questions of class and gender in contemporary Korea that Parasite presents to audiences. It will explore the ways in which the film’s social criticism, combined with what one might call its universal cinematic genre storytelling and local details, creates a narrative whose affective impact lingers, leading to more disturbing questions after the film ends. The film’s diegetic world is a man’s world, and the women in the film, as in Korea’s reality DOI: 10.4324/9781003102489-4

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beyond the film screen, are caretakers and affective laborers who do their job as live-in housekeepers, mothers and a therapist, whose limited power is only derivative of that of the men in their lives. Parasite seems to conclude that contemporary Korea’s neoliberal social reality is such that the haves and the have-nots are fundamentally different, and that the latter cannot cross the chasm between their two worlds no matter how well one seems to fit into the world of the haves. However, female characters’ experience does not always fold so neatly into such binary notions of class difference the film presents.

The stratified spaces: up, down and in-between This section specifically discusses the characters’ central feature, their socioeconomic positions, by illustrating how the film represents the extremely stratified society of today’s Korea through the different physical spaces the film’s characters occupy. The fact that beyond the big screen, more and more people realize and reluctantly accept that a socioeconomic upward mobility is closer to a myth than reality indicates a systematic, rather than individual, failure. Meanwhile, Parasite all but flips the audience sympathy through a pivotal scene about a working-class man’s smell, which is comical, tragic and visceral, all at once. Parasite is a film about three families. The Kims, who live in a semi-basement home, receive a gift and a job opportunity which they exploit, to comic effect, to secure positions for each family member, the parents Gi-Taek and Chung-Suk, and children, Gi-Woo and Gi-Jeong. The wealthy Parks who hire them live in a spectacular mansion on a hill, and trustingly invite the Kims as domestic staff to run their home and lives. The third family, the Ohs, Geun-Sae and MunGwang, exist on the very edge of the margins; so much so that Geun-Sae lives in the Parks’ basement unbeknownst to them, and is mistaken for a ghost. The film opens with a tilt down and ends in the same way, pointing to a space underground, beneath where people’s eyes would usually rest, hinting at the lives lived under the surface that the audiences may not know about, or are interested in looking. The film’s opening scenes situate the Kims for the audiences in a semi-basement home. Through their window located, unfortunately, at their eye level, the family can see people urinating in front of their place. The shabby house swarms with stinkbugs and street noise. Since none of the Kims has an income, their home is turned into a makeshift factory, in which they fold pizza boxes as a last resort. When the fumigation gas from the streets seeps through the open windows, Gi-Taek, the father, wants to take advantage of it to kill vermin. Though the tone is comic in these opening scenes, there is a sobering hint that the family is like the bugs they are trying to exterminate, all of them existing as surplus to the system in dark, dank corners of a ruthless city that is Seoul. While the vastly different homes of the characters deliver a universal visual message to the audiences about the haves and the have-nots, the film crucially brings up the local social issue – that of the contempt for the Other openly and callously expressed with the suffix “chung” or insect. Various groups – from the

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old and the infirm, the poor, the migrant workers, mothers with noisy children, feminists or sexist men – chung has been added to their identity to show the speaker’s contempt for them. The reality of Korea, unfortunately, is that citizens self-deprecatingly refer to themselves and others as insects. A few years ago, the so-called “Hell Joseon” discourse became popular. It demonstrated, only halfjokingly, that the upward mobility in contemporary Korea is just as impossible to achieve for the average people as it was for the non-aristocrats back in Joseon dynasty when people inherited their class position at birth, with little hope of changing it. Today, Koreans use the term chung to mock themselves rather than spend any energy criticizing the system (D. Lee 2019: 286). Parasite reflects neoliberal Korea’s reality, in which the individual becomes solely responsible for one’s wellbeing and welfare by focusing on the private space of the characters’ homes while hiding the systematic contradictions (Ibid.: 298). Semi-basement homes first appeared in 1984 in Korea, and since then have been the metaphor of poverty (D. Lee 2019: 288). The Kims are the precariat excluded from the network of living wages and the security of a full-time employment, symbolized in the film by the stolen Wi-Fi that they could lose any moment. Their precarious living also manifests as bugs and drunkards who may appear any moment to either metaphorically or literally invade what should be their sanctuary, their home (Ibid.: 289). The fact that the house lacks a Wi-Fi connection truly, comically drives the family’s desperate predicament, given the specific context of Korea, the most connected nation in the world. Another local detail is the Kims’ educational background one might guess from the dialogue. The family seems to represent the particularly Korean situation of an overeducated population that exists in every class, including the poor. One can see and hear glimpses of the family’s past in which Chung-Suk, the mother, was a promising young athlete and the family also had its own businesses, a Taiwan Cake franchise and a fried chicken restaurant, both of which failed. Those business failures, which routinely happen to middle-class families, led to their current situation; the parents are unemployed and the children, who want to attend college, cannot gain entrance because they cannot afford to attend the most popular means of gaining such entry in the first place, private academy. In other words, their poverty is not due to their bad choices or laziness but a result of a system failure. The patriarch Gi-Taek’s words – the best plan is no plan at all because it will not lead to a failure – perhaps indicate how he is conditioned not to strive anymore, as efforts to make a good living failed over the years. The aforementioned Taiwan Cake failed almost completely for many who bought a franchise, and became synonymous with a bad franchise business model that is bound to fail (Y. Lee 2019: 241). The system that created the situation for characters like the Kims and GeunSae (who also had a failed Taiwan Cake business) is nearly invisible. The film only shows individuals and not the nation nor the state. By the same token, there is no show of force by the state or the police. The police in fact briefly show up to Mirandize Gi-Woo in the hospital at the end of the film and quickly disappear

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afterward; it is a world in which the system, the law and the state are not visible ( Jeong 2020: 22–27). As such, the state seems unable or unwilling to help those who are not upwardly mobile or even have basic welfare. Instead, the film depicts that the individuals who share the same fate, as the unemployed or precariously employed, turn on each other as their proximity and affinity breed hostility and competition rather than empathy. Meanwhile, the haves and the have-nots typically only cross paths with each other through hierarchical networks of labor relations as employee and employer. This is the sole reason why Mr. Park must reckon with his driver’s smell, which he describes to his wife as the “subway smell,” emanating from a space that people of all walks of life pass through, and is also home to the homeless population. Mr. Park, the CEO of a globally recognized company, cannot imagine where and how his driver lives, so he explains the offending smell, the one thing about his driver that “crosses the line” and upsets him, in those terms. But his wife does not know the smell because it has been too long since she took the subway. Mr. Park’s struggle to describe the working class Other’s odor, invoking the familiar images of drying radish, boiling rags and, finally, the subway, reverses the direction of the audience empathy and identification that might have been building up to this point in the narrative. The Kims’ plotting to install themselves as the Parks’ domestic staff seems callous and manipulative, and the audiences may feel more sympathy for the rich Parks. But at this moment, when the local audiences realize that Mr. Park is talking contemptuously not only about Gi-Taek’s smell but their own (as most Koreans routinely take the subway), they suddenly face an interesting dilemma of switching their emotional alliance and siding with the Kims, mere moments after watching what might be their murder of Mun-Gwang, the original housekeeper they drove out. Interestingly, Gi-Jeong immediately recognizes the smell that her parents wonder about, after Da-Song, Mr. Park’s young son, innocently points out in an earlier scene that the family members all smell alike. She defines it as none other than the semi-basement smell and declares that it will not go away until they move out of their home. The climactic sequence following Mun-Gwang’s sudden reappearance deserves a closer look, as it is a key turning point in the narrative. It is also a moment when the director’s manipulation and hybridization of film genres point to the central conflicts involving the three families. The film that begins as a breezy comedy suddenly becomes a suspense thriller involving a woman, an unwanted visitor, from the past. Mun-Gwang arrives, sodden and disheveled, on a dark, rainy night, just as the Kims are celebrating the taste of the good life in the homeowners’ absence. The stately home’s usually sun-drenched living room is now painted in dark colors, and the color palette not only gets darker but also dirty, as Mun-Gwang leads stunned Chung-Suk down to the basement which she did not know existed. There lies Geun-Sae, who has been helplessly waiting for his wife and food. The physical struggle with and the captivity of the Ohs that follow, shot in a stark chiaroscuro fashion and low angles, turn up the tension.

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By this point, the film’s visual and narrative tone has changed to a different genre from what the audiences first expected and experienced. The interesting twist in all this is the introduction of the new character Geun-Sae and the hidden space of the basement, whose existence no one other than the Ohs knew about. This promises new possibilities of the plot’s direction for the second half of the film, as well as giving new hints of the theme, parasite. Upon discovering the “parasite” living in the basement, Geun-Sae, one might wonder if the protagonist, Gi-Taek, may also become one. By the end of the narrative, this turns into reality as he seemingly vanishes into thin air after killing Mr. Park, by going into hiding in the home’s basement just as Geun-Sae did before him. As for the character Geun-Sae who fled his debtors into the selfimposed exile four years ago, and the visual design of the basement, they are both grotesque and pathetic. The space has used condom wrappers and photographs of his heroes, including one of Mr. Park, whom he worships as his provider. All this is mixing in the windowless apartment with the paraphernalia indicating that he tried to study for the bar exam. At some point, he has given up on leaving the basement, and now pleads with Gi-Taek to let him live on in the space. In this stratified world where the rich and the poor have parallel lives whose details are unfathomable to each other, connection is everything, and it is no doubt a resource whose access is also unequal for everyone. It is Gi-Woo’s connection to a rich friend Min that allows him to step inside the Parks’ family home. Once Gi-Woo gets a job as the daughter’s tutor, the family plots together to become the younger child Da-Song’s art therapist and teacher, and the family’s driver and housekeeper. In order to do so, they not only forge official documents but also manipulate to get the existing driver and housekeeper fired. The Kim family unity, which allows them to move as one, and their refusal to blame each other for their poverty, is crucial to the narrative. In each case, the three families in the film look out for each other, but only for each other, which may be the unfortunate but true reflection of Korea’s familism.

The deaths of working-class women and a son’s fantasy This section further examines the intersection of class and gender in Parasite and argues that the class difference manifests as nothing less than a difference of meaning itself for the film’s characters. In other words, same material reality takes on vastly different meanings for the rich and the poor. The most significant such narrative moments reside in how characters, who belong in diverse classes, enact or use assumptions about gender, which the film’s female characters illustrate particularly well. Importantly, this section will argue that Parasite is a film that reveals the unpretty truth of women’s worth in the twenty-first century Korea. The Kims are unusual because the family utterly lacks any hierarchy. The parents are also proud of their children’s ability to defraud others rather than feel alarmed by it, and they do not seem to mind at all when their children use

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expletives in front of them, either. In fact, most characters in the film seem to lack any sense of guilt or empathy; Mr. Park sees his son’s tutor Gi-Jeong getting stabbed by Geun-Sae but demands the car keys from Gi-Taek, to take his son to the hospital because the child fainted after seeing the stabbing and the “ghost” again; Mun-Gwang and her husband first plead with, then attack the Kims when they realize the other party’s deception of the Parks; and the Kims lie and fake their way into the Parks’ home and feel quite proud of their achievement rather than guilt. The film’s move to turn the Kims’ manipulation of the Parks into comedy is perhaps a social commentary on the fact that the playing field is uneven, and that the audiences might be loath to condemn their actions because of the family’s desperate situation. In this vein, Parasite shows that depending on one’s socioeconomic position, same things can mean tremendously different things, such as the torrential rain, the Scholar’s Stone and even the notion of an open space. The stone from Min is a rare and expensive gift to the Kims, but it is only an object taking up space in his house. This is symbolic of the two young men’s enormously different circumstances in life. And while the Parks use their beautifully landscaped yard as an extension of their living room, holding parties and letting young Da-Song enjoy sleeping in (safe, manicured) nature in a tent, the space outside of the Kims’ house is dirty and noisy. Also, the torrential rain that was a temporary inconvenience for the Parks that ruined a camping trip means an existential threat to the Kims, whose low-lying neighborhood gets submerged in overflowing sewage water. Back in their own reality, having fled the Parks’ home leaving the Ohs bound and gagged in the basement, they struggle to grab what they can of their belongings in the neck-deep filthy water, and then get dressed in donated clothing in the temporary shelter. They go back to work the next day, to take care of Da-Song’s impromptu birthday party, meant to make up for the rained-out camping trip. The camera captures the dramatically different emotions on the faces of Mrs. Park and Gi-Taek in this sequence; Mrs. Park chirps to a friend on the phone that the rain was a godsend because it brought out such clear skies while Gi-Taek stands next to her, exhausted from lack of sleep, dressed in donated clothing. It is telling that even in the midst of the flooding and the ensuing chaos Gi-Woo holds onto his lucky stone like a talisman, saying that it is sticking to him, while Gi-Jeong swiftly realizes that nothing can be saved from the flooded home and chooses to smoke her last cigarette. As usual, she seems the quickest in assessing reality, while Gi-Woo’s lingering attachment to the lucky stone foreshadows the film’s fantastic ending and his impossible plan. Gi-Woo’s “plan” at the end is to make money and simply buy the Parks’ house, so that all Gi-Taek needs to do is just walk up the stairs from his hiding place in the basement. The stairs that prominently feature in the narrative symbolize the difference between classes. The Kims, the Parks and the Ohs are divided by sets of stairs. The stairs leading to the second floor in the Parks’ home are also a backdrop to important scenes, including one in which Mrs. Park witnesses her housekeeper’s coughing fit brought on by tuberculosis (or so she is led to believe).

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It is also here that several characters hide and eavesdrop on others, furthering the plot, as one often sees in melodrama and thriller genre films. But also significantly, it is through a series of stairs that the Kims return to their semi-basement home, moments after enjoying a party as though they were the owners of the Parks’ beautiful home during the family’s absence. Through the camera movement one can see them walk down innumerable sets of stairs, through a tunnel, and still continue to go down, downward. These tracking shots visualize the seemingly unbridgeable gap between the Kims and the Parks that seems both physical and experiential. And indeed, as the filmmaker said in an interview, barring some miracle, it would take Gi-Woo about 547 years of saving his entire salary to buy the Parks’ house (CBS 2019). Even so, the Ohs are located further below than the Kims. In their delirious enjoyment of having the Parks’ house to themselves for a brief moment, the Kims imitate their lifestyle. In the film it seems that the one who imitates or repeats what others said previously is lower in the power hierarchy. Gi-Woo imitates his friend Min and yells at the urinating man, but he does not wield the same kind of authority. He also repeats Min’s words when he tells his family that he will formally begin dating Da-Hye (the daughter of the wealthy Parks) after she enters college and he is even thinking of marrying her. Meanwhile, Mrs. Park is awed by the insight and expertise of Gi-Jeong pretending to be “Jessica from Illinois,” who uncannily guesses that something traumatic happened to Da-Song a year earlier, and soon, she is echoing “-phrenia” when Gi-Jeong speaks of a “schizophrenia zone” in Da-Song’s painting. Such moments reveal how this clever young woman is in charge, while Mrs. Park seems comparatively naïve and innocent. The difference between the two is that one is poor and cannot afford to be innocent in worldly matters such as potential job opportunities, while the other may be encouraged to remain innocent. Well aware of such difference, Gi-Jeong shows utter contempt for Mrs. Park’s naiveté. However, Gi-Taek does not seem to think of class difference as something fundamental. Mr. Park bristles when Gi-Taek “crosses the line” by commenting about his private life and position as a husband and father. For Gi-Taek, who tries to make a human connection – or a man-to-man connection – these thwarted attempts are revealing moments when he sees that Mr. Park does not consider him as his equal on any level. On the fateful rainy night when the Parks unexpectedly return home from their camping trip, the family has to scurry under the coffee table to hide like cockroaches just as Chung-Suk jokingly predicted. Gi-Taek, while hiding from the Parks under the table with his children, not only overhears the Parks’ having sex but also Mr. Park contemptuously commenting on his smell. Thus, a feeling of rage and humiliation builds in him, leading to his eventual murder, an act of class vengeance. Gi-Taek’s mistake was making the assumption that at least as a father and husband, he could be equal with Mr. Park, a notion that would not occur to his employer. While poor characters arguably live off the wealthy Parks in a parasitic way, especially in Geun-Sae’s case since he does not provide anything in return such

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as his labor, it might be argued that the rich also live off the poor by demanding affective labor on top of the service that they pay for. Mrs. Park, for instance, calls her housekeepers eonni (older sister), which is not typical. Chung-Suk, who replaces the live-in housekeeper Mun-Gwang, is the new “older sister” to Mrs. Park, who seems to want a conversation companion, as well as domestic help. It is interesting to note that Mun-Gwang also calls Chung-Suk older sister when she pleads with her to help her and Geun-Sae, which shows that the seemingly friendly, familial term actually indicates one’s desire to get something out of the other. Though it is never verbalized, one of the most important conditions for employment for the domestic staff is the affective labor to prioritize the employer’s needs before their own. One can see this in the Parks’ blithe assumption that it is perfectly fine for the staff to give up their day off to work on their son’s birthday party because they are getting paid for it. This demand by the rich for the poor to always create an environment so that they can feel comfortable and content provides the context of the climactic pandemonium at Da-Song’s birthday party, in which murders occur. In order to cater to their son’s fetishistic tastes, the Parks ask Gi-Jeong, the child’s favorite, to carry out the cake and play the fair maiden who is going to be attacked by Mr. Park and Gi-Taek, the “Indians” wearing authentic Native American headdresses. Da-Song will be the hero who saves Gi-Jeong. This is a not-so-subtle reference to the ways in which people around the world consume typical images of Americana, via the stereotypical gender role and material objects, such as teepees, tomahawks, arrows and feather headdresses. This scenario, tailor-made for Mr. Park’s privileged child, has symbolic meanings that alert the audiences to the identity of the real parasites in the narrative, and perhaps in the life beyond the big screen, which includes the wealthy, and also settler colonizers and imperial forces that the United States represent. That both the villains and the hero in this little drama are Native Americans points to Korea’s position visà-vis the United States. Furthermore, the elite older generation, such as Gi-Woo’s friend Min’s grandfather, the collector of the Scholar’s Stone who attended the prestigious Korean Military Academy and Namgung, the original owner and architect of the Parks’ art piece of a house, invokes images of the Korean War generation and even of the native elite during the colonial period. There is a glimpse at the complex connection between 2019, a historical moment of this film which is described as “post” everything, -colonial, -Cold War, -modern and -democratization, and the earlier periods of struggle and strife that cast a long shadow into the present. But the intertwined relationship between these disparate historical periods does not get much spotlight. The film’s two thematic threads of class and gender make such connection more visible, as the dominant powers that be, patriarchy and the socioeconomic elite, have not changed despite the progresses made and encapsulated in the conditions that the present moment supposedly has overcome, e.g. colonialism, Cold War, modernity, and the struggle for equality or democratization. Min’s character seems to be the natural heir to the position occupied by

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the likes of Namgung, the famous architect. Min probably asked Gi-Woo to take over his tutoring position because unlike his social peers in college, Gi-Woo, an aspiring university student from a poor family, is unlikely to seduce Da-Hye. He was wrong. For Min, Da-Hye is an investment he wants to protect in his absence, while she is a stepping-stone in the upward socioeconomic mobility for Gi-Woo. Either way, she is symbolically important. When Gi-Taek comments that the Parks are incredibly gullible, and despite the fact that they are rich, they are so nice, Chung-Suk replies that it is because they are rich that they are so nice. She aptly points out that the moneyed class has little to be upset about, since all the little wrinkles in the everyday life are “ironed out” by money. Domestic workers and their (ideally) invisible efforts behind the scene smooth the way for the elites such as the Parks to enjoy their clean, orderly and catered lifestyle. Mr. Park seems aware of this, which is why Chung-Suk was hired so quickly after his wife let go of Mun-Gwang. Mrs. Park’s innocence, as Chung-Suk implies, is not something that the (potential) employees can afford: Gi-Jeong, Chung-Suk and Mun-Gwang, for instance, cannot be innocent or unknowing because their knowledge of the higher class Other can provide them their livelihood. In an ironic moment in the film, GiJeong as Jessica wryly smiles to herself when Mrs. Park calls her too innocent. Gi-Jeong, as the audiences know by this point in the narrative, is a central player in her family’s plot to make a living off the Parks’ naiveté and trust. Such moments when the audiences sympathize with the rich (and nice) characters like Mrs. Park, rather than with Gi-Jeong and her family, bring up an uncomfortable question, left unanswered in the film, whether poverty destroys one’s sense of right and wrong. The audiences are left to wonder, disconcertingly, if money not only means purchase power, but also is a requirement to protect one’s integrity and morality in today’s neoliberal Korea. The film exposes the grim truth of women’s worth, as either something entirely fabricated ( Jessica/Gi-Jeong), voluntarily, selflessly given as a quasi-mother/ wife to an infantilized husband (Mun-Gwang), reluctantly participating as a domestic worker (Chung-Suk), or blithely enjoying the derivative power of one’s husband and father (Mrs. Park and her daughter Da-Hye). Mun-Gwang’s relationship to her husband Geun-Sae, whom she bottle-feeds and cares for in such a way that infantilizes him, perversely highlights women’s role as caretakers. Mun-Gwang’s character shows how women can sacrifice their labor in order to maintain a heteronormative relationship. Male audiences and critics might view her as a traditional good wife, rather than consider how one-sided and bizarre the relationship has become. Mun-Gwang is certainly loyal and resourceful, and also takes control of making a living and providing for her husband, but like Gi-Jeong who also claims agency for herself and the narrative control, she gets killed. Mrs. Park is at the top of the socioeconomic totem pole but she is still desperately afraid of displeasing her husband, of being caught making the mistake of allowing a tuberculosis-ridden housekeeper into her home and endangering her family. If her husband finds out, she says to Gi-Taek, she will be “hanged

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and quartered,” and swears him to secrecy about the real reason she is suddenly letting go of Mun-Gwang. This scene reveals that it is a man’s world after all, and women can, at best, enjoy the derivative power and authority of the men in their lives. Mr. Park has the power and authority as the patriarch and a globally respected CEO. As such, the powers of capital and patriarchy are concentrated on him. The narrative shows that even though he works in a progressive industry, innovatively creating world-class digital products, and is a cool, young CEO, he is still very much the patriarch who is dominant in his home, even with the three family dogs. As for the Parks’ daughter Da-Hye, she seems unsure of her position in the family. She is fully aware that her parents’ attention is focused on her little brother. She gets angry, therefore, when no one asks her if she wants the ram-don snack that her brother, Da-Song, rejects. This incident is indicative of her position in the family as an afterthought, unlike her younger brother whose every whim is catered. She also seems insecure of Gi-Woo’s affection for her. But she is in fact tremendously valuable to the Kims, who dream of eventually becoming the Parks’ in-laws, hoping that their son Gi-Woo will marry Da-Hye, to have a permanent access to her family’s wealth and social position. In other words, this high school girl is valuable as a social, economic token of exchange, as an anthropological perspective has recognized women’s position in various societies and cultures (Lévi-Strauss 1969).

Conclusion Since his 2009 film Mother, Bong’s films Snow Piercer (2013) and Okja (2017) imagined subversion and revolution, and especially in Okja, the director seemed to indicate a revolutionary possibility through the figure of a girl. But such a tendency disappears in Parasite: In fact, Bong’s latest film shows that history is a male-centric narrative and any criticism of the system ends up being a story of a filial son (H. Son 2019: 61). Seen in this light, it is significant that the film kills off Gi-Jeong, a self-possessed young woman in control of the narrative who momentarily claims the agency to direct the film’s plot, while Gi-Woo is spared to live on, fantasizing that one day he will own the beautiful house and that his father could simply walk up from the basement to join him and his mother in its front lawn. Parasite provides a trenchant social critique through a hybrid of genres and rich details. It also leads one to ask fundamental yet troubling questions about the nature of the larger structures in which individuals live, about class and patriarchy. Will the pervasive and amorphous nature of the line, indeed a wall, between different classes in contemporary Korea (and other neoliberal societies) ever dissolve? And are individuals forever trapped in the power structure that maintains and normalizes the patriarchal order? The deaths of two female characters, GiJeong and Mun-Gwang, whose actions shape and pivot the film’s plot and meaning, are especially revealing in light of these questions that remain unanswered.

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References CBS (2019) “Parasite as an Honest Film: Bong Joon-Ho ‘I Didn’t Want to be Irresponsible’” [Korean], 14 June. Jeong, H. (2020) “The Cinematic Response to Collapse of Equality and Its Meaning: Focused on Films Snowpiercer and Parasite” [Korean], Literary Criticism, 75: 7–33. Lee, D. (2019) “A Study on the Film Parasite: Impossibility of Coexistence Between Classes Reenacted by Tragic Comedy” [Korean], Eomunyeongu, 101: 283–303. Lee, Y. (2019) “Cruel Children’s Tale: Parasite” [Korean], Hyeonjanggwa Gwangjang, 1: 236–242. Lévi-Strauss, C. (1969) Structural Anthropology, London: Allen Lane. Son, H. (2019) “Representation of Women’s Image in Bong Joon-Ho’s Films: Focusing on Parasite” [Korean], Cine 21, 10 December: 58–61.

5 ONE-INCH-TALL BARRIER OF SUBTITLES Translating invisibility in Parasite Jieun Kiaer and Loli Kim

This chapter discusses the challenges of translating/subtitling South Korean films (K-film), using the case study of Bong Joon-Ho’s 2019 film Parasite. The film tells the story of the destitute Kim family – father Gi-Taek/Mr. Kim, mother ChungSuk/Mrs. Kim, daughter Gi-Jeong and son Gi-Woo – who scheme their way into the employment of the wealthy Park family with devastating consequences. The narrative revolves around themes of desperation, greed and discrimination. It is on the one hand a narrative that is universally relatable, while on the other a window into Korea’s unique and complex hierarchical system of interpersonal relations; a fragile social dynamic in which failing to know one’s place can have fatal consequences. Despite the K-film industry’s relative isolation from international film markets until the 1980s and the international dominance of Hollywood, the global impact of K-film today is undeniable. This dramatic transformation in terms of K-films themselves and their international popularity has come to be known as the “Korean Film Wave” (Choi 2010; Yecies and Shim 2016). K-film’s popularity reached a new peak in February 2020 when Parasite made Oscars history by becoming the first foreign language film to win the prestigious Best Picture Award; the moment signified K-film’s shift to a truly global phenomenon. In his Oscars acceptance speech for Best Picture, Bong Joon-Ho stated: “Once you overcome the one-inch-tall barrier of subtitles, you will be introduced to so many more amazing films.” His statement was aimed at the globalization of foreign, particularly non-English, films, encouraging mainstream film viewers to give subtitled films a chance. However, the issues of viewing foreign films are more than the inconvenience of having to read subtitles. For non-Korean audiences, particularly Anglophone-European audiences, K-films bring considerable challenges due to their vast differences in linguistic and cultural heritages, verbal and non-verbal communication styles, cultural meanings and contexts. DOI: 10.4324/9781003102489-5

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Therefore, subtitles cannot realistically provide definitions of all the verbal and non-verbal expressions. Since the English subtitles cannot convey all of the meanings at play in K-films, it is necessary to ask whether Anglo-Euro audiences can truly understand them without the knowledge of Korean language, behavior and culture to fill in the gaps. K-film’s recent global popularity makes this a prime time to start moving toward a richer understanding of meaning in K-film, as with more fans worldwide there is less of a need to domesticize the English subtitles to attract foreign viewers. Non-Korean K-film viewers have become increasingly interested in this issue precisely. Numerous online articles and blogs have discussed symbolism and meaning in K-films, particularly Parasite (York 2019; Maffei 2020; Zen Kimchi 2020). Viewers from around the world have even been using K-film as a means of culturally embodied Korean language learning with the aims of enriching their experience of K-film. Viki.com is a prime example – a streaming service focusing on Asian content with a range of features to cater to K-film viewers’ desire to learn the language and culture of the films they are viewing: Many of Viki’s viewers aren’t native speakers of the languages of the programs they watch, and Viki also engages these users by offering them the chance to pick up the languages. In LEARN mode they can study Chinese, Korean, Japanese, by referring to dual English and foreign-language subtitles, by pausing programs to repeat words, and also searching for words and phrases so they can hear them in different ways, in different languages. Movies and TV are one of the most important and potent ways students can employ for learning about language and culture, and Viki makes the most of the opportunity. (Cain 2017) The desire of K-film fans to understand the language and culture of K-films can also be seen in the increasing use of Korean words in world Englishes. All fandoms engage in a degree of semiotic productivity (Fiske 1992), but K-fandoms appear to stand out for how they absorb Korean words into a global form of English. These words are not limited to nouns or unknown concepts in English, either. Some words now even appear in the Oxford English Dictionary (e.g. chaebol, bibimbap, doenjang, gochujang, soju). Fandoms select and use Korean words to create an environment that is stylized by Korean culture, through which they create empathic solidarity among members. This demonstrates a keenness to actually understand K-popular culture products rather than passively relying on translations. Korean K-film fans are equally keen to help foreign fans’ understanding. Recently, there has been an increasing desire to explain the meanings that are lost in the subtitles, rather than allowing them to be missed, misinterpreted or used to justify broad generalizations about East Asian cultures. Parasite, in particular, has spawned numerous online articles by Korean K-film viewers explaining these

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meanings (Cho 2020; Yang 2020). In her online article “subtitles can’t capture the full class critique in Parasite: Bong Joon-Ho’s film is even more nuanced and incisive than closed captioning would suggest,” Cho (2020) gives a lengthy description of the invisibility she encountered viewing Parasite as a bilingual Korean American. Cho immediately noticed what she describes as “the peculiarity of translating Korean into English text,” followed by her realization that “the subtitles are not for me… they’re for American audiences.” Below are a few examples of the invisibility that she encountered: i Neukde is translated as “frat boys,” when it really means “wolves.” ii Kottakji is translated as “modest amount,” when it literally means “snot.” iii Eonni and dongsaeng are both translated as “sis” when eonni is used for an “older sister,” and dongsaeng is used for a “younger” sister. One is using eonni to ally themselves as similar working people; when the power shifts, the other is appealing to her dongsaeng trying to elicit sympathy. Cho (2020) also emphasizes the invisibility of the power dynamics expressed through interactions within the Korean system of interpersonal relations: “These exchanges signal power dynamics at play. What the subtitles can’t portray are the acrobatics of signaling familial love and alliance.” The untranslatability of Korean language and culture into the English language and Western culture has been discussed in translation studies (Kiaer 2019); however, in an era of informed consumerism, viewers increasingly wish to understand what they are watching. Likewise, Koreans increasingly want to share what they see when they watch K-films. As Cho (2020) expresses: I wanted to tap my boyfriend on the shoulder to explain this in the theatre. I wanted to pause the film and explain to this mostly white audience in the (un-ironically named) Oriental Theatre that this film isn’t just funny and unconventional when characters call each other “sis” in the middle of a violent argument. So, what exactly is the one-inch-tall barrier? First, exploring this in depth requires a multimodal approach as the one-inch-tall barrier cannot be reconstructed solely with verbal dialogue. Non-verbal expressions often cannot be translated by subtitles but are nevertheless vital due to their socio-pragmatic interactions with verbal expressions. Second, multimodality must be approached from a crosscultural perspective; K-film viewers and researchers must understand the limitations of their own language and culture for explaining the Korean media. On understanding foreign films, Willemen (2006) recommends a cross-cultural practice for developing world film studies and preventing the marginalization of non-European/Hollywood films: Although it is necessary for Western intellectuals to address, for instance, the cinema in India, with one eye on their own situation, their other eye

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must remain focused on the potential effects of their discourses within the Indian situation. This uncomfortably cross-eyed mode of operation is absolutely vital if Western intellectuals, however well intentioned, are to avoid obstructing the work of Indian allies… Differences between, say, Ireland and Britain, or Korea and Japan, require a similar approach. (Ibid.: 41) For example, some meanings expressed in K-film may not exist in English but do exist in Chinese and vice versa. In this sense, Anglo-Euro audiences’ scope of comprehension differs greatly from Korean language and culture. However, panAsian cross-cultural perspectives are also essential to help to de-generalize Eurocentric commentaries on meaning in East Asian films. Likewise, within Western languages and cultures, providing a micro-scale of cross-cultural perspectives on K-film would also be beneficial: “Western” countries may share some similarities but are not identical. As Willemen (2006) continues: If this cross-eyed dialectic is forgotten, the term ‘specificity’ loses any meaning and any notion of creative or diagnostic understanding. That would be unfortunate, since a position of double outsideness, that is to say, of in-between-ness, is the precondition for any useful engagement with ‘the national’ in film culture. (Ibid.: 41) In a pilot research that tested a multimodal analysis to find conventions in how K-films mean, Kim and Kiaer (2020) address the need to account for Korean specificity, recognizing that this approach would benefit by accounting for Korean social reasoning and how this manifests meaningfully in Korean language and behavior through which one can gain the long-awaited contextualization of the meaning systems of Korean culture and language. A set of knowledge is required in order to be able to make sense of what is happening in films (Wildfeuer 2014), and viewers from one set of socio-historical configurations cannot be expected to simply have this knowledge of films from another set (Willemen 2002). For instance, Korean thought has been influenced by Confucianism. Despite the remarkable political and economic development of contemporary Korea, the Confucianism of the Joseon period still persists within the hierarchical system governing Korean society. The Confucian mindset is collective, in contrast to the individualistic mind-set promoted in the West and reflected in its language and culture. Semiotic repertoires are thus very different, and the inventories of semiotic expressions in K-films therefore require explanation – not only in how expressions are formed and what they mean but also in how they are culturally contextualized. With this toolbox of knowledge, Korean multimodal expressions absent from the English subtitles can be reconstructed and understood. This chapter will explore this multimodality in depth through Parasite, providing examples of what is lost in the English subtitles and highlighting the

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tools required to gain an understanding. Examples of meanings beyond the one-inch-tall barrier were selected from a cross-cultural perspective (Korean and Anglo-Euro) based on the inability or inefficiency of their translation in the English subtitles. Examples are multimodal – both verbal and non-verbal expressions – since it is the multimodal inventories utilized in socio-pragmatic expressions that are vastly different from those used in accordance with Anglo-Euro interpersonal systems and are subsequently invisible.

Challenges of translating invisibility in K-film Translating the multimodal expressions in Korean films into the English subtitles presents numerous problems within the context of cultural translation. One issue is that of “visibles” and “invisibles.” Invisibles describe systems and contexts that exist in the source language but not in the target language. In Korean-English translation, for instance, there are linguistic forms and functions that simply do not exist in both (Kiaer 2019), and there are vastly different cultural intertexts that cannot be translated “with any completeness or precision” (Venuti 2009: 157). Often, invisibles are subtle and culturally specific and are removed in translation. Their omission removes the precise and nuanced cultural script of the original. Omitting these invisibles could therefore be considered a failure to convey the intended meanings from the source text. Although this translation issue has not yet been widely explored in Korean films, except for Kiaer and Kim (2021), the multimodal and dynamic nature of film makes invisibles especially problematic in film translation. Translators may choose to either naturalize or foreignize their texts to make them more comfortable and familiar to readers in the target language, or to keep them closer to the original text at the risk of readability in the target language. Historically, translators have over-prioritized naturalization when translating East Asian texts into English, resulting in translations stripped of nearly all sense of the culture of origin. However, translators can also occasionally conflate or confuse different East Asian cultures while trying to foreignize a text. Attention has recently been drawn by the media to the issue of naturalization and foreignization for Anglo-Euro audiences in Parasite’s subtitles. In an interview with Parasite’s subtitler Darcy Paquet, he explained some of the substitutions that he made, particularly of Korean cultural intertexts, for those more familiar to Western viewers (Lee 2019). For example, the Korean messaging app “KakaoTalk” was replaced with “WhatsApp” and “Yonsei University” was localized as “Oxford University” in order to convey familiar meanings to foreign viewers. He also conflated Japanese with Korean culture to devise the term “ram-don,” a term partially formed by Japanese morphemes, to refer to the Korean noodle dish jjapaguri; don comes from the Japanese udon while ram is taken from the Korean ramyeon. A key issue in the translation of Korean films is the fine-grained hierarchical language of Korean. Translators’ linguistic decisions are not limited to word-level

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decisions but involve syntactic and pragmatic decisions, too (Kiaer 2018). Halliday and Matthiessen (1999) propose that language possesses ideational, textual and interpersonal functions, and especially stress the interpersonal function of language. Language cannot exist in isolation as communication is a social endeavor. One’s choice of words and grammatical structures depends on the person with whom one is speaking, the situation in which one is speaking and one’s aims for the dialogue. In Korean, this involves both verbal and non-verbal language as non-verbal expressions are the key to socio-pragmatic expressions (Kiaer 2020).

Invisibility through the lens of Parasite This section specifically examines Parasite’s English subtitles to identify which meanings from the Korean verbal/non-verbal expressions were lost in translation. To demonstrate the frequency of invisibles, this study selects some of the expressions observed in the first 11 minutes of Parasite, detailed in Table 5.1. TABLE 5.1 Verbal and non-verbal invisibles identified in the first 11 minutes of Parasite

Characters and relationship

Expression

Meaning

Banmal speech style. Shows their intimate relationship at the start of the film to establish who people are. Mrs. Kim Use of the word Indicates low (wife) to Mr. Kim “ya!” socioeconomic status (husband) and the wife’s tough personality. Father-son relationships Gi-Woo (son) to Use of more are significant; boys Mr. Kim jontaytmal when are expected to be (father) speaking to Mr. formal to show care Kim. toward fathers. The Young Pizza Boss Combination Young Pizza Boss looks down on the of banmal and (younger) to Mrs. Kim family, and has jontaytmal speech Kim (employee, power over them. styles. older generation) Gi-Woo is being Jontaytmal speech Gi-Woo (older persuasive. style, lowering employee) to of body, compact Young Pizza Boss posture. (younger employer) Banmal speech style. Can indicate that MinMin-Hyuk (younger Hyuk is angry, and university student) to rude, or has a big ego. Unknown Drunk Man (older stranger) Gi-Woo (brother) to Gi-Jeong (sister)

Time

Starts at 2:10:15

At 2:10:00

Noticed by 2:08:32

During 2:07:58– 2:07:08 During 2:07:08– 2:06:15 During 2:05:31– 2:05:16 (Continued)

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Characters and relationship

Expression

Mrs. Kim (mother) to Gi-Woo (son)

At 2:05:11 Based on the subtitle, it The subtitle reads seems as if Mrs. Kim “college students is complimenting her have a real vigor son’s friend, but she to them” but the is actually insulting Korean dialogue her son. This is then means “university clarified when his students are sister mentions that definitely Gi-Woo failed to enter different.” Mrs. university. Kim speaks while looking directly at her son. At 2:04:58 Use of the address Use of the honorific term “abeonim.” address term for “father” indicates a close relationship with the family. Uses the address Shows Gi-Jeong At 2:04:50 term “oppa.” is younger than Min-Hyuk.

Min-Hyuk (younger) to Mr. Kim (close friend’s father)

Gi-Jeong (younger) to Min-Hyuk (older brother’s close friend) Gi-Jeong (younger) to Min-Hyuk (older brother’s close friend) Gi-Woo to MinHyuk (close friend, same age)

Gi-Woo to MinHyuk (close friend, same age) Min-Hyuk to Gi-Woo (close friend, same age)

Meaning

Banmal speech style Shows closeness.

Use of the word “ya!”

Gi-Woo pours his own drink. Use of the address term “Samonim” referring to Mrs. Park.

Time

At 2:04:35

At 2:04:46 Indicates a close and friendship and that 2:03:38 they are the same age (likely in the same class at school). Suggests a close At 2:03:21 relationship; doesn’t need to make an effort. At 2:01:19 Samonim is translated as “mother” but it actually means that Mrs. Park is a married to a successful husband.

The invisibility of inter-character relationships This section will further examine the meanings underlying key relationships between characters in Parasite, focusing on how Korean verbal and non-verbal language and culture add layers of meaning to the film that were lost in the English subtitles.

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Father-son relation: Mr. Kim and Gi-Woo The relationship between Mr. Kim and his son is revealed through their use of address terms and speech styles. Gi-Woo’s use of language shows that the son’s attitude toward his father is filled with warmth, respect and trust. Likewise, Mr. Kim’s love for his children and authority as a father are revealed through his choice of speech styles. In one scene, Mr. Kim says, “adeul-a, na-nun ne-ga jarangseureopta” (“Son, I am proud of you”). The –ta ending makes the speech sound reliable and trustworthy. Mr. Kim shows integrity through the speech styles he uses to others, despite his low class status – a nuance unfortunately lost in English.

Employee-employer relation Gi-Woo (Kevin)/Gi-Jeong ( Jessica) and the Park’s household: Mr. and Mrs. Park’s attitudes toward their children’s tutors are also revealed through their use of verbal and non-verbal expressions. Teachers are respected in neoConfucian Korea, and although Gi-Woo and Gi-Jeong are not formal schoolteachers, they are even more valuable to the Parks. Private education fever among wealthy Seoul mothers like Mrs. Park is well known in contemporary Korea. Their success is measured by their children’s academic success, and therefore tutors are highly regarded by these parents. These attitudes toward education are visible in the shift in Mrs. Park’s expressions toward Gi-Woo. Before she hires him, when he does not yet hold the status of a teacher, Mrs. Park looks down on Gi-Woo. However, upon hiring him as her daughter’s tutor, her attitude toward him completely changes. Her posture, behavior and the position of her hands change – from standing upright with her head held high and holding her pet dog, to leaning forward, tilting her head downward slightly with her hands placed together on her lap and nodding agreeably. In Korea, holding one’s hands together like this and nodding agreeably are common gestures used toward seniors. Her non-verbal expressions also reflect Gi-Woo’s newfound status as a tutor in the household. Mrs. Park’s verbal expressions change, by using the polite speech style and calling Gi-Woo “Kevin ssaem” (Mr. Kevin). Throughout the film, the Park family never call Gi-Woo by his Korean name, but always by Kevin ssaem – a combination of an English name and the abbreviation ssaem taken from the honorific term for “teacher,” seonsaengnim. Due to the complexity of finding the right address term for each situation, speaking in English can be liberating or prestigious for class-conscious Koreans. Speaking in English and using English names, as the Parks do, is a display of class status and distinctive taste. Bong Joon-Ho uses this casual appropriation of English in the film to signify the Park family’s wealth and status in stark contrast to that of the Kims. English as a cultural capital is also considered to be important for upward social mobility. This is the reason why Gi-Jeong introduces herself as

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having studied at the University of Illinois. No further reference is needed as her education in America associates her with the super-rich class. A similar power shift occurs with Gi-Jeong, and also when the Parks call her Jessica. She calls Mrs. Park eomeonim “dear mother (of Da-Song),” which is translated as “madam.” When Mrs. Park brings up a difficult issue concerning her son, Da-Song, Gi-Jeong behaves with authority, sitting straight and speaking calmly, while Mrs. Park appears almost submissive to her; she holds her hands on her lap while talking, nods and places her hands over her mouth when she expresses shock. From this point on, Mrs. Park places her trust in Gi-Jeong, which is also shown later when she begins to mix polite speech styles with half-talk and casual styles. This shows Mrs. Park’s naivety, while Gi-Jeong’s air of authority and acceptance of Mrs. Park’s politeness and trust reveal her deviousness and create humor, as audiences know she is not an art therapy tutor but a con artist! The Parks’ household staff start to show their respect toward Gi-Woo and Gi-Jeong once they become the children’s tutors. The housekeeper Mun-Gwang treats Gi-Woo with respect by using the similar expressions adopted by Mrs. Park, despite being practically two generations older than him. This shift happens with Gi-Jeong as well. When Mrs. Park introduces her to Mr. Park with the respectful address “Jessica ssaem,” Mr. Park immediately starts to use jontaytmal (polite language). When the Park family’s driver Yoon drives Gi-Jeong home, he also shows respect to her as the tutor of his superior’s son. The English subtitles render his address to her as “Miss Jessica,” but in Korean, the driver calls her “Jessica seonsaengnim.” In addition to using this honorific address term, he speaks using an honorific style, for instance, when he says “daeg ap-e-kka-ji mo-syeo-da deu-lyeo-do doel-kka-yo.” Daeg is an honorific word for a house and mo-syeo-da deu-lyeo, which means “to drive,” is an honorific verb used toward superiors. The driver and Gi-Jeong are not bound by any professional relationship, but the driver nevertheless shows respect to her through his language. This is also reflected in his non-verbal expressions; when Gi-Jeong refuses his repeated suggestion to drive her home, asking to be taken to the station, the driver nods. Examples of some of the address terms that are either naturalized for Anglo-Euro audiences or missed entirely in Parasite are shown in Table 5.2. The Kims and the Young Pizza Takeaway Boss: In one early scene, the Kim family are working as box folders for a small takeaway pizza business. Their boss looks around the same age as Gi-Jeong, the youngest member of the Kim family. The boss looks down on the Kim family, expressed by her frequent use of banmal while only occasionally drifting into jontaytmal. This could be seen as politeness coming from a senior, but when the takeaway boss does this it seems rude and condescending. Gi-Woo is older than his boss, and he uses the reverse of this socio-pragmatic reasoning when negotiating with the boss by employing the opposite – respectful verbal expressions (polite speech style) and non-verbal expressions (e.g. compact posture, lowering his height and head) in order to gain her favor. Mr. Kim and Mrs. Park: A power struggle takes place between Mr. Kim and Mrs. Park early in the film when Mr. Kim lies to Mrs. Park that Mun-Gwang

One-inch-tall barrier of subtitles  99 TABLE 5.2 Some key address terms used in Parasite that are naturalized or missed in the

English subtitles Address terms

Meanings

eomeonim Gi-Jeong calls Mrs. Park eomeonim. sajangnim daepyonim (CEO) Mr. Kim refers to Mr. Park as sajangnim or daepyonim. seonsaengnim A car seller refers to Mr. Park as seonsaengnim. ssaem Mrs. Park and her children refer to the tutors as ssaem.

