Transnational Convergence of East Asian Pop Culture (Routledge Research in Digital Media and Culture in Asia) [1 ed.] 0367648989, 9780367648985

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Transnational Convergence of East Asian Pop Culture

This book observes and analyzes transnational interactions of East Asian pop culture and current cultural practices, comparing them to the production and consumption of Western popular culture and providing a theoretical discussion regarding the specific paradigm of East Asian pop culture. Drawing on innovative theoretical perspectives and grounded empirical research, an international team of authors consider the history of transnational flows within pop culture and then systematically address pop culture, digital technologies, and the media industry. Chapters cover the Hallyu— or Korean Wave—phenomenon, as well as Japanese and Chinese cultural industries. Throughout the book, the authors address the convergence of the once-separated practical, industrial, and business aspects of popular culture under the influence of digital culture. They further coherently synthesize a vast collection of research to examine the specific realities and practices of consumers that exist beyond regional boundaries, shared cultural identities, and historical constructs. This book will be of interest to academic researchers, undergraduates, and graduate students of Asian media, media studies, communication studies, cultural studies, transcultural communication, or sociology. Seok-Kyeong Hong is a professor in the Department of Communication at Seoul National University, Korea. She finished her PhD at University of Grenoble and was an associate professor at the University of Bordeaux, France, between 2000 and 2013. Dal Yong Jin is Distinguished Professor at Simon Fraser University, Canada. Following a career in journalism, Jin completed his PhD in the Institute of Communications Research at the University of Illinois in 2005.

Routledge Research in Digital Media and Culture in Asia Edited by Dal Yong Jin Simon Fraser University

Chinese Social Media Social, Cultural, and Political Implications Edited by Mike Kent, Katie Ellis, and Jian Xu Digital Media and Risk Culture in China’s Financial Markets Zhifei Mao Mediatized Religion in Asia Studies on Digital Media and Religion Edited by Kerstin Radde-Antweiler and Xenia Zeiler Digital Transactions in Asia Economic, Informational, and Social Exchanges Edited by Adrian Athique and Emma Baulch Digital Mediascapes of Transnational Korean Youth Culture Kyong Yoon Transmedia Storytelling in East Asia The Age of Digital Media Dal Yong Jin Transnational Convergence of East Asian Pop Culture Edited by Seok-Kyeong Hong and Dal Yong Jin For more information about this series, please visit: www.routledge.com

Transnational Convergence of East Asian Pop Culture Edited by Seok-Kyeong Hong and Dal Yong Jin

First published 2021 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN and by Routledge 52 Vanderbilt Avenue, New York, NY 10017 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business ©2021 selection and editorial matter, Seok-Kyeong Hong and Dal Yong Jin; individual chapters, the contributors The right of Seok-Kyeong Hong and Dal Yong Jin to be identified as the authors 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: Hong, Seok-Kyeong, editor. | Jin, Dal Yong, 1964– editor. Title: Transnational convergence of East Asian pop culture / edited by Seok-Kyeong Hong and Dal Yong Jin. Description: Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon ; New York, NY : Routledge, 2022. | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2020042297 (print) | LCCN 2020042298 (ebook) | ISBN 9780367648985 (hardback) | ISBN 9781003126850 (ebook) Subjects: LCSH: Popular culture—East Asia. | Popular culture— Western countries. Classification: LCC HM621 .T7429 2022 (print) | LCC HM621 (ebook) | DDC 306.0973—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020042297 LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020042298 ISBN: 978-0-367-64898-5 (hbk) ISBN: 978-1-003-12685-0 (ebk) Typeset in Sabon by Apex CoVantage, LLC

Contents

Acknowledgmentsvii About the contributorsviii   1 Introduction: the making of East Asian cultural space

1

SEOK-KYEONG HONG AND DAL YONG JIN

PART I

History and content of the transnational: flows of East Asian popular culture13   2 East Asian popular culture in the early 20th century: Jin Yan/Kim Yŏm (金焰), the emperor of film in Shanghai

15

DOOBO SHIM

  3 Media ecologies and transnational media flow in East Asia

32

DONG-HOO LEE

  4 Converging East Asia: cultural politics toward cultural regionalization

52

DAL YONG JIN

PART II

Transnational convergence of culture73   5 New Generation Dance Music: the beginning of K-pop and J-pop’s influence

75

GYU TAG LEE

  6 The past, present, and future of Boys Love (BL) cultures in East Asia JUNGMIN KWON

96

vi  Contents   7 Sharing gender imagination in East Asia: an essay on soft masculinity and female digital scopophilia in East Asian mediaculture

113

SEOK-KYEONG HONG

  8 Pirate cosmopolitanism and the undercurrents of flow: fansubbing television on China’s P2P networks

127

JINYING LI

PART III

Digital platforms, cultural industries, and East Asia147   9 The rise of digital platforms in the networked Korean society

149

DAL YONG JIN

10 War memory, globalization, and cultural convergence: the trajectory of PRC-Japan coproduction from the 1980s to the present

170

WENDY SU

11 Korea’s creative migration to media cities in China: the space of flows and fluid assemblages

189

JU OAK KIM

12 Cultural industries and the state in East Asia

207

NISSIM OTMAZGIN

Index230

Acknowledgments

This book was generated out of a program supported by the Research Grants for Asian Studies funded by Seoul National University Asia Center (SNUAC). Between 2016, the year of the beginning, and 2021, the year of the publication, several seminars and meetings have deepened the initial research questions. We thank the participant researchers for their perseverance and enthusiasm as well as the participants of seminars who enriched the collective making of thoughts. I (Seok-Kyeong Hong) am specially indebted to my graduate students. They showed an immense interest on this book and stimulated me through their encouragements and participation in reflections on the cultural dynamics in the East Asia. Special gratitude should go to Professor Dal Yong Jin. Without his endeavors I’m not sure if this book would have come into being or be of high quality. I started this book project; he finished it. I (Dal Yong Jin) want to express my thanks to Professor Seok-Kyeong Hong who led the project. Without her academic leadership and vision, this book could not have been published. We also acknowledge that early versions of two chapters of this book appeared in two different journals. One is Chapter 9, which was originally published with the title of “Platform imperialism in the networked Korean society: a critical analysis of corporate sphere,” in Asiascape: Digital Asia (2017) 4: 209–232. The other is Chapter 12, which was originally published with the title of “A tail that wags the dog? Cultural industry and cultural policy in Japan and South Korea,” in the Journal of Comparative Policy Analysis: Research and Practice (2011) 13:3: 307–325.

Contributors

Seok-Kyeong Hong is a professor in the Department of Communication at Seoul National University, Korea. She finished her PhD at the University of Grenoble and was an associate professor at the University of Bordeaux, France, between 2000 and 2013. She has been teaching visual culture, cultural studies, globalization and media culture, and qualitative research methods including visual methods. She has published books on Korean television dramas and Hallyu as a cultural consequence of globalization and digital culture, as well as articles on digital cultural practices. Dal Yong Jin is Distinguished SFU Professor. He completed his PhD in the Institute of Communications Research at the University of Illinois in 2005. Jin’s major research and teaching interests are on digital platforms, globalization and media, transnational cultural studies, and the political economy of media. Jin has published numerous books and journal articles, as well as book chapters. Jin’s 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). Dong‑Hoo Lee is Professor of the Department of Mass Communication at Incheon National University, Korea. Her English language publications include articles in the Fibreculture Journal, The Information Society, and Mobile Media & Communication, and chapters in Feeling Asian Modernities  (2004),  East Asian Pop Culture  (2008),  Studying Mobile Media (2012), Understanding Creative Users of ICTs (2013), Asia-Pacific Film Co-productions(2019). She has also written books in Korean, including  Media Ecology Theory (mi-di-eo-saeng-tae-i-lon)  (2013),  Mobile Media Environment and Humans (mo-ba-il-mi-di-eo-hwan-gyeong-gwa in-gan) (2018). Her areas of research are media ecology, new media culture, digital mobile communication, gender and media, and transnational media flows.

Contributors  ix Ju Oak Kim is an assistant professor of Communication at Texas A&M International University. Her research interests include global media systems and industries, production studies, transmedia storytelling, and East Asian media and culture. She is currently working on a book manuscript that examines the production culture of the Korean television and pop music industries. Kim’s work has appeared in refereed journals, such as Continuum: Journal of Media and Cultural Studies, International Journal of Communication, Culture, Theory, and Critique, the Journal of Popular Culture, and Journal of Fandom Studies. Jungmin Kwon is an assistant professor of digital cultures and film studies in the School of Film at Portland State University. She earned her PhD from the Institute of Communications Research at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Her research interests include digital media, film, gender and sexuality studies, media industry and fan/­audience ­studies, and Korean popular culture. She is the author of a book titled Straight Korean Female Fans and Their Gay Fantasies (2019, University of Iowa Press). Her work has been published in academic journals including Television  & New Media,  International Journal of Communication, and the Journal of Fandom. Gyu Tag Lee is an assistant professor of anthropology and cultural studies teaching K-pop, Hallyu, and the music industry at George Mason ­University-Korea. He is the author of The K-pop age and K-pop in conflict (in Korean). Jinying Li is Assistant Professor of Modern Culture and Media at Brown University, where she teaches media theory, animation, and digital culture in East Asia. Her essays have been published in  Film International,  Mechademia, the  International Journal of Communication,  the Journal of Chinese Cinemas,  Asiascape,  Asian Cinema,  and  Camera Obscura. She co-edited two special issues on Chinese animation for the Journal of Chinese Cinemas, and a special issue on regional platforms for Asiascape: Digital Asia. She recently completed her first book, Geek Pleasures: Anime, Otaku, and Cybernetic Affect  and began her second book project, Walled Media and Mediating Walls. Nissim Otmazgin, Director of the Institute for Asian and African Studies at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, is the author of Regionalizing Culture: The Political Economy of Japanese Popular Culture in Asia (University of Hawaii Press, 2013) and The Anime Boom in the US: Lessons for Global Creative Industries (with Miki Daliot-Bul, Harvard University East Asia Press, 2015). He has also co-edited six other books on society and culture in East Asia, the most recent (with Eyal Ben-Ari) is Global Context: Creativity and Innovation in the Media and Cultural Industries (Springer 2020).

x  Contributors Doobo Shim is currently Professor of Media and Communication at Sungshin Women’s University, Seoul, Korea. He previously served as an assistant professor at the National University of Singapore and as a visiting scholar at Duke University, USA. He does research on the media and communication within critical, cultural, and historical perspectives while his recent research has focused on the rise of Korean popular culture in Asia. His research has been honored by several academic societies including the National Communication Association (USA), and at the Global Fusion Conference. He has been an editorial board member of many academic journals including the Journal of Fandom Studies and Asian Communication Research. Wendy Su  is Associate Professor of the Department of Media and Cultural Studies at University of California Riverside. She is the author of China’s Encounter with Global Hollywood: Cultural Policy and the Film Industry, 1994–2013 (University Press of Kentucky, 2016), and co-editor of  Asia-Pacific Film Co-productions: Theory, Industry and Aesthetics (Routledge, 2019). Her research areas include global communication, Chinese media and cultural policy studies, cultural industries research, transnational film studies, audience research, and Asian modernity. She was awarded a 2014 William L. Holland Prize for best article by Pacific Affairs.