Honorific term for “mother” Madame. but is subtitled as madame. Honorific term for your boss – CEO.

Means teacher. Now used as an honorific term regardless of job. Ssaem is introduced to make the address term seonsaengnim feel less hierarchical, more informal, and more intimate. gisa Means “driver.” Mr. Park Mr. Park calls Mr. Yoon uses gisa-nim to older and Mr. Kim gisa. drivers and gisa to younger drivers. ajumma/ajumeoni An ordinary middle-aged Mrs. Kim and Mun-Gwang woman in contrast to are called ajumma. the upper-class image of samonim.

seonbaenim Gi-Jeong refers to Gi-Woo as seonbaenim.

Pretending not to know each other while in the Park household, Gi-Jeong calls her brother using this respectful address term – used to address a senior, particularly from the same school.

Translation used in Parasite

No translation.

Sir.

Often, Mr. or Miss is used.

No translation.

Translated once as ma’am and once as lady Other times, omitted (e.g. when Mrs. Park asks Mrs. Kim for ram-don, she calls her ajumma, which went untranslated). No translation.

has tuberculosis so that she loses her job. Following Mun-Gwang’s dismissal, Mr. Kim and Mrs. Park meet in the family sauna to discuss the matter in private. Mr. Kim sits on a bench in front of Mrs. Park who remains standing, assuming a lower position both physically and hierarchically. However, he plays around power in the conversation when he grasps her hand, seizing control of

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the situation. Skinship is a sensitive issue in Korea; touching someone who is not familiar or intimate is unacceptable. Mr. Kim attempts to create a bond with Mrs. Park, which is confirmed when the comforting gesture leads to a handshake agreeing to keep the secret between them. Their hands are now on the same level, reminding Mrs. Park that she is at his mercy just as he is at hers. However, Mrs. Park reclaims power, asking if he washed his hands after handling a bloody tissue supposedly dropped by Mun-Gwang. Mr. Kim loses power in the situation as he realizes his social misstep of neglecting to wash his hands, invalidating any superiority of status granted momentarily by his age. Mr. Kim and Mr. Park: Tensions rise between Mr. Kim and Mr. Park throughout the film due to hierarchical conflicts, invisible to Anglo-Euro audiences, which neither man will compromise over. Mr. Kim is almost a generation older than Mr. Park, given Mr. Kim’s appearance and the age of his children. Age grants Mr. Kim power, and because of his low socioeconomic status this seniority is the only status he holds, making it all the more valuable. However, Mr. Park is his boss and moreover an elite member of chaebol (the upper class), making Mr. Kim subordinate to him. The privileged Mr. Park wishes to keep this power and is determined to maintain the “upstairs-downstairs” dynamics between his household staff and himself; he states multiple times that he hates it when employees “cross the line” by getting too close to him. Mr. Kim, however, often plays closely to this line by making comments that employees usually avoid in Korea for this very reason. For example, when Mr. Park complains that his wife is not good at housekeeping, Mr. Kim says “geuraedo saranghasijiyo?” translated as “still, you love her, right?” Although an inoffensive remark, within a non-intimate junior-senior professional dynamic it is inappropriate. In relatively conservative neo- Confucian Korea, the explicit expression of “love” toward spouses in front of others has been a taboo (De Mente 2017: 173). Mr. Park shows his displeasure with a long pause, before breaking into laughter in an attempt to disregard the comment. In another scene, Mr. Kim curses at another driver in front of Mr. Park, shouting “ssibal jinjja” which is, in English, something like “you are fucking serious!” Mr. Park is shocked, but quickly regains composure. In reality, if not for Mr. Kim’s senior age he would have been scolded for this, perhaps even losing his job. Mr. Park’s decision to remain calm again reflects the conflict in their hierarchal relationship. For Korean viewers, these moments of inappropriate behavior within the conflicting hierarchy ratchet up the tension between the protagonists. These scenes also show Mr. Kim’s unwillingness to let go of his feeling of age-based superiority and demonstrate his lack of education and social status. Mr. Kim does not fully accept his rank or take his position seriously, exposing him in a negative light and leading viewers to empathize with Mr. Park. Mr. Kim’s treatment of Mr. Park foreshadows future tensions between the two toward the end of the film, when Mr. Kim finally explodes and kills Mr. Park.

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Comrades and enemies: Mun-Gwang and the Kim family When viewers start to realize that Mun-Gwang is equally parasitic like the Kim family, conflicts ensue in the film. Mrs. Kim and Mun-Gwang attempt to create a bond through address terms, using the term eonni (older sister) to imply a sense of comradery. Because both sides are desperate not to be discovered as parasites, the use of the term here feels manufactured, a desperate play for empathy. This was translated as “sis,” which does not convey the feeling of upward respect or contextualize the term to explain the motivations of the characters. A similar persuasive use of address terms is seen when Gi-Woo begs MunGwang and her husband not to reveal their true identity to the Parks. In his desperation, Gi-Woo calls Mun-Gwang ajumeoni (translated as “ma’am” in the subtitles) to show slight respect by elevating the address term ajumma (translated as “lady”) which Mr. Kim uses to address her and which would be a more typical choice for Gi-Woo as well. Later, after Mr. Kim accidentally kills Mun-Gwang, he expresses respect by pronouncing her full name, syllable by syllable, attaching -ja at the end (a typical way of honoring somebody who has died), which is entirely invisible in the subtitles.

Key relationship dynamics in parasite From senior to junior: downward address terms and the affectionate suffix -a/-ya -A and -ya are vocative particles and can be labeled as affectionate particles or downward address terms (Kiaer 2020). -A is used when the final sound of a name is a consonant and -ya is used when the final sound is a vowel. Ya can be used as an address term, too. Both express hierarchy and are used toward a close junior and rarely used professionally, typically by an older sibling to a younger sibling, between friends, by adults toward children and also toward pets. For example, in Parasite, friends Min-Hyeok and Gi-Woo refer to each other using -ya, and elder brother Gi-Woo calls his younger sister Gi-Jeong -ya. -Ya can also be heard when Mr. Kim’s family and Mun-Gwang are fighting, which is used rudely. Only on one occasion are -a/-ya translated in the subtitles, when Gi-Woo talks to Min-Hyeok and -ya is translated as “hey” – otherwise, they are invisible.

From junior to senior: upward respect particles: -nim, -kkeseo, -ssi Suffixes or particles such as -nim (dear), kkeseo (dear) or -ssi (an honorific term) signal respect toward one’s senior. This is usually accompanied with bowing or similar non-verbal expressions. For example, the Parks’ son Da-Song shows respect to his tutor Gi-Jeong by using polite speech styles, calling her seonsaengnim and bowing when their lesson ends. These multiple dimensions coordinate to

102  Jieun Kiaer and Loli Kim

create the meanings of respect. If this coordination fails, it can seem insincere, rather becoming humorous or ironic (Kiaer 2020).

First-person and second-person pronouns How to refer to oneself and others in Korean depends on the situation. Jeo is a humble first-person pronoun, in contrast to na, or “plain I.” Even young children quickly grasp this distinction. Therefore, how characters refer to themselves and others in K-films is hierarchically expressive and defines characters and positioning. In Parasite, Mr. and Mrs. Park occasionally use jeo, but mainly use na when speaking to the Kims. In contrast, Mr. and Mrs. Kim usually use jeo when speaking to the Parks. Referring to one’s speech partner is even more complicated, as the secondperson pronoun is avoided out of politeness in Korean. Neo is the closest translation for the English “you” and is used between friends, sounding awkward in formal situations. In one scene in Parasite, Mrs. Kim calls her husband neo when she says that he, the head of the family, does not have the right to say “eat as much as you like” because the children paid for the meal. In highly patriarchal Korea, it is quite shocking to call one’s husband neo as it sounds too disrespectful, so her use of neo on this occasion shows that she lacks respect for her husband because he cannot financially support his own family.

Conclusion This chapter has demonstrated that meaning-making processes in K-film are multifaceted – created multimodally and contextualized ideologically in Korean culture. Both verbal and non-verbal modes play key roles in socio-pragmatic expressions that are contextualized within the Confucian system of interpersonal relations. These expressions are the key for understanding characters’ backgrounds, emotions, attitudes, motivations and intentions. The full complexity of these interpersonal relations and the meanings that are strategically crafted for film narratives often become invisible in translation, becoming either anglicized or ignored entirely. However, interactions in Korean cannot be separated from these pragmatic contexts, and thus anybody interested in truly understanding Korean films should make sure they are well acquainted with how these social relations are navigated in Korea. By using Parasite as a case study, this chapter has attempted to bridge the gap between the English subtitles and what is actually expressed through language and behavior in K-film. It has provided a glimpse into the toolbox of knowledge required to deconstruct meanings beyond the barrier of the one-inch-tall subtitles and enrich the understanding of non-Korean viewers. With this toolbox, keen K-film viewers can begin to obtain the informed viewership that they desire, and K-film researchers can further utilize and develop the toolbox fully. It can potentially provide the long-overdue beginning of a cross-cultural perspective in

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K-film translation that is capable of addressing the differences and the untranslatability through which invisibles arise and prevent viewers’ understanding.

References Cain, R. (2017) “Viki.com is the Most Innovative Streaming Video Service You Haven’t Heard About,” Forbes, 24 October. Cho, S. (2020) “No Title Subtitles Can’t Capture the Full Class Critique in ‘Parasite’: Bong Joon-Ho’s Film is Even More Nuanced and Incisive than Closed Captioning Would Suggest,” GEN, 3 February. Choi, J. (2010) The South Korean Film Renaissance, Middletown: Wesleyan University Press. De Mente, B.L. (2017) The Korean Mind, Rutland: Tuttle Publishing. Fiske, J. (1992) “The Cultural Economy of Fandom,” in L. Lewis (ed) The Adoring Audience, London: Routledge. Halliday, M. and Matthiessen, C. (1999) Introduction to Functional Grammar, London: Routledge. Kiaer, J. (2018) Routledge Course in Korean Translation, London: Routledge. Kiaer, J. (2019) “Translating Invisibility: The Case of Korean-English Literary Translation,” in J. Guest and X.A. Li (eds) Translation and Literature in East Asia, London: Routledge. Kiaer, J. (2020) Pragmatic Particles: Evidence from Asian Languages, London: Bloomsbury. Kiaer, J. and Kim, L. (2021) Understanding Korean Film: A Cross-cultural Perspective, London: Routledge. Kim, L. and Kiaer, J. (2020) “Conventions in How Korean Films Mean,” in J. Pflaeging, C. Ng, J. Wildfeuer and J. Bateman (eds) Empirical Multimodality Research, Berlin: De Gruyter. Lee, H. (2019) “Parasite’s Subtitle Translator,” Korea.net, 19 June. Maffei, L. (2020) “Parasite: Symbols and Meanings of Bong Joon-Ho’s Film,” Auralcrave, 8 March. Venuti, L. (2009) “Translation, Intertextuality, Interpretation,” Romance Studies, 27(3): 157–73. Wildfeuer, J. (2014) Film Discourse Interpretation, London: Routledge. Willemen, P. (2002) “Detouring Through Korean Cinema,” Inter-Asia Cultural Studies, 3(2): 167–86. Willemen, P. (2006) “The Nation Revisited,” in V. Vitali and P. Willemen (eds) Theorising National Cinema, London: British Film Institute. Yang, E. (2020) “Parasite Symbolism Explained: Instant Noodles, Language, Basement,” News Lens, 15 February. Yecies, B. and Shim, A. (2016) The Changing Face of Korean Cinema, London: Routledge. York, J. (2019) “Parasite Mines the Power of Symbolism in One of 2019’s Best Films,” Creative Screenwriting, 7 November. ZenKimchi. (2020) “Cultural Details You Missed in “Parasite”,” ZenKimchi: The Korean Food Journal, 8 February.

PART II

BTS

6 BTS AND THE WORLD MUSIC INDUSTRY Kyung Hyun Kim

Pop music is becoming relevant again after floundering commercially and critically for the past two decades. Subscription-based music streaming services such as Spotify, iTunes, Vevo and Amazon Music are putting money back in the pockets of artists. Perhaps in response, young artists are once again becoming stars in a way the world has not seen since the final decade of the twentieth century. Artists such as Post Malone, Billie Eilish, Dua Lipa and BTS are at the forefront of a strong corps of young artists who routinely dominate the global pop scene. After a period of lost growth, the music entertainment industry has seen its profitability restored, thanks to the tech companies. The industry has yet to completely recover from the decline it suffered when Napster helped to distribute music free to Internet users around the world during the mid-2000s. The year 1999 still continues to hold the record for music sales revenue, at $25.2 billion, but global revenue from recorded music reached $21.5 billion in 2019 (Watson 2020) and it is only a matter of time before the success of streaming music apps will nudge annual sales above the two-decade-old revenue record. Of course, the pandemic of 2020–1 will inevitably impact the music industry, with many artists canceling tours and delaying the release of their new albums (Cooper 2020). But once the world returns to normalcy, the music industry will continue to enjoy success from its music streaming and app download business model. As the business model of the global music industry transformed itself from one that was reliant on physical CD sales and radio play to one that is now based on streaming app and social media activities, there was finally room for a non-English pop music genre to break out into the mainstream American and European scene. This chapter first investigates the social and cultural conditions in Korea over the past three decades that made K-pop possible to arrive on the scene before any other music genre from other countries. It then asks how the theory of “sound vision” helps us address DOI: 10.4324/9781003102489-6

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the reasons why the Korean pop group BTS may have been best suited for success in this changing environment for global pop music in the twenty-first century.

Music is no longer in the airwaves – but streaming through the Wi-Fi Throughout the twentieth century, pop music was the most powerful entertainment business in the world, generating revenues greater than those of cinema. As late as 2000, music industry revenues in North America were almost double theater box office revenues: Cinemas pulled in $7.5 billion, whereas consumers spent $13.36 billion on CD album purchases alone (Tschmuck 2015; The Numbers 2020). Michael Jackson was undeniably the most recognizable superstar around the globe throughout the 1980s and 1990s – even more so than Hollywood personalities like Tom Cruise or Arnold Schwarzenegger. If the music that grew out of Western counterculture of the 1960s resulted in the success of global pop acts such as the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, Bob Dylan and Led Zeppelin – music rooted in psychedelic experience, political responsibility and the innovative fusion of musical genres that continued to impact the rest of the world throughout the twentieth century – the first decade of the twenty-first century witnessed not only demise of the music business but also the disintegration of music as a cultural experience. During the first decade of the new millennium, music lost its role as cultural, ideological and stylistic harbinger for youth. For instance, the best-selling artist of the 2000s was Eminem, a Caucasian rapper groomed by African American hip-hop legends of the previous century, but he was also a talent who lived in the shadow of his producer and mentor Dr. Dre, who innovated the genre in the 1980s. Eminem’s rise to fame also came about through his sampling of many songs from the classic rock genre, such as Queen’s “We Will Rock You” (“Till I Collapse”), Janis Joplin’s “Summertime” (“Rock Bottom”) and Black Sabbath’s “Changes” (“Going through Changes”), which only confirmed the fact that the hip-hop of the early 2000s was no longer a leading cultural force and had instead come to rely heavily on past musical glories just to stay relevant. In the 2010s, the music industry reorganized under a new online business model, as services such as Spotify, Vevo and Apple Music pushed out CD players, television and radio as delivery vehicles for pop music. Today, the smartphone has replaced the Walkman and the Boombox. Furthermore, most young music consumers now pay monthly subscription fees to music streaming services that end up padding the pockets of artists – a revenue stream that was dried up in the 2000s when Napster popularized P2P filesharing crippled an incredibly profitable industry overnight (Shevenock 2020). P2P, which stands for peer-topeer Internet network, and MP3 technology, which enabled the reduction of audio file size without compromising sound quality, almost sank the giant music industry (Witt 2015). Music piracy had existed ever since an industry formed around the mass reproduction of musical recordings, but the meaning of “piracy” took on a new meaning during the 2000s when file sharing gave birth to

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the “pirate generation” of consumers, who spent more time downloading music than actually listening to it. This habit of spending time to swap files and form communities of similar musical tastes did not in fact end up killing the music industry, but it did eventually pave the way for online fandom to emerge as the new modality of music consumption for millennials. Posting reaction videos, sharing translations of non-English lyrics and campaigning for underdog musicians soon became the newest Internet fads among a young generation of music consumers who grew up appreciating social activities around music rather than passively listening to it. The era of musical geniuses dominated by the likes of John, Paul, George and Ringo, or Michael Jackson had come to a close as the new social media era gave unprecedented agency to music fans. Fans are now in closer partnerships with musical acts than ever before. This changing consumerist pattern in music ended up transforming the entire music industry, which opened more opportunities for smaller global acts to publish music outside the mainstream labels and reach out to North American fans. It was not just Napster that forced the music industry to abandon the traditional sales model of reliance on radio play and CD sales; also critical was the formation of a maniacal fandom phenomenon, which became the prototype for K-pop’s ascendance on the world stage. YouTube and social media sites such as Twitter, Instagram and Soundcloud gave young artists better platforms to both showcase their musical talents and reach out to fans across national boundaries. For Korean pop groups, more important than these music-sharing sites were the increasing activities of oppa budae (armies of girls embracing “older brother” stars). From 2014 to 2018, for instance, CD sales saw rapid growth in Korea at a time when sales trends were down in most other countries. Korean CD sales grew from 7.37 million units in 2014 to 21.54 million in 2018, whereas during roughly the same period in the USA the sale of CDs plummeted from 143 million units to 88 million (KOCCA 2019: 42). In Korea, just as in other countries, the most dominant form of music listening during this period was through smartphones. Why, then, did Korean CD sales defy global trends with threefold growth? It was because K-pop companies regarded compact discs not as an integral part of CD packaging but as a marketing gimmick to sell more units of keepsake merchandise for oppa budae fans. Supplementary goods included in the seemingly overpriced CD cases were booklets, photos and even raffle tickets for exclusive “fan meet” events. Most young fans did not even own a CD player, but CD sales of K-pop groups nevertheless exploded. As early as the 1990s, the Korean music industry had begun to cultivate the massive online fandom that has become the norm today. In 1992 legendary rapper Seo Taiji – along with his dancers Yang Hyeon-Seok and Lee Juno – formed Seo Taiji & Boys, becoming perhaps the most important pop act in the history of Korean popular music. This was also when earlier forms of sasaeng (literally “live-or-die”) fans began to appear on the nascent online space. Many high school girls who tended to be docile and reticent offline became aggressive, vocal and even hostile in their online interactions with fans of other clubs.

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The obsessive behavior exhibited by tens of thousands of fans toward their stars, sometimes reaching levels of stalker-like intensity, was made possible thanks to Korea’s introduction of early Internet technology, which was available to the masses and was much cheaper and more efficient than that of the USA. Paired with the availability of lower-cost computers due to the power of local electronic companies such as SKC and Samsung, which regarded their domestic markets as critical for their product launches, technology allowed Seo Taiji’s young fans to connect with each other and exchange information using their online docking centers. Before Wi-Fi became the technological modus operandi, Chollian and Hi-tel, the Korean equivalents of Compuserve and AOL, provided dial-up modems and sponsored discussion sites and trade forums that fed the nascent forms of fandom designed to increase Seo’s sales of music albums, merchandise and concert tickets. Two decades before the rise of BTS, Seo Taiji & Boys’ ability to connect directly with fans unshackled them from reliance on reviewers, music programmers and DJs in newspapers, radio and television. During the 1980s and the 1990s, the payola system – the illegal practice of paying DJs and producers to promote songs on commercial radio and television stations – was not the exception but the norm. With the emergence of Internet-based fandom, the era of the DJ or VJ was coming to an end. Many of the popular DJs and producers of music programs at MBC, one of the two broadcasting companies in Korea at the time, went into decline. They included DJ Kim Ki-Duk, reportedly the holder of the Guinness World Record for overseeing the same daily radio program for over 20 years, whose record of consecutive days as DJ came to a halt when he was arrested in 1995 for taking bribes from musician managers (Yoon and Shin 1995: 30). Rapper Seo Taiji was determined not to waste time and money trying to be part of the payola system; instead, he was far more interested in putting out accomplished music albums and concerts with high production values that could compete against world-class musicians. Most Korean musicians at the time, even the most popular kayo-king, Cho Yong-Pil, had a difficult time selling their CDs. Although music stores during the 1990s saw rising CD sales for mega-hit albums of American and British artists such as Madonna and Prince, sales for local artists were comparatively dismal. Seo’s hip-hop–steeped flair managed to appeal to younger musical consumers. In addition, consumer purchasing power increased as the Korean middle class expanded in the 1990s, allowing young fans to buy albums and concert tickets publicized through Internet cafés. Seo seized on this opportunity to become the biggest superstar of his day. To him, the traditional media were not only unnecessary but sometimes constituted a hindrance with their negative reviews and publication of damaging personal gossip articles. Diehard fans identified with Seo, publicly chastising journalists or anti-fans who spread fake or negative news. The Seo Taiji phenomenon witnessed the first instance of online mob activity in Korea during the 1990s. One of the reasons South Korea became a bedrock of aggressive forms of fandom during the age of social media is the country’s unique adherence to

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a combination of neo-Confucian principles and neoliberal capitalism, both of which dominate everyday life on the peninsula. The cut-throat competition that pressures every student to excel places enormous significance on national college-entrance exams and, subsequently, on the employment exams of corporations such as Samsung and LG. Ostensibly, every individual student has an equal chance to perform well on these exams, and this system thereby forces almost all school-aged children in Korea to spend long hours at school and in an after-school cramming system called hakwon. In order to keep up with their peers, children as early as kindergarten typically spend endless hours in extracurricular classes that range from reading to coding. In this extraordinary learning environment where children often do not return home until well after dinner, music often becomes the only source of solace where youthful energies can be unleashed against the adult world. In the West, drug and alcohol use and sexual activity are prevalent among teenagers, but these illicit activities are extremely frowned upon in Korea, where online games and music listening are virtually the only opportunities for teenagers to relieve stress. Games tend to be popular among male teenagers, while music listening and overidentification with music stars are prevalent among female teenagers.

BTS: is it audio or is it vision? BTS’s rise on the world stage was therefore set by the exacerbation of three changes during the decade of the 2010s – the expansion of online music fandom, the global explosion of music video programming and consumption on YouTube, and the advent of an idol empire involving non-musical merchandising, games and fantasy fiction. The transformation of music culture continued to benefit K-pop in general because by 2000 Korean pop itself was reliant on attractive performers and sharp dance choreographies that fit well into the medium of YouTube videos. Although the Korean lyrics of K-pop acts continued to be largely shunned by radio DJs in the USA, music in the new millennium was now far less reliant on radio airplay. As outlined above, music during the era of social media had become a meta-musical enterprise, appealing to a young new global audience less preoccupied with the lyrical dimension of music listening. In a way, the global popularity of K-pop music videos in the twenty-first century debunked the two prevailing theories about music videos as advanced by E. Ann Kaplan (1987) in Rocking around the Clock and Andrew Goodwin (1992) in Dancing in the Distraction Factory. In defining the appeal of music videos, Kaplan privileged the visual, while Goodwin responded to her by arguing that visuality in music videos is secondary to the music itself. Today, in light of the overwhelming emphasis on social media convergence – which involves ringtones, meme songs and Instagram photos – the popularity of K-pop music videos has proven that neither the visual nor the music can be considered primary when it comes to the contemporary musical consumption experience: Images and sound in music videos are in fact inseparable, evidencing what Michel Chion (1994) has called

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“audio-vision,” which privileges neither element and warrants new theorization in the new millennium. James Steintrager (2018) advances Chion’s concept of “audio-vision” into what he calls “sound objects” that “contemplate the place of sound.” The “sound object” is perhaps useful for understanding K-pop, a music genre that is still heavily reliant on Korean language lyrics even though they are inaccessible to most American listeners (Steintrager 2018: 1). There are many sounds in the world that cannot be reduced to semantic meaning but are nevertheless considered beautiful. Many sounds from nature – the chirping of birds, the pelting sound of rainfall or ocean waves breaking against cliffs – constitute soothing “sound objects” even though no meaning can be deduced from them. However, without a visual imaginary associated with these sounds, could they still be considered “beautiful”? In order to respond to this question, Steintrager discusses Kant’s example of deceptive aural misidentification and compares it with trompe l’oreille, a term derived from trompe-l’oeil, the artistic technique of creating an effect of three-dimensionality using two-dimensional images. Kant speculated about “the effect on listeners who, thinking they are enjoying the ‘bewitchingly beautiful song of the nightingale,’ discover that the source is a ‘mischievous lad’ hiding in the bushes and imitating the bird with a pipe or reed” (Steintrager 2018: 4). Although the two sounds might be the same to the ear, the listener might feel disgusted if the source, or even the motif behind the source, turned out to be completely different from the one imagined. The importance that Kant placed on visual confirmation of the auditory source has remained relevant throughout the modern era, as seen in the hiring of “ghost singers” to perform behind the stage for Hollywood stars, as incorporated into the plotline of the classic movie Singin’ in the Rain (1952), or in the models who posed as singers for the pop sensation group Milli Vanilli in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Milli Vanilli, a European rap/soul duo, was even awarded a Grammy before it was revealed that neither of the two headliners, Fab Morvan and Rob Pilatus, had sung any of the vocals for their album. Frank Farian, Milli Vanilli’s German producer and mastermind, who was also behind the disco-pop group Boney M, almost had his playbook stolen from Kant, who argued that auditory sensation alone cannot please the listener, especially if visual confirmation shows that the source is completely different from the one imagined. By hiring two attractive guys with Reggae hair and stylish moves to visually match the sound of Milli Vanilli, Farian wanted to ensure that the listeners of his songs would not be disappointed, even while the real singers were actually a couple of middle-aged musicians well past their prime. Farian’s desire to visually represent his new dance songs with two lanky, attractive models fulfilled the trompe l’oreille ruse, but when audiences discovered that the “nightingale” was just a “mischievous lad” playing a pipe, they did indeed become as upset as Kant had predicted. The Milli Vanilli models were forced to return their Grammy and pay fines to many concert promoters. I have long wrestled with this decades-old controversy about Milli Vanilli, because K-pop acts, although they feature no ghost singing, are built around

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lip-sync performances, attractive looks that far outweigh vocal talents, dance choreography and splashy videos that reduce music to “sound objects.” K-pop, in fact, raises the question as to whether music in “pop music” is even relevant today. I now turn my attention to BTS, because this globally famous boy group, more so than any other K-pop idol groups, has in fact built its career around music, which could be the real reason for its success despite the declining importance of music in global pop today. BTS has long showcased music actually written by its members, rather than solely caring only about its stars’ looks, despite the fact that the septet is still squarely situated within a K-pop platform that draws on dance energy and idol fandom. If Milli Vanilli had Frank Farian, and Whitney Houston had veteran recording industry executive Clive Davis, BTS had Bang Si-Hyuk, composer-cumtalent management company CEO who has been the veteran mastermind behind the group. Bang was quite possibly the most important composer and producer in the JYP Entertainment group, which produced hits for early idol groups such as g.o.d. and Wonder Girls, but when he left the company in the mid-2000s and formed his own outfit called Big Hit Entertainment, his hits had dried up. Aside from Baek Ji-Young’s 2009 “Feels Just Like Being Shot” (Chong majeun geot cheoreom), Bang had failed to produce a big single or effectively groom any rising music acts for about a decade. Unlike the giant entertainment moguls SM or YG, his Big Hit company lacked resources to launch idol groups outside Korea. The most surprising and ironic element in BTS’s story over the past decade was not its sudden rise to fame but the fact that this rise to fame was achieved in the USA – the one country where most K-pop companies had failed to see meaningful success over the past two decades. Psy’s breakout song, “Gangnam Style,” was an outlier hit in the USA, where the big three K-pop companies, SM, JYP and YG, had steadily launched artists to no avail. Of course, BTS changed all that by becoming a household name in North America when their 2018 album “Love Yourself: Tear” topped the Billboard albums chart and their 2020 single “Dynamite” also topped the Billboard Hot 100, a feat never previously accomplished by a Korean artist – not even by Psy, whose “Gangnam Style” stayed at number 2 for two months during October and November of 2012. BTS’s appearances on American television shows and awards ceremonies have become commonplace, even during the pandemic. A quick glance at the Billboard charts in recent years reveals several things. Some of the biggest hit songs of 2019–20, such as “Dance Monkey” by Tone E, “A Bad Guy” by Billie Eilish and “Old Town Road” by Lil Nas X, tell stories about how these unknown artists grabbed headlines and made teenage hearts around the world swoon, whether by busking on the streets (Tone E), producing songs in a modest two-bedroom home with a brother and with no support from music studios (Billie Eilish), or independently writing and promoting songs on social media and streaming channels such as SoundCloud and Instagram (Lil Nas X). All of these songs were sold not only based on their own musical merits but on the successful branding of their behind-the-scenes stories, which caught the

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attention of consumer masses who subsequently promoted them through their social media handle. These songs were surely good, but the stories behind them were perhaps even better. What was the story behind “Dynamite” that enabled BTS to hold the number one single record for three weeks without the support of radio play in North America? Was the BTS song’s ascendence to number one possible just based on musical merit alone? By the mid-2010s, the convergence of social media and streaming music service rolled into one, such as SoundCloud and Instagram, allowed musicians to promote and distribute new audio files as well as making it possible to share new music in ways that effectively challenged the power of traditional media outlets. Any fan could now post their reaction to new songs or partner with other online fans to promote favorite music acts in ways that were obviously impossible just a decade earlier. Reaction videos and parody videos on YouTube, or the creation of viral memes or ringtones with new tracks, at times became even more effective than traditional media promotional mechanisms as ways to promote new releases of unknown or little-known musical acts. In the era of social media, having influential fans on Twitter and Instagram turned out to be a much better way for a Korean group to “conquer North America” than persuading or bribing radio DJs to play its songs. BTS fans certainly did not write number one songs for the group, but these fans are now in a position to help propel BTS to the number one spot in the US charts by actively campaigning for other fans to join the drive for more clicks, likes, posts and retweets. The US ARMY was also independently formed, a grassroots organization that participated in campaigns for almost all of BTS’s activities. Tens of thousands of fans also wrote to talk show hosts, which eventually resulted in BTS receiving free airtime on television and radio and at awards ceremonies. The biggest storyline behind BTS’s rise to fame in the late 2010s was the passion created by its fans through the US ARMY. But the question still remains: Why did hundreds of thousands of Americans – the overwhelming majority of whom did not speak Korean – identify with BTS rather than with any other K-pop act? BTS did put out songs with great dance choreography and attention-grabbing videos, but so did other K-pop groups over the past decade. EXO, for instance, managed by SM Entertainment, featured arguably better dancers and more impressive music videos with much larger budgets. Their catchy songs were also written by hit-making composers and producers. And yet EXO, while popular in China and Korea, was never able to break ground in the US territory the way BTS had during the mid-2010s. BTS’s early songs, before they matured over the past five years, were stock K-pop songs that left few marks on the local culture outside their hard-core fan base. K-pop has long sought to find musicians who can minimize the tension between the vision and the sound embedded in boy or girl idols. BTS’s spectacular rise in the global pop world quite possibly is attributed to the fact that it is not only a visually pleasing group, but also one that pays attention to the music. Although idols themselves, BTS members developed a different approach to idolhood ever since the group first became active in 2013. BTS was different

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from other K-pop groups for three reasons. First, during its critical formative years between 2013, when it debuted its first album “2 Cool 4 Skool,” and 2016 (with the release of “The Most Beautiful Moment in Life” EP series, which finally marked the group’s arrival), BTS never shied away from connecting with its fans through social media. Although most K-pop groups do connect with their fans through their official handles, they are extremely cautious with their use of social media, not wishing to over-incentivize the stalking tendencies of their followers. BTS’s constant communication with its fans – starting from the very moment the group was formed, perhaps because the members were initially underexposed – has been extraordinary. The ability of young fans to stay in touch with their BTS stars through pictures, memes and music that cross continents, languages and cultures has allowed the ARMY fan club to feel like a co-creator of BTS along with Big Hit Entertainment. This special sense of partnership has given the group’s fan club members a particular incentive when campaigning for BTS over the past half-decade. Second, BTS started out by claiming to be a hip-hop group. Although hip-hop has always been an integral genre for K-pop over the past 20 years, no Korean boy group had ever actively embraced the African American music genre the way BTS did during its early years. BTS took on hip-hop not only as a style or a dance choreography, but also as the spirit of “telling stories of underdog experience.” All seven BTS members hailed from Korea’s countryside and nearly all of them came from working-class families. Their first couple of albums, although commercial duds domestically, helped to build a solid fan base outside Korea, where fans came to perceive BTS as the K-pop boy group that told stories many young listeners could identify with. The group’s early songs, such as “No More Dream” (2013) and “N.O.” (2013), were neither party songs nor assembly-line bubblegum tunes but expressions of rebellion against the establishment that tapped into Korean teenagers’ frustrations with Korea’s education system. This energy helped BTS build a solid fan base particularly among young North American and European fans. During this rather dark, formative period, BTS even made a cover song of Kendrick Lamar’s “Swimming Pool” set to Korean lyrics, entitled “Tears of School” (Hakgyo eui nunmool), which replaced Lamar’s original message about persistent alcoholism problems in Black communities with a protest against violence in Korean schools. Third, telling their own stories meant that BTS members themselves had to write their own songs. Although, ironically, BTS’s first number one song, “Dynamite,” was a catchy, upbeat bubblegum pop song written exclusively by two British songwriters, David Stewart and Jessica Agombar, whose affiliation with K-pop was virtually non-existent prior to 2020, many hit songs from 2017 to 2018, such as “Spring Day” (Bom nal), “DNA” and “Fake Love,” each of which featured memorable hooks and gritty rap bridges, were at least partly written by BTS members. RM and Suga, the group’s two rappers, have become accomplished singer-songwriters and producers, who engineer their songs both on stage and behind the scenes for BTS. The accomplished songwriting and producing abilities of the group’s members, which have actually

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matured over the years, have given BTS a musical edge that is not currently shared by any other K-pop groups.

Reading BTS’s non-English lyrics as a case of deterritorialization Will BTS be able to keep developing its incredible worldwide fame into the next decade of the 2020s? With all of the group’s members turning 30 in the first half of the new decade (members Jin and Suga are already in their late 20s), it seems highly unlikely that BTS can continue to make and perform music that will appeal to teenagers for the next decade; no K-pop idol group has ever successfully maintained its oppa budae appeal beyond the age of 30, although it will be interesting to see how BTS members reshape their careers beyond that age limit. Yet even in the USA or the UK, boy groups such as Boyz II Men and One Direction, as well as girl groups such as TLC and Spice Girls, were either obliged to disband or go on extended hiatus around the time when members reached their 30s, and even if they managed to resume their careers, they never again achieved the same peak they had enjoyed as members of idol groups – with the possible exception of Justin Timberlake, whose career started with NSYNC. Whether or not BTS can defy the odds and maintain its stardom as a single group through the 2020s is still to be determined. Nonetheless, BTS is likely to continue to carry out the legacy of K-pop, whether as solo or cluster acts, by helping to further diversify global pop for years to come. Although there is no ethnic diversity among BTS members, all of whom are from South Korea, the group’s listeners around the world are extremely diverse. Latin pop acts that became popular in the USA through stars such as Selena and Enrique Iglesias did register some crossover hits, but their fan base was primarily among Hispanics and the Spanish-speaking population. One thing that BTS has ironically proven, time and again, over the past several years is that pop music can go beyond semantic impositions and figures of representation. For most listeners around the world who cannot speak English and for whom American or British pop have dominated for over half a century, pop music is largely sounds for which language is secondary. Despite the fact that English-language lyrics come across as little more than warbling or less-than-meaningful yelps for these listeners, they can still find songs by Michael Jackson or Kendrick Lamar to be acoustically sublime. Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari pointed out that Kaf ka’s indecipherable warbling constitutes instances of “deterritorialization” that, in the words of Steintrager, “find a force that draws ‘a line of abolition’ across music and ‘a line of escape’ that slices through language” (Steintrager 2018: 10). The non-English–speaking world has long been familiar with the power of pop music to liberate our sensibility from semantic structures and other orders of signification; for better or for worse, it is now America’s turn to open up to the possibility of feeling music beyond linguistic constraints. The fact that it took “Dynamite,” an English-language song completely written by non-Korean songwriters, to be BTS’s first legitimate smash hit

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in the USA does demonstrate that the global pop market’s reliance on English is far from less than dominant. However, BTS’s musical maturity both predates and postdates “Dynamite,” which indicates that BTS’s rise is more than just a social media phenomenon. It is also highly unlikely that BTS will abandon the use of Korean on-stage and off-stage, despite the fandom that had always outgrown the local market even before the group had made its first album. BTS’s popularity among young American listeners may be the first true realization of the possibility that there is a “minor language” beyond English and Spanish are loudly warbled in the global pop world.

Acknowledgement This work was supported by the Core University Program for Korean Studies through the Ministry of Education of the Republic of the Korea and Korean Studies Promotion Service of the Academy of Korean Studies (aks-2016-olu-2250005).

References Chion, M. (1994) Audio-Vision: Sound on Screen, New York: Columbia University Press. Cooper, L. (2020) “Change the Tune: How the Pandemic Affected the Music Industry,” Guardian, 18 December. Goodwin, A. (1992) Dancing in the Distraction Factory: Music Television and Popular Culture, London: Routledge. Kaplan, E.A. (1987) Rocking around the Clock: Music, Television and Consumer Culture, New York: Methuen. KOCCA (2019) Music Industry White Paper [Korean], Seoul: Korea Creative Content Agency. The Numbers (2020) Domestic Movie Theatrical Market Summary 1995 to 2020, Beverly Hills: Nash Information Services. Shevenock, S. (2020) “Young Adults Twice as Likely to Prefer Streaming Music than Consumers Overall,” Morning Consult, 21 January. Steintrager, J. (2018) “Sound Objects: An Introduction,” in J. Steintrager and R. Chow (eds) Sound Objects, Durham: Duke University Press. Tschmuck, P. (2015) “The Recorded Music Market in the U.S.,” Music Business Research, 26 March. Watson, A. (2020) “Global Revenue of the Recorded Music Industry,” Statista.com, 25 August. Witt, S. (2015) How Music Got Free: A Story of Obsession and Invention, New York: Penguin. Yoon, Y. and Shin, Y. (1995) “Popular DJ Kim Ki-Duk Disappears on Vacation” [Korean], Dong-A Ilbo, 19 January.

7 BTS, THE HIGHEST STAGE OF K-POP John Lie

President Donald Trump’s rally in Tulsa, Oklahoma, on 20 June 2020 failed beyond his detractors’ wildest dreams. With over a million registered electronically and expecting perhaps 100,000 supporters to show up, only 6,200 went through the turnstiles at the BOK Center, which can accommodate over 19,000 people. Were radical leftist protesters blocking the entrance, as some in the Trump camp alleged? Did Oklahomans and their neighbors worry about Covid-19 infection? Surely there are numerous factors at play, but a crucial key to the vast gap between the Trump re-election campaign team’s exalted expectation and the cold reality of low turnout was a most unlikely source – K-pop fans and, in particular, BTS (Bangtan Sonyeondan, “bangtan” meaning defense and “sonyeondan” young men’s group, and aka Bangtan Boys) fan club called ARMY (Adorable Representative MC for Youth). The phenomenal success of BTS is irrefutable. In 2020 alone the standout group made the cover of many of the world’s leading magazines, ranging from TIME in the United States to Shūkan Asahi in Japan (for data in this paragraph, see e.g. the special issue of Shūkan Asahi 2020). In August 2020 its single, “Dynamite,” was number one on the Billboard’s singles chart – only the second time an Asian act had climbed to the top of the singles chart – and its June 2020 online concert made the Guinness Book of World Records as the livestreaming musical concert that garnered the largest audience. The initial public offering of BTS’s parent company, Big Hit Entertainment, topped the staggering sum of US$4 billion – a sum all the more remarkable because BTS remains the agency’s sole successful act. Within South Korea, its standing can be gauged by the surprising news that the previously recalcitrant government allowed military draft deferment for BTS members. They are the proverbial rock stars who can shake society to the core. BTS’s longstanding popularity can be gauged by its standing as number one for over 180 straight weeks on the popular music trade journal Billboard’s DOI: 10.4324/9781003102489-7

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Social 50 that ranks the most active musicians on the leading social media. At over six billion tweets in 2019, K-pop was the most tweeted popular music topic, and BTS was the most tweeted popular music act. The aforementioned BTS fan club ARMY claims 48 million unique accounts (active fans number in hundreds of thousands), including adherents around the world. From their preferred perch in Twitter – one thing they shared with President Trump – they meander across the digital landscape and make their presence known in Instagram, Facebook, TikTok and other popular digital hangouts. They are not mere truants, however. They not only engage in involuted discussions of all matters BTS and K-pop but have also sought to spread the word. The social media, as any self-respecting marketer knows by now, are not just cat videos and idle gossip but big business. To get a sense of BTS’s commercial impact, it was involved in ten times out of “101 times brands went viral” in 2019. BTS, in other words, spells big business. In summary, as Raisa Bruner (2020) put it in TIME, “BTS isn’t just the biggest K-pop act on the charts. They’ve become the biggest band in the world – full stop.” In this line of thinking, as BBC quipped, BTS is the Beatles of the twenty-first century ( Jackson and Browne 2018). How can we make sense of BTS’s runaway success and influence? To be sure, there is a null hypothesis – the self-evident excellence and greatness of BTS as musicians and performers. Indeed, few would question the vocal prowess and the choreographic virtuosity of the group, or the physical and personal attractiveness of its seven members. Skeptics who spout contrarian opinions on the Internet face a veritable tsunami of refutations and condemnations. For its legions of fans, BTS’s unique talent and unquestionable allure are so obvious to render any commentary or explanation superfluous. With apologies to ARMY, however, BTS did not emerge ex nihilo but from the fertile soil of the South Korean popular music genre called K-pop. At the very least, no one can question the chronological priority of the rise of K-pop and the formation of BTS. The purpose of this chapter is to explore the broad background of K-pop and how BTS became at once the disruptive innovation and the representative exemplar of South Korea’s best-known export industry. In so doing, the chapter will also touch on ARMY’s outsized influence not only for BTS but also for the wider world.

The genesis of K-pop K-pop emerged in the 1990s and coalesced in the course of the first decade of the twenty-first century (see the growing scholarly literature on K-pop, including Lie 2015; Choi and Maliangkay 2015; S. Kim 2018; G. Kim 2019; Lee and Jin 2019). Needless to say, the search for origins is fraught with disputes and uncertainties, but we should not assert uninterrupted continuities from the considerable charms of South Korean popular music in the 1980s – dominated as it was by slow ballads in a genre called kayo or trot. K-pop marked a decisive break from the history of South Korean popular music by superseding Japanese influences and decisively incorporating African-American elements in US popular music.

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From being a national or regional, popular music, K-pop would be at first a regional powerhouse and then a global sensation (this section draws on Lie 2015). More prosaically, we can look to the primary organizational forces of the genre called K-pop, or the big three K-pop agencies – SM Entertainment, JYP Entertainment and YG Entertainment. What would become the three dominant K-pop agencies were all founded in the mid-1990s. In efforts to counter the Asian currency crisis, President Kim Dae-Jung’s administration instituted anti-monopoly measures that vitiated the economic power and concentration of conglomerate-dominated industries, including that of the culture industry and therefore popular music as well. The weakening of oligopolistic power provided much needed space for the start-up popular music agencies to survive and thrive. Yet the opportunity structure alone is insufficient to make sense of the rise of K-pop. For instance, how did South Korean musicians, so to speak, catch up with the latest and the coolest in the world of popular music? The expansion of the Korean diaspora in the United States and the influx there and elsewhere in the West of students from South Korea had created rapid and instantaneous flow of information and skills across the Pacific, including that of popular music. What had been a national popular music that was under the influence of Japanese popular music – owing in no small part to Japanese colonial rule – turned decisively away from the old and embraced the new, namely United States, and especially African-American influenced, popular music. The move was crucial, as Japanese-influenced, Asian-sounding popular music would have been a hard sell outside of East Asia. The convergence with the world industry leaders, especially the popular music of the United States, was a critical condition of possibility for K-pop’s transnational success. This cultural turn drew on the political democratization of South Korea in the late 1980s that had liberalized cultural expression. The rapid industrialization from the late 1960s had generated a large urban middle class, or the social basis of the leisure society with ample demands for popular music. These political-economic developments made possible not only the information flow but a surplus of talent, often trained in the United States, in a wide range of pursuits related to popular music, ranging from composition to choreography. All these developments occurred in a culture propitious to creating musical talent. Technological transformations, such as personalized music reproduction system and the diffusion of karaoke, rendered popular music as one of the prime sources of entertainment. That is, South Korea had a large reserve army of potential popular music stars by the late 1990s. Nevertheless, however favorable for the popular music industry, all these trends should have produced merely a vibrant national industry. After all, many industrialized countries are replete with knock-offs of the global industry leader United States and its latest and coolest trends in popular music (this is not to deny the considerable endogenous influences and achievements in every country that makes national popular music, whether of Germany or Gambia, distinct and worthy in their own right – it is simply that they become hard sells in the export market, which is not to say that it is impossible). But the larger point is

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that popular music has been resolutely national; even in the case of the United States, the focus of the agencies and stars is on the domestic market and their international success is very much an afterthought. As noted, however wonderful the national popular music, very few acts make it outside of their own country. This is all the more striking in the case of East Asia, in which distinct looks and sounds – however influenced by the latest trends from the United States and elsewhere – would have rendered them as outliers in the wealthy markets of Europe and North America. It is a simple empirical fact that almost no Asian musicians have made an inroad in the West, and the few exceptions, such as Kyū Sakamoto (who was the first Asian to make it to the top of the Billboard singles chart) or Psy, were one-hit wonders. Indeed, far-sighted analysts in the 1980s may have foreseen the spectacular success of Samsung semiconductors or Hyundai automobiles in the twenty-first century, but I am confident that no one prognosticated the global success of South Korean popular music then. As I mentioned, the dominant popular music genre in South Korea in the 1980s was kayo or trot (usually slow love ballads), hardly likely to tickle the fancies of listeners outside of East Asia, and especially of the large youth market. What made K-pop possible as a global phenomenon was the export orientation of the leading K-pop agencies, the advent of the digital revolution, a new organizational model, a new business model and a new genre that the agencies forged and crystallized from the mid-1990s to the middle of the first decade of the twenty-first century. First is export orientation. The very ambition to target foreign markets has been an unusual feature of the South Korean popular music industry. Although there is a long pre-history, dating as early as the Japanese colonial period, the explicit goal resonated with the country’s longstanding commitment to growth through export (Lie 1998), which was reinforced in the aftermath of the Asian currency crisis. It was as if the national mandate and slogan was, export or die. Rather than world domination, as it were, the initial goal was much more modest. For instance, Lee Soo-Man, the founder of SM Entertainment, sought to focus on Japan in the 1990s and trained performers to speak native-level Japanese and to groom them as Japanese stars. Needless to say, the modest goal seemed wildly ambitious at the time, but Lee would spawn stars, such as BoA and Dong Bang Shin Ki (TVXQ), who had enthusiastic followings in Japan and elsewhere in Asia. Lee and his peers’ immediate tactic was to target the large youth market, and the preferred genre was idol pop music, which was then, as now, popular in Japan (and a growing presence not only in South Korea but also in the rest of East Asia). The accidental popularity of H.O.T., a boy idol group, in China in the late 1990s alerted Lee and other industry leaders to consider China and markets elsewhere beyond Japan. Soon the focus shifted well beyond Japan and China to around the world, though it is important to note that K-pop’s primary export market until BTS has been Japan. Be that as it may, K-pop’s export orientation was a signal feature from its genesis, and was deeply rooted in the politicaleconomic culture of South Korea.

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Second is the digital revolution. The long history of popular music in the West – from selling sheet music composed in Tin Pan Alley in the late nineteenth century to the sale of records in the twentieth century – was long the province of analog technology and one that perforce stressed the sonic dimension. The first wave of the digital revolution in the 1980s ushered in an era of music videos, with the attendant accentuation of the visual dimension of popular music, and the new medium of dissemination, from CD to MP3 to the Internet. By the twenty-first century, there is no question that the digital revolution was fundamental and foundational. The consumption of popular music decisively becomes a product of the digital revolution. Consider only the dominance of music videos and the smartphone as perhaps the principal medium of dissemination and reproduction. K-pop embraced the visual and the Internet, relying on YouTube among other media to disseminate its music videos. Here the advantage of lateness, or of being a latecomer, helped the upstart agencies to focus on the digital revolution as the main way to promote K-pop. Similar to the export orientation discussed above, the embrace of the digital revolution was facilitated by President Kim Dae-Jung’s administration and its commitment to build a national digital infrastructure, making South Korea a “connected” society and a front runner in the digital revolution of everyday life. Third is a new organizational model. The royal road to popular music stardom was long well established. An act would begin, for instance, as a garage band doing local gigs, eventually cut a demo, release a single by signing with an entertainment agency and a record company, seek to promote its song through radio stations, and perhaps to do a national and eventually an international tour. K-pop upends the received model by recruiting promising talent, training them for five to ten years and debuting them often as a group. Needless to say, there have been idol groups in the West that anticipate, more or less, the K-pop model. Consider only the Spice Girls or One Direction, both instances of manufactured pop music. Yet in the world of K-pop, there has been basically only one model of topdown training and formation. There are acts that follow the prevailing Western model, called indie music in South Korea, but they are resolutely not considered part of K-pop. Given its export orientation, for instance, an agency would instruct the talent not only in singing and dancing but also in foreign languages. In contrast to the bottom-up, largely self-made acts of the received model, K-pop relies on an extensive division of labor – a song might be composed by a Swede, fashion design by an Italian, choreography by a Japanese and so on – in which K-pop performers have almost no autonomy. In the West, popular musicians are artists; in South Korea, K-pop stars are performers, or for its detractors, puppets. Be that as it may, K-pop represents a new way of generating stars and hits. It is au fond a form of the culture industry that generates idol groups and idol pop music geared to the large market of young (and some older) listeners. Fourth is a new business model. Relying on the digital means of dissemination, K-pop agencies have sought to generate revenues less from the sale of CDs or downloads but more from concerts, sponsorships and selling paraphernalia to

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fans. Unlike the dominant Western model of popular music, in which CD sales and downloads though increasingly superseded by subscriptions, such as Spotify, the South Korean model supersedes the received way of generating revenue by selling music. In seeking profit from non-music products, the new business model has stressed the significance of fan clubs. To be sure, popular music cannot be told apart from enthusiastic fandom, but K-pop has taken it to a new level. The necessity is in large part financial; fan club meetings with K-pop stars – such as a session of doing high-fives – not only spawn support but also generate much-needed revenue. The outsized importance of fan clubs in K-pop is not an accident, but a constitutive part of its strategy. To be sure, it is the case that in the hitherto largest export market of Japan, K-pop agencies have relied on the sale of analog products, such as CDs and DVDs, and there have been new efforts to generate revenues from downloads and subscriptions around the world. Yet we cannot deny the innovative nature of the K-pop business model that follows the logic of the post-thing economy, part and parcel of the digital revolution. The final element is musical and aesthetic. K-pop came to be equated with idol pop music, drawing on the latest trends of African-American–influenced popular music that stresses backbeats, fast rhythm and so on. The dominant form was ensemble singing and dancing. As noted, visual elements were emphasized – the newfound stress on the body and its beauty, as well as on fashion and dance. Put simply, no more round-faced idols of the H.O.T. era in the 1990s, but the domination of angular-faced, chiseled bodies of any K-pop group by the 2010s. In addition, K-pop acts provided a kinder and gentler version of rap and hip-hop or more sex-tinged lyrics and representation of leading US popular musicians, such as Lady Gaga. Formal instruction on fan interaction capped the customerfriendly nature of K-pop stars. Put simply, K-pop cut a distinct figure and style in terms of both sonic and visual dimensions. Indeed, its music and dance became widely and easily identified around the world, even inviting copycat groups and parodies – a sure sign of K-pop’s reach and influence. It would be a fallacy of misplaced concreteness to assert an unchanging, essential structure to K-pop, however. It did not emerge fully formed from an act of parthenogenesis, but rather has been evolving from emulating competition and gauging and responding to fan reception and reaction. After all, K-pop did not arise out of an artistic vision, whether of an impresario like Lee Soo-Man or its performers who by and large faithfully execute their training and instruction. Rather, it is a contingent product of myriad forces, and one that is attuned to changing consumer needs and demands. The big three K-pop entertainment agencies sought to promote K-pop by avoiding controversies, whether aesthetic or political. Idol pop had at its heart something akin to a teeny-bopper romance aesthetic, and much effort was expended to ensure mainstream tastes in looks and lyrics. K-pop was therefore resolutely non-political; the point was to generate revenue, not promote an artistic vision, as I noted. Political or ethical statements may very well alienate potential fans and sponsors. Too much allusion or representation of sex and drug may turn off fans in Japan and the rest of Asia.

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The kinder, gentler version of US popular music made K-pop at once accessible and anodyne to its detractors. Until the advent of BTS and ARMY, it was hard to envision K-pop acts or fans becoming exercised by politics or current events. To be sure, K-pop has been changing constantly even before the BTS revolution. Consider only the syrupy, bubblegum songs and amateurish dance moves of H.O.T. in “Candy” (1996) to the harder-edged, sleek and perfectionist sheen of EXO’s 2015 hit “Love Me Right”; there are family resemblances, to be sure, but few would mistake which is the more progressive, refined version that was born of constant tinkering to make songs, dances and performers more attracting to fans, who themselves are changing. Given the volatile and fickle nature of the youth popular music market, there is absolutely no reason to believe that the current K-pop formula will remain the same. As consumers move on, so will K-pop agencies and performers. The classic form of K-pop that was forged by the big three agencies had crystallized by the middle of the first decade of the twenty-first century. Some groups, such as Super Junior and Wonder Girls, began to make waves in Northeast and Southeast Asia. What was even more striking was that by the mid-2010s K-pop aficionados could be found throughout the world, including the Americas and Europe. K-pop became something of a global sensation.

K-pop disrupted Nevertheless, without discounting the success and popularity of K-pop in the mid-2010s, it is fair to say that that version of K-pop had significant and severe limitations. Most obviously, K-pop’s inroads in the profitable markets of North America and Europe were minimal. Perhaps up to a half of its revenues came from Japan. It would be easily enough to laud K-pop’s achievements by the mid2010s, but we would be remiss to consider it as a major presence in the leading markets of the world, especially in the United States. What accounted for the limited successes of K-pop in the West? In part it would be easy to chalk it up to ethnoracial preference. The fact is that no major Asian popular music stars – save for occasional mavericks, such as Psy, a one-hit wonder, at least thus far – had made a lasting mark in the world of Western popular music. Beyond the bamboo barrier, so to speak, lies a barrage of criticisms made by casual Western observers of K-pop. They center on the lack of authenticity and autonomy that stems from the new organizational model of K-pop. Put simply, K-pop stars are less artists, as Western popular musicians are called, and more performing robots. That is, K-pop talent does not compose or, for that matter, has much of an input in artistic decisions that range from what one wears to what one says in public. What may be endearing to some fans, such as K-pop stars’ penchant for being polite to fans and the public, may merely denote their lack of individuality and authenticity – the absence of a soul, so to speak. K-pop had long been a kinder, gentler version of US popular music, but the timidity of K-pop stars pointed to a key ingredient for any successful popular musician –

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individuality and autonomy, and therefore authenticity (Barker and Taylor 2007). However well executed, then, K-pop stars’ lack of conception – artistic power, imagination and originality, individuality and authenticity – grates the ingrained value orientation of many Western popular music fans. Idol music, to be sure, has its place in the West, but it does not dominate the youth market as it does in East Asia, in contrast. Indie music in South Korea, for instance, is very much a marginal phenomenon. In short, K-pop strikes many fans in the West as slick but fake, interesting but inauthentic. The perfectionist sheen that excites K-pop adherents may turn off many Western fans who would prefer to see the blood, sweat and tears of artists baring and expressing their soul and emotion. BTS upended the received criticisms against K-pop (the most sustained discussion of BTS is by Y. Kim 2019). In this regard, it is no accident that BTS is represented by Big Hit Entertainment, and not by one of the three K-pop entertainment agencies that had dominated the industry. Put differently, as a start-up, it was in a position to subvert and supersede the receive formula of K-pop in the mid-2010s. The ingrained habits of conception and training that have dominated the top three agencies did not encumber BTS, which had the latitude to express its individuality and uniqueness unimaginable for a K-pop act from the regnant agencies. BTS debuted in 2013, precisely when K-pop was reaching wider audiences around the world. It violated most of the received tenets of K-pop organization, most obviously in the form of its members having artistic inputs and avoiding the overtrained and over-regulated regimen that K-pop stars in the top three agencies experienced. Although its music and dance were very much in the dominant K-pop genre, it is fair to say that BTS injected a fresh dose of individuality and authenticity in the over-controlled world of K-pop. Not coincidentally, BTS has dug deeper into the rap and hip-hop that are omnipresent but routinized and watered-down in mainstream K-pop. BTS is something of a chimera, a hip-hop idol group, though the hip-hop element was probably most noticeable in their first single, “2 Cool 4 Skool” (2013). Put differently, it was closer to the indie music – very much an underground phenomenon in South Korea – than the manufactured K-pop of the three major entertainment agencies. Yet BTS had the vocal and dancing chops that were often sorely lacking in independent acts. There is another dimension worth a brief discussion. BTS has accentuated the importance of fan club, in part by avoiding anodyne messages and interactions and by embracing a strong message, such as “Love Yourself.” The very name of the group was taken to signify that the group would protect individuality and diversity, and in so doing embrace differences and deviances. To be sure, a similar message could be found elsewhere, most obviously in Lady Gaga’s “Be Yourself.” However, it is not an accident that the group’s non-normative origin as an Asian band exemplified those who deviated from the normative White culture. Without engaging in wide-ranging hermeneutics of BTS’s message, the salient point here is that BTS’s message embodies the very individuality and authenticity that the group seeks to project. In other words, there is something of an ideological

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core to BTS fandom, something that was lacking in all previous K-pop groups. One of the common themes in BTS fans’ description of BTS – on why they love the group – is its uniqueness and distinctiveness; BTS for many of the group’s ardent fans is sui generis and some resist facile equation of the group, or its background, in the world of K-pop. It is not an accident, therefore, that perhaps the largest representation of ARMY is in the United States, a market hitherto lukewarm to K-pop. In this regard, though BTS is undoubtedly popular in Japan, the ARMY chapter there pales in significance in terms of the US chapter that is active and outspoken. Nevertheless, there is undoubtedly a cultural convergence in the youth cultures (and older populations as well) across Asia to the Western norm that valorized individuality and diversity. In this regard, South Korea hardly fits the old Confucian stereotype of valuing the family and the collective and respecting the elderly and patriarchs. The assertion of individuality and the protection of difference are no longer American, or Western, virtues but ones that appeal to not only a majority in the advanced industrial societies but also many in the Global South. Consider, for instance, how BTS became embroiled in one scandal after another in the latter half of the 2010s. Most famously, one of the band members wore a T-shirt depicting the image of an atomic-bomb-caused mushroom cloud that suggested the legitimacy of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The resulting brouhaha led, for instance, to the cancellation of a planned BTS appearance on a Japanese television show. But the larger import of the incident was that BTS is not controlled like other K-pop groups, whose every action and utterance seem to be planned in advance. The very existence of a scandal of this sort proves BTS as an ensemble of individuals with distinct opinions who in turn are not afraid to voice them. Individuality and authenticity, in other words, triumph and generate greater enthusiasm and support of ARMY and other BTS fans. Put differently, the top three K-pop agencies would not have brooked political statements or unplanned pronouncements; BTS was free to do so, and even its seeming mistakes generated enthusiasm and loyalty of its ARMY. This, then, is one decisive break that BTS has made against the staid, risk-averse culture of K-pop. How does ARMY go from cultivating cult-like devotion with commercial implications to becoming a political player? Why did they intervene in the Trump re-election campaign, for instance? BTS fans are not passive automatons. Intense online exchanges are not just about recherché debates on who has the most adorable hair style but also to spread the word – most importantly their favorite group in particular and K-pop in general. In so doing, some of them are acutely aware of outsiders’ criticisms – such as that K-pop has illegitimately appropriated Black music – and ongoing social, cultural and political topics seep into their chats and tweets. Furthermore, it is not just about words but also deeds. Gifts to charity and non-profit organizations with good causes have been ongoing for years. As noted, the politics of “Love Yourself ” resonates with the protection and promotion of diversity and marginality, including anti-racist politics

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that would render ARMY averse to the Trump re-election campaign. It is but one click away to generate a minor seismic shock in the world of US politics. That is, ARMY tends, like BTS itself, to demonstrate their individuality and authenticity. Far from being mindless fans of an idol group, they resonate with and react to the core beliefs, such as love and respect for individuality and diversity, that BTS seems to be promoting. ARMY is therefore unlike other K-pop fan clubs. The individuality and expressiveness of BTS goes hand in hand with the distinctiveness and expressiveness of ARMY. To be sure, some fans who exhibit cult-like devotions also engage in unfortunate, cult-like acts, such as hounding naysayers and critics of BTS in particular and K-pop in general. Needless to say, the etymological root of fan is from fanaticism, and there is at times a thin line that separates laudable from despicable statements and actions. In summary, BTS seeks to be more than an idol group, or a successful instance of a new K-pop group, but to disrupt and reinvent K-pop. Its fan club in turn strives to be more than hero- and idol-worshippers. In injecting doses of individuality and authenticity to the perfectionist model of K-pop, BTS has catapulted itself to become a global sensation. It is fair to say that the top three K-pop agencies were unlikely – perhaps even unable – to break decisively into the Western markets as their ingrained habits of thought and action were unlikely to enable their acts to perform individuality and authenticity. Not being beholden to the three big agencies, but drawing on their successful formula, Big Hit Entertainment and BTS were able to break the bamboo barrier to make it around the world. BTS is, then, the latest and the best in the genre called K-pop. In spite of disruptions and innovations, it would be difficult to say that the group has transcended or superseded the world of K-pop. After all, it seems hyperbolic to call BTS the Beatles of the twenty-first century. There is no Lennon-McCartney hit-making dynamo within BTS, and not even a George Harrison. Nevertheless, it would be myopic to deny BTS’s considerable innovation and achievement as of 2020.

Conclusion BTS is by far the most successful act to come out of K-pop thus far. Their unparalleled success has led the top three agencies to emulate the group and in so doing to revise their received, hitherto highly successful formula. Blackpink – from YG Entertainment, one of the big three K-pop agencies – exemplifies the recent swerve, in which the women of Blackpink reveal considerable individuality. However, it is fair to say that Blackpink is far from reaching the level of BTS in terms of individuality or popularity (Hunter-Tilney 2020). Far from expressing their own opinions, the women of Blackpink remain ensconced in the risk-averse bubble that K-pop promotes. They also do not make artistic inputs, much less compose lyrics and song, and therefore remain very much performers, rather than artists. One does not need to be a feminist to wonder about its hyper-feminized

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self-presentation. Be that as it may, there is ingrained conservatism to the three agencies that have been in operation for a quarter-century or so, and led by the charismatic founder-owner in each instance to boot. Hence, the most likely source of new disruption and innovation in the world of South Korean popular music is likely to come from a start-up entertainment agency, such as Big Hit Entertainment, which promotes a group influenced by but not controlled by the regnant K-pop formula of the big three agencies. Needless to say, it would be a mug’s game to predict the future of K-pop, but it is certain that the latest revision would move away from the receive formula and explore the brave new world of a more expressive and therefore more authentic formulation of the received K-pop formula. Making inroads into the world’s largest popular music markets in North America and Europe would require innovation and presentation that emulates BTS more than those produced by the three big agencies. As of 2020, however, there is no question that BTS represents the latest and highest stage of K-pop.

References Barker, H. and Taylor, Y. (2007) Faking It: The Quest for Authenticity in Popular Music, New York: W.W. Norton. Bruner, R. (2020) “Entertainer of the Year: BTS,” TIME, December. Choi, J. and Maliangkay, R. (2015) K-pop – The International Rise of the Korean Music Industry, London: Routledge. Hunter-Tilney, L. (2020) “Blackpink’s The Album is Well-Manufactured, Armour-Plated Pop,” Financial Times, 3 October. Jackson, M. and Browne, K. (2018) “BTS and K-pop: How to Be the Perfect Fan,” BBC, 9 October. Kim, G. (2019) From Factory Girls to K-pop Idol Girls, Lanham: Lexington Books. Kim, S. (2018) K-pop Live, Stanford: Stanford University Press. Kim, Y. (2019) BTS the Review, Seoul: RH Korea. Lee, H.J. and Jin, D.Y. (2019) K-pop Idols, Lanham: Lexington Books. Lie, J. (1998) Han Unbound: The Political Economy of South Korea, Stanford: Stanford University Press. Lie, J. (2015) K-pop: Popular Music, Cultural Amnesia and Economic Innovation in South Korea, Oakland: University of California Press. Shūkan Asahi (2020) “Special Issue on BTS,” 4 December.

8 BTS, ALTERNATIVE MASCULINITY AND ITS DISCONTENTS Gooyong Kim

To better understand BTS’s global success, this chapter explores the group’s popularity from critical perspectives. There are many factors behind the phenomenon of popularity such as digital presence, clever songwriting, high production value, dramatic visuals and its avid fandom, ARMY. However, the chapter scrutinizes BTS’s visuality of masculinity in an effort to understand its marketing strategy since audiences nowadays tend to pay more attention to a song’s production quality, especially visual performances than lyrics. To date, the existing debate has particularly been on a committed, ever-evolving fandom and the group’s sympathetic messages. As per TIME’s announcement for the Entertainment of the Year for its positive message of kindness, connection and self-acceptance, the biggest factor is “the comfort and hope” in BTS’s music (K. Kim 2020). In turn, by “BTS revolution” ( J. Lee 2020), the fandom challenges the hegemonic discourse on female audiences: While taking up BTS’s open-ended messages on issues such as inequality and anxieties under the current socioeconomic system ( J. Lee 2019), fans engage in various direct actions for a cause, like Black Lives Matter movement. Taking on BTS’s elaborate, multi-layered narratives open to fans’ authorial participation (M. Lee 2019; Y. Yoon 2019), they actualize the group’s positive messages in their everyday lives. As K-pop’s most successful case of the “female-friendly model of masculinity” (Ainslie 2017: 610), BTS’s visuality warrants a critical examination of its marketing strategy. The members become an object of fandom’s fervent desire as emancipatory masculinity (Hong 2020). The discourse on BTS’s alternative masculinities revolves around the members’ feminized appearances, grooming practices and emotional expressions (Daily Vox 2018; Bennett 2020). However, as to its contribution to changing the dominant gender relations, empirical research suggests that the current assessments are hyperbolic since the audiences DOI: 10.4324/9781003102489-8

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are ambivalent or take it as a matter of entertainment or fantasy (Lee et al. 2020; Putri and Mintarsih 2020). Especially, it is asserted that BTS’s soft masculinity perpetuates hegemonic racial hierarchy by being “subsumed under the stereotypical images of Asian men” in the United States (Song and Velding 2020: 16). So far, there are a few studies that examine the topic from structural perspectives. BTS’s success has been analyzed from business and mass communication perspectives. Utilizing the communicative power of online media, BTS and its handling agency have excelled “sophisticated consumer-oriented strategies” to promote contents (Parc and Kim 2020: 32). The agency has promoted each member as an embodiment of a fantasy that evolves around BTS Universe, the master narrative of self-realization and resiliency in the current, deteriorating living conditions (Y. Yoon 2019). In the Universe, BTS offers positive messages for a better world, by therapeutic narratives of overcoming the hardship and becoming better, self-loving individuals. However, these studies do not explain how BTS has successfully marketed American audiences, when lyrics are not easy to convey meanings due to an outstanding language barrier. While popular songs generally play a role in reinforcing an existing ideology, promoting ingroup cohesion and maintaining a morale among like-minded people (Denisoff 1983), they can be limited to recruit new fans if there is a language barrier. Focusing on BTS’s thematic changes around the time of American debut, this chapter critically analyzes its marketing strategy reflected in different visualities. BTS’s debut concept of a socially conscious idol in June 2013 revolved around hardcore hip-hop rebellion. Representing hegemonic masculinity in its choreography, lyrics, images, outfits and settings of music videos, especially misogynistic “War of Hormone,” BTS combined gangster rap’s “thug life” images with a message of hopes, which did not work for their different thematic orientations. Due to its subpar market performance, BTS expanded its genres and messages in sophisticate storylines and multi-layered narratives to find an overseas market with an album, “The Most Beautiful Moment in Life,” in 2015. It is when BTS started to pay careful attention to female fans’ concerns, and in turn visualize alternative masculinities. However, due to diplomatic disputes with China where BTS tried to market in 2016, the group made a US debut with “DNA” at the 2017 American Music Award. Compared to its earlier music, BTS’s audio-visual characteristics have changed drastically: Its members’ well-groomed androgynous faces are accentuated by their physical virtuosity, and softened sound emphasizes melodies and lyrical messages. Strong visual elements are extensively employed as an essential part of its musical themes, storylines and narratives. With narcissistic “Love Yourself ” series, BTS claims global popularity. Appropriating Western cultural references, such as Herman Hesse’s Demian, Gerry’s “You’ll Never Walk Alone” (1963), the jazz-rock group Blood, Sweat and Tears (1967), Justin Bieber’s “Love Yourself ” (2015) and a tribute to Michael Jackson in “Dynamite” (2020), BTS has appealed to dominant cultural tastes. This chapter will argue that BTS’s visualities of alternative masculinities embody its strategic calculation to market American female audiences. Or, it is a K-pop version of neoliberal masculinity

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that technologies of body are closely related to a certain masculine ideal for the workplace (Gregory 2016). In contrast to Rain’s unsuccessful American debut that emulated the hegemonic masculinity, BTS’s feminized masculinity can be seen as a neoliberal embellishment that becomes “spice, seasoning that can liven up the dull dish that is mainstream white culture” (hooks 1992: 21).

Alternative masculinity as merchant of fantasy In cutthroat competition of K-pop industry, marketing a right message at a right time is a pure work of art that has many contingencies and risks. By market fetishism of differentiation, the industry manufactures an array of concepts so that a wider range of audiences can try and adopt a favorite personality/lifestyle, like the cute, the prankster, the cool rebel, the dancer, the songwriter, the outsider and so on. As a latecomer, Big Hit Entertainment, BTS’s agency, took a risk of being a maverick who capitalizes on an anxiety of being insecure in the market, by promoting a message of hope in the youth’s determination to be successful and sincere toward others (Romano 2019). In a debut song “No More Dream” that criticizes Korea’s education zealot, BTS marketed the young generation. Seen as an idol who can be relatable and dependent upon, BTS has provided comforting and encouraging messages (Han 2018). Indicated in the documentary Burn the Stage (2018), they build an appearance that fans deem relatable, by showing various, mundane moments of life experiences. Like a “made-up person, living out, or actualizing a particular temporary fiction, or moving through the life course to realize a particular larger narrative” (Featherstone 2010: 198) in a Western consumer culture, BTS embodies themes of hard-working, honesty, humbleness, self-improvement and sincerity that strike an ethical code of neoliberalism. Visuality in K-pop idols stems from the industry’s imperative to maximize commercial profit by assembling various components to represent aspirational lives, experiences and self-images of an ideal figure. Idols in a Western pop culture become a hyper-real condition of fans’ desires and fantasies (Sandvoss 2005). Like an affective commodity that makes fans create close emotional associations with their lives, experiences, needs and desires (Grossberg 1992), conventional K-pop is replete with fantasy images that aim to satisfy audiences’ desires for mobility or escapism, by hiding everyday strife, discrimination, exploitation and other problems through distraction. Like a process that hyper-reality becomes reality (Baudrillard 2004), while consuming a glossy heteroglossia of fantastic images, fans may become conformative. K-pop constructs a fantasy world by “its own distinct syntheses of sound and image to produce a utopian and communitarian aesthetics” (Laurie 2016: 214). As a popular, yet ephemeral utopia that implicates a “transformational work on social and political anxieties and fantasies” ( Jameson 1979: 141), K-pop emits a sense of relief and hope amidst anxieties and tensions in people’s everyday lives. Since images, as a reconfiguration of social meanings, seduce individuals to adopt manufactured needs or fantasies, individuals may “conjure away the real with

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the signs of the real” with a false sense of liberation from the realm of the social and the political (Baudrillard 2004: 33). With an ample affective power, images are not representative, but they can exert strong bio-political power (Lazzarato 2007) and project “the invention, capture or configuration of new world (of affects, beliefs, perceptions, memories, habits, etc.)” (Toscano 2007: 86). Simulated by mythical images of empowerment, glamor, freedom, independence, rebellion and success, idols’ corporeal and emotional signs cultivate audiences with various desires (Galbraith and Karlin 2012). For example, projecting different spatial environments into one virtual space that engenders surreal experiences in “Blood, Sweat and Tears,” BTS amplifies the impression of fantasy, where audiences enter into a kind of theatrical “liminal state” that “the real and the fictional, the performative and the imaginary” are blurry (Fischer-Lichte 2008: 94). As a non-threatening masculinity, audiences enjoy playing with BTS’s fantastical masculinity. BTS members’ appealing appearances, especially their feminine faces with fair, porcelain skins, emotional vulnerability, sweet smiles and colorful hairs, accompanied by delicate and powerful choreography, allow audiences to satisfy complex, often contradictory, female desires for intimacy. For example, in “I Need U,” one of BTS’s earliest hits, audiences are invited to privately examine the idols’ agonies of wanting love in personal spaces of bedrooms or bathrooms. Demanding desperate attention, the idols keep singing, “I need you girl. Why am I in love alone, why am I hurting alone?” By not showing their love interest in the video, BTS keeps asking for love and care, which in turn imbue them with a fantasy of being BTS’s lovers. Female (sexual) drives are one of the main dynamics behind the global success of K-pop male idols. It is female fans’ desires more than the idols’ attractive appearances per se that drive the fervent K-pop fandom (Oh 2015). While the gendered division of affective labor is often taken for granted, the global success of BTS warrants reconsideration of the commodification of male intimacy. As “symptomatic of a reconfiguration and a continuation of unequal gender relations” in the face of women’s increasing economic, political and social power, a new masculinity in popular music has been promoted to satisfy women’s affective demands and needs (de Boise 2014: 231). BTS’s global success has popularized the commodification of the male body that caters to (female) audiences, whose tastes and fantasies are also structured and legitimated by the bio-political nature of neoliberalism. As an apex of the “carnivalesque celebration of difference, a shiny world of escapism and a highly participatory cultural practice enacted through digital media” (Fuhr 2016: 10), BTS has perfected K-pop industry’s strategic marketing of highly trained idols by providing audiences with a means to invest psychological attachment and experience a vicarious sense of self-empowerment. K-pop is an exemplar of “overlapping webs of relentlessly mediated top-down promotion and bottom-up interpretations” that encourage idols to be “deployed as a vehicle reflecting a variety of interests and desires” (Epstein 2015: 36).

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With a performative, fleeting homoeroticism in music videos, BTS gives fans an imaginary sense of overcoming rigid gender relations. The effeminate and sophisticated masculine features augment connotations of homosexuality in music videos. Especially, in the “Fake Love” music video, a visuality of homosociality is developed to the extent that it dances on the border of homosexuality. Given the strong material structure of heteronormativity in reality, K-pop’s homosexual performativity serves an imaginary satisfaction by a repeated, narcissistic exhibition of consumption and conspicuous commodities, which in turn may reinforce the perceived inevitability of the status quo. A mere alternative articulation of masculinity does not automatically challenge heteronormativity, but it is an “aesthetic reworking of gendered power dynamics” (De Boise 2014: 238). K-pop male idols’ alternative gender/sexual performances have been deployed as a fan service, not as a genuine expression of their queer identities (Oh 2015; M. Lee 2019). The recent trend of soft masculinity in Korean popular culture does not pose a threat to the hegemonic masculinities in the contemporary Korean symbolic order of representation (Elfving-Hwang 2011). Rather than a particular kind of masculinity becomes hegemonic in a given spatial-temporal condition, it is the “institutions of the neoliberal order that are hegemonic” (Besnier et al. 2018: 841). An alternative masculinity of BTS – institutionally manufactured in the neoliberal order – is equally hegemonic. If anything about the representation of BTS’s masculinity, it is a pluralistic expression of ideal manhood in the age of digital media that enables audiences to participate in the co-construction of celebrity as a projection of their fantasies in gender relations. As a strategic response to growing fan activities online, BTS has been successful in capitalizing on an assumed female gaze in a limited number of accepted representations of alternative masculinity with some lyrical messages, relatable to their life experiences. Without addressing broader structural issues, the group advocates individualistic, non-threatening slogans of self-love, self-acceptance, non-violence and other liberal ideas. Therefore, it is not a demise of traditional masculinity. Rather, it is a representational adaptation to the changing socioeconomic relations of gender in the permanent state of financial uncertainty and crisis under neoliberalism.

Affective masculinity in neoliberal marketing Maintaining solidarity with fandom by providing constant flows of content is another key to BTS’s global popularity, although the group did not have an explicit strategy to market neoliberal Western, particularly American, audiences (T. Yoon 2017). However, BTS’s alternative approach is a strategy itself in an effective, neoliberal way (G. Lee 2018). Idols’ awareness of, and capacity to engender, emotional resonance and impact touch upon a shared set of affective investments and affiliations among fans (Balance 2012). BTS keeps audiences hooked, by providing contents that are tailored to fulfill fans’ desire to know the

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idols’ intimate, “real” lives, which boosts their fantasy of becoming up-close personal (Kang 2016). Uploading a ceaseless succession of behind-the-scenes videos, BTS has commodified its private lives, manifesting K-pop’s neoliberal mantra of cutthroat competition, and affective labor for survival has intensified in its extreme level (G. Lee 2019). Fans’ intense emotional investments in their idols’ round-the-clock endeavor for maintaining intimacy are attributed to the group’s success for its perceived authenticity (King-O’Riain 2020). BTS accentuates its “sincere,” intimate acts of care for its fans, which appeals to their burgeoning longing for a romantic relationship. Being humble, polite and professional is BTS’s hallmarks for its sincerity to others, while embodying a neoliberal mantra of competitions in its own reality program, Run BTS! In this total package of the idols’ mediated authenticity, they become complete commodities that circulate in the absence of difference in “the public/private, insider/outsider, celebrity/ micro-celebrity, and frontstage/backstage performances to maintain audience interest and seem authentic simultaneously” (Ibid.: 13). Idols in Korean popular culture have traditionally perfected masculinityembraced-in-femininity as “manufactured versatile masculinity” for female consumption ( Jung 2011: 165). BTS is not an exception. As the icon of threatlessness, K-pop has deployed the 1990s’ boy band aesthetics such as matching outfits, synchronized choreography and abstinence from intoxication in sex, drug and alcohol. Also, feminized masculinity was a stable appealing point of previous Western boy bands like Take That and Backstreet Boys to market female audiences’ longing for a cultural symbol of uniqueness and attractiveness, shaped by imaginations and fueled by fantasies (Mankekar and Schein 2012). These Western boy bands performed innocent masculinities to market clean, friendly and non-threatening images, accompanied by lighthearted romantic sentiments and fantasies of puppy love ( Jamieson 2007). The commodifications of alternative masculinities in the Western market can be considered as commercial appropriation of broader sociocultural trend, such as the 1980’s “New Man” that is sensitive, emotionally astute, respectful of women, supportive of gender equality and attentive to personal appearance (Gill 2003). This commercial venture of “different imaginistic and discursive paradigms” (Phelan 2010: 119) of alternative masculinity has been rampant in East Asia since the 1990s, with the rise of bishonen (beautiful boy/youth) in Japanese shojo manga (targeting young females) and J-pop male idol groups. It has become a regional trend of the shared, popular cultural imagination. An international success of the K-pop boy band DBSK, as BTS’s precedent, was attributed to its strategic adaptation to J-pop’s feminized masculinity. Anationality of K-pop’s soft masculinity ( Jung 2009) – designed to transcend national market boundaries – becomes a solid market strategy for global audiences. BTS’s feminized masculinity is promoted to market emotion, friendship, love, sensitivity, understanding and other non-threatening features. Western pop culture has historically explored feminine sides of masculinity (Aldrich 2004), while “channel-hopping across versions of the masculine” (Beynon 2002: 6).

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BTS exhibits a body that is free of hair, sweat and odor in trendy clothes and fashion items, while sporting picture-perfect, synchronized choreography. Halsey, an American pop singer who collaborated for “Boys with Luv,” characterizes BTS as being polished and professional but also enjoying boyish laughter and secret handshakes, which indicates their unconventional masculinity (Romano 2019). By offering their bodies as objects being watched and indicating unthreatening masculinity attractive to the female gaze, K-pop idols commodify themselves to appeal Western female audiences’ appetite for alternative, or exotic masculinities (Oh 2015). As to American fans’ love affair with BTS, their disenchantment from the hegemonic masculinity plays a major role. Characteristics of masculinity are contingent on broader spectrums of social environments as masculinities are “produced by history, but also capture how people imagine the future and its role in the present” (Besnier et al. 2018: 866). A presence of alternative masculinity is a response mechanism against male insecurity in Western society (Bordo 1999). Socioeconomic and political unrests, such as September 11 Terrorist Attack, the 2008 Financial Meltdown and the Occupy Wall Street movement in 2011, have facilitated a skepticism over the traditional masculinity. Alternative masculinity is a diagnostic phenomenon that represents a crisis of the normative manhood that is stuck “between the excesses of a hyper-masculinity that is often discredited and caricatured in popular culture and the increasing empowerment of women” in post-crisis, neoliberal economy (Messner and Montez de Oca 2005: 1905). TV programs like King of Queens and various commercials like Budweiser beer advertisements popularize the trend: Considering beer as a centerpiece of a “high holy trinity of alcohol, sports and hegemonic masculinity” (Wenner 1998: 302), soft masculinity in Budweiser advertisements institutes a major shift in the construction of normative manhood (Ervin 2011). BTS’s feminized masculinity is the industry’s strategic marketing venture to find what is appealing and profitable. An atypical masculinity was incepted by the media in Korea, while Western counterparts commercialized a pre-existing gay culture (Lim 2008). Androgyny targets a broader audience, by which women experience their hidden “masculine sides” and men their hidden “feminine sides” (Kimmel 2006). Since every form of manhood reflects ideals of a given economy (Kimmel 2001), male glooming practices are a corporeal requirement for the late consumerist capitalism, which is neoliberal body politics that considers one’s body as a status symbol and a reflection of inner self (Atkinson 2008; Jones 2008; Featherstone 2010). Like female bodies, traditionally used as a commodity display, male bodies under neoliberalism are deployed for “generating insecurity about one’s body and one’s consumer choices and then providing consumers with the correct answer or product” (Alexander 2003: 551). As a non-threatening cultural commodity and a status symbol, K-pop idols’ alternative masculinity sustains neoliberal governmentality of self-care, improvement and investment for upward social mobility and self-empowerment (Elfving-Hwang 2011; Maliangkay 2014).

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Structure of fantasy: participatory meta-narrative, BTS Universe As a K-pop version of self-made man, or a fan-assisted, self-help success story, BTS romanticizes a utopian narrative of opportunity. Like a flashy appearance that “summons up the inner narrative, imaginary image, which propels the body work and make-up efforts” in a Western consumer culture (Featherstone 2010: 198), BTS’s energetic dance moves emit powerful, affective messages in a way that fans are motivated by and further invest in its successes. Dancing bodies are projected as an abstract form that demonstrates a social dynamic of economic structure (Kracauer 1995). BTS’s visuality is the K-pop version of the abstracted reality of fantasy. This glamorized manifestation of the possibilities becomes an object and a subject of simulation for an ideal neoliberal subject that may “train the broadest mass of people in order to create a pattern of undreamed-of dimensions” in the alternative visualities (Ibid.: 77). As metaphorical dynamics of neoliberalism, BTS’s music videos produce not only pleasure and fascination, but also meaning and inspiration. However, with music videos’ capacity of “turning real places (if only temporarily) into pure imaginary spaces” (Laurie 2016: 218), meaning and inspiration the audiences get could be confined to an everexpanding loop of fantasy that is fed on an endless succession of commodities. As an addictive, powerful mode of media spectacle, BTS’s music videos invite the audiences to indulge in the imaginary, while perhaps giving them a false sense of getting over the real. BTS’s fantastical resolution of issues the audiences go through and relate by empowering messages in glossy visuality can give them a sense of being understood and hope for the future. Especially, tapping into today’s common malaises, such as anxiety and depression, BTS offers sympathetic and consolating messages to audiences who suffer from various psychological, economic and social issues. The members’ public exhibitions of emotional vulnerabilities appear to consolidate the audiences’ acceptance and support for the group. In the grave mental toll of the pandemic situation, BTS’s latest single in English “Dynamite” calls for individual resilience. “Life Goes On,” another comforting and uplifting song for the audiences in the age of the pandemic, is full of individual, somewhat decadent, nostalgia for mundane things that Covid-19 has taken away. However, BTS’s music videos scratch surfaces of the dire reality to vent out personal emotions, or an industrial strategy to tap into the sentiment of today’s desperate audiences. Seeing the idols grow, the fans experience a vicarious sense of accomplishment and self-betterment. Uploading a horde of semi-professional videos about their dance practices and rehearsals on social media platforms, BTS perpetuates a neoliberal mantra of individuals’ ceaseless trial and efforts as the way for social mobility. Revealing a public statement full of youthful energy in the latest consumer goods in flashy settings, BTS has continuously contributed their successes to avid fan bases, which in turn help fulfill their sense of accomplishment by seeing their investment paid off. Fandom for male pop musicians in the Western market is

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based on “someone to support and nourish the incompetent male adolescent as he grows up” (Frith and McRobbie 1990: 375). BTS’s recognition of the fans’ commitment to its global success contributes to challenging “double-subjugation of female fans by rejecting the hegemony of women as the object of the male gaze, and fans as subordinated group compared to their idols” (Oh 2017: 137). By a meta-narrative under the name of BTS Universe, BTS has perpetuated a therapeutic narrative of overcoming obstacles individually since its song “I Need You.” Its master narrative of resilience and self-care/respect has become sophisticated and expansive, especially with transmedia storytelling strategies that invite audiences’ participation in the evolving worldviews in subsequent albums, “Wings” and “Love Yourself.” Publishing fragmented, yet related short stories on the members over various media such as short film, short novel, webtoons, music videos and concerts, BTS keeps the audiences interested in and motivated to explore open-ended, ever-evolving episodes and stories. This teaser marketing is effective in engendering the fans’ vernacular content production and active engagement in the message by rendering their own interpretations and opinions. With individuals’ ever-increased capacity to produce vernacular media content, this imaginary sense of cultural agency further fantasizes individuals to claim a more encompassing agency to fulfill their desires and needs. BTS’s masternarrative with the fans’ active involvement has witnessed a viable tool to create a real-life engagement. For example, BTS launched the “LOVE MYSELF” campaign partnered with UNICEF, and ARMY further elaborated this cause by follow-up campaigns online such as #BTSLoveMyself. Most recently, ARMY initiated a campaign for racial justice in the United States, inspired by Black Lives Matter movement. Avid fandom amplifies highly emotional and affective resonances to the extent that fans exert a high degree of “autonomy over how to consume celebrity cultures” (Elfving-Hwang 2018: 200). BTS has become a phenomenon that engenders a plethora of social events in a way that fans try to realize or mirror BTS-influenced desirable ways of living. However, without dealing with fundamental, structural issues the individuals live with, K-pop idols sport an audio-visual fantasy of personal success, freedom, hedonism, posh consumerist lifestyle and narcissism. Stage performance of overcoming problems, excessive bodily movements and emotional display are contrary visual factors to the topics that BTS occasionally claims to address the audiences’ everyday life issues that need structural change for equality and justice. For example, in “Dope,” the first major hit released in 2015, BTS is boastful for its signature dance style and quality. Along with the creative use of synthesizer to mimic a whine sound of the saxophone, the music video sports BTS members’ bold, in-your-face dance moves that convey their confidence and success. In uniforms that signify status and power as a police officer, a military officer, a CEO, a car racer, a medical doctor and a detective, the members brag their hustlers’ lives due to their hard work. While blaming the media and the establishment that blame the youth for a lack of motivation and endeavors, the leader RM encourages and tells never to give up. However, attributing the success to the individual

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members’ hard work, hope and belief, BTS does not raise critical consciousness on the structural dimension of the problems, but maintains an individualized solution, hard work. Preoccupied with appearance and images, BTS’s treatment of the “social” issues is shallow and non-threatening to the extent that it commands a global sensation in the heartlands of neoliberalism. Female audiences’ pseudo- empowerment or satisfaction for consuming caring images of BTS may alienate them further from the reality and entice them to consume commodities they promote. BTS can serve the status quo since the fans may still remain as an enduring, resilient subject in the debilitating living conditions of neoliberalism. With a conformative power of perfectly synchronized choreography that draws audiences to the dazzling visuals, which “smooth out social and spatial differences” (Laurie 2016: 218), audiences are likely to forget about the reality and get addicted to the hopeful messages of self-love and realization in the BTS’s version of communitarian utopia.