1 Introduction The making of East Asian cultural space Seok-Kyeong Hong and Dal Yong Jin

The transnational flow of popular culture in East Asia has continued over the past several decades. In the early 21st century, East Asia has become a major hub for cultural flow due to Japan, Korea, and China having rapidly developed their cultures, both popular and digital, as well as their cultural markets. Various forms of integrated production and consumption are rapidly developing in East Asia. Hong Kong cinema of the 1980s, Japanese animations and J-pop of the 1990s, and the success of the Korean Wave (Hallyu) starting in the late 1990s are some distinctive examples of transnational cultural convergence. In the 2000s, the development of cultural industries and subsequent transnational exchange in Japan and South Korea (hereafter Korea) were emulated by China, Taiwan, and Hong Kong, which led to great interest in the transnational flow based on the development of pop culture in East Asia. More specifically, since the beginning of the 21st century, there has been an active development of the exchange and convergence of East Asian pop culture—referring to the new collective condition represented by the reciprocal merging and penetrating within the once-separated practical, industrial, and business aspects of popular culture under the influence of digital culture—as well as the subsequent possibility of an East Asian pop culture community. The introduction of Japanese pop culture in East Asia in the late 1980s catalyzed the subsequent emergence of Korean pop culture in the same region since the late 1990s. Ever since, the transnational exchange of East Asian pop culture has kicked into high gear. In other words, there is no doubt that the transnational convergence of East Asian pop culture started with the introduction of Japanese culture in East Asia (Iwabuchi, 2006, 2013). Japanese manga and anime have especially become some of the most significant cultural content representing Japan around the globe (Steinberg, 2017; Suzuki, 2019). However, Iwabuchi (2006) claimed that the spread of Japanese manga, anime, and music (J-pop) in Taiwan, Indonesia, and other East Asian countries ignited intra-Asian cultural flows is limited because Japan-centered pop culture mostly failed to flow into China or Korea, although there were some programs that unofficially flowed from Japan to these countries. Considering China and Korea, who both have a history of

2  Seok-Kyeong Hong and Dal Yong Jin war and colonization with Japan, only opened the gates to Japanese culture in the late 1990s, Iwabuchi’s claim toward cultural community in East Asia centered on Japan is inevitably limited. It is certain that ever since Korea and China openly accepted the flow of Japanese culture in the late 1990s, the cultural convergence of East Asia through transnational exchange grasped the attention of the global academic world (Otmazgin, 2013); however, this transnational exchange is still restricted to only a few countries. The theory of a China-centered flow of popular culture within East Asian countries also has its limitations. As Chua Beng-Huat and Koichi Iwabuchi (2008) emphasized, cultural exchange called ‘Pop Culture China’ has long existed in Taiwan, Hong Kong, Singapore, and China. However, because only a few TV programs and films have been exported beyond the Greater China region to countries like Japan and Korea, the claim for a pan-Chinese East Asian convergence of popular culture did not receive much spotlight, besides exceptions from a few relevant countries. Japan and China have developed their own cultural influences in East Asia; however, their attempts are limited as they mainly penetrate only a limited number of East Asian countries. In this regard, cultural community in the East Asian region has been fully actualized since Korean pop culture began to spread to other East Asian countries, and later beyond regional boundaries (Hong, 2013; Jin, 2016). As Jin (2002) emphasized, Hallyu or the expansion of Korean pop culture into Asia and the global markets began in the late 1990s. Based on the increasing Korean Wave trend in Japan, China, Taiwan, and Singapore, the simple exchange of cultural products such as television programs and films led to the actual formation of an East Asian cultural community that included the exchange and sharing of capital, labor, and scripts (Jin & Lee, 2012). Korea has significantly shifted its regional integration as Japan and China have pursued similar policies to develop their own popular culture after the global popularity of Hallyu. In fact, Cool Japan policy has similarly pursued the formation of cultural communities through the spread of Japanese culture in East Asia in the 2010s. Likewise, China, seeing the success of Hallyu, aims to form a regional commonality in East Asia that transcends the boundary of Greater China, and it is developing its soft power policy. Under this circumstance, the need for research on popular culture that is shared and circulated in East Asia, which accounts for more than one third of the world’s population, is ever more escalated. The main context of this book regards the historically constructed conditions of the formation of a common popular culture, including digital culture in East Asia, and its direction.

Major goals of the book With the rapid growth of East Asian cultural flows, several scholars have undertaken substantial research on pan-East Asian cultural flow and

Introduction  3 collaboration, and case studies are accumulating. However, writing this book, from preparation to completion, is unique and has been a thoroughly collaborative process between its co-researchers. This is what sets this book apart from other directed books, which are usually composed of chapters collected from a call for papers discussing mutual themes at hand. Initiated by Seok-Kyeong Hong, with a long-term collaboration with Dal Yong Jin, this book received institutional aid from SNUAC (Seoul National University Asia Center) for a year of preparation and two years of collective academic activities. Over the course of eight months in 2016, eight seminars were held by six researchers from six different universities located in three different countries (three from Korea, two from America, and one from Canada). During this first year of preparation, the core problematic of the book was discussed and shared, and an outline of the chapters and content was shaped. In addition to the chapters to be written by the six co-researchers determined at this stage, more researchers were selected through five international conferences held during the two following years (2017–2018). These scholars have paid special attention to the transnational cultural exchange processes of East Asia. Although the dramatic development of Hallyu triggered a great amount of research on the transnational production/consumption of culture in East Asia, there still remains a lack of literature that attempts to systematically integrate this phenomenon into the universal theories of cultural industry (see Hong et al., 2017; Yoon & Kang, 2017). On the one hand, in cultural industry studies led by American, British, and European scholars, Asia is either boxed away or is studied by only a small group of experts, resulting in an alignment of theories that do not address each other. On the other hand, while Hallyu studies, Japanese pop culture studies, Chinese media studies, and Asian fandom studies have garnered a great quantity of literature, most of the literature consists of case studies that cannot actually be connected to general culture industry t­heories. However, today’s cultural industry of East Asia, in which Japan-Korea-China are connected and rapidly joined by other East Asian countries, shows a scale and dynamism that exceeds the North American-European market in terms of its size and creativity. Such dynamism is closely related to the digital culture of this region, making theories on East Asian convergence culture possible. This book agrees with the reality that transnational relations of mutual influence in the formation of pop culture have been established, and it hypothesizes that the amalgamation of pop culture mediated by digital culture is forming a “convergence culture.” Convergence culture, again, refers to the new collective condition represented by the reciprocal merging and penetrating within the once-separated practical, industrial, and business aspects of popular culture under the influence of digital culture. North American and European research shows that such condition is not fragmented into individual practices, but is rather embodied in a dominant

4  Seok-Kyeong Hong and Dal Yong Jin logic made visible by the digital culture (Jenkins, 1992, 2006; Jenkins et al., 2013). Korean popular culture—driven by the growth of Hallyu in the midst of the dynamism of digital culture and empowered by its geopolitical position acting as a mediator between East Asian superpowers such as China and Japan—is now considered a powerful driving force of cultural convergence in East Asia. Korean pop culture, which was modeled after the Japanese pop culture industry and shaped by the active embrace of Western pop culture, is actively developing the Hallyu industry with the help of the Japanese and Chinese markets. As the countless remakes and format sales between Korea-China and Korea-Japan testify, Korea is acting as a mediator of pop cultural influence between the two superpowers, China and Japan. The pop culture space of East Asia—mediated by Hallyu and built by Korea, China, Japan, and the joint forces of other East Asian countries—is being shaped in large part by production systems (e.g., crossmedia, idol systems, etc.), consumption phenomena (East Asian fandom culture), and the powerful influence of the consumers on processes of production. This book aims to observe and analyze transnational interactions of East Asian pop culture and current cultural practices, comparing them to the production and consumption of Western popular culture and providing a theoretical discussion regarding the specific paradigm of East Asian pop culture. In other words, this book is to identify and explain the huge cultural space constructed by Korea-China-Japan, becoming visible through the mediating efforts of Hallyu in midst of the transition, settlement, success, and failure of technologies of East Asian pop culture. This book originally attempted to serve as not just an accumulation of case studies but as an active discussion of pop culture and cultural industry theories on East Asia. At the same time, it aimed to observe, analyze, and reflect theoretically upon the formation of an East Asian pop culture block and the ‘convergence’ and ‘de-convergence’ that occur inside. It would ­provide a theoretical paradigm and field of observation for a transnational understanding of the pop culture practices of East Asia in the future. However, later, we decided to extend the scope and twisted the original ideas a bit to include transnationality in East Asian pop culture and added a few more chapters, while eliminating some chapters so that this book collectively discusses not only the notions of convergence and de-convergence, but also transnational popular culture in the East Asian context. Currently, research on East Asian pop culture industries as well as Hallyu studies is scattered among various field, genre, and regional studies. We expect this book to assemble and synthesize these scattered fields of research into a single coherent flow and shed light on the uniqueness and originality of the convergence culture of East Asia. In other words, this book seeks to examine the specific realities and practices of consumers that exist not only within East Asia but also beyond those regional boundaries, the cultural identities they share, and their historical constructs.