The “most beautiful” moment in life under neoliberal fantasy This chapter has attempted to understand industrial strategies behind BTS’s successful career. It has been a successful market positioning that appeals to today’s depressed audiences from various personal and social issues; a clever planning, or simulation of images/concepts that recruited, trained and marketed beautiful idols who emit senses of understanding, sympathy and motivation; a compelling narrative that audiences can engage; a high production quality that gives audiences a sense of comfort, imaginary satisfaction and motivation; the dynamic choreography and flashy styles; and an appealing fantasy of affective bonding with the idols. However, BTS does it through and within the dominant cultural hegemony of neoliberalism and methodological individualism. Except for a few occasions where conscious fans engage in sociopolitical issues like Black Lives Matter movement, BTS does not initiate any fundamental change other than imaginary satisfaction, or compensatory fantasy. It seems to reinforce a hegemonic solution to the current social problems, that is, personal resilience with a sense of hope. Likewise, while there are some occasions where BTS fans get involved in transformative causes, their realm of engagement is largely confined to consumption, no matter how ARMY is different from traditional fans and active in socially conscientious matters. It can be argued that BTS propagates, intentionally or unintentionally, resilience discourse via their affect-charged visuality that helps fans construct their neoliberal subjectivities. Meaning and feeling are concurrent in an active discursive construction of subjectivity (Lemke 2012), and a powerful discursive apparatus conditions individuals’ sense of how they relate to the world, to each other and to themselves (Drake and Miah 2010). BTS is not only a concrete result of the rigorous implementation of resilience discourse, but is also an embodiment,

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or a hyper-reality of the very discourse. In a fantasized version of neoliberal masculinity, incepted and promoted by the industry’s management structure, no matter how much BTS members are organic, sincere and wholesome in their artistic motivations and performances, they are still part of the neoliberal culture industry. BTS is a manifestation of how the flashy and enticing culture industry achieves a dazzling success in a hyper-competitive capitalist world (Elfving-Hwang 2018). An oppositional or alternative form of masculinity of a recent Asia can reify and accommodate rather than undermine hegemonic masculinity, which can represent a cultural shift from a production to consumption oriented masculinity (Charlebois 2013). BTS constitutes auto-correcting neoliberal agents in the face of growing economic inequalities and injustices, while their positive messages conceal structural and institutional constraints against individuals. While being positive and hopeful for a better future, BTS does not challenge fundamentally unequal relationships between men and women, between masculinity and femininity. Exercising a malleability of hegemonic masculinity that embodies a neoliberal strategy, BTS does not contribute to the formation of a more gender equal society.

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Lee, M. (2019) “Brand Marketing through Transmedia Storytelling,” Journal of the Korea Entertainment Industry Association, 13(3): 351–61. Lemke, J. (2012) “Multimedia and Discourse Analysis,” in J. Gee and M. Handford (eds) Routledge Handbook of Discourse Analysis, London: Routledge. Lim, I. (2008) “The Trend of Creating Atypical Male Images in Heterosexist Korean Society,” Korea Journal, 48(4): 115–46. Maliangkay, R. (2014) “Catering to the Female Gaze,” Situations, 7(1): 43–61. Mankekar, P. and Schein, L. (2012) Media, Erotics and Transnational Asia, Durham: Duke University Press. Messner, M. and Montez de Oca, J. (2005) “The Male Consumer as Loser,” Signs, 30(3): 1879–909. Oh, C. (2015) “Queering Spectatorship in K-pop,” Journal of Fandom Studies, 3(1): 59–78. Oh, C. (2017) “‘Cinderella’ in Reverse,” in X. Lin, C. Haywood and M. Ghaill (eds) East Asian Men, London: Palgrave Macmillan. Parc, J. and Kim, Y. (2020) “Analyzing the Reasons for the Global Popularity of BTS,” Journal of International Business and Economy, 21(1): 15–36. Phelan, P. (2010) “Broken Symmetries,” in A. Jones (ed) The Feminism and Visual Culture Reader, New York: Routledge. Putri, A. and Mintarsih, A. (2020) “Bangtan Sonyeondan in America,” International Review of Humanities Studies, 5(1): 209–23. Romano, A. (2019) “BTS, the Band that Changed K-pop, Explained,” Vox, 17 April. Sandvoss, C. (2005) Fans, Cambridge: Polity. Song, K. and Velding, V. (2020) “Transnational Masculinity in the Eyes of Local Beholders?,” Journal of Men’s Studies, 28(1): 3–21. Toscano, A. (2007) “Vital Strategies,” Theory, Culture & Society, 24(6): 71–91. Wenner, L. (1998) “In Search of the Sports Bar,” in G. Rail (ed) Sport and Postmodern Times, Albany: SUNY Press. Yoon, T. (2017) “BTS: A New Grammar of Hallyu,” KyungHyang Sinmun, 26 November. Yoon, Y. (2019) “Analysis of the Global Fandom and Success Factors of BTS,” Journal of the Korea Entertainment Industry Association, 13(3): 13–25.

9 TRANSNATIONAL CULTURAL POWER OF BTS Digital fan activism in the social media era Dal Yong Jin

As Covid-19 has fundamentally influenced people’s daily activities, many people around the world have had to work from home since March 2020. Almost all areas of life, including travel and sports, are experiencing huge setbacks, and cultural activities, including going to theaters and attending music concerts, have been canceled and delayed as well. However, Covid-19 has not entirely eliminated transnational cultural flows in the realm of popular culture as cultural creators and artists utilize social media, such as YouTube and Facebook, and streaming services like Spotify and Netflix, to appeal to global fans. The convergence of popular culture and digital platforms has become one of the most significant trends in the early twenty-first century. With the increasing role of social media/digital platforms, digital fan activities as part of fan culture have also significantly changed. In fact, online fandom activities employing social media in the Covid-19 era have transformed contemporary cultural spheres. Musicians increasingly utilize social media to connect with fans and continue their careers as coronavirus has put their plans on pause. Pop musicians, such as Neil Young, Chris Martin of Coldplay and Keith Urban, have all put on or promised impromptu online performances as most major concerts and festivals were canceled (Bakare 2020). BTS from South Korea (hereafter Korea) has dramatically transformed the notion of music concerts, and its influence in the global cultural markets has even been intensified during the Covid-19 era, proving its transnational power in the global music scene. BTS especially introduced a new form of cultural activity, titled “Bang Bang Con: The Live,” on 14 June 2020. This live event was streamed over around 100 minutes remotely from a studio in Seoul, drawing some 756,000 viewers from across the world. Fans from 107 countries, including Korea, the USA, the UK, China and Japan, logged in to view the online event (Yonhap 2020). The concert streamed by BTS became the world’s biggest paid online DOI: 10.4324/9781003102489-9

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music event in terms of the number of viewers. BTS is being evaluated as opening new possibilities through its online concert. The concept of Bang Bang Con revolved around rooms, with “bang” being the Korean word for room. Throughout the show, the stage production changed constantly, presenting five types of scenes, or rooms, so as to suit the themes of the songs the band performed. Having teamed up with the US streaming service startup Kiswe Mobile, Bang Bang Con allowed viewers to watch the entirety of the show through six different camera angles (Yonhap News 2020). This K-pop event certainly showed a close relationship between K-pop and social media/digital technologies. BTS fans around the globe not only watched this live event, but also shared their emotions and satisfactions on various social media, which turned into traditional online fandom activity. There is another form of new digital fan activity in tandem with K-pop, as K-pop and BTS fans in particular have created a newfangled form of fan activism against social injustice in recent years. For example, following the outbreak of protests in the USA in June 2020, sparked by the death of a Black man George Floyd due to brutal police actions, the Dallas Police Department asked people to share videos of illegal activity protests through the iWatch Dallas app. K-pop fans responded by inundating it with fan-recorded videos, known as fancams, and memes of various K-pop musicians, in an effort to prevent the police from tracking protesters’ actions. Barely a day later, the app was reported to be experiencing technical difficulties (Reddy 2020). This kind of massive online activity had not been seen previously; therefore, it is marked as a new online protest that K-pop fans equipped with social media/digital technologies lead today. As these two recent cultural incidents demonstrate, K-pop and digital fandom drive new forms of transnational cultural activities. However, as a reflection of short history in the global market, online fan activities in tandem with BTS and with K-pop in general have not been fully analyzed. In order to fill the gap, this chapter addresses the ways in which K-pop has transformed the global cultural markets in the Covid-19 era and further examines digital fan activities in tandem with social media, such as Twitter, Facebook and TikTok. Due to the significant role of BTS as one of the leading musicians in the popular music market, the chapter especially discusses how BTS and K-pop in general have shifted the conventional notion of transnational fan activities. It considers how these major cultural activities have driven the shift of the relationships between musicians and fans, as global fans today demand K-pop musicians to express their positions on delicate social and political issues.

Transnational cultural power of K-pop and fan activism Transnational cultural activities in conjunction with K-pop have changed as K-pop becomes one of the most significant non-Western pop music genres in many parts of the world. When the Korean Wave started in the late 1990s, the export of Korean music was only $8.6 million in 1998 and $16.4 million in

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2008; however, it soared to $564 million in 2018, a 65.5 times increase between 1998 and 2018 (Ministry of Culture and Tourism 2000; Korea Creative Content Agency 2019; Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism 2020). K-pop mostly refers to a particular genre of Korean pop music that is known for its boy/girl bands and their signature dance performances. K-pop has not only targeted ethnic or diasporic audiences of Korean or East Asian backgrounds but has also become appropriated into the mainstream media in some communities (Han 2017). Most of all, K-pop has become globally popular because of the rapid growth of social media and digital technologies, as many global fans enjoy K-pop through these cutting-edge technologies. Due to its phenomenal popularity around the globe, the number of K-pop fans has soared, and therefore, many researchers in the fields of music, media and cultural studies have paid attention to K-pop fandom. Fan studies have a long history; compared to the attention paid to Western cultural texts, fan studies “have not engaged sufficiently with transnational flows of non-Western cultural texts” (Yoon 2019: 178). Some researchers (Min 2017; Swan 2018; Yoon 2019) explored K-pop fandom based in the West. One of the missing points in K-pop fan studies is about fan activism. K-pop fan activism studies have relatively suffered from the lack of cases, discourses and experiences. Fan activism in most cases implies that people themselves collectively participate in public activities in order to support their idols, which produces some cultural consequences (Fung 2009): Through such activities, they establish their rapport and mutual identification, but these overt behaviors—displaying collective styles, yearning for cool values and engaging activities—could slip easily beyond the acceptable limits of the state. In terms of mobilization, the collective and organized fandom behaviors could push their emotive satisfaction easily to an uncontrollable level. In such extreme emotive states, fans would break social norms, challenge the regulations and publicly display an antistate order. This is what the state abhors and attempts to control and suppress. (Fung 2009: 292) For many years, fan activism was also read as “grass-roots resistance to cultural capitalism and its colonization of the life worlds of those whose authentic relationship to their cultural forms, identities and practices cannot be reduced to disciplined, obedient consumption” (Rowe et al. 2010: 299). In comparison to mainstream social movements seeking political democracy, human rights or dignity of disadvantaged groups, fan activism signified as subcultural complaints or outrage might appear as little more than a celebration of hobbyist trivia. In this regard, Jenkins (2006) raised fan activism out of the consumerist or cultural domains and laid out the ways in which fan activities start to change politics. Fan activism has greatly connected to the growth and utilization of social media/ digital technologies. Set against the backdrop of media convergence between

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popular culture and new media, global fans as consumers of popular culture are offered various new digital technologies to bring the flow of culture under their control and to interact with other fans (Zhang and Mao 2013): A participatory culture, in contrast to the older notion of passive media culture, emerged as a networked practice, as well as a collective intelligence. Fan communities became knowledge communities that creatively appropriate and transform materials borrowed from mass culture, which empowered these communities in their relationship with corporate media. (Zhang and Mao 2013: 48) As such, global fans have certainly developed more active and direct participation in socio-political movements over the past decade. K-pop fan activities have especially related to digital technologies because of the increasing role of social media and streaming services. Due to various fan representations, K-pop fan activities have also dramatically changed. K-pop has recently provided a complex case for digital fan activities, both nationally and globally, which means that K-pop as a nascent global popular music produced by Korea plays a crucial role in fan activism in several key social movements. Compared to offline fan activism, the convergence of K-pop and social media/digital technologies has opened a new era in digital fan activism.

Evolution of K-pop fandom As K-pop fandom has fundamentally changed over the past two decades, it is necessary to identify the evolution of K-pop fandom in order to recognize the continuity and change in fan activism studies. To begin with, K-pop fandom, from the initial stage of the Korean Wave in the late 1990s to the early 2000s, was mainly driven by immigrant Koreans in many parts of the globe. One of the most significant contributing elements to immigrants’ cultural transnationalism is certainly technological developments, including the Internet, social media and streaming services. Under the broad definition of cultural transnationalism or the globalization of culture, immigrant cultural transnationalism refers to immigrants’ and their children’s “transnational cultural linkages to their homeland.” As the cross-border flows of culture involve “transformations, re-creations, and negotiations of ideas, consciousness and value,” hybridization is often emphasized as the central component of the second generation’s transnational cultural practices (Min 2017: 1141). In the first stage of transnational fandom, cultural activities are organized by inviting cultural specialists from their home countries. Music/dance performances by singers/dancers from home countries are typical examples of organizational transnational cultural events that occur in immigrant communities. When immigrants participate in these music performances, they engage in transnational cultural practices at the individual level. Interestingly enough,

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government agencies in their home country often initiate transnational cultural events to promote their cultural traditions (Min 2017). As Kim (2013) points out: Since the 1990s, the mediated networks established through the Internet and the transnational ethnic media, such as the Korean Wave culture, have been instrumental in facilitating these changes in contemporary movements, allowing dispersed yet networked migrants to maintain transnationally their home-based relationships and to regulate a dialectical sense of belonging in host countries. The media, mostly taken for granted, go along with diasporic subjects; and the Korean Wave phenomenon can be understood in this context of transnational migration systems and processes. (Kim 2013: 87) Young immigrants seeking to sustain ties back to their home countries have played a pivotal role in the creation of online networked culture and in the circulation of transnational culture (Lee 2018). The second period of K-pop fan activities is driven by local-level activities, not driven by ethnic immigrants, but by native young people in different countries. As K-pop has continued to become popular around the globe, several K-pop idol groups like BTS, TWICE, Blackpink and EXO rapidly increase their global fan bases. Beyond ethnic Koreans, many teens and people in their 20s around the globe form K-pop fan communities. For example, many people in Latin America, in particular Chile, enjoy K-pop and develop some of the largest K-pop communities in different countries (Min et al. 2019). With the rapid growth of social media, including YouTube and Facebook, they easily access and enjoy K-pop. Some of them meet at public places to practice K-pop dances, and the convergence of K-pop and digital technologies has become a solid trend to appropriate K-pop music while developing their fan activities. According to an ethnographic study conducted in North America, the rapid circulation of music videos and information about K-pop on the social mediascape transform the nature of cultural consumption ( Jin and Yoon 2016). Consuming pop culture does not mean the possession of materials; rather, it implies participatory processes, such as searching, accessing, enjoying and networking. K-pop music videos, circulated and linked through social media, hook fans, while the technological architecture of social media allows young people to navigate across different genres of music, videos and shows (Yoon 2019). The third period of K-pop fan activities is driven by global-level fan activities starting in the mid-and-late 2010s, and in this latest stage, people around the world consist of the largest digital fan community. As ARMY (Adorable Representative MC for Youth) – BTS’s official fan club name – represents, ARMY members consist of fans from all over the world, and they are loyal to the band, made up of members nicknamed RM, Jin, Suga, Jimin, V, Jungkook and J-Hope. Behind BTS’s record-breaking global success is their powerfully active and engaged fandom. Composed largely of digital natives, the impact ARMY has had

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on BTS’s success is clearly demonstrated in their engagement and mass voting power that resulted in BTS’s Billboard Music Awards in 2017, 2018 and 2019. From crowdfunding drives for BTS’s UNICEF campaign and billboard advertisements to their effective mobilizing in support and defense of BTS against mischaracterizations or racism, ARMY offers a powerful foundation for BTS’s global popularity (McLaren and Jin 2020). In fact, the lyrics of BTS songs, many of which are written by the band members themselves, tackle social issues like academic stress, bullying, inferiority complexes, depression and social injustice; therefore, ARMY members sympathize with them. Their real-world messages veer sharply away from the highly regimented, conventional K-pop industry engineered to sell perfection (Foong 2019). The global K-pop phenomenon has been driven by networked fan bases whose members extensively deploy social media ( Jung 2015; Jin 2016; Han 2017). As Yoon (2019) explains: Korean pop culture spreads beyond geo-cultural proximities and without traditional media, such as broadcast media. As exemplified by BTS, several K-pop groups have been followed by a large number of global fans long before, or without even having, their network TV debut. On a global scale, K-pop illustrates the fan-based, new media-driven, transnational flows of youth culture, which extend beyond racial, cultural and/or linguistic proximities... The recent growth of the K-pop fandom cannot be easily defined as a homogeneous trend. As K-pop’s fan bases are spread out across different, albeit networked, geo-cultural regions, the fans’ engagement with K-pop may be diverse, depending on locally specific constraints that block transnational media flows and available resources that enable fans to access and appropriate K-pop. (Ibid.: 176–77) K-pop fan activities have significantly shifted, as they not only form fan communities to support their favorite K-pop musicians and share their aspirations and emotions, but also participate in socio-political activities and play a key role in potentially changing the direction of social movements. What is significant in this latest stage is that fans are utilizing both K-pop and social media, two of the most familiar cultural icons, to actualize their participation in social movements.

K-pop, political activism and social media K-pop has become one of the major venues for political activism. K-pop fans are not political in most cases, but they do not hesitate to play a role in several significant socio-political issues. This section specifically discusses some of the major K-pop fan activities in conjunction with a variety of social movements. The purpose is to identify the significant role of fandom as part of increasing social movements occurring due to the severe socioeconomic divide and injustice

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around the globe. Since the discussion mainly focuses on transnational fan activities relevant to K-pop fandom, it addresses the ways in which K-pop fans develop diverse fan activities. However, it also refers to one particular political activity that happened within Korea in order to better understand and historicize K-pop fandom and digital activism in the global context as well. K-pop fandom during the Ewha Womans University protest: In summer 2016, many Ewha Womans University students in Korea formed several consecutive rallies on their campus to protest something that initially seemed unrelated to national politics – the university administration’s decision to create a new degree program in the name of the Future LiFE (Light up in Future Ewha) College. Due to several protests from students, Ewha Womans University soon withdrew the plan, but the students did not stop there, pressing on with their sit-in to urge the university president’s resignation. The efforts to topple the university president ended up uncovering a crucial piece of the puzzle in the political scandal that, in the end, eventually brought down the country’s leader – the university’s favoritism to an equestrian athlete who turned out to be the daughter of Choi Soon-Sil, then President Park Geun-Hye’s secretive confidante (Lee 2017). The incident struck a nerve in the country, where many young people worked hard to get into prestigious universities, including Ewha, and unleashed the massive popular movement. This student movement indicated a new protest culture by those who were raised after authoritarian rule, and growing up with social media like YouTube and K-pop. One of the most memorable moments for many Ewha students happened in July 2016, in the early days of the protests, when some 1,600 policemen entered a university building occupied by a group of female students who reportedly numbered around 200. These female students, standing arm in arm, burst into the popular K-pop song Into the New World (Yang 2016). Interestingly enough, they did not choose to sing a protest song mostly used in the 1980s and 1990s. The choice of the song – the debut single by Girls’ Generation, one of the most famous Korean girl groups back then – surprised many former student activists, who had memories of rallying against the country’s authoritarian leaders with protest songs (CBC 2017), such as Solah, the Green Solah (sol-ah puleuleun sol-ah) and While Living Life (sa-no-ra-myeon). Into the New World is a song that has never been interpreted to have any social-political meaning; however, the reason for the selection was simple: “It’s the song we can all sing together… The lyric, ‘close your eyes and feel the moving heart and my eyes on you,’ may sound sweet. But there are also some meaningful parts in the lyrics” (Y.H. Kim 2016). There is a rough road ahead of us. Unknown future and obstacles won’t change. We can’t give up. Protect me with an unchanged love.

Ewha students refused the factional association of protest songs, because they did not intend to be explicitly political. They just wanted to express their desire of solidarity among themselves, believing that this song could represent what they

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pursued, while securing hope (Yang 2016). The scenes of the female university students singing Into the New World, about a woman venturing into an unknown world, in front of the police crackdown were widely viewed and shared on Facebook and YouTube, along with what happened next – the female students getting forcefully dragged out by the police amid screams of pain (CBC 2017). The Ewha movement is not transnational in itself; however, many foreign K-pop fans watched the moment on YouTube. As of 5 August 2020, about 2.83 million people around the globe watched this video clip on YouTube. What is significant is that this new kind of protest culture is not a one-time event, as global K-pop fans have continued to develop several different forms of social activities, from fundraising to political rallies. The global flow of K-pop has continued to soar before and after the Ewha movement, and this kind of national social movement in conjunction with K-pop has become a transnational online activity. This does not mean that the Ewha movement of 2016 has directly influenced any global social movement today. The Ewha case can be seen as a rare example of the appropriation of K-pop in national political activism; however, the wider impact of K-pop and massive fandom around the world can potentially influence transnational fan activism in the social media era. Transnational fan activities and K-pop in the #BLM movement: One of the nascent and major transnational fan activities in the realm of K-pop came with the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement in June 2020. Amid ongoing protests against racism, a global legion of K-pop fans has emerged as an important ally for the #BLM movement. Fans of K-pop have raised funds for BLM and mobilized to overload social media hashtags used by its opponents, gaining appreciation from like-minded protesters for their political activism. Some outside the K-pop world may have been surprised by their impact, but K-pop observers note that fans have long organized support for social and political causes as well as their favorite stars (Reddy 2020). Their efforts met with approval from the world’s best-known K-pop band BTS. In due course, BTS tweeted to express their support: “We stand against racial discrimination. We condemn violence. You, I and we all have the right to be respected. We will stand together. #BlackLivesMatter” (McCurry 2020). This created headlines around the world that spoke about the “unlikely allyship” between K-pop fans, BTS and BLM (Song 2020). Again, when the Dallas Police Department asked people to share videos of illegal activity protests through the iWatch Dallas app, K-pop fans inundated it with fan-made materials, and some K-pop acts voiced their support for the movement on Twitter and Instagram or donated money. BTS announced a $1million donation, and its fan group One In An ARMY (OIAA) organized their own fundraising drive and matched the amount in less than 24 hours (Reddy 2020). As protests against police brutality erupted nationwide, online fandoms of K-pop and others established a clear course of action: They would not use any of their normal promotional hashtags to boost their favorite music, but instead focused on the message of BLM and disseminated information about how to support the protests (Tiffany 2020). Since the K-pop industry has historically been influenced

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by Black hip-hop, #BLM movement has highlighted the need for K-pop and BTS fans to do some soulsearching. When harnessed for a cause, K-pop and global fans have the potential to make a difference (Reddy 2020; Song 2020). From a global music perspective, K-pop is still regarded as a subculture and a genre for minorities. K-pop has also been largely affected by Black music culture, particularly hip-hop and R&B (Anderson 2020). This has led to a belief that K-pop singers should show their respect to the original music culture by showing solidarity with the movement, if they are truly not to be seen as part of merely commercialized or capitalist cultural appropriation. Through the hybridization with African-American hip-hop, K-pop has relayed messages about resistance and social criticism in the lyrics. Hence, global fans, especially marginalized groups, have developed an emotional empathy with the musicians, believing that their stars would be on the same page with them when it comes to issues like the BLM movement (Dong 2020). This close connection demands that K-pop singers should play a more active role when racial justice is called for. K-pop stars, including BTS, have significantly affected the thoughts and behaviors of young people by conveying meaningful messages about issues such as social injustice and corruption through their tracks. If the musicians interact with their fans by actively expressing their opinions, this may potentially contribute to the further development of cultural politics (Ibid. 2020). The BLM movement has demonstrated that future digital fan activism will be intensifying due to the convergence of K-pop or pop music in general and social media/digital technologies, which is possibly a new form of protest culture in the twenty-first century. Some K-pop idol groups such as BTS appeal to fans who are keen about racial minorities in the USA, but the majority of K-pop acts are commercially driven and unlikely to be part of social-political movements. Nevertheless, K-pop is increasingly driven by global fans to acknowledge the shifting global cultural spheres and pay attention to anti-racial and anti-capitalist movements. Transnational fan activities and K-pop in political events: Another major fan activity came with a political campaign in the USA. When Donald Trump had a political rally in Tulsa in June 2020, K-pop fans and users of TikTok claimed tickets to Trump’s rally but then did not use them, as a coordinated effort to leave many seats empty in a 19,000-capacity venue. Before the event, Trump’s campaign team boasted that there were over 1 million ticket requests. However, there was a very low turnout, with the count at under 6,200 (Hoffman 2020). Moreover, the hijacking of a divisive Twitter hashtag and the humiliation of Trump were demonstrations of another social activism that run throughout the K-pop community (McCurry 2020). These spread mostly through Alt TikTok. K-pop Twitter and Alt TikTok have a good alliance where they spread information among each other very quickly. K-pop fans who are technology experts know the algorithms well and how they can boost videos to get what they want (Lorenz et al. 2020). This particular activity does not mean that K-pop fans are explicitly political, but they are socially conscious. BTS fans have not always been serious about politics, although many of them are keen about socioeconomic issues, such as youth

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unemployment, mental health, school bullying and socioeconomic inequality. K-pop fans’ consciousness mirrors the social awareness of the stars themselves as some K-pop stars have significantly influenced the hearts and minds of young fans by conveying meaningful messages in their lyrics. Young people take out their anger and frustration through a peaceful online social movement, and feel empowered as their messages resonate online across different generations, locations, nationalities and ethnic backgrounds (McCurry 2020). Fandom today is perhaps replacing politics as a center for preferred values and lifestyles. Through their expressiveness, support and enthusiasm, some of the active young fans perform bold personal acts, the nature of which may mostly appear to be cultural but also can be political. At first glance, such youth performativity seems benign, but can turn out to be a meaningful social force accelerating the pace of social reform (Fung 2009). Traditionally, the purpose of activism has been to challenge systemic hegemonies and corporate structures (Madden 2020). K-pop fans’ online activities demonstrate that digital fan activism has become a new subversive form of transnational activity due to the nexus of global popular culture and social media platforms developed in different countries. In politically polarized Korea, many K-pop musicians are shunned away from political activities in order to avoid any unnecessary backlash from the mainstream media and fans. K-pop is diverse in genres and themes: While some K-pop musicians in hip-hop domains underscore socio-political issues, many others deliberately repudiate with socio-political tendencies. By large, K-pop’s political participation is still limited and ambiguous in Korea.

Conclusion This chapter has analyzed digital fan activism in the realm of K-pop, as global K-pop fans transform digital fan activities. K-pop’s transnational cultural power has rapidly soared in part due to social media/digital platforms and streaming services, providing an unconventional example of non-Western–based popular culture and transnational fandom studies. K-pop has grown around the globe, not only in Asia but also in North America, Latin America, Europe and the Middle East. Whenever K-pop stars such as BTS, EXO and Blackpink held music concerts in global cities like New York, Los Angeles, Paris and London, they were able to perform in front of jam-packed crowds regardless of linguistic and cultural differences, demonstrating the transnational popularity of K-pop. Feelings of being outside the dominant peer culture appear to facilitate subcultural practices and accumulate subcultural capital among K-pop fans, while fan networks enable them to share affective connections with other fans and K-pop idols (Yoon 2019). K-pop as a subculture is often distinguished from the symbolic meaning of the dominant mainstream cultural forms. Networked participation in K-pop fandom is recognized by the fans themselves as “growing up together,” and some fans, who have been dedicated to K-pop for a long period, tend to feel that they have grown up “alongside their favorite idols” (Ibid.: 187).

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Digital fan activism is relatively under-explored, although fan activities indicate the possible formation of a participatory civic culture growing out of the collaborations made during a socio-cultural crisis era (Zhang and Mao 2013). In recent years, K-pop fan activism has advanced a new form of protest culture as global fandom can aptly utilize social media and form a transnationally imagined community, instead of physically occupying streets or buildings within the nation. Organizing, mobilizing and fundraising within a global K-pop community such as BTS and ARMY is not a new phenomenon, but their massive and often strategic use of social media in the realm of fan activism is certainly new. The dynamics and values inherent in digital fan activities based on non-Western popular culture, and the Korean Wave, in particular, have become a new foundation for political action as the nature and function of fandom have changed today. K-pop fans have been empowered enough to not only stand alongside their favorite idols but also guide them, enacting change from a bottom-up participatory stance (Madden 2020). Recent fan activism in tandem with K-pop has shown their unique socio-political perspectives while utilizing various social media platforms to organize rallies and actualize their protests against social injustice. The new form of digital fan activism has also created a stronger solidarity between stars and fans as BTS has continued to express their supports for fan activism in social movements. Largely operating by the logic of consumerist capitalism, the K-pop industry and musicians were not part of protests nor expressed their political opinions; however, BTS has changed the contour, to some extent. Active global youth tend to live with social media and may not always stay silent when they witness unacceptable socio-political issues. Although they do not generally partake in street protests, they have developed a new mode of protest culture in the age of social media. For many global fans, K-pop has become a venue for them to not only enjoy contemporary music but also share their unspoken agonies and express their discontents with dominant cultures. Their fan activities are not always or explicitly political in most cases; however, due to their emotional investment and massive force in terms of the number of fans, K-pop and digital fans’ collaborative and strategic activities in the critical junctures, such as the Ewha movement, #BLM and Trump’s campaign, turn out to be historically significant and unprecedented. In extreme emotive states, K-pop fans can break social norms, challenge regulations and publicly display an anti-state order (Fung 2009). K-pop today is a resource for transnational cultural power, which potentially changes the nature and norm of global youth culture and digital fan activism around the world.

References Anderson, C. (2020) Soul in Seoul: African American Popular Music and K-pop, Jackson: University Press of Mississippi. Bakare, L. (2020) “Musicians Head Online As Covid-19 Puts Live Shows on Pause,” Guardian, 20 March.

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CBC (2017) “How Protests at a South Korean University Led to the Downfall of President Park Geun-Hye,” 14 March. Dong, S.H. (2020) “Should K-pop Stars Speak Out About Social Issues?” Korea Times, 15 June. Foong, L.M. (2019) “The ARMY Still Holds the Power,” Medium, 31 July. Fung, A. (2009) “Fandom, Youth and Consumption in China,” European Journal of Cultural Studies, 12: 285–303. Han, B. (2017) “K-pop in Latin America,” International Journal of Communication, 11: 2250–69. Hoffman, J. (2020) “Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez Salutes K-Pop Stans for Their Possible Trump Troll,” Vanity Fare, 21 June. Jenkins, H. (2006) Fans, Bloggers and Gamers, New York: New York University. Jin, D.Y. (2016) New Korean Wave, Chicago: University of Illinois Press. Jin, D.Y. and Yoon, K. (2016) “The Social Mediascape of Transnational Korean Pop Culture,” New Media and Society, 18(7): 1277–92. Jung, E.Y. (2015) “New Wave Formations,” in S. Lee and A. Nornes (eds). Hallyu 2.0, Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. Kim, Y. (2013) “Korean Wave Pop Culture in the Global Internet Age: Why Popular? Why Now?” in Y. Kim (ed) The Korean Wave: Korean Media Go Global, London: Routledge. Kim, Y.H. (2016) “An Unorganized Organization,” Korea JoongAng Daily, 4 August. Korea Creative Content Agency (2019) 2018 Content Industry Outcome and 2019 Prediction, Naju: KOCCA. Lee, H.J. (2018) “A ‘Real’ Fantasy: Hybridity, Korean Drama and Pop Cosmopolitans,” Media, Culture & Society, 40(3): 365–80. Lee, Y.K. (2017) “How Sparks at S. Korean Women’s School Lead to Anti-Park Fire,” AP, 14 March. Lozenz, T., Browning, K. and Frenkel, S. (2020) “TikTok Teens and K-Pop Stans Say They Sank Trump Rally,” New York Times, 21 June. Madden, E. (2020) “The BTS Army and the Transformative Power of Fandom as Activism,” Ringer, 11 June. McCurry, J. (2020) “How US K-pop Fans Became a Political Force to be Reckoned With,” Guardian, 24 June. McLaren, C. and Jin, D.Y. (2020) “You Can’t Help But Love Them: BTS, Transcultural Fandom and Affective Identities,” Korea Journal, 60(1): 100–27. Min, P.G. (2017) “Transnational Cultural Events among Korean Immigrants in the New York-New Jersey Area,” Sociological Perspective, 60(6): 1136–59. Min, W.J., Jin, D.Y. and Han, B. (2019) “Transcultural Fandom of the Korean Wave in Latin America,” Media, Culture and Society, 41(5): 604–19. Ministry of Culture and Tourism (2000) Cultural Industries White Paper, Seoul: MCT. Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism (2020) 2019 Music Industry White Paper, Seoul: MCST. Reddy, S. (2020) “K-pop Fans Emerge as a Powerful Force in US Protests,” BBC, 11 June. Rowe, D., Ruddock, A. and Hutchins, B. (2010) “Cultures of Complaint,” Convergence, 16: 298–315. Song, V. (2020) “Why BTS and Black Lives Matter Are Natural Allies,” Shondaland, 9 July. Swan, A. (2018) “Transnational Identities and Feeling in Fandom,” Communication Culture & Critique, 11: 548–65.

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Tiffany, K. (2020) “Why K-pop Fans Are No Longer Posting about K-pop,” Atlantic, 6 July. Yang, S.J. (2016) “The Reason Why into the New World Becomes a Protest Song,” HanKook Ilbo, 16 August. Yonhap (2020) “BTS’ ‘Bang Con’ Becomes World’s Biggest Paid Online Concert,” 15 June. Yoon, K. (2019) “Transnational Fandom in the Making,” International Communication Gazette, 81(2): 176–92. Zhang, W. and Mao, C. (2013) “Fan Activism Sustained and Challenged,” Chinese Journal of Communication, 6(1): 45–61.

10 BTS AS CULTURAL AMBASSADORS K-pop and Korea in Western media Sarah Keith

On 28 May 2018, South Korean President Moon Jae-In, “amid busy diplomatic talks with North Korea and the US… took to his official social media account to congratulate BTS for reaching the No. 1 spot on the Billboard 200 chart” (Korea Herald 2018). The President’s English-language post praised the seven-member group’s release “Love Yourself: Tear” for being “the first ever Korean album to claim the top spot” (Ibid.) on the US-based chart, in a nod to national pride; but also carefully couched this achievement in terms of conciliation and friendship. The post commended the group’s “sincerity,” underscoring their commitment to ideals, rather than commerce and politics; while their music’s ability to “transcend regional borders, language, culture and institutions” (Ibid.) revealed BTS’s global reach. This official congratulation – issued for achieving what is essentially a commercial milestone – reveals a deep entanglement between culture and state. The global prevalence of South Korean cultural content is well established as the result of long-term strategic government planning, starting in the 1990s, by the country’s Ministry of Culture (now Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism) and organizations such as the Korea Foundation for International Culture Exchange (KOFICE). These and other institutions have facilitated the consolidation and promotion of Korea’s nation brand (Schwak 2016), and cultural contents are today a significant national export sector. In a 2019 address to an industry summit, President Moon again emphasized the importance of content industries to both the Korean economy and diplomacy, relating, “the topic of K-pop and K-dramas invariably surface when I meet with foreign leaders” (Moon 2019). Today, most casual observers – let alone fans or researchers of Korean popular culture – will have noticed the gradual establishment of K-pop within Western mediascapes and public consciousness. Over the last two decades, K-pop musicians have made multiple forays into Western markets, with milestones including DOI: 10.4324/9781003102489-10

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the 2010 SM Town Live ’10 World Tour (including concerts in the USA and Paris); Girls’ Generation’s 2012 performance on the Late Show with David Letterman and BTS’s performance at the 2017 Billboard Music Awards. Mainstream media coverage of K-pop has variously treated it as a foreign curiosity, a sign of South Korea’s (or Asia’s) diplomatic and economic ascendancy, and a manifestation of cosmopolitan, social media-driven youth culture. Articles and think pieces with titles like “Are K-Pop Stars the World’s Biggest ‘Influencers’?” (Gallagher 2019) and “Seven Reasons Why South Korea’s BTS Is an American Phenomenon” (Shah 2020) – both published in The Wall Street Journal – demonstrate an enduring preoccupation with analyzing how and why Korea’s popular culture has come to the world stage, and what it means for the West. These types of features, which continue to be published regularly in major Western (Englishlanguage) media outlets such as The Wall Street Journal, Forbes and BBC, reveal how K-pop idols are at the vanguard of Western audiences’ perceptions of Korea. For instance, the BBC front page for South Korea lists 20 articles; among features on North Korea, domestic issues and the 2020 pandemic, six articles relate to Korean popular culture, all of which are specifically about BTS (BBC 2020). Given the importance of culture to the nation’s economy and reputation – K-pop, K-dramas and other exports strategically branded with the K-prefix – the idols, actors and creators who are the public faces of South Korea’s culture industry possess significant responsibility, with BTS currently at the forefront. The continuing involvement of the South Korean government in funding the culture industry, as well as related sectors such as education and infrastructure, positions cultural exports as key part of national strategy. Although K-pop idols may not always formally serve in a diplomatic capacity, for these reasons it can be argued that they can be interpreted as cultural ambassadors. K-pop idols have, from time to time, been deployed as ambassadors in a formal capacity; for example, EXO’s presence at the Blue House during a 2019 US state visit, and Red Velvet’s 2018 performance in Pyongyang. However even when idols are not performing an explicitly diplomatic role, the entanglement of culture and state interests means that all foreign engagements by K-pop idols are imbued with political significance. This chapter will explore Western (English-language) media coverage of BTS, and how this reveals popular culture as a territory for negotiating and establishing perceptions of Korea. It will furthermore contend that BTS serve as cultural ambassadors for South Korea, fulfilling a specific diplomatic role in a complex way. The effectiveness of the Korean Wave or Hallyu has been widely acknowledged. In the case of BTS, the success of their cultural diplomacy has often been measured quantitatively, for example, by estimating their effect on the Korean economy (Hyundai Research Institute 2018) and inbound tourism (Kwak et  al. 2019). Although useful, such studies provide limited insight to how BTS affect attitudes, understandings and perceptions of Korea itself. These studies encounter difficulties when measuring intangible concepts; determining causation; accounting for the proliferation and complexity of new media technologies; and that impacts may only be visible in the long term (Banks 2011).

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To address this, various alternative evaluation methods exist, including quantitative opinion surveys and network and content analysis (Sevin and Ingenhoff 2018), as well as qualitative discourse analysis. While the social media are doubtlessly key part of the contemporary media landscape and instrumental in BTS’s global expansion, the traditional mass media – magazines, newspapers and the like – are more likely to reflect opinions of, and reach, a wider public; and reveal mainstream assumptions and preconceptions. These media form integral part of a public’s symbolic, information-based environment, which “can affect their perceptions of and interpretations about a country” (Tam and Kim 2019: 32). Mainstream media outlets therefore provide particular insight into prevailing in-country attitudes toward issues, and serve as a barometer of public opinion. For this reason, an examination of the mainstream media reveals how Korea’s cultural diplomacy has “moved the needle” (after Banks 2011: 34) of wider public opinion. This study therefore uses discourse analysis (Fairclough 2010) to discuss how media coverage of BTS reveals developing understandings and attitudes toward Korea more broadly.

Adorable representatives for youth Stories about popular culture form part of general country reporting in the Western media, as demonstrated by the BBC example above. It is nonetheless remarkable for only one group to command so much attention, especially as K-pop encompasses many musicians with established international followings. This focus on BTS as leading representatives of Korea’s popular culture places these seven individuals in the position of representing Korea itself. Before embarking on a discussion of media discourse around BTS, some context on the group itself and their activities is necessary. Within K-pop, idols, although this term seems to be falling into disrepute (Park 2018), are held to high moral and personal standards, in comparison with their counterparts in the West. The reasons for this are many, and include historical government policies, television broadcast regulations and the role of the entertainment agency in shaping all aspects of an idol’s image (Howard 2013). While direct political censorship of the arts today is rare, the closeness of South Korea’s government and its private sector has resulted in a de facto adherence to cultural policy (Yuk 2019). Furthermore, the economic value of K-pop relies heavily on its commercial relationship with other industries (through sponsorship, advertising and promotion of products), and an idol’s public reputation is therefore crucial. As such, as soon as a typical singer debuts, they are expected to uphold standards of behavior prescribed by their management agency, television broadcasters, government policies and priorities, and the public. Since their debut, BTS have established their pro-social credentials. This is evident, for instance, in the management company’s (Big Hit Entertainment) slogan, “Music & Artist for Healing,” and the name of their fandom, ARMY (Adorable Representative MC for Youth). Their early focus on the social media

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and direct-to-fan communication presented the group as relatable, unfiltered and genuine, in contrast to the highly stylized and market-ready idols produced by major agencies such as SM Entertainment and JYP Entertainment. The group’s youth-focused strategy echoes that of K-pop innovators Seo Taiji and Boys, though some 20 years later; just as Seo’s “direct relevance to youth… resulted in masses of teenage fans who worship him as their hero and representative voice” ( Jung 2016: 146), so too have BTS established themselves as a youth-driven movement. Seo’s influence on BTS’s trajectory is recurring; their 2013 single “N.O.,” like Seo’s 1994 “Gyosil Idea” (Classroom Ideology), criticizes the inflexible educational system; 2015’s “Baepsae” mirrors the generational critiques of Seo’s “Sidae Yugam” (1995); and in 2017, the group covered Seo’s 1995 hit “Come Back Home.” As “representatives for youth,” BTS have addressed the United Nations and donated to various charitable and social causes including the US-based Black Lives Matter movement. While many K-pop idols undertake charitable work, BTS have surpassed other groups in establishing social responsibility as core to their identity. These activities, for the most part, carefully avoid specific political interpretation, and concern widely supported (and often global) causes, such as mental health awareness and humanitarian relief.

Defining cultural ambassador Like many K-pop idols, BTS have undertaken formal ambassador roles, such as Honorary Tourism Ambassador for Seoul (Seoul Tourism Organization 2020). However, this investigation argues that they also serve an ongoing function as cultural ambassadors, a role which carries multiple levels of meaning and interpretation. Cultural diplomacy, as practiced by governments worldwide, is a well-established “soft power” approach for advancing national interests, including facilitating cultural exchange and the export/promotion of cultural goods. Soft power refers to “co-optive power” (Nye 1990) associated with intangible power resources, including culture and ideology. It has formed an increasing element of international power relations in the modern era (Ibid.). In the Korean context, the nation’s soft power assets include the global Korean diaspora; and culture, including both traditional forms (art, crafts and cuisine) and popular culture, often termed the Korean Wave or Hallyu (Kim and Nye 2013). Since the early 2000s, Korea has incorporated Hallyu into its nation-branding efforts and has subsidized the production of creative exports, as well as other initiatives such as supporting language learning and promoting cuisine (Kim 2011). The specific role of the cultural ambassador within this approach, however, has been less widely examined. What does this role entail? Its first function is ambassadorship, namely, a role in which an agent signifies or represents the nation, or a constituent state or institution. It evokes formal diplomatic activities, as outlined in the 1961 Vienna Convention, including representing the state, negotiating with foreign states and “promoting friendly relations… developing their economic, cultural and

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scientific relations” (Wolfe 1998: 27). Ambassadors may function in a formal, honorary or de facto capacity; however, the core responsibility is that the agent embodies or promotes a defined (and sanctioned) set of values abroad. Accompanying this representation is the expectation that these values will represent the nation in a positive light, leading to desired outcomes, including changing public perception for political or financial advantage. Adding culture to an ambassadorial role adds further layers of complexity. First, it reveals the importance accorded to national culture by the modern state. This is outlined in Wallerstein’s world-systems analysis (2011: 349) which defines core (e.g. economically dominant) nation-states as possessing a strong “national culture,” allowing them to maintain internal order while projecting external power. The cultural ambassador, whether formal, semi-formal or de facto, therefore fulfills a strategic role in representing not only culture, but also developing cultural power. In other words, the cultural ambassador as a figurehead embodies and acknowledges culture itself (rather than specific forms of culture or expression) as a symbolic commodity. Second, the role of cultural ambassador presupposes the existence of a representative national culture. The idea of culture as a shared social construct – let alone a national construct – has been widely critiqued in contemporary cultural studies (Dirks et al. 1994). A “legitimate national culture” (Bourdieu 1994: 62) is necessarily the result of the state, which imposes “bureaucratic procedures, educational structures and social rituals [contributing] to the construction of what is commonly designated as national identity” (Ibid.: 61). The cultural ambassador therefore serves the state not only because they serve the nation’s diplomatic interests, but also because they promote a state-supported “national culture.” Third, a cultural ambassador serves an explicitly public-facing role. Public diplomacy is increasingly focused on the role of publics and non-state actors in “political change, information and communication technologies, and the transnational flows of culture and news” (Hayden 2012: 6). As public figures, cultural ambassadors are agents through which state power is translated and disseminated to publics. The interactions of cultural ambassadors with the public sphere are therefore critical visible moments where symbolic value is exchanged. Examining these moments offers an insight into the mechanisms of soft power. Viewed through this lens, the congratulatory post discussed at the outset is illuminating. In this brief memo, President Moon articulates the importance of popular culture to South Korea’s diplomatic mission; outlines the sanctioned message of joy, self-determination and sincerity; and anoints BTS as the carrier of this message. There are two significant and related aspects of BTS’s cultural ambassador status. These are the specifically popular context of their cultural milieu, and the informality of their ambassadorial role. Despite their global recognition, BTS and Hallyu constitute only one element of South Korea’s overarching public diplomacy strategy. The Korean government’s public diplomacy strategy aims to “enhance national prestige and image [by using] abundant cultural assets such as Hallyu, the 2018 PyeongChang Olympic Winter Games and tourism,” alongside

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other initiatives such as promoting Korean studies overseas (Choi 2019: 19). The strategy aims to co-ordinate government ministries and public and private sector entities, as well as overseas diplomatic missions, in conformity with the master plan (Ibid.: 16). Historically, the use of cultural assets within public diplomacy relied on promoting cultural exchange. Schneider (2003: 2) gives the example of the numerous “actors, musicians, artists, writers and dancers” sent abroad as cultural ambassadors by the US government in the 1950s until the mid-1970s. Sports constitutes another strand of cultural exchange, as does the exchange of cultural artifacts through exhibitions (Ibid.: 4–5). These exchanges are facilitated through embassies and relevant arts, or sports, institutions in each country. Hallyu, and likewise BTS, is somewhat different. The examples of cultural exchange above are typically organized in a “top-down” manner by state organizations, prioritizing “high culture” assets (such as fine art and jazz music) and traditional/historical expressions of culture. Hallyu, meanwhile, is driven by the private sector, including numerous entertainment agencies and broadcasting corporations (Kim 2016), although these have strongly benefited from state support (Kang 2015). It relies on mass-market appeal and a wide and often young audience demographic using the social media to propagate publicity. There is an inherent tension in Hallyu within cultural diplomacy because it serves a double role as both economic (private) sector and diplomatic (public) resource (Ibid.: 443). In this light, BTS’s cultural ambassador role is even more remarkable. Historically, popular music has formed an important aspect of soft power – for instance, increasing favorable impressions of Japan in East Asia (Otmazgin 2008) and the West in the German Democratic Republic (Fuchs 2000) – but has been mostly outside the purview of the state. Likewise, American popular culture, especially rock ‘n’ roll, helped precipitate the collapse of communism, by spreading through radio and underground networks in Eastern Europe (Schneider 2005: 154). Yet crucial part of this success was its separation from political use; rock music “worked best when void of government overtones” and was effective precisely because it was “non-state soft power” (Kounalakis and Simonyi 2011: 26). This risk of appearing propagandistic explains why popular music has not historically been directly used for cultural diplomacy. Nonetheless, popular music is a powerful medium, as exemplified by the American Forces Korea Network (AFKN); broadcasting popular music to US troops stationed in South Korea, this station was not specifically set up as a “soft power” initiative (being directed at an American expatriate audience, rather than Korean listeners), but nonetheless was profoundly influential in the development of Korean popular music, from rock ‘n’ roll (Lie 2012: 343) to hip-hop (Song 2019: 1–2). Likewise, BTS’s popularity growth outside of Korea has largely occurred organically, rather than as a governmental “soft power” initiative, although the relation of the state to Hallyu has historically been one of support and promotion. BTS and other Hallyu figureheads are emblematically representative of South Korea, but not usually perceived as a direct tool of the state by audiences

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participating in K-pop as a distributed, subcultural online phenomenon (Oh 2013). The benefits of this seemingly informal arrangement are that BTS and their management, Big Hit Entertainment, have (or are perceived as having) creative autonomy. This allows BTS to “work” as a “soft power” mechanism, without seeming to be state-driven. While various anti-Hallyu movements have certainly occurred, most notably in China and Japan, these are largely attributed to complex domestic factors and historical rivalries (Oh 2009), more than a direct reaction to Korea’s cultural diplomacy strategy.

BTS in English-language Western media A review of major English-language news publications, including The Guardian (UK/USA/AUS), The New York Times (USA) and The Telegraph (UK), reveals that interest in BTS – separate from K-pop in general – started around 2017, coinciding with the group’s EP “Love Yourself: Her” and their win of “Top Social Artist” at the Billboard Music Awards. Articles on K-pop have been a fixture of the Western mediascape for close to a decade, accelerated by Psy’s viral “Gangnam Style” in 2012. These often focus on aspects of K-pop which are seen as fascinatingly at odds to Western popular music, such as the comparatively high number of members per group, the trainee system and different expectations of idols’ physical appearance and behavior. Likewise, K-pop is often featured in broader discussions around Korea and East Asia’s rising economic and cultural influence. This investigation, however, concentrates on how media coverage of BTS itself reveals developing perceptions of Korea. Early media discourse surrounding BTS in 2017 and 2018 builds on these then-current conceptions of K-pop as a highly standardized popular culture product, derived from established Western musics (particularly from the USA) and repackaged in glossy, anodyne form. A 2018 review in The Guardian writes, “There’s nothing in the boyband’s third album to upset the formula, with hookheavy synth anthems and breathy ballads delivered to precision-engineered perfection,” and describes the album itself as sounding “almost exactly like a mainstream British pop album would, with all the good and bad that entails” (Petridis 2018). Further articles similarly describe the group as a copy of Western predecessors, commenting, “The foundations of this banging, glittery show have been lifted from Western pop/R&B acts, as has their music’s frenetic EDM and Bieberpop” (Sullivan 2018) and “a derivative mix of Nineties hip hop, R&B and pop rock” (McCormick 2018). The judgment present in this discourse is worth discussing. First, these comments reveal an expectation that BTS’s music should be identifiably “Korean-sounding,” beyond the use of the Korean language. Yet the globalization of popular music has been underway for decades; for example, Swedish songwriters and producers work extensively in US popular music (Seabrook 2015). The underlying preconception here is that Korea does not participate in global flows of popular music or culture. Second, these descriptions position Western musicians as innovators, and BTS as imitators. While popular

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and youth culture in Korea – like many other countries and regions – has been influenced by the USA, similarities to Western musics are invoked here to diminish BTS’s music as derivative and unoriginal. Related to this, a third aspect of this discourse is a view of BTS (and K-pop as a whole) as formulaic, rather than creative. While such criticisms of pop and commercial music are nothing new, dating back at least to Adorno’s (1941) essay on popular music, the recurring depiction of BTS as the product of a manufacturing process is remarkable, especially as such critiques are applicable to popular music globally. Terms like “formula” and “precision-engineered perfection” associate BTS with factory-made products, suggesting a lack of creativity, originality and agency. Such depictions recall stereotypes of the “othered” Oriental mind, lacking initiative and engaging in “fulsome flattery” (Said 1979: 38). These early discussions of BTS reveal preconceptions of Korea as a culturally “othered” territory that replicates, rather than creates, content. BTS are frequently described in relation to Western popular music, in an effort to introduce them to domestic readership. Justin Bieber is one such artist; in the UK, One Direction is often named. A notable aspect of this discourse is the competitive framing of this comparison. BTS are described as “bigger than One Direction” (McCormick 2018), having “obliterated Taylor Swift’s record for the most-viewed video in 24 hours” (Stokel-Walker 2018); while “some of the West’s biggest bands have thrown up the white flag in the face of competition from BTS’s global reach” (Ibid.). At a press conference, BTS’s publicists “wield an omniscient awareness of their client’s movements that their British counterparts could never begin to compete with” (White 2019). This first positions BTS as a little-known “outsider,” whose mainstream popularity is both surprising and inexorable; and second indicates a rivalrous relationship between “the West” (Stokel-Walker 2018) and BTS, who assumedly represent “the East.” The recurring discourse focusing on BTS’s dominance as “global” artists is also notable. Western pop artists are seldom described as “global” by the media, as the West’s hegemony permeates popular culture worldwide. The term “global,” used to describe BTS’s popularity across Asia and the West, implicitly refers to a decline of Western-dominated global popular culture. Metaphors of domination, competition and conquest are not in themselves unusual in music journalism, as awards and sales constitute important metrics of success. However, the diametric positioning of BTS against Western musical acts suggests awareness – and possibly anxiety – of non-Western (e.g. Korean) culture moving from the margins to the mainstream. While BTS are occasionally dismissed as a derivation of Western pop music, several features discuss ways that the group refines, or elevates, the genre. One point of focus is the group’s visual aspect, such as “hair styled in matching bushy bowl cuts and dyed neon colors” (Petridis 2018), as well as more exoticized depictions – “porcelain-perfect flesh” (Sullivan 2018) and “ethereal-looking Jimin” (Glasby 2018). A concert review notes that “never has the production of a boy-band concert been so noticeably fixated on the beauty of its performers” (White 2019). BTS’s high standard of live performance is also noted; commenters

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point out the “weirdly thrilling, millimeter-perfect synchronicity favored by K-pop choreographers” (Petridis 2018); that the group put “so much graft into their dancing that by the end of the first song, Idol, they’re gulping liters of water” (Sullivan 2018) and that “no American artists – apart from perhaps Travis Scott – are working on live shows with BTS’s level of intensity and detail” (Caramanica 2018). Here the discourse suggests that the standards of pop music itself, historically centered in Western aesthetics and performance, are being rewritten by BTS. This notion is evident in the oft-repeated description (rejected by the group itself ) of BTS as “The Korean Beatles” (White 2019); unlike comparisons to contemporaneous “boy bands” such as One Direction, the implied similarity in this case relates to the group’s impact on popular culture. More notably, the foregrounding of “Korean” in “Korean Beatles” demonstrates how Korean-ness is at the center of BTS’s identity in the Western media. The suggestion in this discourse is a shift in the locus of cultural influence away from the West, toward Korea in particular. Media coverage of BTS has also marked changing perceptions of Korea’s popular culture industry, shifting discourse away from K-pop’s “dark side.” This is remarked upon in a 2018 article, which discerns that the Western media have typically focused on K-pop’s “antiseptic cuteness, the battery farming of young performers tied to ‘slave’ contracts, with everything from their diets to their sex lives strictly controlled” (Petridis 2018). Even early discourse around BTS focuses on the group’s perceived difference from “typical” K-pop acts, noting their “slightly more thoughtful tone within the exhaustingly energetic world of K-pop” (Haynes 2017). This difference has several aspects, including the complex literary allusions to “Jung, Orwell, Hesse and Nietzsche” (Glasby 2018) in their material; their interest in fine art, culminating in the well-publicized “Connect, BTS” global art project in 2020; and the creative freedoms BTS seem to possess, noting that management agency Big Hit Entertainment “has given the band members a degree of freedom uncommon in the world of corporate K-pop” (Dooley and Lee 2020). A noticeable distinction is drawn between BTS and “typical” K-pop acts, even as other K-pop artists have previously explored literature and art and exercised freedom of creative expression, or at least appeared to (e.g. G-Dragon). Likewise, media discourse distinguishes BTS from “exhaustingly energetic” K-pop (Haynes 2017) in praising their informal demeanor and in-group friendships, the “relaxed” execution of dance moves (Caramanica 2018) and the “ease” with which they conduct a Q&A session (White 2019). The group’s perceived intellectual curiosity, creative autonomy and camaraderie neatly refute prevailing criticisms of pop music, and of K-pop in particular, as a cynical and exploitative industry. The most prominent accolades for BTS in the Western media are given to the group’s messages of self-love, tolerance and acceptance. As well as attention to their “LOVE MYSELF” partnership with UNICEF, their speeches at UN General Assemblies and donation to the Black Lives Matter movement, columnists also note “the warmth they extend to each other, with constant pats and touches, and to the ARMY” (Sullivan 2018) and the “playful, grounded warmth” that

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members display (Caramanica 2018). This focus on social progress and wellbeing has been lauded as “intriguingly revolutionary” (White 2019). The “revolutionary” element suggested here is not fully explained, but it has two aspects. First, while the group’s message is aimed at a general and global audience, it obliquely acknowledges the taboos surrounding mental health and related pressures within K-pop, and within Korean society generally. Topics such as molka (spycams), sexism and competition have featured in country coverage of South Korea (Tai 2020) forming part of the “dark side” of K-pop. Although the group mostly refrains from commenting on specific incidents or issues, BTS’s positive message counterbalances these largely negative portrayals of Korean society. Second, although BTS are among many global pop artists who have spoken out about mental health (including Billie Eilish, Lady Gaga and Demi Lovato), their way of doing so is notable. Rather than discussing these issues from a primarily confessional perspective (although they have discussed their own experiences), BTS concentrate on role-modeling positive behaviors and attitudes toward acceptance, and on galvanizing their fan base. This approach might be interpreted as “revolutionary” because it foregrounds social change as part of the group’s core ethos, in a largely apolitical global pop scene. This broadly appealing pro-social message is upheld as the principal cause for BTS’s global following, and underpins a discourse identifying BTS as the leaders of a global youth movement. “BTS’s music and squeaky-clean image appeal to millennial and Generation Z listeners who are drawn to themes of self-acceptance and empowerment” (Shah 2020). Other writers note that recent political activism, such as ARMY’s disruption of Donald Trump’s rallies, follows “a concerted effort by K-pop fans in recent years to make positive change en masse” (Coscarelli 2020). Articles on BTS frequently describe the fervor and community-mindedness of BTS fandom, both at live concerts and on the social media. Typical coverage expresses surprise at the dedication of fans, including “spending serious money on Bluetooth-programmed light-up sticks” (Glasby 2018) and “singing along in phonetic approximation” (Thomas 2018) of Korean; their considerable social media presence and “fiercely mobilized and diverse fan base” (White 2019) are almost always mentioned. While writers may be baffled by them, ARMY are discussed in largely positive and sympathetic terms, lauding their “generous spirit and sense of community [where fans] find help and support with everything from tricky school work to how to dress for the London cold” (Matthews 2018). In this discourse, BTS embody a moment of generational transformation. ARMY represents a “coming of age” for the young, in which cultural production and influence are no longer limited to the USA or Europe, where communities are global and meaningful, and where the youth are politically and socially engaged. BTS’s rise to worldwide popularity, coinciding with global political unrest (particularly in the USA and the UK), growing socioeconomic inequality and an increasingly uncertain future for young people, seems to offer hope; that the utopian ideal of McLuhan’s (1964) “global village” may yet come true. That BTS is consistently identified as a Korean group positions South

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Korea at the vanguard of a new, progressive movement. As a Telegraph columnist muses, “BTS have evolved into a quietly radical industry all their own… It feels like the right time to brush up on your Korean” (White 2019).

Conclusion The continuing novelty of a South Korean group among the global pop élite means that BTS cannot be discussed as “just” a pop group by the Western media; they are depicted as having some deeper significance. The South Korean government’s support of Hallyu has enabled the development of the nation’s culture industry and their export abroad, and the state has explicitly approved BTS’s global achievements. The Western media, meanwhile, do not perceive BTS as a direct function of South Korean diplomacy, but nonetheless relate the two in revealing ways. To this end, BTS’s function as cultural ambassadors is unavoidable. Periodic calls to “stop politicizing K-pop” (Korea Herald 2020) – which recently resurfaced, following BTS’s statements on the Korean War that piqued the Chinese media – fail to acknowledge that popular culture cannot be disentangled from its wider context. To Western columnists, BTS’s rapid grassroots success presents an opportunity to consider wider territories – the turn of cultural influence away from the West; Korea’s growing creative capacity; the rapidly shifting parameters of global pop culture and the potential of an online, united collective of young people. Even when the group is addressed as an entity in itself by culture or music columnists, it reveals developing understandings of shifting geopolitical, economic, social and cultural power. Through these features, depictions of Korea and its culture industry have also evolved, moving from exploitation to empowerment, from imitation to innovation and from triviality to significance. At the same time, the group’s still-growing popularity offers increasing potential for commercial exploitation in service of Korea’s national interests, reflecting what Kim and Nye (2013: 39) term the Korean Wave’s “neoliberal capitalist approach” to nation branding. This is evident in the public offering of their management agency Big Hit Entertainment, as well as continuing associations with conglomerates (chaebol) such as Samsung and Hyundai, who have used BTS as the “face” of recent major product launches (the BTS edition Samsung Galaxy and IONIQ electric vehicle, respectively). It remains to be seen how and whether BTS will sustain the balancing act required of the cultural ambassador; on one side, representing national and commercial interests, and on the other, maintaining the apparent creative independence and progressive, authentic image that has underwritten their success to date.

References Adorno, T. (1941) “On Popular Music,” Zeitschrift für Sozialforschung, 9(1): 17–48. Banks, R. (2011) A Resource Guide to Public Diplomacy Evaluation, Los Angeles: Figueroa Press.

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BBC (2020) “South Korea,” 21 October. Bourdieu, P. (1994) “Rethinking the State,” in N. Dirks, G. Eley and S. Ortner (eds) Culture/Power/History, Princeton: Princeton University Press. Caramanica, J. (2018) “K-Pop Superstars BTS Lit up Citi Field’s Stage,” New York Times, 7 October. Choi, K. (2019) The Republic of Korea’s Public Diplomacy Strategy, Los Angeles: Figueroa Press. Coscarelli, J. (2020) “Why Obsessive K-Pop Fans Are Turning Toward Political Activism,” New York Times, 25 June. Dirks, N., Geoff, E. and Ortner, S. (1994) Culture/Power/History, Princeton: Princeton University Press. Dooley, B. and Lee, S. (2020) “BTS’s Loyal Army of Fans Is the Secret Weapon Behind a $4 Billion Valuation,” New York Times, 14 October. Fairclough, N. (2010) Critical Discourse Analysis, London: Routledge. Fuchs, T. (2000) “Rock ‘n’ Roll in the German Democratic Republic, 1949–1961,” in R.  Wagnleitner and E. May (eds) Here, There and Everywhere, Hanover: University Press of New England. Gallagher, J. (2019) “Are K-Pop Stars the World’s Biggest ‘Influencers’?” Wall Street Journal, 15 July. Glasby, T. (2018) “How BTS Became the World’s Biggest Boyband,” Guardian, 12 October. Hayden, C. (2012) The Rhetoric of Soft Powers, Lanham: Lexington Books. Haynes, G. (2017) “Why BTS Are the K-pop Kings of Social Media,” Guardian, 24 May. Howard, K. (2013) “The Foundations of Hallyu – K-pop’s Coming of Age,” First World Congress for Hallyu Studies, 18–19 October. Hyundai Research Institute (2018) BTS’s Economic Effect [Korean], Seoul: HRI. Jung, E.Y. (2016) “Seo Taiji Syndrome,” in H. Shin and S. Lee (eds) Made in Korea, New York: Routledge. Kang, H. (2015) “Contemporary Cultural Diplomacy in South Korea,” International Journal of Cultural Policy, 21(4): 433–47. Kim, J. (2016) “Success without Design,” Korean Journal of Policy Studies, 31(3): 101–18. Kim, R. (2011) “South Korean Cultural Diplomacy and Efforts to Promote the ROK’s Brand Image in the United States and Around the World,” Stanford Journal of East Asian Affairs, 11(1): 124–34. Kim, Y. and Nye, J. (2013) “Soft Power and the Korean Wave,” in Y. Kim (ed) The Korean Wave: Korean Media Go Global, London: Routledge. Korea Herald (2018) “President Moon Jae-In Congratulates BTS for Achieving No. 1 on Billboard 200,” 29 May. Korea Herald (2020) “Stop Politicizing K-pop, Warn Experts,” 20 October. Kounalakis, M., & Simonyi, A. (2011) The Hard Truth About Soft Power, Los Angeles: Figueroa Press. Kwak, H., Kim, J., Kim, S., Jung, J. and Choi, H. (2019) “Korean Dance Performance Influences on Prospective Tourist Cultural Products Consumption and Behavior Intention,” Journal of Psychology in Africa, 29(3): 230–36. Lie, J. (2012) “What Is the K in K-pop?” Korea Observer, 43(3): 339–63. Matthews, R. (2018) “Inside ARMY: The Bizarre and Beautiful World of BTS Fandom,” Telegraph, 17 October. McCormick, N. (2018) “One Direction’s Seoul Mates,” Daily Telegraph, 6 October. McLuhan, M. (1964) Understanding Media, New York: McGraw-Hill.

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Moon, J. (2019) “Remarks By President Moon Jae-In at Presentation of Three Strategies for Innovative Content Industry,” Office of the President, 17 September. Nye, J. (1990) “Soft Power,” Foreign Policy, 80: 153–71. Oh, I. (2009) “Hallyu,” Korea Observer, 40(3): 425–59. Oh, I. (2013) “The Globalization of K-pop,” Korea Observer, 44(3): 389–409. Otmazgin, N. (2008) “Contesting Soft Power,” International Relations of the Asia-Pacific, 8(1): 73–101. Park, J. (2018) “Why Japanese Idol Trainees Lag Behind Koreans,” Korea Times, 4 July. Petridis, A. (2018) “BTS: Love Yourself: Tear Review,” Guardian, 19 May. Said, E. (1979) Orientalism, New York: Vintage Books. Schneider, C. (2003) Diplomacy That Works: ‘Best Practices’ in Cultural Diplomacy. Washington, DC: Centre for Arts and Culture. Schneider, C. (2005) “Culture Communicates,” in J. Melissen (ed) The New Public Diplomacy, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Schwak, J. (2016) “Branding South Korea in a Competitive World Order,” Asian Studies Review, 40(3): 427–44. Seabrook, J. (2015) The Song Machine, London: Jonathan Cape. Seoul Tourism Organization (2020) “See You in Seoul,” VisitSeoul.net. Sevin, E.and Ingenhoff, D. (2018) “Public Diplomacy on Social Media,” International Journal of Communication, 12: 3663–85. Shah, N. (2020) “Seven Reasons Why South Korea’s BTS Is an American Phenomenon,” Wall Street Journal, 6 March. Song, M. (2019) Hanguk Hip Hop, Cham: Palgrave McMillan. Stokel-Walker, C. (2018) “BTS Mania, Explained: How a Science Fiction-loving, Record-breaking Boy Band Brought K-pop to the World,” Telegraph, 29 August. Sullivan, C. (2018) “BTS Review — Warmth and Wonder from World’s Biggest Boyband,” Guardian, 10 October. Tai, C. (2020) “Exploding the Myths Behind K-pop,” Guardian, 29 March. Tam, L. and Kim, J. (2019) “Who Are Publics in Public Diplomacy?,” Place Branding and Public Diplomacy, 15(1): 28–37. Thomas, C. (2018) “BTS: The K-Pop Group That Finally Won America Over,” Forbes, 26 March. Wallerstein, I. (2011) The modern world-system. I, Capitalist agriculture and the origins of the European world-economy in the sixteenth century. Berkeley: University of California Press. White, A. (2019) “The Korean Beatles: How BTS Are Changing the Language of Pop,” Telegraph, 8 August. Wolfe, R. (1998) “Still Lying Abroad? On the Institution of the Resident Ambassador,” Diplomacy and Statecraft, 9(2): 23–54. Yuk, J. (2019) “Cultural Censorship in Defective Democracy,” International Journal of Cultural Policy, 25(1): 33–47.

PART III

Drama

11 K-DRAMAS MEET NETFLIX New models of collaboration with the digital West Hyejung Ju

Korean dramas are now distributed and consumed globally via streaming services such as Netflix – a notable channel for Western audiences, including US viewers. Netflix provides a rich library of nostalgic K-drama classics, such as Jewel in the Palace (2003), Full House (2004) and Boys Over Flowers (2009), and a list of recent K-dramas including Mr. Sunshine (2018) and Kingdom (2019, 2020) on Netflix Originals. Netflix’s recommendation algorithm encourages international audiences to check on a list of K-dramas on the site and further caters to those who are either new starters or regular viewers. Reed Hastings, Netflix’s founder and now co-CEO, was recently asked about Netflix’s competitive market position as the leading global streaming platform. He particularly emphasized the site’s impressive rise during the COVID-19 pandemic: We want to be like your primary, your best friend, the one you turn to. And of course, occasionally there’s Hamilton and you’re going to go to someone else’s service for an extraordinary film. But for the most part we want to be the one that can just always please you, be the convenient, simple, easy choice. (Goldsmith 2020) Netflix’s recent advantage over other global OTT (over-the-top) media industries also coincides with increasing recognition of non-Western media products and particularly Korean TV contents, such as K-dramas and K-variety shows, often distributed via the Netflix platform. Indeed, the platform’s licensing of high-profile K-dramas for streaming in the United States and more than 190 countries has grown exponentially, including a K-drama fully funded by Netflix – Love Alarm produced in 2019 (Kil 2017; B. Kim 2019; Ju 2020a). Love Alarm adapted a popular Korean webtoon (web cartoon) by another Korean content DOI: 10.4324/9781003102489-11

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production firm, developing it into an eight-episode series for Netflix Originals. Several new K-dramas have served as Netflix Originals within the US market and elsewhere. Those K-dramas have been produced by Netflix’s direct investment in Korea for local drama production studios. In some cases, Netflix gets exclusive licenses to stream them through direct deals with the original production companies. These new models of collaboration reveal that Netflix has increased its capital and intense interest in K-dramas in recent years, testifying to a growing global appetite for K-dramas and the Korean Wave in general. In this context, Studio Dragon, a Korean production company subsidized by CJ E&M Group and JTBC Content Hub, recently signed an extended production partnership agreement with Netflix (B. Kim 2019; Lee 2020). Netflix is a significant promoter of K-dramas inflowing to North America and Europe, where K-dramas had been a nearly unknown TV genre to the mainstream TV audiences (Lee 2018). To explore these recent and relatively under-explored trends in the digital media landscape, this chapter considers a new development of K-dramas along with Netflix, looking specifically at their increasing Western viewership. It is fair to say that Netflix expands K-dramas’ speedy distribution and shareability to larger and broader Western audiences. Besides the competitive premium of Netflix global streaming, several peculiarities characterize how the platform and K-dramas combine to generate new attention from Western viewers, a process that seems quite different from how the first wave of K-dramas swung across Asia. By analyzing the appeal mechanisms of Netflix K-dramas, this chapter addresses textual distinctions of those K-dramas and engagement of Netflix K-drama viewers in the West to understand how a new tribe of Netflix K-dramas encourages Western audiences to engage with popular texts and Korean culture.

Transculturality, Netflix and pop cosmopolitanism In considering the global flows of the media, it is important to recognize the challenges of the hierarchical, unidirectional and geo-cultural media powers. Global cultures can be understood in the nexus of cross-border interpenetrations, fluid movements and cultural blending, albeit asymmetrical, rather than assuming the stasis and stability of cultural commodities (Hopper 2007). The media and popular culture flows in the case of K-dramas and broadly the Korean Wave are understood within a frame of complex, uneven and multifaceted media exchanges, with the rise of transnational traffic of the non-Western media through increasing digital media platforms. The notion of transculturality in the media and popular culture sheds light on the changing dynamics of cultural exchanges in a myriad of levels and directions (Cho 2011; Kim 2011). At least, cultural exchanges globally concur in two directions. On one hand, global cultural exchanges still maintain national cultural distinctiveness upon territorial particularities. On the other hand, many cultural processes and outcomes reflect the simultaneous rise of mutual yet still uneven interpenetrations from different

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cultures. In the digital age today, the media flows embark on visible, crossborder exchanges regardless of the cultural and production origins of contents as an inevitable consequence of transculturality. The ideas of cultural proximity and cultural affinity tend to identify a shared modern sense or postcolonial cultural identity as one of the prime factors of the popularity of the Korean Wave including K-drama and K-pop across Asia ( Jung 2011; Lie 2012) and more recently in Latin America (Han 2019). These ideas provide a plausible answer to the penetration and appeal of K-dramas in a geographically proximate Asia, and, to some extent, the culturally proximate Middle East. Elements of cultural affinity or proximity may lead to affective involvement driven by perceived commonality, preference or non-Western ideologies beyond the differences of languages, religions and national traditions. The recent rise of K-drama consumption by Western audiences can raise an intriguing question; to what extent cultural affinity can still be useful to understand the extended K-drama viewership in the digital West. Western viewers have not been familiar with K-dramas and Korean culture until recently, but nevertheless they may be able to relate to and identify with Korean contents alongside similar sociocultural backgrounds. To be sure, Netflix K-dramas consumed and enjoyed by Western audiences suggest the demand for the exploration of the polysemic aspects of K-dramas that can be surprisingly appreciated, emotionally invested and feasibly emulated (Schulze 2013; Han 2019). Polysemic textual and intertextual dimensions embedded in popular K-dramas on Netflix may capture the hearts and minds of more Western audiences than before. Transculturality for those engaged audiences of the West can be understood in terms of both entertaining appeal and critical cultural reflection. Transculturality as the process of interpretation and engagement in foreign media consumption seems a corollary to the ever-growing trans-border media flows as part of uneven cultural globalization (Morris and Wright 2009). As an integral feature of international media exchanges, transculturality provides useful insight into the range of cultural forms, forces and new trends simultaneously encompassing both national and international media landscapes. For more than a decade, the Korean Wave has been blowing up outside of Asia, but relatively a few studies on K-drama viewership in the United States have appeared in this period (Park 2013; Oh 2014; Ju and Lee 2015; Lee 2018). Those existing studies generally examined the role of online and social media fandom, as well as the racial/ethnic relevance to the Korean Wave’s transnational fandom. One of the reasons for this research gap stems from under-represented receiving platforms for transnational K-dramas. Until Netflix took up K-dramas in its main TV catalog, the third-party on-demand providers, relying on fan-base websites (mysoju.tv, Viki, DramaCrazy.net, DramaFever.com and allkpop.com) (Lee 2015), were the major platforms accessible to K-drama fans in the United States ( Ju 2020b). The rapid rise of streaming TV marketplaces in the United States enhances the demand for a diverse set of transnational TV shows to feed the versatile desires of viewers, while also bolstering its alternative marketability

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in a niche market ( Ju 2020a). According to the Korea Creative Content Agency (KOCCA), 18 million viewers in the United States stream K-dramas, and US viewership overall accounts for 5–6% of the total international share of K-dramas ( J. Kim 2019). In the United States, Netflix has been a mainstream middle-class media platform since the early 2000s, but in other parts of the world, the use of Netflix is limited to cosmopolitan upper-class viewers whose tastes may not be indicative of their fellow citizens (Lobato 2018). Netflix has targeted English language-speaking elites in international markets and this strategy affects their service catalogs that are constantly changing and spatially differentiated. In a sense, Netflix catalogs can be better understood through the prism of transnational class formations, rather than the frame of a national audience (Lobato 2018). By using K-dramas, Netflix has bolstered its recognition overseas across continents, in much the same way YouTube has globalized K-pop. For Netflix, K-dramas have not only boosted streaming profit but also required significantly less investment than other Netflix Original series (Sanjay 2020). Korean dramas are likely to offer a variety of themes and genres within a whole entertainment universe, which many foreign viewers can identify, digest and absorb as they move across different K-dramas. Pop culture fans, as cultural agents and grassroots entrepreneurs, intentionally or unintentionally disseminate ideas, emotions and sensibilities from certain cultural commodities when they are able to construct mechanisms for marketing those commodities in the digital age (Otmazgin and Lyan 2018). Transnational K-drama flows can exemplify the grassroots pattern of dissemination mechanisms. The process can create unexpected interest among foreign viewers by accessing and exposing them to various aspects of Korean culture, history and experiences. It can stimulate excitement and reflexivity among transnational viewers who want to explore their own lives and engage their emotions and identification, depending on their sociocultural context of reception. The provoked feelings are involved in both exotic and somehow familiar perspectives on K-drama texts, allowing foreign viewers to experience a reminiscent sense as well as a sense of fascination for “otherness” (Ibid.: 296). Going beyond the consumption of the media texts, online participatory culture has been created by active fans who may experience transnational cultural products as pop cosmopolitans. “Pop cosmopolitanism” refers to the ways that the transcultural flows of popular culture inspire new forms of “global consciousness and cultural competency” ( Jenkins 2006: 156). Online participation does not simply mean being active in this context, but being part of a shared practice and culture ( Jenkins et al. 2016), although technology-centric or technology-deterministic uses of the term implicitly define participation through the use of a digital platform or an online site. Pop culture fans’ online participation takes certain levels of intensity, affective investment and commitment in their favored cultural objects or celebrities. Transnational cultural objects, such as K-dramas, may exhibit ways of engaging pop cosmopolitans who are likely to open their minds and viewpoints to fresh experiences, sharing an alternative cultural knowledge, sentiment, critical reflection and cultural identity.

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The term “Korean Wave 2.0” refers to the expanded, globally emerging phenomena of Korean popular culture in the digital West, highlighting the role of social media and amateur distribution channels throughout Western countries (Yi 2011; Jin 2012; Oh 2015; Jin and Yoon 2016). The online-based K-drama viewership, more visibly developed with digital fandom, is part of the process of pop cosmopolitanism in a shared space where Western audiences can join through the extended Korean drama distribution channels in both America and Europe. Transnational media flows reside in the complex and multifaceted dimension interconnected between uneven global media industries, transmedia agents and divergent digital platforms. Although current K-drama flows into the West are unpredictable in terms of K-dramas’ sustainability in the future, the following case study on two Netflix Original K-dramas attempts to explore the apparent surge of Western viewership and unprecedented attractiveness of K-dramas on the streaming service, which was not foreseeable in the past discourse of the Korean Wave.

Mr. Sunshine and Kingdom on Netflix For this case study, I conducted a semantic and textual analysis on two recent K-drama texts, Mr. Sunshine (2018) and Kingdom (2019, 2020), as well as viewers’ online reactions. These two dramas share some similar characteristics that have led to the latest wave of K-drama popularity across the Western world. They are among the most popular K-dramas on Netflix and were also named by TIME as the top ten best K-dramas to watch for 2018–20 (Moon 2020). In response, Netflix viewers in the United States showered both dramas with praise and numerous reviews on a variety of social media and online forums. Online communications among transnational K-drama viewers exist in both real-time and delayed interactions. Among Western viewers, the online communications function as a significant mediator in emulating, negotiating and better understanding K-dramas. To examine Netflix K-drama viewers’ reactions to these two K-dramas, I collected viewer review data from IMDb (www.imdb.com) to conduct a textual analysis. IMDb (Internet Movie Database) has archived information on TV shows, films and streaming video contents for many years. According to the IMDb reviews of both K-dramas, reviewers on the site watched them via Netflix; there are many commentaries to show their appreciation for Netflix’s fine catalogue of K-dramas. The IMDb review site allows Netflix K-drama viewers in the United States and other countries including the UK to interact with dispersed viewers since Netflix has no user space for viewer conversations. Englishlanguage reviews for both K-dramas were analyzed by using AntConc (free software for content analysis), and this analysis included 624 reviews on IMDb – 168 for Mr. Sunshine and 456 for Kingdom. IMDb site users give a 10-point rate per TV show. Those users have given the average point of 8.8 for Mr. Sunshine and 8.4 for Kingdom. In terms of IMDb users’ demographics, the almost equal ratio of males (51%) and females (49%)

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rated Mr. Sunshine, and 30% of the raters identified themselves as American. For Kingdom, male users (83%) participated much more than females (17%), which indicates male-identified gendered consumption. The majority of male users for Kingdom were aged 30–44 (55%), followed by those aged 18–29 (31%). These reviewers showed their immediate and intense feelings toward these K-dramas as many expressed that they posted comments right after, or sometimes in the middle of, watching the K-dramas. Although this case study cannot offer the representative view of Netflix K-drama viewership in the West, it can nevertheless provide useful insight into the meaning-making process and pleasure of K-drama viewers. On Netflix, the full 24-episode series of Mr. Sunshine was streamed, two episodes per weekend, right after it aired on TVN (Korean domestic broadcaster), from July to September 2018. Both six-episode seasons of Kingdom are a Netflix K-drama original series, exclusively released on the Netflix global catalogs, starting in January 2019 for season one and March 2020 for season two. Both dramas are historical series that construe the unique local history of Korea, with Mr. Sunshine set in the last ancient Korean empire, Joseon, during the premodern era. The official Netflix trailer introduced Mr. Sunshine this way: Based in Shinmiyangyo, or the US expedition to Korea in the late 19th century, it tells the story of a Korean boy born into a family of a house servant running away to board an American warship, later to return to his homeland as a US marine officer. He ironically falls in love with an aristocrat’s daughter and discovers the dark scheme to colonize the country that he once ran away from. (Netflix Official Trailer July 2018) The chronicle setting of Mr. Sunshine presents a historical rupture, going from Joseon to the Korean Empire via the beginning of Korea’s colonization by Japan, which has rarely been explicated in world history. By contrast, Kingdom conveys a historical fantasy setting in the seventeenth century, a segment of the Joseon era that many other historical K-dramas have also adopted. Season one of Kingdom was introduced this way: “The deceased king rises and a mysterious plague begins to spread. The prince must face a new breed of enemies to unveil the evil and save his people” (Netflix Official Trailer February 2019). These two historical K-dramas share some commonalities in storytelling and the prime story arcs. As the following sections will demonstrate, viewers’ cognitive and emotional engagement is reflected in their enthusiastic reception of the K-dramas.

Historical storyline and cultural uniqueness IMDb reviewers enjoyed both Mr. Sunshine and Kingdom because of the unique historical storyline and interesting main characters. Despite different degrees of awareness about K-dramas, Korean history and cultural representation, the reviewers pointed out these two elements as a prime reason to keep watching both

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K-dramas. Specifically, three review keywords – story/storyline (109), characters (58) and acting/action (55) – explained their impression with the high quality of Mr. Sunshine. Additionally, the reviewers pointed out attractive elements of the drama, such as the story depth, flawless acting, cinematographic sceneries and emotional narratives. “Storytelling,” or the centrality of narrative events, is crucially important because American TV viewers are primarily concerned with storytelling in their TV show selection (Mittell 2015). Storytelling calls for the interesting and effective composition of a narrated story world, characters, events and narrative sequences. The reviewers for both Mr. Sunshine and Kingdom consider this important composition of storytelling when they select domestic TV shows as well as K-dramas. The reviewers closely follow the first episode in particular because of the unfamiliar periodic settings in the two K-dramas. The emphasis on the historical theme, regardless of genre differences, seems novel and significant as some Western viewers are immediately motivated to watch and stick to these K-dramas. They come to enjoy more, after the first episode, when the featured Korean history in the beginning of the storyline enables them to understand where the overall story goes and what the story stands for. Getting to know historical events and the truth that happened in the ancient times of Korea may give them a sense of cognitive fulfillment and worth for watching these K-dramas. History, or historical context, appears as another important keyword for the reviews in both Mr. Sunshine (48) and Kingdom (71). In the case of Mr. Sunshine, the reviewers express their new understanding of Korea’s colonization by Japan in the turbulent period under imperialistic geopolitics in Asia. They come to reflect on the positions of other countries portrayed in the drama as well as Korea’s nationalism or patriotism, a consequence of its colonial history. While watching the drama, these viewers further perceive that Korea, Japan and the United States were historically involved in conflicts with each other due to their differences of power and culture. This new recognition is reflected in their review comments on the IMDb site: Historically, it is based on an actual setting, something very few people in this country [the USA] would know about Korea, Japan and the USA. Within that framework, the clash of cultures, where values are different and honor prevails. “This is an epic drama loosely based on the history of Korea… It is set in the time where Joseon [Korea] is fought over between different countries with America and Japan.” The reviewers make sense of the historical context of the drama, while also paying attention to fictional characters and romantic narratives. They seem excited to follow the romantic relationship-oriented storyline in each episode and feel impressed with how the plot arc can successfully combine historic themes – patriotism, voluntary civic actions and tragic national sentiment – into the elegant romantic epic. Due to this emotional involvement, some reviewers

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even complain about the drama’s streaming schedule that serves only two episodes per weekend and express how hard it was for the viewers to wait for the following episode. Netflix’s schedule for other K-dramas functions differently from the service’s regular operation, as all episodes can be streamed at once; however, Netflix Original K-dramas such as Mr. Sunshine do not instantly allow the viewers to indulge in binge watching. Another historical context of Mr. Sunshine that captured the viewers’ hearts is the “righteous army” fighting for the Japanese colonial power, as symbolized by a noble female protagonist. The righteous army as an important narrative element adds another layer of the storyline into the romantic plot. With the idea of the righteous army, the drama presents the peculiar history legacy as a distinctive cultural theme and amplifies emotions arising not just from romantic feelings but also from universal humanism. In this context of viewing, the polysemic nature of the drama multiply creates cultural, affective and entertainment values for the majority of viewers: “It is a story about people who sacrificed their all trying to save their country from colonization.” This is not a romantic TV series, this is simply a genuine hymn to the beauty and strength of Joseon [Korea]… The real protagonists are the emotions and the ardor of those who have the strength to fight for the survival of their homeland, even at the cost of their lives. Initially, I thought the premise was very lackluster – set in the early 1900s, this mini- series focuses on Righteous Army activists fighting for Korea’s independence against foreign forces, but the more I watched, the more I began to realize how fascinating this was. TV viewers of well-made drama series tend to be emotionally entertained and this tendency seems universal across the world. Transnational K-dramas, typically trendy or family dramas, have gained popularity due to their strong emotional appeal since the late 1990s, and this historical drama Mr. Sunshine is not an exception. The reviewers of Mr. Sunshine describe its appeal in terms of “love/loved,” “beautiful,” “romantic,” “heartfelt” and “emotional.” Similarly, the reviewers of Kingdom express their enthusiasm and emotional engagement in terms of “loved,” “great,” “amazing” and “brilliant.” The emotional values of K-dramas in transnational contexts are revealed among the Netflix K-drama viewers, too. Transnational fans of Japanese popular culture, including manga and anime, demonstrate their tastes for and attraction to the foreign content based on the culturally odorless, nationless nature of its storyline and characters, due to the legacy of Japan’s imperialistic colonial power in Asia (Iwabuchi 2002). The nationality or cultural specificity of foreign contents is often conceived as a hindrance in the process of global media distribution and reception (Lie 2012; Lee 2018). In some cases, however, the national and cultural uniqueness of foreign media culture such as K-dramas may not always hinder the reception and emotional engagement among international audiences, when the foreign media

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culture is perceived to be originated from a relatively disempowered nation in a postcolonial context. For the US viewers, unique differences between American and Korean cultures can function rather as a motivating factor to involve with K-dramas and enrich viewer experiences ( J. Kim 2019). As the case study of Mr. Sunshine and viewer responses has indicated, the nation-centered storyline and its unique elements can be received by the viewers as distinctive cultural values that can further lead to a new interest in Korean history and culture.