Introduction  5

Transnational convergence of popular culture and digital technologies in East Asia As was briefly discussed, since the 1980s, popular cultural products and digital technologies have crossed the national borders of East Asian countries, enabling a discursive construction of an “East Asian popular culture and digital technologies” as objects of academic analysis (Chua, 2006). East Asian countries, including Japan, Korea, and China, one after another, have greatly advanced their cultural content and digital technologies, and therefore, East Asia has become one of the major hubs that global cultural industry firms, policy makers, and consumers have to pay attention to. These countries have developed cultural flows within this region, and later beyond the regional boundary, which is unprecedented. With the increasing regional penetration of local culture and digital technologies, several theoreticians developed different discourses, such as intra-cultural flow (Fung, 2007), cultural regionalization (Jin & Lee, 2012; Otmazgin, 2013), inter-Asian referencing Iwabuchi (2013), and inter-Asian frameworks (Cho & Zhu, 2019). However, only a few works (e.g., Chua & Iwabuchi, 2008) focused on the Korean Wave-driven pan-East Asian flows and collaborations. As Hong (2017, p. 67) aptly argues, “it has been more than a decade since Hallyu became one of the important topics in East Asian cultural studies,” and the emergence of Asian media and popular culture developed in the early 21st century has been much bigger than imagined. It has been remarkable as Korean popular music (K-pop), television programs, and webtoon-based transmedia storytelling such as Kingdom (2019) and Itaewon Class (2020) on Netflix have penetrated Western countries. As the recent popularity of BTS—a seven-member boy idol group in K-pop—and Parasite’s wins at the 2020 Oscars also prove, Korean popular culture has become globally popular in recent years. This means that we have to emphasize the increasing role of Hallyu as the source of the pan-East Asian cultural sphere in order to determine the possibility of regional integration and collaboration in both popular culture and digital technologies. Although we don’t attempt to emphasize Hallyu as the only available source for the panEast Asian cultural collaboration, we believe that it is critical to understand the significant role of the Korean Wave in the creation of regional cultural identity. Therefore, what these scholars focused on has been the Hallyu phenomenon, which gained widespread popularity simultaneously in various East Asian countries from the late 1990s to the early 2000s. The co-researchers in this edited volume assumed that the various phenomena of the cultural industry, consumption, and the development of the cultural market in East Asia in regard to the digital cultural environment are both converging and diverging. Borrowing the concept of ‘convergence culture’ that was first developed in North America, this approach positions the logical transformation of pop culture brought forth by the digital media environment as a prerequisite while simultaneously identifying the distinct

6  Seok-Kyeong Hong and Dal Yong Jin East Asian characteristics in an effort to further develop the existing theory. Again, there has been active development of research on the exchange and convergence of East Asian pop culture. In particular, we are certain that the Korean Wave is an ongoing process of transnationalization. This book analyzes the transnationalism of popular culture not only through the exportation of domestic popular culture to other countries but also through its increasing appropriation and digital mediation. Through our articulation of Hallyu as a unique global cultural phenomenon, we plan to shed light on the ways in which transnational cultural flows are configured and reconfigured in relation to digital media environments in East Asia. The milieu surrounding media and cultural studies will be continuously shifting, and this new media ecology offers great opportunities for us to develop unique canons. With the emphasis of the perspectives of rich Asian history and culture, we can develop new paradigms running through an East Asian sphere (Jin, 2020). As Wendy Su (2021) in this book emphasizes, the construction of an East Asian cultural identity or the convergence of East Asia culture is impossible and implausible without a sufficient understanding of the historically intertwined, deeply complicated East Asian relationship and cultural exchanges. What is important in this light is that we must avoid limited perspectives emphasizing only intra-Asian dialogues. Instead, we must posit East Asian perspectives in the globalization context, which means that our approach, focusing on transnational convergence of East Asian culture and digital technologies, should be rather innovative, comprehensive, and comparative so that the readers of this book will be able to grasp not only the pan-East Asian sphere, but also the transnational globalization approach.

Organization of the book The organization of the book is as follows. To encourage the reading of the chapters alongside other cognate areas, we have organized the contents across three broad thematic points. Part I documents history and context of the transnational flows of East Asian popular culture. Part I consists of three chapters. Chapter 2 analyzes East Asian popular culture in the early 20th century, focusing on Jin Yan (金焰), the emperor of film in Shanghai, China. It emphasizes Shanghai since the city was considered the most cosmopolitan society in Asia in the period of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. While the traditional research that focuses on popular culture has centered on media, text, fandom and recently celebrities, the media hub’s importance should be stressed; therefore, the research questions in this chapter include 1) On what grounds did Shanghai become an early pop cultural hub in Asia? and 2) Under what circumstances did a Korean actor become a star in the Chinese film industry? In Chapter 3, Dong-Hoo Lee analyzes a media ecology approach to transnational media flow in East Asia. She attempts to look at the role of media

Introduction  7 as a crucial agent in the formation and expansion of the Korean Wave as a transnational media flow. Rather than taking a functionalist approach to media or treating media as a taken-for-granted and fixed determinant for transnational media flows, she considers the media environment as the “foreground” (in McLuhan’s term) of the Korean Wave and seeks to understand it from a media-ecology perspective. This chapter focuses on the media environment as a context that has mediated transnational media distribution and consumption in East Asia in the 20  years since the late 1990s. Rather than examining the functional role of a specific medium, she focuses on the changing media environments in terms of inter-media relations between old and new media and people’s everyday media systems and how they have shaped “the speed, scale, and pattern” of transnational media experiences. Chapter  4 discusses the converging East Asian cultural market. It analyzes the cultural collaboration process of the East Asian regional market transforming into one integrated market for the popular cultural industry. It explores the possibilities of forming one distinct cultural sphere in East Asia. It also examines the influences of regional political economy in terms of shifting cultural politics that have expedited both cultural convergence and cultural de-convergence in the regional cultural market. Instead of emphasizing only one side, it converges the two main aspects, both state-led top-down and private cultural producers-led bottom-up, in order to fully understand the growth of regional integration. In doing so, it discusses the major characteristics of pan-Asian cultural products and integration. Part II identifies transnational convergence of culture in East Asia with four chapters. In Chapter 5, Gyu Tag Lee discusses new generation dance music, focusing on the beginning of K-pop’s and J-pop’s influences on it. “New Generation Dance Music” was the most popular musical genre of the Korean music industry in the early and mid-1990s. It was the first time in the history of the Korean music industry that dance music became the most popular genre. New Generation Dance Music was also highly influenced by Japanese music, which has played an important role in developing Korean popular music. A number of plagiarism scandals that seriously undermined the popularity of new generation dance music are good examples of how not only Western popular music but also J-pop influenced the early K-pop as well. In this chapter, Lee investigates the unofficial enjoyment of J-pop by local Korean audiences and their reaction toward those scandals to show how cultural exchange took place between Korea and Japan even though it was officially banned by governments. In Chapter  6, Jungmin Kwon discusses the past, present, and future of Boys Love (BL) cultures in East Asia. She raises a question of how this particular subculture (i.e., BL fandom in East Asia) could obtain strong fan bases across national boundaries and beyond political, cultural, and historical conflicts. She firstly historicizes BL culture and its development in each East Asian country, with a focus on reciprocal actions. Then she explores

8  Seok-Kyeong Hong and Dal Yong Jin the root of shared fantasies about the male body that are described in BL content among BL participants and offers culturally specific backgrounds regarding BL’s origin, such as Confucianism and the oppressive education system. Next, she moves on to examining recent, noticeable BL phenomena that are commonly discovered in East Asian popular cultures. Chapter 7 analyzes sharing gender imagination in East Asia. This chapter explains that the fandom for East Asian popular culture is mostly comprised of female fans over males, and thus the representation of ‘masculinity’ in the contents is directly subject to the female audience’s feedback. The fandom for East Asian cultural products has been increasing on a global scale through gaining more audiences in support of their cultural resources, such as Japan’s animation (manga) and the Korean Wave’s celebrity-oriented music, drama, and movies. Thus, the scale of East Asian pop culture is not only limited to the region, but on a global scale through the Internet-related digital platforms. This chapter aims to find characteristics of imagined gender identities portrayed in East Asian pop culture, and ultimately to map out the possibilities for East Asian pop culture to reshape the existing fabric of cultural identity on gender and race. Chapter  8 examines pirate cosmopolitanism and the undercurrent of flows with fansubbing television in China. With the rapid development in digital hardware and software, fansubbing culture fashions a new type of media access that traverses across multiple platforms on diverse devices. Situating TV fansubbing within the wider digital culture of transmedial convergence, it examines the cultural logic, as well as the socio-political function, of the pirate, shadow route of multiple flows in China, including televisual flow, information flow, and transnational cultural flow. It interrogates the political meanings of an imagined cosmopolitan community that is created through the self-organized communication sphere of fansubbing, and examines how an alternative framework of identity formation, which it calls “pirate cosmopolitanism,” can be generated by the affective “flows” between content and platform, between text and paratext, and between the televisual and the informational. Part III focuses on digital platforms, cultural industries, and East Asia, which comprises the final four chapters. In Chapter  9, Dal Yong Jin discusses the rise of digital platforms in the networked Korean society. He first identifies the major characteristics that signal the growth of digital platforms as a corporate sphere in which their operation is greatly defined by market forces. Then, he analyzes the nature of the development of local digital platforms in order to determine whether locally made digital platforms have controlled their own market and expanded in global markets. Finally, he investigates the ways in which US-based digital platforms have dominated or influenced the local market, constructing a new form of imperialism. For this reason, Jin not only examines hardware architecture but also pays close attention to the commercial and cultural values embedded in digital platforms.

Introduction  9 In Chapter 10, Wendy Su analyzes war memory, globalization, and cultural convergence. She seeks to map out the historical trajectory of film collaboration between the PRC and Japan from the 1980s to the present. She hopes to discover how the PRC-Japan film coproductions have evolved throughout the past two decades, and how the content, themes, and cultural essence of coproductions have developed and changed. She first traces the origin and path of PRC-Japan coproduction, followed by an analysis of film coproductions relating to cosmopolitan Shanghai. Wendy also discusses the latest trend of purchasing and remaking Japanese IP and coproduction. The central argument is that the PRC-Japan collaboration is always characterized by a complicated love-hate relationship. While PRC’s official discourse and popular culture foreground the war memory and anti-Japanese nationalism, recent coproductions indicate the tendency of moving away from the haunting shadow of the war and embracing mutual-understanding and cosmopolitanism, which are welcomed by China’s younger generations. Chapter 11 addresses Korea’s creative migration to the Chinese television industry, with the presumption that the rise and fall of these two nations’ collaborations can unveil recent dynamics in the East Asian media landscape. Sino-Korean media interactions can be discussed as the historical moment when human agents reimagined the boundary of spaces in the Information Age. Therefore, it elucidates interregional collaborations whereby Korean media players are employed as instrumental texts for negotiating cultural infusions and political conflicts in an interregional context. It explores several focal points, including the ways in which Korean media actors deal with conflicts and tensions with their regional partners. Based on in-depth interviews with five Korean media professionals who either collaborated with Chinese media companies or observed the process of Sino-Korean media production, it concludes that the spatial gravity of regionalization manifests Sino-Korean collaborations in reality show production. Chapter 12 analyzes cultural industries and the state in East Asia. This chapter analyzes the impact of the cultural industries on state policy by looking at the emergence of the Japanese and Korean cultural industries and at the consequential governmental policies that have been initiated. It first reviews the relationship between “culture” and “industry” in order to underline the challenges for policy makers. It then places the issue of commodifying and exporting pop culture in the wider context of Japan’s and Korea’s developmental legacies and discusses the massive emergence of the Japanese and Korean cultural industries over the last two decades. It later analyzes the way that the policies toward the cultural industries have shifted, the recent governmental initiatives to support the production and export of commodified culture, and provides a few examples of the domestic discourse they initiate. Lastly, it outlines the wider theoretical significance of this study to the process of policy making, and offers some policy recommendations based on the structure and organization of the cultural industries.