Hybrid genre, Netflix branding and visuality Both Mr. Sunshine and Kingdom present a new style of K-drama narratives through a combination of familiarity and difference in the text. The two K-dramas combine the main storyline with unique historical contexts, while at the same time producing a new hybrid genre that integrates multiple subgenres, such as romance, comedy, adventure, horror and historical drama, into one dynamic text. The reviewers commonly label Mr. Sunshine and Kingdom as a hybrid genre, historical romance or historical zombie horror, commenting that this genre combination in impressive creativity makes a big difference, compared to popular Western texts and K-dramas with modern romance storylines: The mix of zombie and Korean Joseon period after the invasion of Japan is just so unique and different from the modern clique zombie movies. Everyone should watch this! Great story. Drama, horror, comedy, action, adventure, all in one. Trust me, you don’t want to miss this. Well done Netflix. The combination of subgenres resembles innovative TV shows or film releases by the Hollywood system, and it has fit into Netflix’s promotion algorithms. Since Netflix is familiar with the trendy cross-genre conception of TV shows, it has effectively branded the two K-dramas to generate multiple genre interests for diverse viewers, through their official trailers and drama introduction homepages. Big-budget K-dramas on Netflix influence the domestic production trend of Korea, creating more chances for domestically unusual genres to be produced for international audiences. This collaboration between Korean TV production houses and Netflix stimulates a new form of Korean TV production. New innovative genres of K-dramas are more likely to be valued, with the expansion of K-dramas into transnational media marketplaces where Korean romance dramas still dominate international sales (Frater 2019). Audiences share their opinions on the subject of zombies in the Korean drama Kingdom and point out the distinctiveness of Kingdom, compared to other Western zombie movies or TV series, particularly The Walking Dead (2019–21, Season 10), as revealed on the IMDb reviewer site: Korean Walking Dead is way better than American Walking Dead. This is the zombie apocalyptic theme serial… Kingdom = straight to the point, not too much drama, action and push your heart beat fast.

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Such a brilliant season 1 [Kingdom] and then other mind blowing season and now I’m already looking forward to third season. Season 2 is fast paced and you’ll finish the whole show in one go. For many Western viewers, shows about zombies have set in modern urban societies, as in The Walking Dead which is seen to be exciting, entertaining and familiar. However, both seasons of the historical drama Kingdom have disrupted this conventional formula by opening up a familiar yet unknown story world for zombie lovers, as well as a horror and thriller for fans. As the above excerpts indicate, viewers recognize that Kingdom is a distinctively new species in the zombie genre, set in premodern Korea. Because the drama tells the story of humane struggles against selfish political powers that still currently operate in reality, zombies are received as a fantasy subject that portrays realistic characters and offers a phenomenal thrill. Each episode features intense storytelling and fast pacing, presenting iconic Korean zombie action texts and attracting many Western viewers who have perhaps not seen this new kind of zombie genre before. The importance of TV genres is recognized in foreign media reception outside of local cultures, as the genre can drive viewing choices and bolster salient frames, allowing international viewers to understand foreign media texts from their familiarity with the genre conventions (Hartzell 2020). These K-dramas have drawn attention through Netflix’s branding of the hybrid genres for the Western and global audiences. Netflix’s K-drama branding strategy has been operating effectively by highlighting unique storytelling and mixed genre structure. Netflix has branded K-drama itself as a cultural genre for international promotion that can help transnational K-drama fan communities foster a differentiated taste and style of K-drama through their socially discursive consumption (Oh 2015). Participatory practices of discursive consumption include K-drama review comments, recommendations, point rankings, and then sharing those reviews on portal sites and available social media platforms. A well-mixed genre combination of Mr. Sunshine and Kingdom on Netflix represents K-drama as an innovative and unique Asian TV genre among Western viewers. In addition to the hybrid genre and Netflix branding, the viewers are attracted to the fresh style of visuality, advanced production technique and cinematography in both K-dramas. They are impressed with somehow different camera angles, split-screen formation and lights for naturalizing landscapes, all of which combine to produce high-quality cinematography. Their interest in the K-dramas is naturally connected to the visual effects that are not lost in, and do not disrupt, the fast pacing of the storytelling and the cultural sentiment. For instance, one of the viewers emphasizes the enjoyable visuality of Kingdom, as highlighted on the IMDb reviewer site: Season 2 appears polished, refined and the production team sure knew what the audience wanted, and how to give it to them. The cast and acting are amazing, the cinematography and use of landscapes are amazing, the soundtrack is amazing. And for once, the zombies are actually terrifying!

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Recent Netflix Original K-dramas, such as Mr. Sunshine and Kingdom, show more advanced and distinctive production styles beyond fresh story ideas. The production quality development of K-dramas seems to be triggered in part by intense domestic competition to satisfy the high expectations of Korean viewers who tend to be selective and critical of the average quality of dramas in the fiercely competitive TV market. Netflix, in strategic collaboration with Korean production companies such as Studio Dragon, attempts to experiment and initiate big-budget versatile genres based on their sufficient capital and funding capacity. Netflix’s new models of collaboration increasingly influence Korean media productions to create unconventional cultural products and reach out to the digital West.

Conclusion Since 2016, Netflix has shown their keen interest in K-drama content and established direct partnerships with Korean production companies. Undoubtedly, Netflix is effective for K-dramas’ international visibility and promotion, especially for Western viewers who may seek more diversified and innovative sources of entertainment. Netflix’s global distribution networks make K-drama originals accessible to the mainstream audiences and expand branding effects. For instance, Netflix promoted Mr. Sunshine through YouTube teasers published one month before the drama began streaming, and the teasers instantly recorded more than a million views. In the case of Kingdom, particularly Season 2, Netflix created huge promotional premiere shows with main casts, both online and offline. It placed a spot advertisement on the Time Square billboard in New York City and built a giant billboard in LA downtown to further promote the K-drama after the first season’s phenomenal success. Netflix viewers tend to form affective ties with K-dramas, primarily seeking versatile characters and entangled human relationships in pursuit of romantic love ( Ju 2020b). Similarly, Western viewers of Mr. Sunshine and Kingdom on Netflix experience the emotional aspects of the textual forms and themes of the dramas. National and cultural specificities embedded in the historical narratives of the K-dramas nevertheless enable the Western viewers to identify with and relate to the multiple layers of the storylines and the characters’ relationships. The analysis of the two Netflix Original K-dramas in this chapter indicates that the seemingly foreign and unfamiliar historical texts do not necessarily hinder but can possibly enhance the cognitive and emotional viewing pleasure of the geographically distant audiences of the digital West. While catering to the diverse needs and desires of the international audiences, the new models of collaboration between Netflix and non-Western media productions such as K-dramas have shown a symbiotic and interesting footstep in the capitalist expansion of the global market. On one hand, the Korean drama industry can certainly benefit from this collaboration with the global streaming giant Netflix in terms of gaining additional resources and extending the routes for international distribution. On the other hand, it is also possible for the

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growing global power of Netflix to influence and change K-dramas’ production style, textual strategy and so on as a result of Netflix’s already successful cases of K-drama Originals. Today, transnational television flows interconnect with multilayered global media mechanisms and the dynamics of geo-cultural media powers, wherein their evolving roles in the national TV industry become more complex and unpredictable.

References Cho, Y. (2011) “Desperately Seeking East Asia Amidst the Popularity of South Korean Pop Culture in Asia,” Cultural Studies, 25(3): 383–404. Frater, P. (2019) “Netflix Expands Korean Content Commitment as Industry Deepens,” Variety, 13 June. Goldsmith, J. (2020) “Reed Hastings Wants You to Go ‘From Hit to Hit to Hit’ on Netflix, Not Just Drop by for the Occasional ‘Hamilton’,” Deadline, 16 July. Han, B. (2019) “Fantasies of Modernity,” Journal of Popular Film and Television, 47(1): 39–47. Hartzell, K. (2020) “Foreign but Familiar,” in R. Dunn (ed) Multidisciplinary Perspectives on Media Fandom, Hershey: IGI Global. Hopper, P. (2007) Understanding Cultural Globalization, Cambridge: Polity. Iwabuchi, K. (2002) Recentering Globalization, Durham: Duke University Press. Jenkins, H. (2006) Fans, Bloggers and Gamers, New York: New York University Press. Jenkins, H., Ito, M. and boyd, d. (2016) Participatory Culture in a Networked Era, Cambridge: Polity. Jin, D.Y. (2012) “Hallyu 2.0,” University of Michigan: II Journal, 2(1): 3–7. Jin, D.Y. and Yoon, K. (2016) “The Social Mediascape of Transnational Korean Pop Culture,” New Media and Society, 18(7): 1277–92. Ju, H. (2020a) Transnational Korean Television: Cultural Storytelling and Digital Audiences, Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield. Ju, H. (2020b) “Korean TV Drama Viewership on Netflix,” Journal of International and Intercultural Communication, 13(1): 32–48. Ju, H. and Lee, S. (2015) “The Korean Wave and Asian Americans,” Continuum: Journal of Media & Cultural Studies, 29(3): 323–38. Jung, S. (2011) “K-pop, Indonesian Fandom and Social Media,” Transformative Works and Cultures, 8: 1–22. Kil, S. (2017) “Netflix Sets ‘Love Alarm’ as Its First Original Korean Drama,” Variety, 5 January. Kim, B. (2019) “Netflix Starts to Eye Korea-made Content,” Yonhap, 28 November. Kim, J. (2019) “Why are Western Audiences Falling Head Over Heels for K-Dramas?” MTV, 6 March. Kim, M.S. (2011) “Riding the Korean Wave of Multiculturalism,” in D.K. Kim and M.S. Kim (eds) Hallyu: Influence of Korean Popular Culture in Asia and Beyond, Seoul: Seoul National University Press. Lee, H. (2018) “A Real Fantasy: Hybridity, Korean Drama and Pop Cosmopolitans,” Media, Culture and Society, 40(3): 365–80. Lee, S. (2020) “Netflix Buys Big into K-dramas,” Times, 11 January. Lie, J. (2012) “What Is the K in K-pop?” Korean Observer, 43(3): 339–63.

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Lobato, R. (2018) “Rethinking International TV Flows Research in the Age of Netflix,” Television and New Media, 19(3): 241–56. Mittell, J. (2015) Complex TV: The Poetics of Contemporary Television Storytelling, New York: New York University Press. Moon, K. (2020) “The 10 Best Korean Dramas to Watch on Netflix,” TIME, 12 May. Morris, M. and Wright, H. (2009) “Introduction: Transnationalism and Cultural Studies,” Cultural Studies, 23(5–6): 689–93. Oh, M. (2014) “An Exploratory Study on the Korean Wave in the U.S.” [Korean], Journal of Media Economy and Culture, 12(3): 46–92. Oh, Y. (2015) “The Interactive Nature of Korean TV Dramas,” in S. Lee and A. Nornes (eds) Hallyu 2.0, Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. Otmazgin, N. and Lyan, I. (2018) “Fan Entrepreneurship,” Kritika Kultura, 32: 288–307. Park, J. (2013) “Negotiating Identity and Power in Transnational Cultural Consumption,” in Y. Kim (ed) The Korean Wave: Korean Media Go Global, London: Routledge. Sanjay, S. (2020) “The Pandemic Got Me Addicted to K-Dramas,” Vice, 31 August. Schulze, M. (2013) “Korea vs. K-dramaland,” Acta Koreana, 16(2): 367–97. Yi, D. (2011) “The Korean Invasion: New Yorkers Are Screaming for the New Wave of Pop Stars,” Daily News, 23 October.

12 MEDIATING ASIAN MODERNITIES The lessons of Korean dramas Lisa Y.M. Leung

Since its inception in the late 1990s Korean dramas have become a global popular culture phenomenon, with its success still unsurpassed. The rise and rise of the Korean Wave, or Hallyu, has attracted scholarship which tried to comprehend the reasons for its continuous popularity, mostly across Asia, but also in parts of North America, Latin America, the Middle East and Europe. The overriding success of Korean dramas across Asia has been attributed to concepts around cultural similarity, but what is being “similar” warrants debate. At its heyday, K-dramas have also come to define “Asian modernity” as an evidence of the successful subversion to the hegemony of American and European popular culture. Yet at the same time, the asymmetrical and intensified trans-Asian flow of the “Korean brand” has also courted geo-political tension, as Asian polities seem to challenge the “soft power” of Hallyu dramas. The rise and rise of “China factor,” along with the emerging force of global fandom utilizing social media, presents increasingly important disciplinary forces to this new “hegemony” which also set to redefine Asian modernities. This chapter traces and explores the different facets of the intricate relationship between K-dramas and Asian modernities. While K-dramas serve as a useful inter-Asian currency, they also unexpectedly fuel geo-cultural hostilities, and complicate the soft power of transnationalized popular culture in Asia.

K-dramas and Asian modernities: Confucianism as modernization The rise of Korean dramas as a phenomenon of the success of East Asian popular culture has been seen, and has to be seen, in the light of the prowess of Japanese popular culture in the Asian region, and, in a lesser degree, across the non-Asian (“Other”) locales. Scholarship noted the rise of Japanese dramas, popular music, DOI: 10.4324/9781003102489-12

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along with the already globally popular media brands (such as Sony) and electronic products in the 1990s, as symptomatic of the rising “Asian modernities” (Iwabuchi 2004: 3). This new wave of “modernities” signaled a regional rise that veers against the persistent domination of the Western media, popular culture, as well as “modernity.” Efforts to define the unique features of these “modernities” as Asian focused on the possibilities of the media texts (of Japanese dramas) as a pan-regional cultural currency to reimagine Asian-ness. This assertion also draws a critical reflection of how “Asian” the Japanese dramas are, and more importantly, what constitutes “Asian” in a region of diverse ethnicities and cultural histories. Amidst the dynamics of the politics of differences and similarities, Iwabuchi (2001, 2002) expanded Straubhaar’s (1991) notion of “cultural proximity” to argue that the Japanese “wave” was more a project of proximating Western modernity for the Asian audience. Japanese media products have always appropriated Euro-American popular culture but “localizing” them for Asian tastes. In fact, critical analysis of Japanese history saw the rise of Japanese media products as symptomatic of the modernization project of Japan as proximating Western hegemonic modernity (Iwabuchi 2002). However, the assumption of “cultural proximity” as the prime reason for the embrace of Japanese media products across “Asian” cultures has also been challenged as “cultural deterministic” (MacLachlan and Chua 2004: 156). Reception studies of trans-cultural audiences across Asia have evidenced that the Japanese media are seen as less “Asian” than “Western” (Iwabuchi 2002: 54). The Japanese “dorama” formula of focusing on urban singles’ romance, handsome/pretty actors, Westernized songs and lyrics, set in Tokyo, has been seen as syncretism of Western modernity with Asian faces (Ibid.: 56). Such cultural gap represents essential(ist) perception of “Asian” held by Asian audiences as associated with “nostalgic or backward,” whereas “modern” is quintessentially “Western.” The “structures of identification” of Japanese dramas among Asian audiences, hence, inevitably involve the appropriation of these media products as “similar but different” (Chua 2008: 73). Japanese dramas are similar in the corporeality, or even the urban setting shared among East Asian cities. Such identification contains an appropriation of Asian audiences toward images of trendiness posited by Japanese dramas, or anything Japanese, as a proximation of Western modernity (Leung 2004). Hence, the specific contribution of Japanese dramas is the textual representation of the hybridization of “Oriental(ized)” images of Asian-ness with Western modernity in terms of cultural behavior, fashion, lifestyle, romance or individualistic values. Since the late 1990s, Korean dramas have continued to surf the high waves of the Korean Wave. Academic studies have started to delve into the reasons for Korean dramas’ persistent success across and beyond Asia, and have associated the Korean Wave with the notion of “soft power” (Nye 2004), the ability to influence people through attractive culture and values. Audience reception studies on Korean dramas assert that Asian audiences read into Korean dramas as more “Asian” than the Japanese media, while confirming the “cultural proximity” argument (Shin 2006; Yang 2012). Affinity to Confucianism became the

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overriding factor that differentiates Korean from Japanese dramas, with its adherence to filial piety, familial kinship or even steadfast love as predominantly Asian cultural values (Yoo and Lee 2001). Confucianism as a common denominator of cultural affinity across East Asia and even Southeast Asia heralded across Asian scholarship (Walker and Wong 2005; Lodén 2006; Kim 2016), and conveniently became a cultural-political currency which could be utilized to imagine a common singular Asian modernity. In particular, the idea of Confucian family in Korean dramas became a signifier of the attributes of Asian family. However, studies also demonstrated that the family constructs vary across East Asian cultures (Kang and Kim 2011), and that they may not reflect the lived realities for ordinary Korean viewers. Rather, this on-screen portrayal is little more than an instance of the television stations catering to the viewers’ fantasies of a harmonious patrilineal extended family. This imagining, however, was instrumental in the collective call of “Asian modernity” as a powerful economic and political force to subvert against Western hegemony. Other reception studies confirm that audiences across Asia do not necessarily relate Korean dramas with strong depiction of Confucianism (Yang 2012). Confucianism has discursively been appropriated as a dominant common cultural denominator across Asia, even state discourse, which connects patrilineal harmony to subordination/loyalty to authorities (Lai and Liew 2020). For example, Hu Jun Tao and Wen Jia Bao, former President and Premier of the NPC China, were quoted as liking Korean dramas, in a seeming gesture of SinoKorean friendship. Wen was quoted with these remarks about his political statement on Korean dramas: “Chinese people, especially the youth, are particularly attracted and it [Korean popular culture] is a vital contribution toward mutual cultural exchanges flowing between China and South Korea.” The expansion of Confucianism as a political strategy, or neo-Confucianism, may be beyond the scope of this chapter, but it is evident that appropriating Korean dramas as “Confucian” has been politically useful as a regional project which attempts to enforce the discourse of “Asian modernity” as a challenge to Western modernity. In Singapore, for example, local TV productions have produced dramas that contain narratives stressing “Asian” and “Confucian” values, which are casually synonymous with “traditional Chinese” values that reflect Sinophone anxieties of “Westernization” and “de-culturalization” associated with the disruptions of modernization and cosmopolitanism of the post-colonial city-state (Eng 2011). While it is debatable whether or not Confucianism constitutes religion, it could be said to denote the set of polysemic representational moral elements in Korean dramas that provide a shared common currency across Asia. In Vietnam, state cultural policy also strategically adopts the “nation-branding project” of Korean cultural policy as its development plan, and relaxes import of Korean dramas to nurture its national citizens of the “Korean model” of work culture and consumer culture of “an industrialized Confucian Asian society, the future image of Vietnam” (Nguyen and Özçaglar-Toulouse 2021). It became clear that Korean dramas have successfully carved out as a “brand” of trendy dramas, which

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intertextually modernizes a loosely defined canopy of “Confucian values,” and excessive images of urban aesthetics and consumerist modernism. Korean dramas are useful not only as a project of nation branding, but also as a project for regional branding. The notion of “brand nationalism” can argue the strategic promotion of one’s products by claiming that the features of those products are unique to one’s nation (Iwabuchi 2010), and are potentially applicable to the region. Besides the East Asian locales, various factors explain for the resonance of Korean dramas across emerging Southeast Asian economies that are seen as struggling to adapt to Western developed modernity. Korean dramas, thus, represent a “dual” subjectivity that both subverts the hegemonic, colonizing Western version and offers an alternative image of modernity. As Jun Ji-Hyun appeared in My Love from the Star (2013) glamorously cloaked in Westernized fashion, and the story set in cafes, restaurants and chandeliered halls, Korean dramas posit a hybridized trendiness that evokes among non-Western audiences the imaginary of sophisticated and modern styles only distinct with Asian faces (Lee 2014). It could be this post-colonial logic that also explains the resistance of Asian audiences against Japanese dramas and American media products, and embracing of Korean counterparts on the other, as a response to the imperial and postcolonial Asian history. Asian-ness is no longer something weird or marginal, but becomes desirable, because an alternative modernity is possible. Contrasting to the preceding success of Japanese dramas, the success of Korean dramas rests on a political-economic hyper-reading that also connects developing nations that share a similar subjectivity at the margins of Western modernity.

K-beauty as modernization My Love from the Star (2013) soon came to stand for a new milestone in the sustained popularity of K-dramas. This romance drama was also seen as a concentration of “excesses.” Besides the standard formula of handsome actors and pretty actresses, the elaborate display of designer fashion, heavy makeup of both the male and the female lead (Kim Soo-Hyun and Jun Ji-Hyun), and extravagant settings such as palatial décor and chic cafes attracted viewership in China, Taiwan, Hong Kong and other non-Asian cultures. Its success even extended to Euro-American cultures, where TV production imported the script and modified it into a version catered for their local audience (Lee 2014). The drama’s phenomenal success could be attributed to a neoliberal strategization of product placement, for example, the promotion of “deep fried chicken and beer” (chimaek) as trendy food as well as beauty products and fashion. Tourism to the spots where scenes were shot also soared, further epitomizing the inter-sectoral promotion of other cultural products by Korean dramas. But one most notable success of the series was a boost of Korean fashion, from clothes, accessories to make-up products worn by Jun Ji-Hyun, which saw an unprecedented surge in orders (Tang 2014).

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Behind this surge is the desire to emulate the looks and even lifestyle of characters in Korean dramas, as well as the celebrities in real life. The “ideal beauty” offered by Korean dramas became consumerable, as a result of the successful product placements in Korean dramas. Studies have demonstrated the extent to which Korean dramas have impacted the consumption of beauty products among East Asian and South East Asian women (Kang et al. 2020; Nguyen and Özçaglar-Toulouse 2021). South Korean cosmetics has been one of the fastest growing products in the global beauty market, with the country posting a year-on-year growth, against other more established markets like the USA and the UK (O’Meara 2015). The combination of Asian-Orientalized features, fair skin, with elaborate use of skin care, makeup and other beauty products and accessories, has come to be accentuated and branded as “K-beauty.” The care for one’s skin, said to have been engrained in traditional Korean culture, was contemporized but also used to justify the authority of Korean skin care practices. The brand of “K-beauty” extends the comprehensive ritualized practices and is promoted not only in K-dramas, but more so on beauty blog posts, web reviews, YouTube and other social media platforms. “Asian-ification” of beauty products, which coincided with the rise of Korean dramas, is seen to have been the catalyst of, or having mutually reinforcing effect on, the changing perception and consumption of Korean beauty products globally. Keen competition among beauty products worldwide has caused consumers to aim for authenticity and quality in the skin care products. Some Korean brands, which emphasize the presence of herbal (ginseng), promote traditional medicinal quality and medical practice, while striking an accord of cultural authenticity for Korean beauty products (Lee et al. 2019). From the consumption of skin and beauty products, one notable feature of this branded beauty has to be the surge of cosmetic surgery across cultures, with Seoul as the dominant capital (Davies and Han 2011). A subsidiary of the “branding” effect of the Korean Wave is the branding of idealized beauty. The stress on “lookism” is said to have been embedded among Korean nationals as a result of the economic downturn since the Asian financial crisis in 1998. Since then, “lookism” has matured into an aspirational ideology, not just as a career boost in the fiercely competitive job market, but also as an advantage in romance seeking. It has also been attributed to the national social psyche of collective behavior rooted in Confucianism, hence social currency, among the Koreans (Lee et al. 2017). As Korean celebrities continuously promoted and reinforced the idealized beauty form as “Korean,” Southeast Asian businesses and culture industries began to appropriate it as a new racial(ized) image of modernity, a pan-Asian model: “In the past, everyone wanted to look Western, but that is old. Now, the new modern is Asian” (Hoang 2014: 522). The significance of “branding” the Korean Wave with cosmetic surgery, as a global signifier, is that “popular beauty,” as with other aspects of popular culture, is globally possible, and can be appropriated and copied, despite cultural difference. This “Koreanized” version of “Asian modernity” adds a layer of medicinal

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technology that proves to perform magical transformation to achieve a stylized standard of corporeal beauty that bridges and hybridizes conventional Oriental and Occidental notions of beauty. The Korean face becomes the epitome of hegemonic ideal that homogenizes ethnic differences within and beyond Asia (Yip et al. 2017). The mythical charm of “modernized beauty,” as explicated by the consumption of cosmetic surgery, is the aspirational ideology that economically powerful consumers can always improve their looks, as with other aspects, albeit a radical means. By following on a globalized set of looks, this discursive path of modernization standardizes ideals of beauty according to the neoliberal logic of consumerism.

Globalizing patriotism: pop nationalism The Korean romance drama Descendants of the Sun (2016) is seen as uniquely appealing because of its military and war setting. The story is mostly set in a fictitious territory where a special forces captain (played by Song Joong-Ki) enforces peacekeeping duties, while falling in love with an army surgeon (played by Song Hye-Kyo). While romance was the crux of the story line, the drama hinged on the deployment of South Korean troops in a fictitious war-torn area to protect and rescue the hapless civilians there. In several scenes, the characters were saluting to the South Korean flag, or to the national anthem (Chung 2016). Despite its fantastical storyline, the drama is said to resonate well with the domestic audience, socio-cultural reality of Korean men having to go through mandatory conscription. The global audience, however, is attracted to the drama because of its war setting, which is unique of most other dramas. Following on its success, the drama also attracted Asian political leaders, who were quoted as demanding their nation’s TV stations to produce a local version of the Korean drama. For example, the drama received unprecedented coverage from China’s official military newspaper, describing the TV show as “a piece of great national service advertisement.” The Thai Prime Minister, who became a fan of the drama, encouraged his nationals to learn from the drama about the “patriotism, sacrifice, obeying orders and being a dutiful citizen” (Yoon 2017). Similar to the historical Confucian drama Jewel in the Palace (2003), the formula for success of Descendants of the Sun was the “extractability” of the polysemic elements so that it appeals to different audiences in different ways. But what was unique about the drama is the glamorization of “patriotism” as a “new” sub-genre in transnational TV dramas. The formula became especially appealing to state leaders, as discussed above, when they interpreted the media text to be a useful form of “soft power” propaganda. Internally, this kind of content could boost citizen loyalty to the country, which could be transferred to that for the ruling party, hence legitimizing state control of the polity. Internationally, as the Korean Wave has demonstrated, the images of patriotism toward the national origin of the TV drama could affectively induce similar feelings among transnational audiences, hence promoting the national image of the local TV drama.

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Commentators pointed out the sparing images of social conduct and moral codes in the Korean TV drama, such as “paternalism,” “patriotism” and “neo-Confucianism,” while “branding” them as well as other cultural practices (e.g. coffee shop culture, soju drinking and other etiquettes) as “Korean” (Nurshazani et al. 2020). The Korean Wave “soft power” (Nye and Kim 2013) confirms “brand nationalism” (Chua and Iwabuchi 2008), as the success of the Korean Wave including TV dramas also draws international interest in the country in terms of education, developmental assistance and collaboration in multifaceted ways. The model of “soft power” as exhibited by Korean TV dramas is a culmination of factors, including aggressive government cultural policies, cross-media strategic marketing and excessive aesthetics in TV drama content – textual, political, economic and cultural ( Jang and Paik 2013; Leung 2019). Contrary to earlier notions of “Asian” as nostalgic and even outlandish, the Korean Wave refashions Asian modernity as trendy, consumable and desirable. With the fusion of the enticing images of Westernized modernity with just the right amount of Asian sentimentality, Korean TV dramas become common cultural currency that traverses cultural boundaries and enables diverse audiences to connect with desired images, texts and values ( Jang and Paik 2013). Apart from cross-media promotion of its cultural products, the South Korean government has been keen and influential in ascending the “cultural diplomacy” project. The success of Jewel in the Palace in China, for example, seemed to signal the heyday of Sino-Korean relationship in diplomacy, trade and other economic collaborations. In 2007, the then leaders – Chinese Prime Minister Wen Jia Bao, and Korean President Roh Moo-Hyun – set up the year as a year of Sino-Korean friendship and exchange (Liu and Yeh 2019). In terms of media and cultural collaboration, co-productions between China and South Korea in film, TV drama, pop music and entertainment production soared, amidst the growth in interregional co-productions (Leung 2019).

State-fan colluded nationalism The controversial response around Descendants of the Sun may expose how Korean dramas could incite anti-imperialist response, even from “culturally intimate” Asian neighbors. While the earlier assertion of “brand nationalism” has been associated with a top-down strategy, “pop nationalism” has been referred to the genre of nationalist sentiments that has generated “from below” (Iwabuchi 2001; Park and Lee 2019). K-drama has sparked off nationalistic responses among the “ordinary” audiences, mainly in East Asia, and notably in China and Japan. Both terms could denote the nationalist branding by global media and cultural exporters. These efforts could spur equal responses from the recipient locales, at the state as well as civilian levels. The airing of Jewel in the Palace drew praises from state leaders such as Hu Jin Tao, but also courted criticism and scorn from cultural critics, media producers and many of Chinese netizen audiences. The drama was accused of committing “cultural theft” of artifacts that belong

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to China (e.g. the invention of acupuncture and herbal medicine) and claiming them to originate from South Korea (Leung 2008; Liu and Yeh 2019). Since the dispute over Jewel in the Palace, other historical dramas including Jumong (2006) have been embroiled in the dispute between Chinese and Korean audiences (Herskovitz 2007). While the dispute was over the ownership of cultural artifacts and practices, later dramas touched on the longstanding territorial dispute between China and South Korea. It is worth noting that nationalist sentiments among Chinese youth have become a subject of contention before the onset of the Korean Wave. The popularity of Japanese media products in China in the 1990s spawned textual/ cultural nationalism among youth in mainland China against foreign invasions (Leung 2013). Coined “fenqing nationalism” (“nationalism of angry youth” in Chinese), the vehement textual expressions of the nationalist youth epitomized the extent of online nationalism against what they see as an extension of Japanese political and territorial aggression, following on the Sino-Japanese dispute over the Diaoyu/Senkaku Islands. The dispute signaled the rise of nationalist responses between netizens from both countries, who transferred the territorial dispute to the cyberspace (Chase 2011). It not only revealed the nuanced historical and geographical relationship between the two states, but also signaled the rise of national citizens who become new “soldiers” ready to defend their country on the new, virtual battleground. Rather than the inter-cultural cordiality that foreign cultural products could enhance, these incidences are seen to promote an irrational fear of, and hostility toward, the foreign Other that tends to justify confrontational action in response to perceived foreign threat (Chase 2011). “Fan nationalism” over popular cultural products became unwary partners with state leaders, as they reinforced and aggravated nationalist sentiments which eventually translated into “real actions” at state policies, as well as economic and cultural practices. The “Korean Performing Arts Activities Ban,” or simply known as “Korean Ban,” was imposed in 2016 when Beijing denounced the Korean American collaboration of the spy missile THAAD (Lee 2016). The ban led to a rippled effect across media industries in China, as all media and cultural imports from Korea were banned, as with concurrent collaborations between Chinese and Korean entertainment companies. Similar to the saga over Jewel in the Palace, the “Korean Ban” triggered vociferous reactions among Chinese netizens. By 2016, webpages on Chinese platforms, which discuss a myriad of political and cultural issues as well as Korean dramas, have mushroomed. When the ban was announced, supporting netizens waged their support of the ban, citing slogans such as “no idols before country,” which became viralized across social media (Leung 2019; Liu and Yeh 2019). Conversely, the Korean Wave fans, and those who are more critical of their nation’s policies, rebutted with criticisms against Chinese media’s rampant “cloning” of Korean dramas, reality TV shows and talent contests (Leung 2019). To date, Sino-Korean collaborations have not yet restored to the past status. The ban has sent such shock waves in China that Chinese entertainment

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companies and media industries are hesitant on reviving collaborations with, and imports from, Korean companies (Liu and Yeh 2019). It also revealed an intricate interplay between (top-down) state-controlled military and foreign affairs policy, and “civilian oriented” (bottom-up) popular cultural practices, ranging from media and cultural industries to online fan responses. Scores of cultural commentators, who have often been interpreted as mouthpieces of the state propaganda machine, raised concern about China’s “cultural deficit” toward Korea, as evidenced by the imbalanced trade flows. They also raised the alarm that Chinese youth, who particularly have a “weak cultural base,” are especially prone to be “corrupted” to worship Korean culture. Rather than assuming the divide of cultural nationalism between “top-down” and “bottom-up,” there seems to be a complex collusion in the Asian locales between the political and economic/ industrial powers, and the common people in the affective response to the prowess of the Korean Wave. This is aided also by digital media technology which gives rise to digital fandom as a collective community and identity that cannot be ignored by states and commercial media industries in the neoliberal age.

Asian media transnationalization: sleeping with the intimate enemy The rise of digital media technology has not only enhanced transnational popular cultural fandom, but also caused the national cultural boundaries to become blurred. As the “Korean Ban” implied, the dialogic inter-twining of state-level and civilian-level nationalist discourses has lashed out at both the exporting and the imported end. With the rise of similar nationalistic discourses in Korea over the persistent hegemony of K-drama and K-pop products, it is not surprising that the Korean Wave has triggered a fair amount of “pop nationalism” from domestic as well as international audiences. The debates around pop nationalism may well epitomize the significance of the Korean Wave as a milestone in the history of media globalization, as it defines the borders and boundaries of popular cultural globalization, if not the limits of soft power. Cultural proximity/ intimacy has been hailed as not only a reason for the Korean Wave’s success across Asia, but also an epitome of the emergent significance of an “Asian modernity,” with Korean cultural products as a unifying currency among the Asian states. The Korean Wave has become a formula of success and the “face” of Asian modernity, aside and above Japan, as the new Asian hegemony. It has become an aspirational post-colonial model for the neighboring Asian states to advance its media culture industry, as well as restoring the “regional cultural pride” of Asia. This rests on hyper-reading of the complex polysemic elements of Korean dramas as “Korean” and even “Asian.” As an advanced form of strategic hybridism, Korean dramas successfully present a polysemic mélange of corporeal, consumerist, historical and moral codes as the “Korean brand.” This “national brand” seems to be strategically utilized as trans-local cultural discourse among the Asian states and locales, which can unite under a

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“pan-Asian” umbrella to formulate a formidable geo-political force against the long-standing prowess of Western centrism. The discursive debates around the Korean Wave as a model of “Asian modernity” are entrenched in a post-colonial trajectory, which has had long historical, political and cultural roots. Aspiring Asian states are keen to assert a decentered worldview and logic of post-colonial modernity. The “softness” of the power of the Korean Wave, hence, should not be imagined as the direct coercive domination of one’s culture over another. It also involves the convenient acceptance and hyper-reading, if not appropriation and capitalization of the near “Others” of this “brand,” as they struggle to qualify for a place among “Asian modernities.” However, the slippery politics of strategic, cultural proximation among the Asian locales may also have exacerbated the geo-political tension between South Korea and its Asian neighbors, as they are keen to realize the cultural-economic model of the Korean Wave. The perceived cultural proximity, and even intimacy, between Korean sender and its fellow Asian states render the conventional conception of “cultural imperialism” difficult. The geographical proximity also intensifies the perceived threats posed by the asymmetrical media flows, which tend to be associated with political and military prowess in the region. The mixed blessings of digital media technology have also spawned the rise of pop nationalism “from below,” and social media fandom has become an emergent regulatory force of global popular cultural hegemony. The rise and rise of participatory pop nationalism in the case of fandom might well coincide with the growing voice among global youth against neoliberal capitalist domination. The case of the Korean Wave reveals how the affective fan responses online to the cultural hegemony of brand nationalism somehow become unwary collaborators of Asian states in equally patriotic measures at the state level against the cultural hegemony of the Korean Wave in the game of geo-political diplomacy. Asymmetrical media flows inevitably render polities increasingly capitalizing on the porous space and web of media cultural transnationalization, and hence become entangled with popular cultural celebrities, along with their unwary regional pop fans.

References Chua, B.H. (2008) “Structure of Identification and Distancing in Watching East Asian Television Drama,” in B.H. Chua and K. Iwabuchi (eds) East Asian Pop Culture, Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press. Chua, B.H. and Iwabuchi, K. (2008) East Asian Pop Culture, Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press. Chung, L. (2016) “Descendants of the Sun: Loving the Country or Loving the People?” Stand News, 26 March. Davies, G. and Han, G. (2011) “Korean Cosmetic Surgery and Digital Publicity,” Media International Australia, 141: 146–56. Eng, R. (2011) “China-Korea Culture Wars and National Myths,” Asia-Pacific Journal, 9(13):1–25.

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Herskovitz, J. (2007) “South Korea Uses TV Dramas in History War with China,” Reuters, 24 April. Hoang, K.K. (2014) “Flirting with Capital,” Social Problems, 61(4): 507–29. Iwabuchi, K. (2001) “Uses of Japanese Popular Culture,” Emergence, 11(2):199–222. Iwabuchi, K. (2002) Recentering Globalization, Durham: Duke University Press. Iwabuchi, K. (2004) Feeling Asian Modernities, Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press. Iwabuchi, K. (2010) “Globalization, East Asian Media Cultures and their Publics,” Asian Journal of Communication, 20(2): 197–212. Jang, G. and Paik, W. (2013) “Korean Wave as Tool for Korea’s New Cultural Diplomacy,” Advances in Applied Sociology, 2(3):196–202. Kang, M. and Kim, S. (2011) “Are Our Families Still Confucian?” International Journal of Cultural Studies, 14(3), 307–21. Kang, Y., Lee, H. and Kim, W. (2020) “A Qualitative Study on Acceptance of Korean Wave Culture and Internalization of Ideal Beauty among Vietnamese Female Students in Korea,” Fashion & Text, 22(4): 456–68. Kim, S. (2016) Public Reason Confucianism, Hong Kong: City University Press. Lai, J.Y. and Liew, K.K. (2020) “Introduction: Confucian Values and Television in East Asia,” Continuum, 34(5): 647–50. Lee, B. (2016) “THAAD and the Sino-South Korean Strategic Dilemma,” Diplomat, 7 October. Lee, H., Son, I., Yoon, J. and Kim, S. (2017) “Lookism Hurts,” International Journal for Equity in Health, 7(16): 1–7. Lee, M. (2014) “‘My Love From the Star’ Heads to the US,” Wall Street Journal, 22 September. Lee, S., Sung, B., Phau, I. and Lim, A. (2019) “Communicating Authenticity in Packaging of Korean Cosmetics,” Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services, 48(5): 202–14. Leung, Y.M.L. (2004) “Ganbaru and its Transcultural Audience,” in K. Iwabuchi (ed) Feeling Asian Modernities, Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press. Leung, Y.M.L. (2008) “Mediating Nationalism and Modernity,” in B.H. Chua and K. Iwabuchi (eds) East Asian Pop Culture, Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press. Leung, Y.M.L. (2013) “Re-nationalizing the Transnational?” in B.A. Eyal and N. Otzmagin (eds) Popular Culture Co-productions and Collaborations in East and Southeast Asia, Singapore: National University of Singapore Press. Leung, Y.M.L. (2019) “Sleeping with the Intimate ‘Enemy’?” in D. Jin and W. Su (eds) Asia-Pacific Film Co-productions, New York: Routledge. Liu, T. and Yeh, W. (2019) “Riding the Drama Waves,” in J. Park and A. Lee (eds) The Rise of K-Dramas, Jefferson: McFarland. Lodén, T. (2006) Rediscovering Confucianism, Folkestone: Global Oriental. MacLachlan, E. and Chua, G.L. (2004) “Defining Asian Femininity,” in K. Iwabuchi (ed) Feeling Asian Modernities, Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press. Nguyen, A. and Özçaglar-Toulouse, N. (2021) “Nation Branding as a Market-shaping Strategy,” Journal of Business Research, 122: 131–44. Nurshazani, M., Hanis, F. and Razak, A. (2020) “Cultural Diplomacy in Korean Drama Descendants of the Sun,” Journal of Media and Information Warfare, 13(1): 1–49. Nye, J. (2004) Soft Power: The Means to Success in World Politics, New York: PublicAffairs. Nye, J. and Kim, Y. (2013) “Soft Power and the Korean Wave,” in Y. Kim (ed) The Korean Wave: Korean Media Go Global, London: Routledge. O’Meara, S. (2015) “Korean Beauty Brands Change Face of Global Market,” Campaign US, 28 July.

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Park, J. and Lee, A. (2019) The Rise of K-Dramas, Jefferson: McFarland. Shin, Y. (2006) Hallyu in East Asia, Seoul: Jeonyewon.Straubhaar, J. (1991) “Beyond Media Imperialism,” Critical Studies in Mass Communication, 8(1): 39–59. Tang, S.K. (2014) “Food and Fashion: How K-drama is Influencing Asia,” CNBC, 18 June. Walker, A. and Wong, C. (2005) East Asian Welfare Regimes in Transition, Bristol: Bristol University Press. Yang, J. (2012) “The Korean Wave (Hallyu) in East Asia,” Development and Society, 41(1): 103–47. Yip, J., Ainsworth, S. and Hugh, M. (2017) “Beyond Whiteness,” in G. Johnson, K. Thomas, A. Harrison and S. Grier (eds) Race in the Marketplace, Cham: Palgrave Macmillan. Yoo, S. and Lee, K. (2001) “Cultural Proximity of TV Drama in East Asia,” Hankuk Unron Hakbo, 45(3): 230–67. Yoon, Y. (2017) “Thailand’s Military Supports for Soap Opera Similar to ‘Descendants of the Sun’,” Business Korea, 11 July.