10  Seok-Kyeong Hong and Dal Yong Jin

References Cho, Y. H., & Zhu, H. R. (2019). Interpreting the television format phenomenon between South Korea and China through inter-Asian frameworks. International Journal of Communication, 11, 2332–2349. Chua, B. H. (2006). Conceptualizing an East Asian popular culture. Inter-Asia Cultural Studies, 5(2), 200–221. Chua, B. H., & Iwabuchi, K. (2008). East Asian pop culture: Analysing the Korean wave. Hong Kong University Press. Fung, A. (2007). Intra-Asian cultural flow: Cultural homologies in Hong Kong and Japanese television soap operas. Journal of Broadcasting and Electronic Media, 51(2), 265–286. Iwabuchi, K. (2006). Japanese popular culture and postcolonial desire for “Asia”. Routledge. Iwabuchi, K. (2013). Korean wave and inter-Asian referencing. In Y. Kim (Ed.), The Korean Wave: Korean media go global (pp. 43–57). Routledge. Hong, S. K. (2013). Hallyu in globalization and digital culture era: Full house, gangnam style, and after. Hanul. Hong, S. K. (2017). Hallyu beyond East Asia: Theoretical investigations on global consumption of Hallyu. In T. J. Yoon & D. Y. Jin (Eds.), The Korean wave: Evolution, fandom, and transnationality (pp. 67–86). Lexington Books. Hong, S. K., Park, D. M.,  & Park, S. J. (2017). Knowledge network analysis on Hallyu research. Korean Journal of Journalism & Communication Studies, 61(3), 318–353. Jenkins, H. (1992). Textual poachers: Television fans & participatory culture. Studies in culture and communication. Routledge. Jenkins, H. (2006). Convergence culture: Where old and new media collide. New York University Press. Jenkins, H., Ford, S.,  & Green, J. (2013). Spreadable media: Creating value and meaning in a networked culture. New York University Press. Jin, D. Y. (2002). Regionalization of East Asia in the 1990s: Cultural and economic aspects of television program trade. Media Asia: An Asian Mass Communication Quarterly, 29(4), 215–228. Jin, D. Y. (2016). New Korean wave: Transnational cultural power in the age of social media. University of Illinois Press. Jin, D. Y. (2020). Encounters with Western media theory: Asian perspectives. Media, Culture & Society, 1–8, online first. Jin, D. Y.,  & Lee, D. H. (2012). The birth of East Asia: Cultural regionalization through co-production strategies. Spectator, 32(2), 26–40. Otmazgin, N. K. (2013). Regionalizing culture: The political economy of Japanese popular culture in Asia. University of Hawaii Press. Steinberg, M. (2017). Media mix mobilization: Social mobilization and Yo-Kai watch. Animation: An Interdisciplinary Journal, 12(3), 244–258. Su, W. (2021). War memory, globalization, and cultural convergence—the trajectory of PRC-Japan coproduction from the 1980s to present. In S. K. Hong  & D. Y. Jin (Eds.), Transnational convergence of East Asian pop culture. London: Routledge.

Introduction  11 Suzuki, C. J. (2019). Yōkai monsters at large: Mizuki Shigeru’s Manga, transmedia practices, and (lack of) cultural politics. International Journal of Communication, 13, 2199–2215. Yoon, T. J., & Kang, B. R. (2017). Emergence, evolution, and extension of “Hallyu studies”: What have scholars found from Korean pop culture in the last twenty years?. In T. J. Yoon & D. Y. Jin (Eds.), The Korean wave: Evolution, fandom, and transnationality (pp. 3–21). Lexington Books.

Part I

History and content of the transnational Flows of East Asian popular culture

2 East Asian popular culture in the early 20th century Jin Yan/Kim Yŏm (金焰), the emperor of film in Shanghai Doobo Shim Introduction We are living in an age in which media exchange in Asia is perhaps the most vibrant ever in history. In the vortex of intensifying Americanization of global culture, more films, television dramas, and music produced from different Asian countries are being avidly consumed in other parts of the region. These changes began in the 1990s. With the Cold War ending, with the World Trade Organization (WTO) era beginning, and with the new media development and digital revolution unfolding since the 1990s, the traditional curbs on the international flow of information and culture virtually disappeared in Asia. In fact, the year 1990 saw the launching of Star TV, which was the first satellite television channel that catered to pan-Asian audiences (Chadha & Kavoori, 2000). After that, such transnational television channels as Disney, ESPN, Discovery, and History made inroads into Asian markets, but with Asian-oriented or country-specific programming. Asia-based television companies also began to take advantage of the new cable and satellite television environment across Asia, reaching wider audiences. Against this backdrop, audiences in different Asian localities began to have access to KBS World (South Korea), NHK (Japan), CCTV (China), Channel News Asia (Singapore), etc., developing a sense of imaginative Asian community. Mobile and social media in the 2000s have become new platforms for news sources of Asian stars and celebrities, who received more attention than before from neighboring Asian countries. Thus, one may wonder what the East Asian popular culture looked like in the early 20th century when mass entertainment cultural forms such as film and radio began to appear in the region. In order to answer this question, we need to first define what East Asian popular culture is. While East Asia is geographically understood to include China, Japan, Mongolia, and the Koreas, we can add Vietnam, Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Singapore, which partly share some cultural and intellectual heritage with those Northeast Asian countries (Chua, 2012). While popular culture can be defined variously according to different contexts, cultural studies scholars like John

16  Doobo Shim Fiske and John Storey have generally recognized popular culture as a set of people’s everyday practices and feelings as a result of interaction with those commodities and texts produced by media industries in modern times (Fiske, 1989; Storey, 2018). The role of capitalist industries in the production of popular culture was emphasized by the Frankfurt School, although from an angle that was different from that of Fiske and Story (Adorno & Horkheimer, 2002 [1947]). While sports can also be understood as popular culture, for the sake of effective discussion in this chapter, we shall limit the categories of popular culture to media entertainment such as film, music, and television. Given this conceptualization, East Asian popular culture started in the early 20th century when the modern forms of entertainment media such as movies, records, and radio became available to ordinary people. That was also a period when local Asian entrepreneurs and artists began to actively produce their own cultural commodities on a large scale. Of course, the movement of commodities and celebrities from one place to another within Asia was not as lively as it is today. Further, because such modern forms of mass media were basically Western imports, metropolises that easily received Western culture and commercial culture prospered as hubs of East Asian popular culture at that time. From this perspective, Shanghai and Tokyo can be thought of as metropolises for this discussion. I  will focus on Shanghai in this chapter, but on the following grounds. Firstly, Shanghai was the biggest cosmopolitan city in Asia beginning in the mid-19th century and became the Chinese film hub in the early 20th century. As hinted by its nickname, the “Paris of the East,” Shanghai materialized cosmopolitanism, modernity, and wealth. Secondly, the discussion on Shanghai is more strategic for this chapter’s discussion. While Shanghai at that time did not wield a cultural influence over other areas in Asia akin to Hollywood’s influence across the globe, over time, Shanghai’s cultural capital and resources were passed on to Hong Kong, which was able to grow itself into a media hub in late 20th century. Thirdly, Shanghai was a space in which Jin Yan (金焰 김염, pronounced Kim Yŏm in Korean), a Korean-born actor, enjoyed his heyday in the 1930s. That he was already very popular in Shanghai testifies to Shanghai’s cosmopolitanism. Against this backdrop, I will revisit Shanghai as an early hub of East Asian popular culture in modern times, while tracing the life of Jin Yan who was a migrant artiste from Korean to China. In this way, early transnationalism of East Asian popular culture will be addressed. While Korean popular culture has wielded influence over Chinese culture for the past three decades under the name of Hallyu, Chinese cinema—to be more exact, Hong Kong cinema—has had a huge impact on Korean culture, both as a partner in film co-productions and as a source of cinematic imagery and imagination for media industry practitioners and audiences in Korea throughout the mid- and late 20th century (Yi, 2017). However, the scope and scale of Korean society’s understanding of Korean-Chinese cinema

20th century East Asian popular culture  17 connections are rather limited. Therefore, a reexamination of Jin Yan/Kim Yŏm and the understanding of Shanghai film industry in the 1930s, which enormously influenced the industrial growth of Hong Kong cinema in later years, would fill the gap in the historiography of Korean-Chinese cinema connection in the 20th century and enrich our understanding of cultural history of East Asia as a whole.

The growing interest in Jin Yan/Kim Yŏm in Korea The year 2019 was meaningful in many ways for Koreans. It was the centennial of the March 1st Independence Movement, the nationwide non-­violent resistance demonstrations that were brutally subdued by the Japanese colonial government. It was also a centennial of the establishment of the Provisional Government of the Republic of Korea (PGRK hereafter), which vowed and staged operations to liberate Korea from Japanese occupation. Both of these are symbolic in the history of Korea’s resistance to Japanese colonial rule that lasted from 1910 to 1945. As such, South Korean (Korean hereafter) media outlets including broadcast and podcast channels and online and offline newspapers reported widely on those two incidents. As the PGRK was founded in Shanghai, China, the media also showed a journalistic interest in the city by making a visitation to the sites associated with PGRK there (Ŏm, 2019). The interest in Shanghai during the Japanese colonial rule era carried over to the interest in Jin Yan (金焰), a Korean-born Chinese actor, or Kim Yŏm according to Korean pronunciation, who was nicknamed the “emperor of the film in Shanghai” in the 1930s. His fame was such that when the Chinese state-run Xinhua News Agency published a book Movie Stars in China (中華影星), celebrating the 90th year of Chinese cinema in 1995, Jin Yan/ Kim Yŏm appeared first on the book’s list of the most renowned Chinese film stars which included Bruce Lee (李小龍), Jackie Chan (成龍), Leslie Cheung (張國榮), Gong Li (鞏俐), Maggie Cheung Man-yuk (張曼玉), and others (Pak, 2003). Particularly the fact that Jin Yan/Kim Yŏm was born into a family which produced many famous independence revolutionaries raised the interest in him. Against this backdrop, the media discourse on Jin/Kim was largely constructed around the nationalist narratives such that Jin/Kim was a proud Korean who pursued the cause of Korean independence campaign through cinema in China (Lim, 2009). What is further noteworthy is that some media connected his story to the discourse of Hallyu, or the Korean Wave, the phenomena in which Korean popular culture and its associated celebrities are the craze overseas, arguing that he was the first Hallyu star (Yang, 2014). Until the early 1990s, Jin Yan/Kim Yŏm was not known to the film industry and media in Korea, and there was no reference to him in the Korean historical literature (Lim & Roh, 2009). This seems to be derived from geopolitical tension in the post-Second World War era, which virtually

18  Doobo Shim disconnected the news and knowledge flow between the People’s Republic of China and the Republic of Korea in Cold War international relations, in which the two countries did not recognize the other as a sovereign state. Even in the 1930s, Jin/Kim was not known in Korean society. According to Lim (2009) he was mentioned only once by a Korean media that reported on the current trend in Chinese cinema, and the reporter did not seem to know that he was Korean. It is also because the Korean society at that time had little interest in Chinese cinema while looking to American and Japanese popular cultures for entertainment and cultural inspiration (Lim, 2007, p. 18). Only in 1996 did Jin Yan/Kim Yŏm come to be known among Korean society after a Korean translation of a book titled A Korean Film Emperor in Shanghai (Sanghaeŭi chosŏnin yŏnghwahwangje), written by a Japanese writer, appeared on April 1 of that year (Sŭjŭk’i, 1996). Shortly after this, the public broadcaster KBS (Korea Broadcasting System) aired a documentary on him in the Sunday Special (Iryosŭp’esyŏl) on April 28, 1996. This sudden surge of interest in him is understood against the backdrop of Korea’s softer relationship with China after their establishment of diplomatic relations in 1992. In the 2000s, the name Kim Yŏm has circulated more widely. In July 2003, Pak Kyuwŏn, a granddaughter of Jin Yan/Kim Yŏm’s brother, wrote a book Shanghai Old Days (Sanghai oltŭ teisŭ), based on her seven years’ extensive research on him. Then on September  4, 2003, KBS introduced the book in its show Book Discussion on TV (TV, 책을 말하다), referring to Kim Yŏm as a proud Korean. In 2004, Korea’s Gwangju International Film Festival screened seven films of his in a special program called “Retrospective Screening: A Korean Actor in Shanghai, Kim Yŏm.” In the same year, the special program’s curator Bok-Rye (2004) wrote a book called Sanghaie p’in kkot: 1930nyŏndae yŏnghwahwangje Kim Yŏm (상하이에 핀 꽃, 1930, 년 대 영화황제 김염). Kim Yŏm-related media events continued. Further, riding on the Hallyu fanfare in the 2000s, some media began to argue that Kim Yŏm was the first Hallyu star. In 2006, a cable channel Zhonghua TV programmed a documentary Hallyu 1920: Joseon Kinema on the Chinese Mainland (Hallyu 1920—Taeryugŭi chosŏnk’inema 한류1920—대륙의 조선키네마), which labeled Kim Yŏm as a pioneer of Hallyu. In 2014, Jin/Kim’s life was made into a musical, and an online media Nyusŭk’ŏlch’ŏ reported it as a musical of the first Hallyu star’s life (Yang, 2014). These days, if one searches “Kim Yŏm” on Naver, the largest search engine in Korea, a huge amount of information comes up and phrases such as “A Korean who was a film emperor in China” and “staging independence movement through cinema” appear. As noted, Hallyu refers to the phenomena beginning in the late 1990s. The reason why the world was surprised at the rise of Korean popular culture overseas was because Korea had long been at the receiving end of international cultural flow without producing world-famous directors like

20th century East Asian popular culture  19 Japanese Akira Kurosawa or Chinese Zhang Yimou (Salmon, 2020). To understand the origin of Hallyu, many scholars have researched the changes in Korean cultural industries, international political economy, media-related technological development, and audience consumption of popular culture, etc. (Shim, 2006; Jung & Li, 2014). Given that Hallyu was born out of such complex historical, cultural, and structural factors specific to the 1990s and 2000s, connecting Jin Yan/Kim Yŏm to Hallyu is anachronistic. Above all else, was it true that Jin/Kim pursued Korean independence through his activities in Chinese cinema? To answer this question, we need to delve into Jin/Kim’s life and career in China.

Jin Yan/Kim Yŏm’s early years and Shanghai’s growth into a film hub in China Jin/Kim’s family is closely associated with the history of the Korean independence movement. He was born as Kim Tŏkrin (김덕린, 金德麟) in 1910 in Seoul as the third son to Kim P’ilsun (김필순, 金弼淳), the first Western medical license holder in Korean history. Kim P’ilsun himself was an independence movement activist, and because of that he and his family moved to Tonghua (通化), a city in Manchuria, currently of Jilin province, China, in 1912 to dodge the arrest by the Japanese police (Jo, 2003).1 While practicing medicine there, Kim P’ilsun continued to support his comrades in the Korean independence movement. When the Japanese police hunted for him he again moved far up north to Qiqihar (齐齐哈尔), a city currently of the Heilongjiang (黑龙江) province in China, in 1916. But he suddenly died mysteriously in 1919, and there were rumors that he was killed by a Japanese assassin (Pak, 2003). In the end, Kim’s family members dispersed and Jin Yan/Kim Yŏm was left at his aunt’s home in Shanghai, and then Jin/Kim lived with his elder brother in Jinan (齊南) before moving to Tianjin (天津) to live with the aunt who moved there from Shanghai (Jo, 2003). The Shanghai aunt was Kim Sunae, herself an independence fighter and a wife of Kim Kyusik, the inaugural Minister of Foreign Affairs with the PGRK. It is known that Kim Kyusik was strict in educating Jin/Kim (Lee, 1963; Pak, 2003). Jin/Kim’s cousin Kim Maria was also an independence activist, who was sentenced to three years’ imprisonment for her involvement in the Incident of Korean Patriotic Women’s Association, of which main activities were funding and delivering a war chest to the PGRK (Pak, 2003). According to Pak (2003), as a teenager, Jin Yan/Kim Yŏm enjoyed watching movies and while admiring a notable Peking opera artist Mei Lanfang (梅兰芳), Jin/Kim decided to become an actor (Jo, 2003, p. 165). Then, the young Kim Tŏkrin made a stage name for himself by adopting a character name Yan/Yŏm (焰), meaning “flame,” as a vow to lead a passionate, flamelike, life (Lim, 2009, p. 234). His decision to retain his family name Kim reveals his hybrid identity in a foreign land. When he reached the age of 17

20  Doobo Shim in 1927, he went to Shanghai to pursue an acting career, and then to the film capital in China (Pak, 2003, p. 182). As Harvey (1985) and Sassen (1991) have pointed out, a city is an important determinant of creating, facilitating, and enacting social changes. From being a small fishing village until the early 19th century, Shanghai became the most modern city in Asia under the influences of Western imperialism. In the wake of Qing China’s military defeat by the British in the First Opium War (1839–1842), representatives of the two countries signed the Treaty of Nanking (1842), which compelled open Shanghai as one of the five treaty ports for international trade (Fairbank, 1953). In the late 19th century, while other regions in China were politically unstable due to a series of farmers’ uprisings and conflicts among warlords, Shanghai grew into a business hub rapidly and sustainably, riding on the back of Western powers and with the booming foreign settlement there (Yeh, 2007). Entrepreneurs and merchants from around the world came to do business in Shanghai, and the Huangpu River, which flows through Shanghai and into the Pacific Ocean, became the busiest river in the world, full of merchant ships. Even amid the global economic recession after the First World War (1914–1918), Shanghai did not cease to grow as a commercial and financial hub in Asia. In 1921, Shanghai hosted the headquarters of 22 out of the major 27 Chinese banks (Erohina, 2011). Based on the glamor and opportunities provided by extraterritorialities exercised by the British, the French, and the US, Shanghai began to be called “Paris of the East” or the “Great Athens of China.” As the busiest ports in history such as 15th-century Venice and 17th-century Amsterdam did, Shanghai became a haven for émigrés, exiles, and refugees from around the world who sought the freedom of speech and political association. After the Russian Revolution in 1917, almost 20,000 Russians moved to Shanghai to flee the Red Terror carried out by the Bolsheviks. Amid the political repression and mass killings in Europe during the 1930s and 1940s, some 30,000 Jewish refugees fled to the city (Ling, 2008). In her memoir as a Russian émigré family member in Shanghai, the writer Erohina (2011, p. 74) noted, “Every ship from Northern China, Korea, and Japan brought more refugees, and the number of them reached ten thousand.” By 1932, almost 70,000 foreigners resided in Shanghai (Tales of Old China.com, 2000). In the same manner, many revolutionaries for Korean independence migrated to Shanghai, especially to set up and help the operations of the PGRK in the French Concession of Shanghai where Japanese authority did not exert its influence (Lee, 1963).2 In fact, the most revered and best remembered Korean independence fighters including Sin Ch’aeho (申采浩), Kim Ku (金九), An Ch’angho (安昌浩), and Yŏ Unhyŏng (呂運亨) had affiliations with the PGRK so that they resided in Shanghai for a certain period. Shanghai also attracted students from Korea. As early as in 1885, Yun Ch’iho (尹致昊), who would later serve the Vice Foreign Minister in the Joseon government, attended the Anglo-Chinese College in Shanghai (Yu,

20th century East Asian popular culture  21 1984). P’i Ch’ŏntŭk (皮千得), a widely read essayist, poet, and English literature scholar in South Korea in the 20th century, received a bachelor’s degree at Hujiang University (滬江大學) in Shanghai in 1937 (Garcia, 2008). As an international port, Shanghai also hosted young Koreans who aspired to make a detour to America to evade the colonial Japanese authority’s restriction policies on Koreans’ studying abroad in the US. Some of them extended their stay in Shanghai, such as Chang Tŏksu (張德秀), who eventually became an independence activist and journalist (Ŏm, 2019). While no literature documented the exact number of Koreans in Shanghai, the Korean community there grew to about 700 by autumn 1919 (Lee, 1963, p. 130). As a cultural contact zone that was open to new ideas and progressive art forms, Shanghai was in good condition to create something new and distinctive. As such, Shanghai attracted cultural performers and entrepreneurs from across the mainland, becoming a cultural hub of China. Besides, based on easy access to capital, technology, population, and international trade networks structured by Shanghai being an International Settlement, the city was set to grow into the film capital of China, producing earliest Chinese feature films. The rapidity of Shanghai’s Western cultural reception was such that Lumière brothers’ first films were screened in the city in 1896, less than a year after their productions in Paris (Pan, 1995). Until the 1920s, Chinese audiences preferred more elaborately made Western films to their local ones, which were largely martial arts films or melodramas with immature production techniques. The poor performance of Chinese films as compared to that of foreign films was such that in 1926, while the number of China’s annual film imports was around 450, its film production per year was approximately 50 (Zhang & Xiao, 1998). Hollywood films occupied the 90 percent out of the 450 imports in that year, and such tendency continued in 1934 that Hollywood films occupied 88 percent (364 films) out of the 412 film imports (Kwak, 2010, p. 104). Soon after their release the newest Hollywood films hit the screens in Shanghai, some of which were directly owned by film studios in the US. However, Shanghai’s leading position in the local film industry continued into the 1920s and 1930s that by 1927 China had 181 film production companies, 151 of which were based in Shanghai (Koivula, 2016). In the late 1920s, the local film industry began to grow by diversifying genres and mixing light entertainment and social criticism, spearheaded by the people who returned after studying cinema in the US, France, and Japan. One of them was Sun Yu (孫瑜), who studied drama, cinematography, and screenwriting in the US, at schools including the University of WisconsinMadison, New York Institute of Photography, and Columbia University (Sun, 1987). Absorbing new filmmaking techniques and progressive ideas in the US, he began film directing in Shanghai in 1928 and made a name for himself with a series of socially conscious dramas in the 1930s. Sun Yu and his ilk’s goal to upgrade the quality of Chinese films was supported by the Lianhua Film Company (联华影业公司), which vowed to

22  Doobo Shim revive Chinese cinema by producing high-quality films and introducing rigorous and vertically integrated system ranging from production, distribution, exhibition, and personnel training (Jo, 2003; Kim, 2015). Established in 1930 by Hong Kong entrepreneur and filmmaker Luo Mingyou (羅明佑), Lianhua found and made good use of talents such as Sun Yu and actors like Jin Yan/Kim Yŏm, Ruan Lingyu (阮玲玉) and Li Lili (黎莉莉) (KerlanStephans, 2007). As one of three leading film companies in the 1930s Shanghai, Lianhua led the revival of Chinese cinema. The other two were the Mingxing Film Company (明星影片公司) and the Tianyi Film Company (天一影片公司), the forerunner of the famous Shaw Brothers Studios in Hong Kong (Kwak, 2010).