13 THE RISE OF K-DRAMAS IN THE MIDDLE EAST Cultural proximity and soft power Yes¸im Kaptan and Murat Tutucu

Since the 2000s, Korean dramas (hereafter K-dramas) have reached the national television markets of the Middle East, and their popularity has suddenly risen among younger audiences in Turkey, Iran, Israel, Egypt, Jordan and the United Arab Emirates. The spread of K-dramas has been eased by the socio-cultural developments on information and communication technologies, including the rapid growth of the Internet, satellite television and cable broadcasting. Many Arab countries launched satellite channels to reach broader audiences after the long years of state-controlled media and government-funded channels in the 1990s (Kraidy 2009). Since the early 2000s, Middle Eastern countries have enthusiastically adopted satellite broadcasting over ground-wave broadcasting, and the distribution rate of satellite television has reached almost 90% (Lee 2012). Amidst the rise of privately owned broadcasting corporations, consolidation of the satellite television industry and a trend toward specialization of television channels, K-drama exports to the Middle East have accelerated and reached the broad and extremely diverse audiences of the Middle East. Despite the growing literature about the Korean Wave dramas in the Middle East in recent years (Kim 2014; Otmazgin 2014; Kim 2017; Azad 2018; Binark 2018; Elaskary 2018; Kaptan and Tutucu 2019; Lyan 2019), the multifaceted influence of K-dramas in this region has not fully received scholarly attention. This chapter explores the implications of K-dramas in the Middle East to understand the intricate relationship between transnational media flows and cultural consumption as transnational popular culture can possibly cultivate soft power in the Middle East. Specifically, the chapter discusses the historical and recent flows of K-dramas in the Middle East and the reasons behind the popularity of K-dramas, socio-cultural motives and specific regional dynamics in this vast geography. It considers the potential consequences of the rising attractiveness of K-dramas in both Muslim and non-Muslim countries. DOI: 10.4324/9781003102489-13

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As a transcontinental region, the Middle East encompasses a broad province, ranging from Asia Minor (Turkey) to North Africa (Egypt), and reaching from the Eastern shores of the Mediterranean Sea to both the Arab peninsula and the Persian Gulf. The definition of the Middle East in this chapter does not include North Africa, and MENA (the Middle East and North Africa region). Although the Middle East is mainly composed of Arab nation states, non-Arab countries such as Turkey, Iran and Israel also constitute the Middle East. This chapter starts with the mapping of the circulation of K-dramas across the Middle East since the 2000s and the “culturally proximate” reception of K-dramas particularly among younger audiences, despite their profound distinctions and differences regarding national cultures, religion, ethnicity and language. The penetration of attractive K-dramas into the Middle Eastern TV markets has a great impact on audiences, fans and consumers as well as television contents in the Middle East.

Originals and remakes of K-dramas in Turkey The first K-drama was sold to Turkey’s national broadcaster, Turkish Radio and Television Corporation (TRT) in 1992. Turkey is a transcontinental country located at the margins of the Southeastern Europe and the Middle East. Despite the early introduction of K-dramas to Turkish audiences, K-dramas have finally dominated the Turkish screens with the arrival of the Korean Wave or Hallyu in Turkey in the mid-2000s. The popular K-dramas including Jewel in the Palace and Jumong started to broadcast by the TRT between the years of 2006 and 2009. In their early stage, K-dramas did not receive high ratings and were aired to fill slots of daytime TV as a cheaper programming choice. After receiving viewer ratings of 70% in neighboring Iran, Jewel in the Palace entered the Turkish market ambitiously but the result was disappointing – viewer ratings of 1.2% (Oh and Chae 2013). At a later stage, multinational channels including Fox TV, local and regional Turkish channels, as well as satellite networks followed the TRT in broadcasting K-dramas (Kaptan and Tutucu 2019). Remakes of K-dramas have become popular among Turkish audiences. Starting with the first K-drama remake Beni Affet (Temptation of an Angel) in 2011, K-drama remakes such as Güneşi Beklerken (Boys over Flowers) became a record-breaking hit and received the highest rating on television and the Internet in 2013. The Korean Wave became influential in Turkey through copyright agreements of remakes (Binark 2018). Numerous remakes of K-dramas have been broadcast on Turkish TV channels, including Autumn in My Heart (2013), The Heirs (2015) and Good Doctor (2019). Why do Turkish audiences watch remakes of K-dramas as well as originals? K-dramas fit well into Turkish cultural values around three major motifs – conservative forms of romanticism, closeknit family ties and friendships, and social class differences as a cultural battlefield of conflicts and negotiations (Kaptan and Tutucu 2019). The representation of love among protagonists, the lack of sexual obscenity and explicit sexual expressions in Korean and Turkish dramas are very similar. Affection for the family,

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interdependence and trust among family members, as well as obedience to older family members and reverence of the community, are particularly important in K-dramas and relatable to Turkish audiences. Social class differences and attractive lifestyles in K-dramas are also factors of identification. Although Turkish audiences experience Korean culture mainly through K-dramas, these motifs in K-dramas are identified as similarities between Korean and Turkish societies. Unlike Western dramas, K-dramas are considered as family-friendly TV shows, and Turkish audiences generally feel that values and sentiments in K-dramas are much more acceptable than those in Western productions (Chae and Oh 2013). The audience reception further indicates how K-dramas enhance the visibility and cultural power of Korea. Turkish-speaking audiences have been involved in various Internet forums about K-dramas, movies and so on. In 2007, one of the most comprehensive virtual Korean pop culture communities in Turkish, Korea-Fans Türkiye, was launched on the Internet. Turkish fans discuss K-dramas on the website creating a large and dynamic virtual community which disseminates information about Korean popular culture as well as Korean traditions and history (Chae and Oh 2013). Cultural-diplomatic interest in Korea has voluntarily been advanced by Turkish fans on the digital media. Korea-Fans Türkiye set an example, followed by the launch of an online Turkish radio station, Radio Korea Fans, airing K-pop music, and two popular websites – an e-magazine Dong Yul, a monthly publication about Korean popular culture (www.dongyul.com), and an e-newspaper Hallyu Sinmun (www.Hallyusinmun.com). An increase in media-related activity about Korean popular culture has paved the way for various cultural events, as well as economic and institutional exchange projects such as the establishment of cultural and educational institutions in Turkey. After the success of K-dramas and their remakes, one of the prominent higher education institutions, Ankara University, began collaboration with the King Sejong Institute of Korea to promote Korean culture in Turkey. To meet the massive demand of the Korean Wave fans, Ankara University’s TÖMER (Turkish and Foreign Languages Research and Application Center) established two branches of the King Sejong Institute in Istanbul and Ankara – the two most populated cities in Turkey. The institute not only provides a cultural space for the fans but also collaborates with local agents. In cooperation with KoreaFans Türkiye, it organized Korean Film Days in Ankara and Istanbul at the weekends. In 2011, the Korean governmental agencies opened the Korean Culture Center in Ankara because of the enthusiastic Turkish fan base. Members of Korea-Fans Türkiye were actively involved in the opening ceremony of the Center. The Korean Culture Center has housed branch offices in collaboration with the Korea Tourism Organization (KTO) and the Korea Creative Content Agency (KOCCA) which help Turkish people access Korean popular culture and provide information about tourism to Korea (Chae and Oh 2013). The Center co-opts Turkish fans by organizing popular cultural activities such as Korean cuisine courses and traditional music (Gayageum) courses, while K-dramas sustain their wider interest in Korean culture.

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Historical and “ethical” K-dramas in Iran The Korean Wave reached Iran through popular historical dramas in the early 2000s. In 2006, the historical K-drama Jewel in the Palace was exported to Turkey and Israel, and reached the broad audience in Iran. The first popular K-drama broadcasted by Iran’s state-run television, the Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting (IRIB) TV2, was Jewel in the Palace. According to a survey conducted by the IRIB, this K-drama ranked as the most popular drama on the network in March and April of 2007 (Korean Culture and Information Service 2011). Concisely, “in one of the least expected locations, Jewel in the Palace attracted over 90% of audience attention in Tehran when it aired” (Liu and Yeh 2019: 72). The historical drama ignited a curiosity in Korean culture, and the protagonist became an international pop icon in Iran (Azad 2018; Liu and Yeh 2019). The unprecedented success of Jewel in the Palace paved the way for other K-dramas that were exported to Iran. Jumong, the story of a heroic historical figure and the emperor of an ancient Kingdom of Korea, was one of the highest rated K-dramas in Iran, with an 85% rating between 2008 and 2009 (Korean Culture and Information Service 2011). After the success of Jewel in the Palace, Jumong charmed more viewers and reached the highest viewer ratings, becoming the most popular cultural product of the Korean Wave in the country (Azad 2018). In 2016, Descendants of the Sun, another mega-hit K-drama aired simultaneously in Korea and China, was also exported to Iran. The success of Korean cultural products in Iran is related to the similarities between Islamic and Korean cultures: China, Japan and South Korea are among the countries that provide the moral and ethical films and drama series which not only are compatible with the criteria of the Iranian broadcasting system, but also palatable to the Iranian audience’s tastes. (Mozafari 2013: 22) Two major factors explain Iranian audiences’ appeal for K-dramas – content factors including commonalities among Eastern Cultures (as opposed to the West) regarding beliefs, values, philosophical teachings and cultural aspects of the Eastern societies; and advanced visual and technological factors such as the design of costumes, special effects, beautiful locations, colors and dubbing in Persian (Ibid.: 25–26). This perspective overlaps with the official discourse of the Iranian government which is particularly sensitive to the influence of Western culture and the effect of the foreign media on public opinion. Iranian broadcasting agencies prefer “clean” K-dramas instead of “immoral” or “decadent” Western products. K-dramas reinforce the traditional values of Confucianism that Iranians find more closely aligned to Islamic culture (Ying 2008), and the sense of “cultural proximity” (Straubhaar 1991) contributes to the success of the Korean Wave in Iran (Mozafari 2013).

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There has been an increasing cultural interaction between the two countries in recent years along with political and economic relationships (Azad 2018). The Korean government has utilized the Korean Wave discourse to advance its national interest. The Director of the Cultural Cooperation Division at the Korean Ministry of Foreign Affairs states that “Iran has shown its respect for traditional culture” and that spreading the word on Korea’s traditional culture might be a good first step toward further cultural exchange between the two countries in the future (Lee 2016). The Korean government’s attempt to endorse Korean culture has become more visible in public events. In 2014, the Korean Embassy in Iran hosted a “Korean Cultural Week” to promote Korean cuisine and to encourage local fans to enjoy Korean dishes they saw on TV. Cultural goods and services provide a positive image of the nation, indirectly serve the trade and encourage the masses to use their products to expand their markets. For instance, due to Jumong’s popularity among Iranian audiences, the protagonist of the drama appeared in promotional events of a South Korean multinational electronics company LG (Mozafari 2013). After Jumong was introduced to Iranians, the import of the consumables has increased by 45% each year. Previously in Iran, more than 80% of all imported cars were Toyota automobiles from Japan; however, Hyundai vehicles held the top market share of newly released cars because of the Korean Wave impact (Kim 2017). Beyond their entertainment value, K-dramas help the Korean government and companies to influence preferences and perceptions of audiences in Iran. Iranians have become more interested in Korean culture and history, with an increasing demand to travel to Korea. In addition to the economic gain, K-dramas stimulate an interest in Korean society and traditional culture. There is a close connection between the popularity of Jumong and an increase in young people’s interest in martial arts (e.g. Taekwondo), the high demand for Korean language courses in Iran and the rising number of Iranians acquiring Korean pen pals (Azad 2018). The reception of K-dramas and participatory activities ignite the attraction and influence of Korean culture in Iran.

Sharing the similar taste: K-dramas in Israel and Palestine The international relations between Israel and Korea intensified during the 1990s after the inception of the peace process in the Middle East and the decreased fear of Korean companies from the Arab boycott of any company which trades with Israel. This change led to the development of political and economic relationships between Korea and Israel (Levkowitz 2012). Subsequently, K-dramas arrived in 2006 when My Lovely Sam-Soon aired on the Israeli cable TV channel Viva. The drama’s tremendous popularity triggered 30 more K-dramas to be broadcast on the same channel (Lyan and Levkowitz 2015). In 2008, an Israeli national daily described the popularity of K-dramas in Israel as a “revolution” in the cultural taste of Israelis (Spector 2008). Following the success of K-dramas, Israeli fans launched many online webpages including illegal websites for downloading

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K-dramas and Facebook groups for K-drama fans, in which they translate news and information about K-dramas from Korean to Hebrew ( Ju 2018). Although Israeli and Palestinian fan communities have different ethnic, religious and national backgrounds, they can nevertheless share similar emotions about K-dramas (Otmazgin 2014; Rhee 2014). Like many Arab countries, Palestine also encountered K-dramas through the transregional Arabic TV channels such as Dubai TV which frequently broadcast K-dramas. Fans in Israel and Palestine can be characterized as “cultural diplomacy agents,” with striking similarities between fans (Otmazgin 2014). They are mostly young females, between the ages of 14 and 22, and integral part of fandom includes participation in the Internet forums dedicated to the Korean Wave, in Hebrew (for Israelis) and Arabic (for Palestinians), and sometimes in English and Korean as well. Dedicated fans see themselves as “cultural missionaries” and actively introduce Korean popular culture to their friends and relatives, although the majority of fans have never visited Korea. The passion for Korean popular culture and particularly K-dramas creates a possibility of bridging the gap between Israeli Jewish and Palestinians within Israel as they share the desire to build a deep connection and enhance a mutual understanding (Otmazgin and Lyan 2013). When asked about cultural similarities between Israel and Korea, both Israeli Jewish women and Palestinian women identified “kindness, warmth, helpful consideration for others, and strong family bond,” while specifying cultural differences between Israel and Korea in “feminine-looking men” in Korean popular culture (Rhee 2014). Fans have created virtual communities to promote Korean popular culture, synthesize Korean and Israeli cultures and form hybrid identities, which result in creating different categories of the “Other” as Korean culture is perceived as an exotic and distant “Other” (Lyan and Levkowitz 2015). Many Israeli fans (95%) have never been to Korea, but similar to Arab audiences, they have encountered Korean culture via K-dramas. The naïveté, purity and simplicity of feelings, as well as family values, expressed in K-dramas are main reasons which influence Israeli audiences to prefer K-dramas over other transnational dramas; and K-dramas are “appropriate for every age, for family viewing, and for religious audiences as well” (Ibid.: 12). As cultural diplomacy agents, active fans aim to bring Korea closer to Israel by voluntarily translating K-dramas into local languages, organizing events and educating others about Korean history and culture (Otmazgin 2014; Lyan and Otmazgin 2019). In the Israeli context, the public knew very little about Korea, so many fans felt that they should play an active role as grassroots cultural ambassadors and even established NGOs in order to promote Korean culture in Israel (Lyan and Otmazgin 2019). With the rising popularity of K-dramas in Israel, the number of people learning Korean language and students taking Korean Studies has dramatically increased. The Hebrew University of Jerusalem offered Korean language courses in the 1990s due to the increase in demand for Korean language, and furthermore the university opened an extensive language program in 2013. This attempt was followed by other universities and some private schools to meet

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the Israelis demand for Korean language. By bringing Korea and Israel closer, K-dramas have helped to bridge language and cultural gaps between the two countries.

Unexpected resemblance: K-dramas in the Arab world K-dramas had not been widely known to Arab audiences in the Middle East until the early 2000s. After the première of the K-drama Autumn in My Heart on Egyptian state television in 2004, the broadcast of Winter Sonata and Jumong in Jordan in 2007, and the widespread popularity of Jewel in the Palace in the Middle East, K-dramas finally became trendy throughout the region (Tuk 2012; Kim 2017). In 2006, Jewel in the Palace aired in Iraq and became the most popular TV program in the country. Across the Middle East, Arabic-speaking audiences established online communities such as the Korean Drama Arabic Facebook page (Otmazgin 2014). K-dramas unexpectedly attracted many fans in the Arab countries and won the hearts and minds of Arab audiences. At first sight, Korea and the Arab world do not appear to be culturally proximate. However, sociocultural factors – such as shared social habits and customs between Arabs and Koreans, close family bonds, romantic love stories with the lack of nudity and obscene images, wisdom of friendship and altruism – play a significant role in the success of the Korean Wave in the Arab world and the embracement of K-dramas by Arab audiences (Kim 2014). To succeed in the Arab world, Korean producers may need to pay attention to Arab customs, and keep in mind religious concerns, such as the importance of keeping Muslim prayer times, by avoiding broadcasting Korean TV programs during these times, as well as respecting strict sexual mores when airing K-dramas on Arab television stations (Hong 2014). Moral codes are crucial for the representation of culture and for the understanding of K-drama consumption in the Arab countries. In the Muslim Middle East, the transcultural digital fandom (predominantly women) of K-dramas is built around personal engagement, cultural proximity and a sense of belonging (Noh 2011). Arab women engage with Korean popular culture personally and regularly in everyday life, becoming acquainted with Korean lifestyle, history, customs and values. Cultural proximity is the reason behind their affinity for the foreign culture, and the fans make connections between Arab and Korean cultures by reflecting on the resonating feeling in everyday life. The identification of “emotional realism” (Ang 1985) generally enables melodrama audiences, even the geographically “distant” Middle Eastern audiences, to sense the “truth to feeling” or “truth to life.” A sense of belonging plays a significant role for K-drama fans, who are geographically dispersed in the Middle East yet are virtually engaged with the Korean Wave (Noh 2011). Arab women declare that they love their country and respect Islamic values, but Korean popular culture gives them more pleasure than their native culture (Ibid.: 359). The success of the Korean Wave in the Middle East depends on the suitability of the content, such as family-friendly values, for the Muslim

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audiences (Kim 2017). Unlike American dramas which often portray violence, betrayal and sex, Middle Eastern fans perceive K-drama stories as peaceful and more humanistic. In addition, Korean Confucian values are seen to be similar to traditional Islamic ideas, and thus resonate with the Middle Eastern viewers who prefer TV shows with moral lessons – such as respect for adults and bonding with family members – for their children (Ibid.: 263). Youth in the region choose to make sense of their personal problems and desires through the lens of K-dramas. Arab viewers feel intimate with the exotic yet beautiful images of K-dramas with sensitive characters, less-sexual romanticism and moral stories in which the good triumph over the evil. By permeating the Middle East, K-dramas generate deep engagements between fans and Korean culture, promote Korea’s international image and develop economic relationships by expanding business opportunities between Korea and the Arab countries. For instance, the success of K-dramas brings economic returns to Korea in terms of consumer goods. The USA and Japan were the main players of car exports in the Middle East, but with the popularity of K-dramas, Korean product exports jumped dramatically in Iraq, Saudi Arabia and Iran (Kim 2014: 19). Since K-dramas were introduced to the Middle East in 2005, exports of consumer goods to this region began to rise from USD 2.9 billion in 2000 to USD 10.2 billion in 2010 (Ibid.: 264). K-dramas in Saudi Arabia were a big hit, resulting in the increasing importation of the consumables by 9% during the 2009 financial crisis and by 25.4% in 2010. The export volume of Korean products to Saudi Arabia totaled USD 1.9 billion along with a dramatic increase in medical tourism and travel to Korea (Ibid.: 260, 266).

Soft power of K-dramas in the Middle East Popular K-dramas and their wider appeal have sparked discussions around the cultural power of the Korean Wave in the Middle East (Otmazgin 2014; Liu and Yeh 2019). The enthusiastic reception of K-dramas plays an important role for the appeal of Korean emotive culture. One of the distinctive features of the Korean Wave is that K-dramas are emotionally powerful and self-reflexive (Kim 2013): Korean producers initially did not pay particular attention to a global formula for the success of TV drama, but they have nevertheless found its affective form useful to touch the sensibilities of disparate audiences, including the geographically distant but “culturally proximate” Middle Eastern audiences. The self-reflexive aspect of K-dramas is generally recognized in a neighboring East Asia (Iwabuchi 2008; Chua 2012) as some of the dominant issues represented within K-dramas are conflicts and tensions between Confucian tradition and modernization and thus touch the feelings, needs and problems of broader audiences in their everyday lives. Along with the globally appealing, universal themes of love and the common concerns of audiences, similarities between Korean Confucian culture and religiosity of the Middle East pave the way for a significant market segment and popularity of K-dramas in Muslim countries.

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As a consequence, popular discussions arise around the Korean Wave dramas as a resource for soft power because of their increasingly visible success and unprecedented influence in the Middle East. Nye’s (2004) concept of “soft power” explains various power resources that exist within international politics. While hard power refers to the ability to use threats, pressure and inducements to force others to change their preferences, behavior or approach, soft power “induces others to voluntarily pursue the wishes of the powerful through the use of attraction” (Nye 2004: 86). Soft power emanates from attractive culture, values and ideas such as liberal or democratic ideas, and particularly by linking cultural productions to national benefits of countries; there has been a strong marriage between soft power and popular culture. Soft power, which is transmitted through culture, political values and foreign policies in geopolitical competition, is all about winning the hearts and minds of people around the world (Ooi 2015). Culturally powerful nations attempt to disseminate their national values, ideas, beliefs and agendas through popular cultural products in order to increase the attractiveness of their national culture, create a common understanding and elevate their national image. A country’s soft power is likely to become strong if global audiences both empathize with and feel sympathetic toward the country, which naturally translates to familiarity and likability (Ooi 2015). Soft power resources, such as the Korean Wave popular culture, are the important assets that are able to entice and attract people (Nye and Kim 2013). Recognizing the soft power of popular culture as a tool for attraction, governments today strive to facilitate and promote the spread of national media products around the world. Particularly in East Asia, the rise of culture industries has led governments, notably Korea, Japan and China, to think about utilizing pop culture exports as instruments of soft power (Chua 2012). Promoted by the Korean government, earlier in 2005, for the first time in the Middle East, Korean popular culture began spreading the non-economic side of its soft power to the political sphere when the Korean TV drama Winter Sonata hit the airwaves in Iraq (Nye and Kim 2013). Furthermore, the Korean government purchased the copyrights of many K-dramas to provide these dramas for free to broadcasting stations in more Arab countries in order to create a favorable and peaceful image of the nation in the politically turbulent Middle East. K-dramas have become an instrument of soft power in the Middle East, as this chapter has addressed the intertwined relationship between the popularity of K-dramas and the national benefits of Korea, including an increase in exports, business opportunities, Korean language learning, cultural participation and tourism. In addition to economic benefits, K-dramas entice and influence the Middle Eastern audiences and especially fans, as unofficial cultural ambassadors, who are eager to engage with and voluntarily promote Korean culture in their local communities. The attractiveness of K-dramas has created a visible fan culture on digital platforms and social media, as well as the bottom-up grassroots participants contributing to Korea’s soft power.

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Korean soft power is demonstrated through the multifaceted cultural activities of K-drama fans, the establishment of Korean cultural institutions (e.g. King Sejong Institute, Korean Culture Center and Korean language courses in some universities due to the popular demand) and the increase in Korean cultural events in the Middle Eastern countries. In 2007, the Korean government introduced the “Korea Day” as an effort to re-connect with diasporic Koreans. Given that Koreans in diasporic communities as well as the Korean Wave fans engage in community festivals, seminars and award ceremonies, this state-initiated celebration has become an official tool to invigorate Korean soft power. In a Middle Eastern context, the Korea Day signifies different meanings for Koreans in the diaspora and the Korean Wave fans, including the Middle Eastern students in the Korean Studies program of higher education (Lyan 2019): For diasporic Koreans, the Korea Day means homecoming, but for the Korean Wave fans, it stands for a symbolic journey toward the national origins of the Korean Wave, which helps them fantasize their fandom and provides them with an opportunity to become the protagonists of the Korea Day, upending the relations between hosts and guests. With the intensification of transnational media flows in the digital age, K-dramas have flourished in the Middle East which is often known for political conflicts and tensions, as well as for being one of the centers of world religions, ancient civilizations and diverse cultures. The geographically distant and religiously distinctive Middle Eastern audiences have been fascinated with the “culturally proximate” K-dramas in their reception and further engaged in various cultural activities and events, including the state-initiated celebration, Korean movie nights, Korean martial arts such as Taekwondo and Korean cooking classes. Based on perceived cultural proximity, fans of K-dramas identify with relatively conservative cultural values and are willing to learn about the traditions and historical affairs of Korea. Popular K-dramas have enthusiastically been embraced, predominantly by young and female audiences of Arab and non-Arab countries, who are more open toward culturally diverse and cosmopolitan dispositions. As the consumption of K-dramas has become part of the Middle Eastern audiences’ daily media habit, this routinized consumption and associated participatory practice can enhance the national image and reputation of Korea and potentially cultivate its soft power in the Middle East.

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Otmazgin, N. (2014) “Fans as Agents of Cultural Diplomacy: Hallyu in Israel and Palestine,” Hebrew University of Jerusalem, 25–26 November. Otmazgin, N. and Lyan, I. (2013) “Hallyu across the Desert,” Cross-Currents, 9: 68–85. Rhee, J. (2014) “Gendered Hallyu: Gender and Soft Power in the Middle East,” Hebrew University of Jerusalem, 25–26 November. Spector, D. (2008) “Viva la Revolution,” Yediot Ahronot, 1 April. Straubhaar, J. (1991) “Beyond Media Imperialism,” Critical Studies in Mass Communication, 10(1): 39–59. Tuk, N. (2012) The Korean Wave: Who Are Behind the Success of Korean Popular Culture? MA Thesis, University of Leiden, Netherland. Ying, S. (2008) “Korean Wave Spreads to Iran,” Korea Policy Review, 4( July): 30–31.

14 KOREAN DRAMAS, CIRCULATION OF AFFECT AND DIGITAL ASSEMBLAGES Korean soft power in the United States Ji-Yeon O. Jo

The Korean-language dramatic TV series produced in South Korea, known as K-drama, signify certain affects and values around the national brand “Korea.” Although not as much in the spotlight as K-film or K-pop, K-drama has become a visible new “trend” of cultural consumption in the United States. According to a report published by the Korea Creative Content Agency (KOCCA) in 2014, an estimated 18 million people in the United States watch Korean television dramas regularly (Korea Times 2014). Considering that Korean Americans numbered only 1.7 million as of 2010, it is clear that the popularity of these South Koreanmade television dramas reaches far beyond the Korean American population (US Census 2010). The United States was ranked first in 2014 and third in 2015 in worldwide search volume for “Top 5 countries searching for Korean Dramas” (Yang et al. 2020), and the US demand for Korean-language content grew by 66% in 2019 (Los Angeles Times 2020). The growing popularity of Korean popular culture, often dubbed the Korean Wave or Hallyu, has been decades in the making. South Korea’s government and private sectors seek to continue its economic success and geopolitical power through popular culture, knowledge and high-tech industry in the era of a post-Fordist market economy and, at the same time, boost the country’s image as politically, socially and economically advanced nation. Recognizing the potential of Korean popular culture as a resource to enhance the country’s soft power, the South Korean government has actively made concrete efforts to enhance the industry since the late 1990s. According to Nye (2019), power is “the ability to affect others to obtain the outcomes you want” and soft power achieves the goal of changing others’ behavior through attraction and persuasion, not by coercion or payment. Thus, soft power “co-opts people rather than coerces them” (Nye and Kim 2013). DOI: 10.4324/9781003102489-14

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Kim and Jin’s (2016) analysis of cultural policy embedded in presidential speeches and other governmental documents between 1998 and 2014 shows that the South Korean government has connected the Korean Wave with cultural diplomacy and soft power. The conservative administrations of Lee MyungBak (2008–13) and Park Geun-Hye (2013–17) in particular advanced Hallyu in conjunction with the national economy with the belief that “the growth of the national economy supported by the Korean Wave would be able to work as both hard power and soft power” (Kim and Jin 2016: 5529). Nye and Kim (2013) also elegantly demonstrate how the South Korean government has been working in tandem with the private sector and the academy to re-create a national image and cultural identity by incorporating the Korean Wave to develop its soft power. In this context, expectations for pop celebrities in South Korea sometimes go beyond their level of performance. The South Korean government has frequently brought celebrities directly into traditional diplomatic events. They often accompany South Korean presidents in diplomatic functions or are invited to serve as cultural ambassadors. For instance, popular drama actress Song Hye-Kyo, who played in Descendants of the Sun (2016), was invited to Beijing as a state guest and joined South Korean President Moon Jae-In (2017–present) at the opening ceremony of a Korea-China Economic and Trade Partnership and a state dinner with Chinese President Xi Jinping in December 2017. Song has been very popular in China for over a decade, and her appearance (along with other Chinese stars from K-pop groups) was expected to ease tensions between the two countries (Korea Herald 2017). During the series of inter-Korea summits in 2018 and 2019, South Korean performers and entertainers accompanied President Moon Jae-In to the DMZ and Pyongyang. While denuclearization and peace talks in the Korean peninsula are serious and sensitive diplomatic moments, cultural exchanges between the two Koreas are considered to play important roles in establishing affective connections between the two Koreas. Considering the enormous popularity of the Korean Wave with the reality of South Korea where intellectual and economic power are strong but natural resources scarce, enhancing soft power through popular culture is one of the best options for South Korea to assert its position in global politics, culture and economies (Y. Kim 2019). Scholars have extensively investigated K-drama’s cultural, political and economic influence in a geographically and culturally proximate Asia, but K-drama’s appeal and soft power in the United States has garnered less attention (S. Kim et  al. 2007; Chua and Iwabuchi 2008; Jung 2009; Huang 2011; Y. Kim 2011; Elfving-Hwang 2013; Hong 2014; Jo 2020). This chapter examines the popularity of K-drama in the United States that revolves around affect, branding and circulation (what might be called the ABCs), and the multidirectional synergies among these three factors. It delineates K-drama’s affective qualities and intensities and how they influence South Korea’s brand images and how those images are circulated through digital spaces assembled by K-drama fans, which can be called “digital assemblages.” The proliferation and sustainability of the

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digital assemblages rely on the K-drama fans’ affective labor (e.g. collection and dissemination of relevant information, translation and curation), which, in turn, create affective connections to South Korea through their consumption of other cultural and commodity products, education and even transnational migration.

Affect and branding in K-drama What is the appeal of K-drama to the US viewers? Monthly fashion and trend magazine Marie Claire (2020) writes that “if you’re not watching Korean dramas, you’re missing out” because not only have K-dramas become “a worldwide phenomenon” but they are also “addictive and amazing.” Larsen (2008: 142) also says that “people [in the US] describe Korean TV dramas as ‘addicting,’ ‘powerful and engrossing’ and ‘highly entertaining’.” Participants in a recent audience study have even commented that they have refrained from watching K-dramas when school was in session because it is impossible to stop once they start watching a series ( Jo 2020). What contributes to these visceral impulses to watch K-dramas that can be described at the level of “addiction”? Larsen (2008) points out that strengths of K-dramas include (1) human themes such as family, friendship, relationships, loyalty, respect and true love; (2) high production values, including beautiful cinematography, unique locations and amazing costumes; (3) well-written stories with strong dialogue and excellent acting; (4) refreshing portrayals of “love” and “affection,” not just focusing on sex but featuring genuine sensitivity, service and friendship; (5) emotional soundtracks; and (6) providing a window into Korean culture. Survey results published by the Korea Creative Content Agency (KOCCA) provide useful insights into the appeal of K-drama. First, romantic comedy (59%) is by far the preferred genre among survey respondents across all age groups, ethnicities and viewing channels. Other genres such as crime/action (10.3%), melodrama (9.9%) and historical dramas (9.8%) distantly follow (KOCCA 2019: 39). However, the same survey results also show that the genre itself is not the major factor when viewers choose which K-dramas to watch. Over half of respondents (53.5%) in the survey answered that they consider good story/plots in choosing K-dramas, followed by favorite actors/actresses (25%), genre (9.7%), and director and/or script writer (2.1%). The factors in choosing K-dramas are similar to what respondents identified as the shows’ “attractions”: 35.3% of respondents answered “unique story/plot” as the quality that attracted them to K-dramas. Other attractions of K-dramas included cast members (20.6%), good acting (20.2%), learning the Korean language (6.4%), original soundtracks/music (5.2%) and beauty/trend (4.7%) (KOCCA 2019: 50). Since the KOCCA survey results do not provide further details on what elements are considered “unique story/plot,” it will help to explore some popular storylines. One of the most typical K-drama storylines is the Cinderella story – a love story between a man from a rich family and a female from a humble background. However, K-dramas add some twists to the typical Cinderella stories by

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portraying female characters not just as passive recipients of love from a princelike male protagonist but as self-determined and not usually interested in the “prince type” at all. The strong mindsets of female characters eventually attract the heart of the well-to-do male characters in popular dramas such as Coffee Prince (2007), Boys over Flowers (2009), Secret Garden (2010), Cinderella and the Four Knights (2016) and What’s Wrong with Secretary Kim (2018). These twists in storyline and added comic or light-hearted elements make romantic comedy the most popular genre. Also, the majority of romantic comedy dramas are situated in contemporary South Korea and feature sophisticated cosmopolitan lifestyles that can be attractive to many viewers. The featured lifestyles in romantic dramas shape the images of Korea as a place with excessive wealth and sprawling contemporary culture but, at the same time, where pure and uncalculated love can still happen. Another K-drama trend is “genre-bending,” the combination of various genres in a single show, incorporating romantic comedy or melodrama with elements of sci-fi, fantasy or historical drama. These hybrid or fusion genres have been very successful, as seen by megahits such as My Love from the Star (2013), Goblin (2016), Hotel del Luna (2019) and the Kingdom series (2019, 2020). Hotel del Luna is about relationships between humans and ghosts. Kingdom’s story combines history, zombies and traditional medicine. The male protagonists in both My Love from the Star and Goblin are supernatural quasi-human beings – a “man” from the “outer world” and a 900-year-old Dokkaebi (Korean goblin), respectively. “Korean” elements, whether they refer to contemporary South Korean culture and society or Korean history, are powerful in K-drama, even in genre-bending productions. My Love from the Star is a sci-fi–romantic comedy based on one sentence written in the Veritable Records of the Joseon Dynasty ( Joseon Wangjo Sillok) about a strange flying object observed in the Gangwon Province area in 1609. The show’s male character, Do Min-Jun (Kim Soo-Hyun), supposedly landed in Joseon (Korea) at that time and continued to live in the country since then, becoming a living witness to Korea’s history. In contemporary Korea, he falls in love with a famous actress. The male protagonist in Goblin, Kim Sin (Gong Yu), has also lived through history. The inclusion of these male characters’ historical experiences into the dramas provides a “uniquely Korean” taste. Similarly, the male protagonist in Crash Landing on You (2019) is a North Korean army officer, and the near impossibility of forming romantic relationships between a South Korean conglomerate (chaebol) heiress and a North Korean army officer in the current political climate of North and South Korea brings the show close to “fantasy.” Situating the drama with the background of these political circumstances also provides a uniquely Korean flavor to the proceedings. None of these dramas is based on mainstream history or cultural knowledge, but they are rather creative and unconventional twists of Korea’s history and reality. However, these fantasized versions of “Koreanness” contribute to the “uniqueness” and brand Korea’s image as an attractive place where tradition and modernity coexist and idealized values of love, affects and ethics can be found.

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The “star power” of cast members is another important attraction for K-dramas that KOCCA survey respondents mentioned (KOCCA 2019). Lee Min-Ho is the most popular actor among the survey respondents in the United States, followed by Park Seo-Jun, Lee Jong-Seok, Ji Chang-Wook and Gong Yu. Park Shin-Hye is the most favored actress, followed by Park Min-Young, IU, Park Bo-Young and Song Hye-Kyo. Interestingly, some of the American favorites from the 2019 KOCCA survey, although popular in South Korea, would not necessarily be considered the favorites of South Koreans, indicating slightly different degrees of reception among K-drama celebrities by region. Dramas that cast K-pop idols as main characters also tend to be popular. Girl group members such as Jung Eun-Ji (Reply 1997) and Hye-Ri (Reply 1988) and boy group members such as Chan-Hee (Sky Castle), Im Si-Wan (Misaeng) and Yuk Seong-Jae (Goblin) are just a few of the K-pop idols who have made successful acting debuts in K-dramas. The overwhelming majority of actors in K-drama are South Koreans, and the Korean language is predominant. Due to the heavy reliance on language in dramas, K-drama has not incorporated as many non-Korean or Korean diaspora actors as the K-pop industry which has actively incorporated trainees from other countries – in groups such as Super Junior-Mandarin (SJ-M), 2PM, TWICE and Blackpink – as part of a strategy for global expansion that includes English lyrics in songs. K-pop’s approach to globalization may not be readily adapted for K-drama because it would take considerable effort to maintain the attraction of K-drama with non-Korean casts, as one of the important factors of K-drama’s appeal continues to be its “putative” relation to Korea, as seen in the global success of the Kingdom series (2019, 2020) and, especially, Jewel in the Palace (2003) over a decade ago. However, collaboration between Korean and foreign production companies such as Netflix and reliance on non-Korean digital platforms for global distribution all suggest that K-drama, too, is no longer a national creation that solely depends on South Korean resources and workforce.

Circulation and consumption of K-drama in the United States Korean dramas, typically family dramas, were once considered integral part of entertainment and social bonding among Koreans, especially middle-aged women (Lee and Cho 1990; Chuang and Lee 2013). The Korean Wave has, however, changed the demographics of K-drama consumers and how they are circulated. KOCCA surveyed 4,753 viewers of K-drama in 2016 and 2,097 viewers in 2019 from all around the United States. Korean Americans comprised only 8.3% of the respondents, a fact that provides evidence of the appeal of K-drama to the general public in the United States (KOCCA 2019: 8). Other ethnicities comprise 26.8% Asians (excluding Korean Americans), followed by 25.9% White/ Caucasians, 19.5% Hispanic/Latinos and 7.1% Black/African Americans. That Asians continue to compose the highest percentage of the US viewer samples and about three times more than the percentage of Korean Americans suggests the possibility of transnational connections between fandom in Asia and Asians in the

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United States. Personal connections play an important factor for K-drama consumption, even for White/Caucasian respondents, 33% of whom mentioned first learning of K-dramas through a friend’s recommendation (Ibid.: 66). The highest percentage of respondents in the KOCCA surveys in 2014, 2016 and 2019 first learned of Korean dramas due to their interest in K-pop or other Korean media, which indicates transmedia pollination of the Korean Wave popular culture. The pattern of loyalty among consumers of K-dramas also follows ethnic composition. Among the respondents who watched K-dramas for over five years, Asians comprise the largest group (35%), followed by White/Caucasians (22%), Hispanic/Latinos (20%) and Korean Americans (13%). The largest number of respondents in the age 21–25 group answered that they watched K-dramas for over five years, meaning that they started watching K-dramas regularly when they were 16–20 or even younger (KOCCA 2019: 15). In terms of the average viewing hours per week, 20.7% of respondents answered that they watch K-dramas for three to five hours, 17.0% watch for five to seven hours and 40.8% watch for over seven hours. Thus, a combined percentage of 78.5% of viewers watch for over three hours per week, which is indicative of the commitment for consumption by K-drama fans (Ibid.: 28). The gender composition of the US respondents shows that K-dramas have greater appeal for female viewers. There were slight changes in gender composition in 2014, 2016 and 2019 surveys but, in all surveys, females comprised between 88% and 92.4% of viewership while males fluctuated between 4.4% and 7.7%. The gender discrepancy is the most severe in the youngest age group (16–20), where female respondents comprised 94%. Larsen’s (2008) earlier surveys revealed that females comprised over 65% of K-drama fans – still higher than males but showing a substantially smaller gap of gender discrepancy in the past than among KOCCA respondents today. K-dramas tend to be consumed by the younger generations of viewers, who compose the two largest age groups, ages 16–20 (16.7%) and 21–25 (21.6%). In terms of the average viewing hours per week by age, the highest percentage of respondents who watched K-dramas for over seven hours per week were over 46 years old and between 21 and 25. Korean dramas in the United States were once almost exclusively circulated within the Korean immigrant community, especially among Korean-immigrant women, first via pirated videotapes and later DVDs rented from local Asian/Korean grocery stores. Local Korean TV stations such as KBFD in Hawaii, California and New York and major DVD distributors started to add English subtitles in the early 2000s, and K-drama quickly reached beyond the boundaries of Korean diasporas (Larsen 2008; Chuang and Lee 2013). Digital platforms with paid subscriptions such as OnDemandKorea, Rakuten Viki (hereafter, Viki), Netflix and Hulu diversified the viewing options for K-drama in the United States. While OnDemandKorea carries mostly K-dramas and TV shows, Viki carries content from other Asian countries and has become one of the major “go-to” Internet venues for K-drama and Asian content. Netflix’s expansion beyond the North American market and its inclusion of K-drama as a genre on their listings has

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also contributed to shifting K-drama from a niche cultural taste to mainstream cultural consumption in the United States. The expansion of the digital distribution of K-dramas has most likely contributed to the lowering of viewer ages to include teens and young adults as well as ethnically diverse viewer groups in the United States. OnDemandKorea and Viki use Kocowa, a streaming platform provided by the Korea Content Platform (KCP), a US-based streaming company. KCP is a joint venture between the three major Korean broadcast networks – KBS, MBC and SBS. Viki (57.7%) has become the favorite digital channel for K-dramas, especially for young viewers. Netflix and OnDemandKorea lag behind Viki for K-drama viewing at 15.3% and 7.3% of the market, respectively (KOCCA 2019: 21). Affective engagement extends far beyond simply watching K-dramas. As with other forms of popular culture, the activity of fandom plays an important role in K-dramas’ circulation and consumption. K-drama fan activities range from offline activities of fan club meetings with beloved stars and visits to places featured in dramas to online activities including writing reviews, recommending dramas, providing recaps and subtitles and writing fan-fiction on platforms such as Wattpad, Asianfanfics, Quotev and Reddit. Although YouTube is not an ideal venue for watching full K-drama episodes, it can function as a hub for curation and dissemination of information about K-dramas. For instance, The Toplists and Drama World are popular YouTube channels for K-dramas, as is MyDramaList, a new channel started in January 2020 that has quickly reached 49.9K subscribers within only eight months. MyDramaList provides information such as a monthly list of short teasers of dramas with voice-over narration of plots and features segments like “9 Hottest Korean Dramas To Watch in August 2020” and theme clips such as “15 ‘Rich Guy, Poor Girl’ Korean Dramas So Good, You’ll Wish You Were Poor!” The digital circulation of K-dramas has been indebted to the affective labor of K-drama fans who provide (often unpaid) services of “fansubbing” and recapping for other fans, which makes the content more accessible for Anglophone audiences (R. Lee 2014). The affective nature of these activities is made clear on the introductory page of prominent K-drama-recap-site Dramabeans: “Dramabeans is a site dedicated to Korean dramas: discussing what they are, what we feel about them, why we love them, what we don’t love about them” (emphasis added by author). Lee’s (2014: 93) analysis of Dramabeans shows how recappers navigate transnational and translational spaces and create participatory fan culture and “reproduce the K-drama as multiple simultaneous texts, their affective weight tied to temporal flow.” Thus, the digital assemblages – disparate, yet simultaneous, digital spaces created by K-drama fans and consumers – are not just content dissemination sites, but they render affective qualities and intensities to circulate between “body to body,” in/out of digital spaces, and simultaneously being “affected” and expand its “capacity to affect” (Seigworth and Gregg 2010: 2). Another example of participatory fan culture is Korean Dramaland, a site with “2240+ KDrama Spots” on an interactive map that are searchable by

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location or by drama. The site encourages fans to participate by submitting filming-location information. Korea Tourism Organization (KTO), a government organization under the South Korea’s Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism, includes “filming locations” in their website; travel agency sites like VELTRA and Viator offer K-drama filming location tour packages. Tourism to drama and film locations has been popular among fans since the early 2000s, especially after the enormous popularity of Winter Sonata (2002) drove almost pilgrimage-like tourism to locations in South Korea. The trend continues to the present day as many formerly little-known places in South Korea are reborn through K-dramas to become affective sites that carry dramatic memories and images.