Jin Yan/Kim Yŏm’s activities in Shanghai When Jin Yan/Kim Yŏm arrived in Shanghai, he had to take any job he could find, washing dishes, cleaning floors, working as a waiter, and box office ticket seller, etc. In 1928, he finally gained an opportunity of performing a bit part in a film, but his life and career path did not change (Pak, 2003). Jin owes his career boost to the earlier-noted Sun Yu and Lianhua Company. After carefully examining the bit actor Jin/Kim, in 1930 director Sun cast him for the leading role in Ye Cao Xian Hua (野草閒花, Wild Flowers), which turned out to be a megahit, elevating Jin Yan/Kim Yŏm to stardom overnight (Jo, 2003). The popularity of Jin/Kim and Ruan Lingyu, who played opposite him in the film, was such that they began to be dubbed, respectively, “Rudolph Valentino of Shanghai” and “Greta Garbo of Shanghai” (Meyer, 2009). Tall and handsome, Jin/Kim was tremendously popular with female audiences. In Wild Rose (野玫瑰), directed by Sun Yu in 1932, Jin/Kim played the role of the scion of a rich family. In it, he drives his convertible car out to the countryside, wearing a fedora hat, and throws a cocktail party in his art deco mansion. In The Big Road (大路, 1934), also directed by Sun Yu, Jin/Kim played the leader of a construction crew. In it, he took his shirt off and showed off his muscular body (Lim, 2009). As such, Jin/Kim almost always played leading roles during the heyday of Chinese cinema in the 1930s, when the local film industry churning out a series of box-office hits.3 When the film magazine The Sound of Cinema (電聲) conducted a poll for the popular movie stars in 1932, Jin/Kim was elected a “Film Emperor” (電影皇帝) (Jo, 2003; Pak, 2003). Two years later, Jin/Kim was again the runaway winner in the categories of “most popular actor,” “most handsome actor,” and “the actor whom I want to be friends with” in the same poll (Meyer, 2009). The 1930s was also a period in which the Japanese invasion of China intensified. In 1932, Japanese forces ruined Shanghai’s city center, either killing or injuring about 18,000 civilians and destroying shops and factories (Pan, 1995). With people’s anti-Japan protest becoming more severe,

20th century East Asian popular culture  23 Chinese cinema took on more nationalistic and political themes. Jin Yan/ Kim Yŏm’s popularity skyrocketed because he continued to play lead roles in those films glorifying the war effort against the Japanese invasion (Jo, 2003). With the dominant melodramatic themes combined with social criticism and nationalism, cinema became the most popular entertainment form among ordinary people in China (Lim & Roh, 2009). Jin/Kim also actively donated money to the war against Japan and participated in relief activities for wounded soldiers (Lim, 2009, p. 237). In 1937, Japan eventually provoked the Second Sino-Japanese War and occupied Shanghai. However, refusing to play roles in Japanese propaganda movies, Jin/Kim fled Shanghai in the autumn of 1938 and headed to Hong Kong (Pak, 2003). Hong Kong, which was undamaged from the war since it was a British colony, was the main destination for wartime refugees from the mainland, including those in the film industry. From 1937 to 1940, almost a million people from mainland China fled to Hong Kong (Fu, 2001). Before returning to Shanghai after the Japanese defeat in 1945, Jin Yan/ Kim Yŏm wandered about across China, shortly sojourning in Guilin, Chongqing, Kunming, and Chengdu respectively. After the People’s Republic of China was founded in 1949, he held posts such as Head of the Actors Guild and vice-president of Shanghai chapter for the Movie Artists Association of China (Meyer, 2009). To his despair, however, since then his acting career went downhill without any noteworthy leading roles in films. While filming for his role of a Tibetan in Eagles Brave the Storm (暴风中的雄鹰) directed by Wang Yi (王逸) in 1958, he drank too many alcohols to avoid cold in the shooting locations and got stomach disease (Lim, 2009, p. 239). While undergoing surgery in 1962, the doctor mistakenly cut off his stomato-gastric nerve (Kim, 2015, p. 103). He had been confined to bed since then, never to rise again until his death in 1983, after starring in 46 films from 1929 to 1962 (Pak, 2003).4 During his career in China, Jin Yan/Kim Yŏm was not active as a Korean actor. He neither spoke Korean on the screen nor played an ethnic Korean character (Kim, 2015, p. 97). Although his ethnicity was known among the filmmakers in China, audiences were unlikely to perceive him as Korean from the film credits alone when his name was given in Chinese characters (Jo, 2003; Kim, 2015, p. 92). Whereas Japanese names usually require four Chinese characters and Korean names three, Chinese names are more often rendered in two characters as in Jin Yan. Although he was famous for his roles in anti-Japanese themes, and while there is a record that he financially donated to a Korean School in Shanghai and played a role of its honorary principal, there is no record that he publicly campaigned for Korean independence (Jo, 2003; Lim, 2009). Above all else, he did not even consider returning to Korea after the liberation in 1945, different from most Koreans who were associated with the activities of PGRK in China (Sŭjŭk’i, 1996). With all things considered, it is not rightful to consider Jin Yan/Kim Yŏm as a Hallyu star or as a Korean independence activist.

24  Doobo Shim At most, Jin/Kim might have lived with what W. E. B. Du Bois called “double consciousness” as both Korean and Chinese (Gilroy, 1993). He used Korean when communicating with his mother and aunt, while using Chinese in all the other occasions, living in “cultural diglossia” verbatim (Burke, 2009; Lim, 2009, p.  233). Considering that Jin/Kim met Chang Chirak (張志樂), a.k.a., Kim San (金山), the famous Korean independence fighter and communist (see note 1 in this chapter), associated with Ch’oe Sŭnghŭi (崔承喜), a prominent Korean dancer, and often treated his Chinese colleagues to his self-made kimchi, he must have had self-consciousness of being Korean (Jo, 2003). After all, it is useful to understand Jin Yan/Kim Yŏm from a theoretical framework of hybridity, which has led to the increasing attention to the role of border-crossers, mediators, and go-betweens in the cultural exchange (Kraidy, 2002). For example, historians became more concerned with the Jewish and Muslim contribution to the Renaissance movement rather than treating it as an Italian “miracle” (Burke, 1998). Said (1993) even argued that “The history of all cultures is the history of cultural borrowing” (cited in Burke, 2009, pp.  40–41). The increasing number of academic journals with “diaspora” as their main focus since the 1990s bears witness to the growing interest in the study of people who have moved from one culture to another.5 Appropriately enough, Jin Yan/Kim Yŏm was “cultural hybrid” or “creole,” a Korean who was active in China (Hymes, 1971). As such, understanding Jin/Kim as a border crosser would help us further unearth the “disjunctural history of fragments” in Korean-Chinese cinema connections (Berry, 2016). For example, there were more occluded cases of Korean filmmakers in the Shanghai cinema of the colonial era. For example, Chŏng Kit’ak (郑基铎, 정기탁), pronounced Zheng Jiduo in Mandarin, was active in Shanghai both as an actor and director in the 1920s and 1930s. Since it was hard for a Korean filmmaker to produce films in Korea under Japanese rule, Chŏng moved to Shanghai to continue his vocation. According to Jo (2003), it was Jin Yan/Kim Yŏm who introduced Chŏng to Lianhua Film Company. Chŏng was so acknowledged as a director that he recruited Chinese film star Ruan Lingyu for his 1934 film Goodbye, Shanghai (再會吧,上海) (Giammarco, 2010). For the same reason as that of Chŏng Kit’ak, I Kyŏngson (이경손, 李庆 孙), pronounced Li Qingsun in Mandarin, one of the pioneers of Korean cinema in the 1920s, spent three years in Shanghai from 1929 to 1932. Another famous figure was Chŏn Ch’angkŭn (전창근, 全昌根), pronounced Quan Changgen in Mandarin, who directed several films in Shanghai in the 1930s before returning to Korea and extending his career as an actor and director as late as 1969 (Yi, 1995). Considering the contributions made by the Koreans to the growth of the Shanghai-based Chinese film industry in the 1930s and considering Shanghai’s influences on Hong Kong cinema in the ensuing years which then wielded important influences on Korean media industry, Jin Yan/Kim Yŏm

20th century East Asian popular culture  25 and other Korean filmmakers in Shanghai are worthy of belated credit for their eventual contribution to Korean-Chinese cultural flow. In the next section, we shall turn to Korea–Hong Kong film connections in the late 20th century, which developed in the disjunctural history of East Asian cultural relations.

Shanghai-Hong Kong-Korea film nexus in the Cold War era After a short period of Korean-Chinese film connections in Shanghai in the 1920s and 1930s, Cold War tension impeded the flow of popular culture between Korea and China in most of the second half of the 20th century. When economic and diplomatic isolation became the major prongs of US policy toward China, Beijing voluntarily closed its film and media markets to the outside world to tighten its ideological control. Also, when Korea was plowing the road to “compressed development” (Wade, 1990) after its independence from the Japanese colonial rule, it could not afford to advocate cultural exchanges with its neighboring countries. Besides, the two countries did not recognize the other as a sovereign state. It was Hong Kong cinema that imaginarily connected the two countries in the second half of the 20th century although Hong Kong was under British rule until June 30, 1997. When millions of Chinese mainlanders sought refuge in Hong Kong during the political upheavals including the Second World War and NationalistCommunist civil war after the surrender of Japan in 1945 and after the Communist takeover of the mainland, film directors, producers, and actors from Shanghai also arrived and laid a foundation for Hong Kong to replace Shanghai as the “Hollywood of the East” (Fu, 2008). They established film studios including Da Zhonghua (大中華, Great China), Yonghua (永華, Forever China) and Changcheng (長城, Great Wall) by hiring proven talents from Shanghai and rebuilt the postwar Hong Kong cinema, which they used to deride as a “colonial backwater” compared to more sophisticated and glamorous Shanghai cinema (Fu, 2001, p. 250, 2008). In 1957, Run Run Shaw, a Shanghainese who had moved to Singapore to become a billionaire movie entrepreneur across the Southeast Asia, came to Hong Kong and reorganized the Tianyi Film Company into Shaw Brothers Studios, which became the biggest film producer in Asia by the 1960s (Kandall, 2014). Director Chang Cheh (張徹), nicknamed “the Godfather of Hong Kong cinema” for his pioneering martial arts films in the period of 1960s and 1980s was also from Shanghai. Golden Harvest, founded in 1970 by film producers who left Shaw Brothers, helped globalize Hong Kong cinema with martial arts films of Bruce Lee, Jackie Chan and Jet Li (Chu, 2003). Cold War politics influenced Hong Kong cinema’s market strategy overseas. Especially when the People’s Republic of China closed its interior market to Hong Kong cinema, it had to target overseas markets early on and Korea became one of the largest importers of Hong Kong cinema (Chu,

26  Doobo Shim 2003; Kim, 2017, p.  121). Korean audiences have ardently loved Hong Kong stars ranging from Bruce Lee (李小龍 이소룡), Jackie Chan (成龍 성 룡), Leslie Cheung (張國榮 장국영), Chow Yun Fat (周潤發 주윤발), to Joey Wong (王祖賢 왕조현). As arguably one of the most popular entertainment forms in Korea in the period of 1970s and 1990s, Hong Kong cinema was instrumental in breathing new ideas and imagination into the audiences of Korea (Yi, 2017). Korean audiences shouted with joy when they saw Bruce Lee hitting a Japanese police office with a flying kick like those Chinese audiences admired Jin Yan/Kim Yŏm resisting the Japanese invaders on screen in the 1930s. Korean writer and filmmaker Yu Ha directed a film Once Upon a Time in High School (2004), of which background is set in a high school in Korea in 1978, to express that Bruce Lee was a cultural code for youngsters (Jeong, 2004). A monologue by a protagonist in the ending scene reveals that 1980s was also an era of Hong Kong films: “The Bruce Lee era is on the wane, and the Jackie Chan era is coming.” Many filmmakers, songwriters, and television producers in South Korea confess that they honed their creativity and technical skills by watching Hong Kong films (Kim, 2017). To them, the word Hong Kong is redolent of a gaudy and glitzy city that is a crossroads of locals, multiracial migrants, and tourists, often a venue of illicit activities (Kim  & Kang, 1995). For example, such scenes of skyscrapers that overlook Hong Kong harbor in the Korean film The Thieves (dir. Ch’oe Tonghun, 2012) might instantly remind audiences of a pleasant suspicion that the director must have been influenced by crime thrillers directed by such Hong Kong action auteurs as John Woo, Tsui Hark, and Andrew Lau. The image of Hong Kong as a crime venue was partly formed from films that were co-produced between Korea and Hong Kong especially in the 1960s. According to Lee (2011), the US government masterminded the partnering of Korean and Hong Kong cinemas in a way to strengthen the relations among the “Free World” countries in East Asia and to draw ‘bad guy’ images of communists through spy films out of Hong KongKorea co-­ productions (Shim  & Yecies, 2012). The Korean-Hong Kong co-productions also include the case of Chŏng Ch’anghwa (鄭昌和), also known as Cheng Chang Ho in Cantonese. As a director, Chŏng directed films for Shaw Brothers and Golden Harvest in the 1960s and 1970s. His Hong Kong martial arts classic King Boxer (1972) was the first Hong Kong film to top the US box office in 1973 (Chu, 2003). Hong Kong films have inspired creative minds around the world. For example, Quentin Tarantino’s Kill Bill series is famous for its inspiration from Hong Kong martial arts films. Australian filmmaker Adrian Castro has directed a film series Tiger Cop to pay homage to the 1980s Hong Kong cinema which inspired him to become a film director (Sultan, 2019). Korean tourists continue to visit Hong Kong and take pictures at the shooting locations of their favorite films ranging from the Bruce Lee-starred The Big Boss (唐山大兄, 1971) to Chungking Express (重庆森林, 1994) and In the Mood

20th century East Asian popular culture  27 for Love (花樣年華, 2000). In the Mood for Love, which was produced based on its director Wong Kar-wai’s observation as an exiled Shanghainese in Hong Kong (Camhi, 2001), is a circumstantial evidence to the ShanghaiHong Kong nexus that has had enormous influences on building Hong Kong cinema industry.

Discussion and conclusion We are living in an era in which Korean culture is the craze in East and Southeast Asia. Television shows and films produced from Korea are being popularly watched in other parts of the region. Catchy tunes of Korean pop music, or K-pop, play everywhere, and fashion magazines in every Asian country now regularly feature Korean beauty products and celebrities. Even news of G-Dragon, a Korean singer-songwriter, falling from a stage without hurting himself during his concert in Bangkok, was delivered by a news anchor on Channel News Asia, which I watched in Singapore in July 2017. Observing these developments in Asia, some Western media report that Korean artistes have conquered Asian popular cultural stardom (Hollingsworth, 2019). Academics argue that the global craze of Psy’s “Gangnam Style,” BTS mania and Hollywood’s frequent remakes of Korean films and TV series are an indication of the “increasing fragmentation of cultural hegemons in a global era” (Chung  & Diffrient, 2015). Recently, Korean film Parasite’s winning four prizes, including the best picture award, at the 92nd Academy Awards seems to cement the firm status of Korean popular culture overseas. Many academics identify that the current Hallyu phenomena started in China in the late 1990s (Shim, 2006; Jung & Li, 2014). Audiences in mainland China and Chinese communities across East and Southeast Asia found the entertainment value of Korean television series, laying the foundation for the future growth of global Hallyu. In fact, the Hallyu fandom in Chinese communities in Singapore and Malaysia, and in the US played a role of stepping stone in expanding Hallyu craze to Malay societies there and to the host society in the US. The reciprocity in the history of cultural relations between Korea and China in the 20th century offers many fascinating cases. In cinema, Korean Jin Yan/Kim Yŏm helped ignite the rise of the Chinese cinema industry in the 1930s. In the 1960s–1980s, Hong Kong cinema encouraged the cinematic imagination among aspiring directors in Korea. An occluded Hong Kong-Korea film nexus is found in the case of CJ CGV, the first and largest multiplex cinema chain in Korea, which has branches in China, Indonesia, Vietnam, Myanmar, Turkey and the US When it was established in 1996, it started as a joint venture with Golden Harvest of Hong Kong and Village Roadshow of Australia for a startup CJ to learn knowhow in developing and operating modern, multiplex cinemas from the veteran companies. For your information, CJ Entertainment is an investor and distributor for

28  Doobo Shim the earlier-noted film Parasite, which became the first non-English-language film to win the Academy Award for best picture, and a vanguard in reviving Korean film industry for the past three decades (Lee, 2020). While many people might believe that it is a recent trend for Chinese musicians to cover K-pop, there were already many cases of such KoreanChinese music borrowing in the period between the 1950s and 1990s. For example, 1960s’ Chinese singer Mei Dai (美黛)’s popular song “I’m By Your Side” (我在你左右) was a remake of Korean singer Paek Sŏlhŭi (白雪姬, 백 설희)’s “San Francisco” (샌프란시스코) released in 1953.6 Even a lesserknown 1985 Korean song “Love and Peace” sung by Yu Chiyŏn (유지연) was later covered by Hong Kong star Chow Yun Fat (周潤發).7 It goes without saying that the legendary Chinese singer Teresa Teng (鄧麗君)’s songs have been widely covered in Korea. This chapter argued that the time in which Jin Yan/Kim Yŏm was active in Shanghai was the first period of Korean-Chinese cultural exchange in the modern era. Different from the recent Korean media discourses, Jin/Kim was neither staging independence movement through cinema nor was he a Hallyu star. Rather, I found that it is more appropriate to put that as an ethnic Korean in China, Jin/Kim participated in the growth of Chinese cinema, which eventually contributed to the Korean-Chinese cultural exchange in the future. By linking the Jin Yan/Kim Yŏm’s activities to the later cultural exchanges between Korea and China, this chapter also attempted to open up new avenues to understand the history of East Asian popular culture. Through this, otherwise forgotten roles of Korean filmmakers in China have come to be identified and acknowledged. Although there are other cases of KoreanChinese cinema connections such as the import of South Korean films into Taiwan in the 1960s and the import of North Korean films into China during the Cultural Revolution decade, they are out of the focus of this chapter. I hope that future scholarship will take up these cases to broaden our understanding of cultural relations between Korea and China, and further, in East Asia.

Notes 1 Koreans’ mass immigration to northern China, or Manchuria, started in the late 19th century. At that time, Koreans who wanted to escape famine at home crossed the border, when the immigration control by the Chinese government was weak. Then, as the Japanese invasion intensified and colonial rule started, those who wanted to stage an independence movement also migrated to China and Russia’s South Maritime Territory, centering around Vladivostok, in full force (Kim, 2003, p.  102). After receiving military drill at several military schools founded by Koreans in northern China, they infiltrated into Korea to attack police stations and other government offices and to kill pro-Japanese collaborators. Chang Chirak (張志樂), a real-life hero in the book Song of Ariran, written by an American journalist Nym Wales, also went to Manchuria to participate in the Korean Independence Movement (Wales & Kim, 1972). Similarly, in the final episode of

20th century East Asian popular culture  29 Netflix-premiered period drama series Mr. Sunshine (2018), protagonist Ae-shin and her comrades in the Righteous Army go to Manchuria to practice military drills on their own. 2 The PGRK was active in Shanghai until 1932 before relocating its office to Hangzhou, Changsha, Guangzhou, Chongqing, etc. across China until 1945 when it relocated to Seoul with Korean liberation. It eventually dissolved on 15 August 1948 when the Republic of Korea was formally established. 3 Jin/Kim’s popularity was such that mimicking his gestures and the way of talking was the fashion among the youth (Jo, 2003; Koivula, 2016). 4 According to Meyer (2009), Jin/Kim starred in 37 films throughout his career. 5 See Diaspora (University of Toronto Press), Diaspora Studies (Taylor & Fancies), Journal of Global Diaspora and Media (Intellect), etc. 6 www.youtube.com/watch?v=DjOpevPyZF0. 7 www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZZ2m38FzqAs.