Soft power of K-drama The influence of Korean dramas in the United States is directly evident in the remakes of K-dramas into American TV series. ABC’s 2017 series Somewhere Between is based on a K-drama, God’s Gift. Also in 2017, ABC remade the hit 2013 Korean TV series The Good Doctor into an American show with the same title. In addition, the US media have adopted Korean formats and collaborated with Korean artists, such as on NBC’s TV series Better Late than Never (adapted from Grandpas Over Flowers [Kkotboda Halbae]) and Fox’s The Masked Singer (adapted from King of Mask Singer [Bokmyeon Gawang]). The popularity of K-drama in the United States outpaces the presence of Korean Americans in American TV series and media in general, where representation is still very limited. However, it is worth noting that the first Canadian TV series in which the majority of the cast are Korean/Asian Canadians, the Canadian sitcom Kim’s Convenience, has gained attention from Canadian and US viewers since first airing in 2016. Before the Canadian sitcom, Korean American and Korean Canadian actors and actresses such as Sandra Oh, Daniel Dae Kim and Grace Park made their presence known in American TV series. An increasing number of Korean and Korean American actors and actresses, including Doona Bae, Daniel Henney, Yunjin Kim and Steven Yeun, have been working in Korean and American mediascapes. Although it is hard to draw any quantifiable connections between the success and visibility of Korean Americans and Koreans in the American mediascape and their contributions to the increased appeal of South Korea, it seems plausible that there is positive synergy created between the successes of Korean American and Korean Canadian artists and the popularity of K-drama, and the Korean Wave in general, in strengthening the attractiveness of South Korea. Popular culture functions as a valuable resource for South Korea’s soft power (Nye and Kim 2013; Gibson 2020). Export-Import Bank of Korea, the state lender who partly funded the 2016 series Descendants of the Sun, recognizes that the cultural content industry offers greater added value than other sectors. K-drama created direct economic impact in South Korea through sales of streaming rights to 32 countries and soundtrack sales, and its indirect economic impact could be seen in the sales of cosmetics and fashion and product placement estimated at

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USD 880 million with an additional roughly USD 300 million in exports of cars and other related products and the potential to create about 4,500 jobs (Korea Export-Import Bank 2012). The attraction of K-drama can also be observed in increased interest in Korean cultural and commercial products: For every USD 100 in cultural goods exported, consumer goods exports rose by USD 412 as the spread of Korean cultural products such as TV shows and movies have been able to instill positive images for Korea and Korean products (Ibid.). K-drama’s success has had ripple effects – creating economic, cultural and social gains for South Korea – in many diverse sectors such as music, consumer products and tourism (S. Kim et al. 2007; S. Kim et al. 2012; Huh and Wu 2017). Transnational migration can also be seen as evidence of this soft power. As American popular culture was integral in forming the image and fantasy of the “American dream,” Korean popular culture, K-drama in particular, generates “Korean fever,” the desire to visit or move to Korea. Though the images created of South Korea in K-drama are somewhat “fragmentary, fabricated and fantastical,” they nonetheless create a desire for living in the place ( Jo 2017, 2020). In 2019, over 1.1 million people visited South Korea from the United States, compared to 694,990 people in 2011; and as of 2019, 151,018 Americans are registered as long-term residents in South Korea, the fourth-largest foreign resident group by country (Ministry of Justice 2011, 2019). “Investment and Immigration,” as one of the six dimensions of the National Brand Hexagon, indicates the soft power to attract people to live, work or study in a country (Ipsos 2019). Although transnational television drama may not be the only or primary reason for transnational migration, prior exposure to popular culture does create affective connections to places before transnational migrations (Espiritu 2003; Y. Kim 2011). The spread of the Korean language in the United States can also provide evidence of the potential of South Korea’s soft power. There has been robust enrollment in Korean-language classes in the US institutions of higher education: Between 2006 and 2009, enrollment in Korean-language classes increased by 18.2%. That percentage increased by 45% between 2009 and 2013 and again by 13.7% between 2013 and 2016. The period from 2013 to 2016 is particularly notable because it represents the highest percentage growth among all modern non-English languages taught in higher education institutions in the United States at a time when enrollments in other languages declined (Modern Language Association 2018). Nye (2011: 81) points out that the spread of the French language and culture enhanced French power in the eighteenth century, and it is possible to say the same thing for British and American power with the spread of the English language worldwide. However, rather than being a cause of power, the spread of the Korean language is more a symptom of cultural popularity that is seen concurrently with the expansion of geopolitical power. What is different today from the previous centuries is where hard power and soft power lie. The increased enrollment detailed above shows that the Korean language’s perceived value has increased, most likely due to the influence of Korean popular culture, including K-drama (D. Lee 2014).

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As Nye (2011: 83) states, “Soft power may appear less risky than economic or military power, but it is often hard to use, easy to lose, and costly to reestablish.” As the soft power of Korean popular culture, and K-drama in particular, is built on the perceived value and attraction of Korean cultural and commercial products and political standing, there are also potential challenges for sustaining that soft power. One potential challenge engendered by the growing flows of K-drama can be “K-fatigue.” If K-drama only reproduces its popular contents and aesthetics without strategic diversification, it will eventually lose its appeal to US audiences because the content of the cultural production will become too familiar, predictable and no longer trendy. Soft power relying heavily on the images of pop culture celebrities or cultural products can also be a potential risk factor, as any illegal or immoral behaviors of individual celebrities or sensitive, controversial topics in dramas can negatively affect the national image. Furthermore, not all government intervention in cultural promotion and soft power is positive, and the South Korean government must not become a driver of cultural promotion since “when governments are perceived as manipulative and information is seen as propaganda, credibility [of the country’s soft power] is destroyed” (Nye 2011: 83). South Korea’s geopolitical vulnerability provides another threat: The peninsula is still divided, and the relationship between North Korea and South Korea is volatile and subject to shifts between temporary peace and impending military confrontation. The US and Chinese relationships can impact South Korea’s soft power, as witnessed during the THAAD (Terminal High Altitude Area Defense) controversy, in which the Chinese government’s retaliation against South Korea included restrictions on cultural and commercial products and even the denial of entry to China for Korean entertainers for performances (Gibson 2020). Despite the challenges, K-drama also presents opportunities for strengthening South Korea’s soft power, especially in this era of digital technology. As Nye (2019) writes, one of the dimensions of public diplomacy is a long-term engagement through scholarship, exchange, training, seminars, conferences and access to media channels. K-drama fans are exposed to Korean culture and society extensively because of the contents, images and ongoing conversations presented in the dramas and associated social media, and K-drama viewing itself requires a substantial time investment. Thus, K-dramas have the potential to play an important role in shaping positive images of South Korea for younger generations in the United States, who have been exposed to them through extended viewing (Ibid.: 13). The development of digital platforms has made the global circulation and mass consumption of K-drama possible and routine. K-drama can continue to benefit from the advanced digital technology of South Korea to find better ways to circulate content and facilitate audience involvement, generating more of the affective investment in K-drama by participatory fans that further fuels circulation and branding efforts “from below” and increases the soft power of Korea. The Korean Wave has been actively embraced as a means of South Korea’s cultural diplomacy in a neighboring Asia. However, South Korea has not yet

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extensively deployed the Korean Wave-based cultural diplomacy targeted at the United States. Although there is evidence of South Korea’s soft power operating in the United States culturally and economically, its influence in cultural diplomacy and international relations between the United States and South Korea has not been as strong as its influence in the Asian region. The United States has been a long-time ally of South Korea, but mainstream Americans’ knowledge of South Korea is limited (R. Kim 2011; Phillips et al. 2013). Given the global success of the K-pop industry, especially with the rise of BTS, and the K-movie industry, with Parasite, it will be interesting to follow K-drama’s further development in the United States and the soft power it potentially creates.

References Chua, B.H. and Iwabuchi, K. (2008) East Asian Pop Culture, Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press. Chuang, L. and Lee, H. (2013) “Korean Wave: Enjoyment Factors of Korean Dramas in the U.S.,” International Journal of Intercultural Relations, 37: 594–604. Elfving-Hwang, J. (2013) “South Korean Cultural Diplomacy and Brokering ‘K-Culture’ Outside Asia,” Korean Histories, 4(1): 4–26. Espiritu, Y. (2003) Home Bound, Berkeley: University of California Press. Gibson, J. (2020) How South Korean Pop Culture Can Be a Source of Soft Power, Washington: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Hong, E. (2014) The Birth of Korean Cool, New York: Picador. Huang, S. (2011) “Nation Branding and Transnational Consumption,” Media, Culture and Society, 33(3): 3–18. Huh, C. and Wu, J. (2017) “Do Hallyu (Korean Wave) Exports Promote Korea’s Consumer Goods Exports?” Emerging Markets Finance and Trade, 53(6): 1388–404. Ipsos (2019) Ipsos Public Affairs Anholt Ipsos Nation Brands Index (NBI), New York: Place Brand Research. Jo, J. (2017) Homing: An Affective Topography of Ethnic Korean Return Migration, Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press. Jo, J. (2020) “(Re)imagined Communities: Korean Diaspora, Identity and Pop Culture,” in Y. Yoon and K. Yang (eds) The Korean Wave: From a Private Commodity to a Public Good, Seoul: Korea University Press. Jung, E. (2009) “Transnational Korea,” Southeast Review of Asian Studies, 31: 69–80. Kim, R. (2011) “South Korean Cultural Diplomacy and Efforts to Promote the ROK’s Brand Image in the United States and Around the World,” Stanford Journal of East Asian Affairs, 11(1): 124–34. Kim, S., Agrusa, J., Lee, H. and Chon, K. (2007) “Effects of Korean Television Dramas on the Flow of Japanese Tourists,” Tourism Management, 2 (4): 1340–53. Kim, S., Kim, M., Agrusa, J. and Lee, A. (2012) “Does a Food-themed TV Drama Affect Perceptions of National Image and Intention to Visit a Country?” Journal of Travel and Tourism Marketing, 29(4): 313–26. Kim, T. and Jin, D. (2016) “Cultural Policy in the Korean Wave,” International Journal of Communication, 10: 5514–34. Kim, Y. (2011) Transnational Migration, Media and Identity of Asian Women: Diasporic Daughters, London: Routledge. Kim, Y. (2019) South Korean Popular Culture and North Korea, London: Routledge.

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Korea Creative Content Agency (2019) Consumer Research Report on Korean Contents in the United States (Drama), Seoul: KOCCA. Korea Export-Import Bank (2012) “Press Release,” 21 June. Korea Herald (2017) “Song Hye-Kyo, EXO-CBX Meet President Moon Jae-In in Beijing,” 14 December. Korea Times (2014) “About 18 Million Americans Enjoy K-dramas,” 24 November. Larsen, T. (2008) “Whetting U.S. Appetite for Korean TV Dramas,” in Korea Herald (ed) Korean Wave, Seoul: Jimoondang. Lee, D. (2014) “Motivation of Learning Korean and Their Influence on Cultural Content,” Korean Language Education Research, 49(4): 191–218. Lee, M. and Cho, C. (1990) “Women Watching Together,” Cultural Studies, 4(1): 30–44. Lee, R. (2014) “As Seen on the Internet,” in K. Kim and Y. Choe (eds) The Korean Popular Culture Reader, Durham: Duke University Press. Los Angeles Times (2020) “Watch Parties and K-pop: How San Mateo Streamer Rakuten Viki is Growing in a Pandemic,” 22 July. Marie Claire (2020) “The Best Korean Dramas to Get You Completely Hooked,” 28 October. Ministry of Justice (2011) Overview of Korean Immigration Service Statistics 2011, Seoul: Korean Immigration Service. Ministry of Justice (2019) Overview of Korean Immigration Service Statistics 2019, Seoul: Korean Immigration Service. Modern Language Association (2018) “Enrollments in Languages Other Than English in United States Institutions of Higher Education,” Preliminary Report, Summer/Fall. Nye, J. (2011) The Future of Power, New York: PublicAffairs. Nye, J. (2019) “Soft Power and the Public Diplomacy Revisited,” Hague Journal of Diplomacy, 14: 1–14. Nye, J. and Kim, Y. (2013) “Soft Power and the Korean Wave,” in Y. Kim (ed) The Korean Wave: Korean Media Go Global, London: Routledge. Phillips, W., Asperin, A. and Wolfe, K. (2013) “Investigating the Effect of Country Image and Subjective Knowledge on Attitudes and Behaviors,” International Journal of Hospitality Management, 32: 49–58. Seigworth, G. and Gregg, M. (2010) The Affect Theory Reader, Durham: Duke University Press. US Census (2010) The Asian Population, Washington: US Census Bureau. Yang, K., Lee, K. and An, J. (2020) “The Korean Wave in the World Seen Through Statistics,” in Y. Yoon and K. Yang (eds) The Korean Wave: From a Private Commodity to a Public Good, Seoul: Korea University Press.

15 NORTH KOREA AND SOUTH KOREAN POPULAR CULTURE IN THE DIGITAL AGE Youna Kim

The Korean Wave popular culture has gained global recognition and a noticeable success in winning the hearts and minds of people around the world; the world’s most reclusive country North Korea is no exception (Y. Kim 2019). The impact of the Korean Wave has reached into communist North Korea, where real-life situations are felt to be particularly constrained and mobility in a variety of capacities and forms becomes all the more important. In 2005, a 20-year-old North Korean soldier defected across the demilitarized zone and the reason given, according to South Korean military officials, was that the soldier had grown to admire and yearn for South Korea after watching its TV dramas which had been smuggled across the border with China (New York Times 2005). Cases of defections have continued to arise in the digital age as the circulation of the Korean Wave has proliferated through advanced media technologies and mobile phones, which may encourage people to imagine the outside world and trigger a new wave of migration (New York Times 2016; Washington Post 2017; Chung 2019). North Korean defectors generally acknowledge that nearly all of their friends living inside the country have consumed South Korean popular culture, or that a majority of North Koreans have secretly watched South Korean drama or film at least once, indicating that exposure to the outside culture is not just limited to escapees from North Korea (CNN 2017; Washington Post 2017). North Koreans publicly hail their leader and state propaganda during the day and secretly watch South Korean dramas and films at night under blankets. The spread of South Korean popular culture among the North’s citizens brings with it a growing influx of challenging information from the outside world, which is considered as one of the worst crimes in the country. The North Korean leader urges authorities to stop South Korean culture from permeating into the country by denouncing it as the “imperialist move for ideological and cultural infiltration,” while at the same time the state media criticize the DOI: 10.4324/9781003102489-15

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popularity as the “yellow dust of capitalism” and “bourgeois, delinquent styles” ( JoongAng Daily 2014; Wired 2015). The leader officially calls for a need to completely end the spread of South Korean culture by launching a special task force and rigorous controls like mosquito nets with multiple layers to monitor and prevent capitalist ideology. This imperative reaction can be seen as the North Korean regime’s war on culture at an important juncture in its history in an increasingly porous world. Distribution or consumption of the South Korean media can be subject to severe punishments, imprisonment or even public executions which are commonly administered by shooting on river banks, at school grounds and marketplaces; and one can get thrown into a gulag for six months of hard labor for humming South Korean pop songs (Cha 2013; Daily NK 2016). Despite tight control set by the regime, copies of TV dramas, movies and music are increasingly smuggled across the border with China into North Korea, and in some parts of North Korea people have good reception of Chinese TV signals and watch South Korean dramas directly. Advanced media technologies and increasingly digital forms of media consumption break through border barriers, making it more difficult for North Korea to prevent its citizens from accessing South Korean popular culture (Y. Kim 2019). A move toward digital media devices at all levels of society has been driven by ordinary citizens, as these devices have become available, affordable and proven well suited to the North Korean context. Small portable devices such as USBs and SD cards contain huge amounts of illegal media content and can be easily concealed, circulated and smuggled across the border. South Korean dramas have become so widespread across North Korea that since 2004 the regime has launched a sweeping crackdown on university students – the biggest audience. Information technology and digital youth make North Korea’s isolation more difficult in the light of new images, concepts and lifestyles from South Korean popular culture. In spite of the severe sanctions and the state efforts to block the influx of external influences, the borders are more porous than ever and the penetration of South Korean popular culture is continuing and expanding. The spread of external culture and information in North Korea can create a significant effect and internal pressure for change, while the regime fears that greater openness would eventually generate popular dissident and political instability. What does South Korean popular culture mean socially, culturally and politically in North Korea in the digital age? This chapter explores the influence of South Korean popular culture in North Korea and social, cultural and political implications at this important historical moment. It considers the significance of popular culture and information technology as a resource for everyday reflexivity and soft power in today’s digitally connected mobile world marked by the expansion of markets, networks, consumers and plurality of cultures in a force of globalization and interdependence. Reflexive engagement with transnational popular culture can be an increasingly important tool for “soft power” (Nye 2004; Y. Kim 2013, 2019) – a cultural weapon to entice, attract and influence people without the use of violence, military or economic force in order to obtain

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desired outcomes – even from one of the world’s most closed and isolated societies. Through the unexpected and diverse cultural engagement, North Korea has become vulnerable to its Southern neighbor’s soft power. North Korea, too, is actively attempting to improve its international image and possibility for soft power through its cultural diplomacy and diplomatic diversification, albeit limited within government perspectives (Cathcart and Denney 2013; Grzelczyk 2018). The politically reclusive and secretive state, and one notorious for isolating its citizens from all sources of outside culture and information, is nonetheless driven to respond to the outside world willingly or unwillingly and create soft power resources, while formal and informal, state and non-state, licit and illicit lines are increasingly blurred.

Black market and illicit consumer culture North Korea has opened unofficially since the late 1990s, when famine substantially weakened the state’s ability to maintain absolute control over the society and the people’s hunger drove them to search for illicit ways to survive on their own outside the Public Distribution System (Kretchun and Kim 2012; Y.H. Kim 2014). The pivotal moment of structural, social and economic changes in North Korea was the catastrophic famine of the mid-1990s that killed as much as 10% of the population, and the declining reliance on the state that could no longer guarantee a living wage or reliable food supplies (Park and Snyder 2013; Smith 2015; B. Kim 2017). The political system has become delegitimized as the government has continually failed to deliver on its promises and as citizens are not quiescent. Disaffection may be channeled into private actions that, while not overtly political, may nonetheless have longer-run implications for the stability of state socialism (Haggard and Noland 2011). One notable example of such action is the willingness of citizens to engage in private market (technically illegal) economic activities and access alternative sources of information and media culture that are likely to conflict with official ideology. In addition to food, portable media devices such as mobile phones, DVDs and USBs containing foreign, mostly South Korean, dramas and movies are found in private markets all over the country (Hassig and Oh 2015; O 2016). Private market vendors, who sell ordinary goods like rice, vegetables and batteries, hide USBs inside under the counter and sell the USBs to the consumers who would quietly ask, “Do you have anything delicious today?” (Washington Post 2017). The secret code word “delicious” or “fun” refers to illicit media content from South Korea. Underground private markets are the important distribution and contact zone not just for basic necessities such as food, clothing, medicine and household items, but also for outside culture and information proliferating through casual chatters, whispering rumors and the illicit foreign media. Black markets have been instrumental in fueling not only a historic transition toward a shadow market economy “from below,” but also a new and creative way for ordinary people to share non-state information and networks in a

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country that regulates and directs all the media and cultural flows. A growing space between the state and the people, between state ideologies and greater marketization, may cause a crisis of governance and uproot the foundations of the regime (Cha 2013). It is a failed state not primarily because it is run by a leadership obsessed with the cult of personality or because it is a one-party state devoid of democracy, but because it subscribes to the failed concept of the Sovietinspired socialist command economy that insists on a centrally planned system (French 2014). The government facing a quasi-capitalist market economy is liable to become unstable as a result of pressure from the people involved in necessary market activities, widespread private trade, outside information and culture that permeate all levels of society, from the poorest to the Party and military elites (Tudor and Pearson 2015). The unleashing of market forces “from below” with the amplified flows of unofficial exchanges has weakened the totalitarian grip more than anything else in history has done, as the livelihoods and opportunities of the people lie in areas beyond its grasp, not in the system that imprisons them ( Jang 2014). The marketization as a coping mechanism that began with food has encompassed a much broader range of goods and gray-area activities as many citizens depend on the black market for survival. A motley crew of foreign organizations (NGOs), defectors, smugglers, Chinese middlemen and businessmen, and North Korean soldiers who turn a blind eye with bribes, comprise a robust, illicit network that links North Koreans to the outside world (Baek 2016). Within a week of a South Korean TV show airing in Seoul, it can be already distributed and available in North Korean black markets. Dissemination of South Korean popular culture is an extremely risky yet extremely profitable business because the consumer demand is so high. In North Korea, a USB is like gold; a USB loaded with South Korean dramas or films sells for more than a month’s food budget for most middle-class North Korean families (Wired 2015; Washington Post 2017). Everyone has to find their own way to survive and earn money in an entrepreneurial and often illegal way. Even college students and youth have become involved in selling smuggled media content, after learning that it is a guaranteed way to profit. Informal traders and money masters called “Donju,” a new rich and powerful class of North Korean capitalists, acquire and smuggle South Korean products through China for the purpose of selling them in black markets or consuming them for themselves (Daily NK 2016). North Koreans who watch South Korean dramas naturally become interested in the products they see, and affluent people purchase popular items such as computers, cameras and bikes for their children that were all made in South Korea. Demand for South Korean cosmetics is high as the popularity of the South Korean media and celebrities has brought changes in the products sold at North Korean markets ( JoongAng Daily 2014). Even while North Korea is heavily sanctioned by the UN, which makes it extremely difficult to do business, it is a burgeoning consumerist place where plastic surgery and South Korean dramas are wildly popular and where one rarely needs to walk more than a block to grab a quick hamburger (Abt 2014). With the

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rise of a consumer culture, the North Korean consumer landscape has evolved dramatically despite the ever-tightening control under the country’s leader. North Koreans’ methods of accessing external consumer culture and information have expanded to Notels, mobile phones and tablets, significantly transforming the nation’s media landscape (38 North 2016). The majority (98%) of USB owners reportedly use their USBs to discreetly store forms of illicit capitalist culture, South Korean dramas or music (98%) in contrast to North Korean entertainment (9%), and such illicit content is shared with family (91%) and friends (64%) via USBs (Kretchun et al. 2017). USBs can be conveniently used on nonInternet–enabled devices and create an informal, offline information network. Most North Koreans view the illegal content of USBs on a small, inexpensive, Chinese-made portable video player called the “Notel,” or “Note-Tel” – the combined “notebook” and “television” multi-media player. The Notel serves as a crucial and multi-purpose nexus that can accept USBs and SD cards, can play DVDs and can receive a television signal. As one of the most popular means of enjoying South Korean popular culture, the Notel importantly has a rechargeable battery to deal with frequent blackouts in North Korea. The spread of illegal Chinese mobile phones along the North Korean border has enabled person-to-person contact with the outside world, and increased the efficiency of cross-border trade and person-to-person information flow (Kretchun and Kim 2012). In order to curb the rising use and smuggling of illegal Chinese mobile phones, in 2008 the North Korean government introduced its own domestic mobile phones. The proliferation of both legal and illegal mobile phones provides a potential for the wide spread of information, mobile communication and greater horizontal interpersonal connection between North Korean citizens, who have been isolated from each other by the regime’s strategy of controlling society. Even rumors or news that the state media do not report can be circulated rapidly to those who are otherwise unable to gain information outside their neighborhoods. Mobile phones have become a status symbol, a sign of prosperity and power, and the most prevalent example of conspicuous consumption on the streets not only in Pyongyang but also in other major cities (Y.H. Kim 2014). Especially among the youth, mobile phones function more as a personalized mobile entertainment device than a mobile communication tool, for taking photos, playing games, listening to music and watching videos, including South Korean pop songs and dance videos. North Korea’s restrictive private Internet was established in 2000, with no access to global websites outside of the country (Seliger and Schmidt 2014). This nationwide Intranet is freely offered to those with access to a computer, and includes a search engine, an email program, a variety of homepages and news about the country’s leader. North Korean tablets were produced around 2015, providing basic apps including a camera and browser but with an extra level of control over what content can be accessed (38 North 2017). North Koreans who work abroad can easily access the virtually global Internet, although the regime prevents them from accessing and conveying outside information and culture. Those with greater financial means have greater access to sources of outside

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information and media culture, and elites are the earliest adopters of new media technologies (Kretchun and Kim 2012). Arguably the world’s most secretive government, North Korea has shifted its digital strategy from attempting to totally deny its people access to information technologies to controlling and monitoring their use, thereby actively shaping and directing the country’s inevitable digitalization in its own best interest.

Popular culture, reflexivity and soft power Consumers of the foreign media include a growing number of ordinary North Koreans in addition to the high-ranking intelligentsia, elites and their kids, and the demand for information is increasingly tilting away from news and toward new forms of entertainment and consumer culture (38 North 2016). The growing forces of South Korean popular culture via digital media technologies and such soft power resources have already penetrated the North, and potentially stand a better chance of fostering changes within the nation than does more immediate and coercive action. The effective weapon against the North appears to be the less formal forces of consumer capitalism and soft power – particularly the soft power of South Korean popular culture – whose penetration of the North offers for the first time a legitimate threat to the regime’s grip on power (Lerner 2015). Today’s revolutionary digital technologies, combined with an unprecedented concomitant economic and cultural globalization, are changing the nature of political power and conflict and creating an international commodity boom, popular cultural convergence and homogenizing consumer culture around the world (Iverson 2017; Press-Barnathan 2017). North Korean elites express their discontent toward the young leader and the dynastic rule as the influx of outside information, capitalist elements and a more independent way of thinking grow in an emerging digital society (Al Jazeera 2017). The regime’s control has appeared tenuous as the sociopolitical and cultural norms of everyday life so assiduously cultivated by North Korea are increasingly in flux, and the regime confronts new challenges to maintaining a rigidly controlled public sphere (Dukalskis 2017). North Koreans love the fact that South Korean TV drama is not about politics, but about love and life, the fundamentals of human existence anywhere in this world. (a North Korean defector, Radio Free Asia 2007) Listening to South Korean songs just makes me feel good. I hum a song without realizing it. Our songs are all about political ideas. (a North Korean defector, Daily NK 2011) Why are we poor? (North Koreans starting to question, after watching South Korean culture, Korea Herald 2009)

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The attraction of illicit media culture from South Korea provides a new framework for making sense of the world, with a possibility of a multitude of meanings to emerge and circulate in North Korea (Y. Kim 2019). Lingering discontent is rife inside North Korea as the people become increasingly aware of the fact that they are poor and their neighbors prosperous. Anyone seeing South Korean cultural artifacts would find it difficult not to notice the prosperity that South Koreans routinely enjoy (e.g. plentiful food, ubiquitous mobile phones, nice cars), and this demonstration effect contradicts the state’s propaganda line that there is “nothing to envy” in the outside world because North Korea is full of riches and the rest of the world is worse off. In reality, North Korea is a place where everybody needs a scam to survive (Demick 2010). Confronted by the imaginary of South Korean culture and higher living standards, media consumers doubt the claims of their own government and internally question: “Why are we poor?” “Why is South Korea so much brighter than North Korea?” Only when North Koreans defected and crossed the border, did they begin to clearly see North Korea as a place of utter darkness, wherein electricity supply is in a perpetual state of emergency. In North Korea, we would never think of eating for pleasure. Eating was for survival. If I have an opportunity to go back or if Korea unifies as one nation, I want to cook for the people in North Korea who could not enjoy eating. (a North Korean defector, USA Today 2017) South Korean popular culture is a pull factor for North Korean migration as mediated experiences of South Korean dramas, movies and music enable North Koreans to see and feel the outside world in comparison to their country (Washington Post 2017; Chung 2019). The famine of the 1990s and the yearning for a better life, combined with the soft power of the South Korean media, have weakened the regime’s hold on its people and their imaginations. The influence of the famine and the media is an agent of a new wave of transnational migration. Transnational migration can be understood with multifaceted insights; considering some of the key macro-factors affecting people’s decision to move and the micro-processes of the ways in which people experience the mediated world of everyday culture, while reflecting the interconnection of these seemingly opposite and contradictory levels of push-and-pull elements within the particular socioeconomic and cultural contexts in which people live their everyday lives (Y. Kim 2011). In the migration process, it is important to consider the possible significance of mediated migration or a pull effect of popular media culture as people’s mediated symbolic encounter with the cultural Other generates imaginations of alternative lifestyles and identities. This migration can be seen as an extension of the previous immersion of people in consuming images transmitted from the outside world, while dreaming of escape from their social constraints. Many North Korean defectors report that they consumed and were influenced

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by South Korean dramas, movies or music before leaving their homeland, despite the substantial risks involved in such consumption (Reuters 2011; O 2016; Washington Post 2017). Experiences of the outside media influence body politics, self-expression and the perception of freedom through capitalist consumer culture. North Korea’s young people or the so-called “black market generation” are eager consumers of South Korean popular culture, competitively emulating not only its stylish fashions, hairstyles, cosmetics and even cosmetic surgery but also manners of speech and behavior, while simultaneously developing more self-expressive individualistic outlooks despite the regime’s efforts to block the anti-socialist elements of the outside media (Hassig and Oh 2015; Tudor and Pearson 2015; Daily NK 2016). Mediated experiences of the outside culture create new opportunities for self-experimentation, ranging from simply trying out a different fashion or a different hairstyle to something more profound, a possibility for self-transformation. The people draw on mediated experiences to inform and refashion the project of the self, potentially negotiating the shape of their present and future. Especially for the black market generation that considers the regime more as an obstructer than a provider (Haggard and Norland 2011), this growing self-expression is indicative of an emerging subculture or counter-culture defined by its refusal of mainstream values and practices. Engaging with the forbidden media can be a small yet grave act of subversion against the regime, expressing hidden wishes and self-determined oppositions to the repressive reality. Many talk like South Koreans in their everyday lives, adopting South Korean terms of endearment and love that did not exist in the North prior to the influx of South Korean popular culture. The mediated exploration of the boundaries between the inside and the outside, between the self and the Other, enables them to imagine a possibility of freedom, a self-fulfilling life, which is in dramatic contrast to, thus a yearning element in, their own conditions. My mom worked in the market selling home appliances, so she had a way to get DVDs [of the outside media]… I thought that if I got to South Korea, I could do anything I wanted. (a North Korean defector, Washington Post 2017) When they brainwash students in North Korea, they say, “We can read your words, actions and thoughts.” If you have bad thoughts about the Kim family, they will know. (a North Korean defector, USA Today 2017) With exposure to the absence of overtly political propaganda in the South Korean media, the North’s market-friendly and individualized generation comes to question their regime’s typical repertoires of socialist and patriotic songs, dramas and films that are all about making self-sacrifices for the leader, the definition of a hero in North Korea. While the leader has traditionally leaned on brainwashing

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tactics to elevate himself as a God, a growing curiosity about the outside culture and the increasing penetration of market capitalism have begun to pose an internal threat to the domestic system of control (CNN 2017). Political attitudes, enforced affection and loyalty toward the leader are shifting, and today’s North Korea is being transformed by the quiet but potentially transformative experience of the outside media culture of freedom, individuality and democratization of everyday life. As a subtle way of demonstrating an individual self, North Koreans appropriate personalized digital devices, for instance, using ringtones of pop songs on their mobile phones, decorating their handsets with preferred accessories sold in the black market, digitally producing and circulating cultural contents. The new trends of digital media use have a long-term potential for encouraging, especially among the youth, individualism and self-expression, the elements essential to developing a democratic society (Y.H. Kim 2014), or the most nascent seeds of a civil society (Kretchun and Kim 2012). The ideational and cultural attractiveness of the outside media in a digitally connected world generates a desire for the learning of how life is organized differently in the outside world under different rules, as well as a desire for the embrace of new values and lifestyles in a cross-cultural perspective. I like dramas that depict everyday life [in South Korea]. It is easy to compare the living standards of North and South Korea when watching these dramas. (a North Korean defector, Kretchun and Kim 2012) They [North Korean viewers] have started asking themselves, ‘What do I really want to do with my life?’ ‘What can I really do here in North Korea?’ This form of skepticism about the limits of North Korean life is on the rise. (a North Korean defector, Daily NK 2016) Curiosity about South Korean popular culture, its intricacies of human relations and compelling narratives of everyday life can create a shared sense of humanity among the North Korean viewers raising existential questions that concern the self and its emotional state. Reflexivity, in a form of self-analysis and self-confrontation, penetrates to the core of the self and its deepest emotions in everyday life. The attraction of consuming the cross-border media lies much in the opportunity to get a transcultural sense of how people live differently in another part of the world, a sense which can give the media consumers a point of comparative reference to understand their own lives. The increased exposure to the cultural Other provides them with a glimpse of alternatives, thereby encouraging them to construct their own meanings and reflect critically on the self and the actual conditions of their lives. This kind of “private reflexivity” (Giddens 1991; Y. Kim 2005, 2008) is already becoming operative in the critique of everyday people at an informal and pre-political level. With ongoing self-reflexive

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discoveries, everyday people have the capacity to make sense of the conditions of their existence and try to change them accordingly, albeit difficult and limited. Their official, local knowledge may increasingly be supplemented by new forms of unofficial, non-local knowledge, and their formation of the self may become more reflexive and open-ended. The forbidden flows of the South Korean media into the North provide rare and significant conditions for increased capacities for reflexivity in the light of non-local knowledge (Y. Kim 2019). The South Korean media as extended cultural resources and frameworks of alternative visions in a North Korean cultural sphere trigger the gradual transformation of the conditions for the construction of social identity. The experience of the South Korean media is a popular conversation starter among North Koreans, particularly youth and women, but also soldiers. When a much-refereed South Korean drama is so popular, those who have not watched it are considered behind the times (Radio Free Asia 2013). Many people share copies of the South Korean media with those they trust, and enter into an unspoken pact of breaking the law together by discreetly viewing the illegal media in groups, or by collectively talking about their viewing experience with trusted friends, neighbors and family. According to a North Korean defector who previously worked for the state’s thought police, he went door to door with the task force assigned to search out the forbidden media in citizens’ homes and caught a group of video watchers who had, in a panic, hidden together under a blanket in a closet (Wired 2015). State censorship units or cadres in the leadership class loosely enforce the regulations against the forbidden media by taking bribes from terrified watchers, confiscating the forbidden media and then watching them at their leisure, or even involving in the reproduction and circulation of the confiscated media (Daily NK 2016). Inevitably, the banned media and information spread through word of mouth and collective talk contributing to the expanding viewership and its wider impact. People’s collective talk about banned popular media text, or their collaborative reading of the popular, is an active mode of reading that is intrinsically subversive to dominant power structure and has an empowering potential. The trajectory of such a collective talk may move from the private to a hidden public sphere in the rigidly controlled society, interweaving the narratives of the popular media with their own lives and interests, and those of their family, friends and neighbors, and thereby forming networks for sharing their unspoken experiences and opinions. Such networks on the level of culture function as a locus of empowerment where people can express their own personal and social issues, as well as their own kind of pleasure, and provide necessary moral support to collectively resist unwanted forces in their lives. The two different forces from the regime and from its people, “from above” and “from below,” create a drama in North Korea, not the drama of a glorious and radical revolution but a kind of socioeconomic and cultural guerrilla warfare of the politically powerless masses against a ruling political class (Hassig and Oh 2015). The powerless attempt to take some control over their lives by employing a silent, transgressive or poetic tactic for the very activity of making

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do with their disadvantaged conditions in the dominant structure of everyday life. A tactic, as determined by the absence of power, is appropriated as an art of the weak, and depends on time because it does not have a place (De Certeau 1984). Popular culture as a tactic is a self-consciously political, transgressive and opportunistic source of power concealed beneath the misery of everyday life. Without leaving the place of misery, the weak insinuate themselves into the place with a hope to change the conditions of their lives. The culture-power tactic that constructs its own space and alternative discourse is persistently lurking and springing forth from everyday life, masquerading behind the dominant ideology and the naturalized common sense. North Korean people, like all oppressed groups in the world, may have difficulty in imagining the precise contours of an alternative society, but they are able to imagine and invoke alternative sources of power in everyday life. Although ordinary people may not believe that there are immediate political ways to completely change the main elements of macrosocial conditions in a short term, their negotiation is operating at a micro level by a new politics to carve a livable life with a tactical approach. Changes within microscopic factors like individual mindsets and behaviors and collective networks caused by the appropriation of South Korean popular culture can influence wider change in North Korea (Kang and Park 2011).

Conclusion Popular culture can take the serious and often oppressive regulation of the conduct of everyday life, and turn it on its head. In such spaces of popular culture, oppressed individuals such as North Koreans can suspend the regularities of the daily, take pleasure and, in some transcendent way, play with the categories and concepts of the world over which they otherwise have no influence. Experiencing the Korean Wave popular culture is not simply to entertain themselves nor simply a form of escapism. At the moments of particular relevance and resonance, meaning-making through popular culture lives in the community of its users and enters into life. Although the experience of popular culture may be hidden and unmarked, there are moments which stand out and are imprinted in users’ memories; the memories of popular culture are intimately linked to their muted biographies. Although the experience of popular culture may not lead to dramatic social or political change in the short run, and although the importance of the transformations generated by popular culture in the long run are problematically obscured by the attention to short-run immediate effects, people’s mundane changes, imagination and critical reflection triggered by popular culture and expressed in the practices of everyday life can be the basis of social constitution or political subjects. It is wrong to assume that because its political regime and authoritarian control have not changed significantly, then North Korea must be a static society in which citizens are devoid of agency or in which sociocultural change and such imagination are insignificant. North Koreans, too, are the agents of change with normal aspirations, hopes and desires, constituting

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a hidden yet potential force for internal change despite long deep-seated oppression (Y. Kim 2019). The people’s capacity to make sense of the meanings of everyday life, or the grounds of what they do, what they think and what they feel, has become dependent on the unofficial mediation of South Korean popular culture which is increasingly present in the daily exigencies of people now. Such cultural encounter can evoke utopian feelings of possibility acting as temporary answers to the specific inadequacies of society and showing what solutions feel like. Changes in awareness, knowledge and attitude toward their society may not always produce an easily observable specific action and social transformation, but new possibilities may arise from a heightened capacity for reflexivity. Increased flows of transnational media culture are important resources for everyday reflexivity (Y. Kim 2005, 2008, 2013), perhaps even more so in an extremely rigid and repressive society like North Korea where other sources of reflexivity might not be readily available. The significance of media cultural consumption practices can be understood as a creative, dynamic and transformative process, often involving active and intended engagement. The growing forces of popular culture, information technology, capitalism and open markets offer a legitimate threat to the regime’s grip on power and help imagine a revolution driven by ideas rather than weapons (Lerner 2015). External culture and information can be the key to catalyze the slow erosion of the repressive regime and rule and bring about change in North Korean society from the inside. The exposure to South Korean popular culture, as a powerful influencing agent, is a conduit of soft power based on aesthetic appeal that transcends longstanding historical divisions between the two nations (You 2017). The Korean Wave popular culture in the digital age marked by increased information has a potentially vital role to play in the future milieu of the peninsula, with the incremental and diffuse effects of soft power in the long term.

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USA Today (2017) “We Would Never Think of Eating for Pleasure: North Korea Defector Admits,” 15 September. Washington Post (2017) “Life under Kim Jong-Un,” 17 November. Wired (2015) “The Plot to Free North Korea with Smuggled Episodes of Friends,” 1 March. You, K. (2017) “K-pop: A Political Weapon,” Brown Political Review, 8 February. 38 North (2016) “Foreign Media into North Korea,” 29 November, Washington: Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies. 38 North (2017) “All That Glitters is Not Gold: A Closer Look at North Korea’s Ullim Tablet,” 3 March, Washington: Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies.

INDEX

affective connection 210 affective economy 3, 19, 29 affective investment 2, 19 affective labor 3, 18–19, 86, 132, 214 affective publics 19 American-Eurocentric cinema 1 anticolonial nationalist ideology 7 ARMY 2, 18, 114, 118–19, 124, 126–7, 137, 146–7, 157 Asian modernities 184–5, 193 audio-vision 112 auteur 46–9, 52 authenticity 16, 32, 124–5, 127 author function 51 autonomy 15, 122, 124 Bang Bang Con 142–3 Black Lives Matter 19, 149–50 black market 222–3 black market generation 227 Bong Joon-Ho 7, 9, 41, 64, 79, 90 #BongHive 1, 11 brand nationalism 190 branding 30, 179–80, 187–8, 210 BTS 1–2, 12, 15, 20, 107, 111, 113–15, 118, 125, 127, 129–30, 142, 156, 159–60 BTS universe 130, 136–7 capital 6, 67–9, 52, 70, 75, 77 celebrity 17–18, 20, 30, 209 celebrity diplomacy 20 celebrity society 20 chaebol 6, 9 CJ Group 9, 41, 45, 52, 57

class 9–10, 27, 71, 77, 79, 82–3, 85, 88, 120 class smell/odor 9, 74–5, 80, 82 collaborative creativity 4 collaborative reading 229 colonialism 6, 26 community of taste 18, 200 Confucianism 10, 13, 93, 102, 111, 126, 184, 186–7, 203 consumer culture 12, 222 cosmopolitanism 12, 21, 27, 172, 174 Covid-19 65, 118, 142 creative economy 59 cultural ambassador 155, 158–60 cultural diplomacy 4, 30, 217, 222 cultural diplomacy agents 201 cultural missionaries 201 cultural policy 30 cultural proximity 173, 185, 196, 199, 202 cultural public sphere 24 cultural uniqueness 176, 178, 211 culture industry 5, 55, 122, 139 decalcomania 69–70 decolonization 28 deterritorialization 116 developmentalist nationalism 6 diasporas 26 diasporic communities 15, 205 digital assemblages 209–10, 214 digital circulation 214 digital technologies 14, 26, 31, 33, 144–5 digital revolution 122 digital West 171, 181

236 Index

emotional realism 202 entrepreneurial self 12 Facebook 14, 19, 142 fan activism 142, 144, 152 fandom 3, 15, 18, 90, 110, 129, 144–5, 148, 151, 175, 202 fan-subbing 2, 214 flower boy 17, 25 Gangnam Style 13, 59, 113 gender 10, 17–8, 25, 27, 79, 83, 132–3 global precariat 9, 60–1 globalization from below 5 grassroots intermediaries 4, 31 grassroots resistance 144 high culture 4, 160 Hollywood 6–7, 11, 44, 46, 49, 52, 56, 58 hybridity 7, 11, 14, 21 identity 3, 6, 15, 28, 30, 32–3, 76, 173 IMF/Asian financial crisis 5, 55, 121 individuality 16, 124–5, 127 individualization 10, 17 Internet 3, 110, 122, 224 invisibility 90, 94 K-beauty 187–8 K-drama 22, 25, 171, 174, 197, 202, 210–11 Korea Day 205 Korean education 9 Korean-English translation 94 Korean fever 216 Korean film industry 5–6, 47, 90 Korean language 10, 29, 93, 216 Korean underground 63–4 Korean Wave 4–5, 7, 15, 21, 26, 28–9, 31, 55, 68, 77, 184, 192–3, 208 Korean Wave 2.0 59, 175 K-pop 12–3, 109, 111, 113–14, 119–23, 131, 133, 144, 151, 155, 157 LOVE MYSELF 2, 163 male gaze 10 masculinity 17–18, 25, 129, 132–5 media convergence 67–8 migration 216, 226 modernity 24–5, 27, 60, 69, 185, 190 multi-directional flow 3 multimodality 92–4 nationalism 10, 29, 31–2, 190–1, 193 neoliberal capitalism 9, 29, 60, 68, 77, 111, 165

neoliberal fantasy 75, 138–9 neoliberal Korea 9, 80 neoliberal marketing 133 neoliberal reforms 60 neoliberal spheres 68 neoliberal subject 73–5 Netflix 2, 11, 22–3, 43, 49, 142, 171–2, 174, 181, 213 networked affect 19 New Korean Cinema 7 Notel 27, 224 Orientalism 21, 51 OTT 171 pan-global project 46–7 Parasite 1, 8–9, 42, 45, 48, 54, 61, 64, 68, 74, 76, 79–80, 84, 88 Parasite universe 75 participatory culture 3, 68 participatory meta-narrative 136–7 patriarchy 10, 88 patriotism 189–90 pirate generation 109 political activism 19, 147 political fandom 19, 147 pop nationalism 189 popular culture 3–4, 12, 15, 18, 21, 26, 28, 30, 32, 56, 225, 230 producer 26, 28, 41, 48, 52, 60, 202 producers-consumers 4, 31 race 21 racism 15, 21, 26 reflexivity 22, 24–5, 68–9, 174, 228–9 remakes 197–8 Samsung 6, 45, 56, 111 semi-basement 10, 61, 70, 81, 85 smartphone 11, 14, 122 social exclusion 15 social media 1, 4, 11, 19, 31, 110, 117, 142, 147, 152 soft power 3–4, 29–31, 59, 158, 160–1, 185, 190, 204–5, 208–9, 215–17, 221, 231 sound objects 112–13 space 69, 72, 77, 80, 83 spreadable media 3 star power 212 star system 12 state-capital power 6 streaming 11, 107–8 subtitles 1, 10, 90–2 tactic 229–30 TikTok 119, 143, 150

Index  237

tourism 6, 28 transculturality 172–3 Twitter 14, 19, 109 United Nations 2, 15 USB 223–4 utopian universality 74 visuality 179–80

Western media discourse 161 Western media imperialism 3 Western modernism 70 White power 1, 11 world music industry 107–9 youth 16, 20, 126 YouTube 11, 14, 19, 23, 59, 67, 109, 111, 142