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20th century East Asian popular culture  31 Ling, W. L. (2008). Shanghai sanctuary. Time. https://web.archive.org/web/ 20090814051154/www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1828102,00. html Lo, W. (1971). The big boss (唐山大兄) [Feature film]. Hong Kong. Meyer, R. J. (2009). Jin Yan: The Rudolph Valentino of Shanghai. Hong Kong University Press. Ŏm, C. (2019). 1919 Hankyoreh (1919 한겨레). The Hankyoreh. www.hani.co.kr/ arti/society/society_general/876535.html Pan, L. (1995). Shanghai, the Paris of the orient. NTC Pub Group. Pak, K. (2003). Sanghai oltŭ teisŭ. Minŭmsa. Said, E. (1993). Culture and imperialism. Vintage. Salmon, A. (2020). Asian film: From Fu Manchu to Bong Joon-ho. Asia Times. https://asiatimes.com/2020/01/asian-film-from-fu-manchu-to-bong-joon-ho Sassen, S. (1991). The global city: New York, London, Tokyo. Princeton University Press. Shim, A. G.,  & Yecies, B. (2012). Asian interchange: Korean-Hong Kong co-­ productions of the 1960s. Journal of Japanese and Korean Cinema, 4(1), 15–28. Shim, D. (2006). Hybridity and the rise of Korean popular culture in Asia. Media, Culture & Society, 28(1), 25–44. Storey, J. (2018). Cultural theory and popular culture. Routledge. Sŭjŭk’i, S. (1996). Sanghaeŭi chosŏnin yŏnghwahwangje (I. Sang, trans.). Shilch’ŏnmunhaksa. Sultan, M. (2019). Homage to 80s Hong Kong Cinema: Interview with filmmaker Adrian Castro. Asian Cinema Blog. https://theasiancinemablog.com/interviews/ homage-to-80s-hong-kong-cinema-interview-with-filmmaker-adrian-castro/ Sun, Y. (1987). Afloat on the silver sea: Recalling my life (in Chinese). Arts and Literature Press. Tales of Old China.com. (2000). Tales of old Shanghai. https://web.archive.org/ web/20100520024207/www.talesofoldchina.com/library/allaboutshanghai/ t-all04.htm Wade, R. (1990). Governing the market: Economic theory and the role of government in East Asian industrialization. Princeton University Press. Wales, N., & Kim, S. (1972). Song of Ariran: A Korean communist in the Chinese revolution. Ramparts Press. Wong, K. W. (1994). Chungking express (重庆森林) [Feature film]. Hong Kong. Wong, K. W. (2000). In the mood for love [Feature film]. Hong Kong. Yang, S. H. (2014, July 4). Myujik’ŏl ‘sanghaiŭi’ pulkkot yŏnsŭpshil . . . ch’oech’oŭi hallyusŭt’a kimyŏmŭi salmŭl kŭrida. Nyusŭk’ŏlch’ŏ. http://nc.asiae.co.kr/view. htm?idxno=2014070409260087014 Yeh, W. H. (2007). Shanghai splendor: A cultural history, 1843–1945. University of California Press. Yi, J. I. (2017). Kŭ shijŏl uriga saranghaettŏn hongk’ong. The Hankyoreh. www. hani.co.kr/arti/culture/culture_general/821642.html Yi, Y. I. (1995). Chŏn Ch’angkŭn. Encyclopedia of Korean Culture. Retrieved February 16, 2020, from https://encykorea.aks.ac.kr/Contents/Item/E004970 Yu, H. (2004). Once upon a time in high school [Feature film]. Korea. Yu, Y. R. (1984). Kaehwagi yunch’iho yŏn’gu [PhD dissertation, Korea University]. Zhang, Y., & Xiao, Z. (1998). Encyclopedia of Chinese film. Taylor & Francis.

3 Media ecologies and transnational media flow in East Asia Dong-Hoo Lee

Figure and ground East Asia has experienced multiple cross-border flows of popular culture. The 1970s to the early 1990s featured the Hong Kong Wave, the 1980s and 1990s were host to the Japanese Wave, and since the late 1990s, there has been a craze surrounding Korean popular culture. While Hong Kong as a world-oriented, regional financial center developed the pan-Asian film industry and star system that created the fast-paced, provincial but ­Hollywood-like films (Yau, 2001), Japanese popular cultural content, such as trendy dramas and J-pop, built on its developed media industry and spread to East Asian countries by appealing to hybrid modernity (Huang, 2011). The transnational flows of popular cultural content from Hong Kong and Japan took place based on their relatively advanced media capital and systems, and yet Korea, an ardent consumer of overseas content, began exporting its own local contents to neighboring countries in the late 1990s. It was a significant cultural event that popular cultural content solely oriented for local consumption within the national boundary became popular across borders, deviating from the traditional anticipated cultural flow from the hegemonic center of media capital to the periphery. The phenomenon of Hallyu, the Korean Wave, coined by the Chinese press in 1998 to refer to the subcultural syndrome of some Chinese youths who liked Korean pop, was not a flash in the pan but has continued to form a part of concurrent transnational media flows in Asia. Media scholars and reports have studied the Korean Wave in East Asia and have tried to identify why the cultural products of a local, non-­Western ­industry with modest resources have become so popular in neighboring countries, and they have speculated as to whether this trend would c­ ontinue notwithstanding strained international relations in the region (Chua  & Iwabuchi, 2008; Y. Kim, 2013; Ryoo, 2009; Shim, 2006). One of the ­concepts that has often been used to analyze the popularity of Korean pop culture in the region in its early stages is cultural proximity, which emphasizes the shared cultural values and collective experiences of audiences in explaining their preferences for certain media products, (Hong, 2017; Yoon & Kang,

Media ecologies and transnational flow  33 2017). This concept may be useful in justifying the emergence of the Korean Wave in the region, and yet it seems to have little explanatory power regarding its diffusion across the globe or its entanglement with regional politics. Another concept often used to describe the Korean Wave is phase theory. The Korean Wave has often been distinguished by different phases, where specific Korean content and products have served as pivotal turning points for its development; for example, Korean Waves 1.0, 2.0, 3.0, and 4.0 have distinctive characteristics in terms of major popular content, consumer groups, and regional reach (Hwang & Epstein, 2016; Park, 2018). It has also been described as the expansion from dramas and K-pop to Korean cultural products in general, including food and beauty, both within Asia and globally (Korean Foundation for International Cultural Exchange, 2018). In particular, new media, such as social media and smartphones, are considered major agents for the global circulation of Korean popular culture, creating neo-Hallyu (the New Korean Wave; Jin, 2016; Jin & Yoon, 2016; Lee & Nornes, 2015). However, the concurrent geopolitical situations in East Asia challenge the previous account of the Korean Wave in the region on the basis of cultural factors or new media functions, as well as its phased progress. Since the late 1990s, China and Japan have become major hubs for the Korean Wave.1 However, its development has often been shadowed by historical issues and political and diplomatic conflicts between countries. Since 2012, when Korea and Japan clashed over Dokdo Island, Korean dramas and singers have disappeared from Japanese terrestrial TV (H. Yoon, 2015). In 2016, when the high-altitude missile defense system (THAAD) was planned to be deployed in Korea, Korean programs began to disappear from Chinese TV, and Korean idol groups’ concerts were suddenly cancelled as the Chinese government explicitly and implicitly banned Korean popular culture in China (KOFICE, 2017). As geopolitical situations have greatly interfered with the formal flux of Korean pop culture into neighboring countries, it appears that the Korean Wave in East Asia is dependent upon international relations in the region. If the Korean Wave in East Asia is heavily affected—sometimes cooled down and other times revitalized—by the popular hit of specific content, national policies, and geopolitical situations in the region, would it decline in concurrent situations (like the Chinese government’s explicit and implicit prohibitions of the influx of Korean pop culture and the Japanese mass media’s sensitive concerns about anti-Korean sentiments)? To what degree would political conflicts between countries in the region curtail the Korean Wave? When the phenomena of the Korean Wave were driven by the popularity of several appealing contents, would it wane without such hit contents? When the new overseas boom of Korean popular culture is explained by the emergence of social media, would legacy media, such as TV no longer have a role in transnational media flows? The Korean Wave seems to be too complex to be explained by a certain single factor or perspective. To

34  Dong-Hoo Lee understand its complexity and uncertain development, we need to consider various contexts intersected by it. This chapter attempts to review the role of media environments as one of the contexts that have conditioned the evolution of the Korean Wave within East Asia over the last 20 years. It will argue that the media environments in China and Japan have allowed the transnational flow of Korean popular content, such as Korean dramas and K-pop music, and have shaped the characteristics of people’s accessibility to them and their modes of reception. Rather than taking a functionalist approach to media, which assumes that media is a taken-for-granted and fixed determinant in transnational media flows, or assessing the direct causal relationship between the development of media and the deployment of the Korean Wave, this chapter approaches the evolution of media environments as the background for specific events and phenomena that indicate the popularity of Korean culture in the region and examines the nature of media conditions for the formation, expansion, maintenance, or transformation of transnational media flows. It will regard the media environment as the ground of the Korean Wave, in McLuhan’s terms, and examine it from a media ecology perspective.2 The media ecology perspective allows us to pay attention to the media environment as a context that conditions our media experiences; it addresses media forms that shape different modes of accessibility and practices, views the interrelationship between old and new media in a cumulative and transformative way, and focuses on a diachronic and holistic approach to how the changing media environment has affected its users (Lum, 2006, 2014; Strate, 2004, 2017). It asks us to explore the affordances of media forms, the evolution of inter-media relations, and their effects on our everyday experiences and senses, rather than the power of their content. A ­ ccording to this perspective, media environments refer to the systems of media whose physical and symbolic forms mediate human experience and perceptions and which are configured and reconfigured by the human—media or culture— media relationship (Strate, 2017). This chapter considers transnational media phenomena and experiences in light of shifts in media environments in the region and focuses on the environment that has mediated transnational media distribution and consumption in East Asia since the late 1990s. It examines the changing media environments in terms of changes in people’s everyday media usage and inter-media relations between old and new media and how the characteristics of media forms have worked as a ground that has shaped the speed, scale, and pattern of the Korean Wave as a figure. For the media ecological exploration of the Korean Wave in East Asia, this chapter will briefly review the Korean media environment of the 1990s, when Korean media content became more globalized and of sufficient quality to be exported to neighboring countries. It will also look back upon the media forms that mediated the early Korean Wave in the late 1990s and the early 2000s, trace major changes in media environments in terms of media penetration rates at the national level, and discuss how those changes reconstitute the

Media ecologies and transnational flow  35 accessibility to or the mode of reception of Korean popular culture, especially Korean dramas and music. By diachronically looking at changing media environments as the ground under the Korean Wave phenomenon, this chapter will discuss how such changes have sustained the Korean Wave in East Asia and have complicated its transnational flow, as well as studying their implications for our understanding of the concurrent Korean Wave.

Emergence of the Korean Wave What happened in the Korean media environment in the 1990s? After a long military dictatorship, South Korea finally achieved political democratization in the 1990s, and became influenced by neoliberalism, as getting through its IMF (International Monetary Fund) crisis led to the rise of marketized individualization (K. Shin, 2013) or compressed individualization (H. Lee, 2014). The media environment at the time was shaped by the expansion of market-centered commercialism and neoliberalism that contributed to such expansion (D. Lee, 2016). In 1993, the National Survey reported that the most popular activities during leisure time were sleeping and housekeeping. In 1996, TV viewing became the most popular way for people to spend their leisure time (Kim, 1997).3 In addition, personalized media forms, such as VCRs, CD players, MP3 players, and PCs, became widely used, transforming the consumption of media content; as many households had more than one TV set, individuals could enjoy their favorite programs separately from the traditional familycentric viewership, and as the consumption of video content through personal VCRs dramatically increased, there were more opportunities to connect with global popular culture. Moreover, the so-called multi-channel, multi-media era came into being due to the introduction of a new commercial broadcasting station (SBS) in 1991, as well as the introduction of cable TV in 1995 and the Internet and mobile phones in the late 1990s. In the 1990s, Korean terrestrial broadcasters maintained their monopolistic positions, possessing an almost 100  percent share of all TV viewers, and cable and satellite channels and VCRs began to provide alternative content to satisfy viewers’ needs. Personal computers and the Internet penetrated the home and served as mediums for entertainment, information, and subcultural activities. This media environment allowed people to consume media content based on their personal needs and tastes (D. Lee, 2016). Whereas Koreans still spent most of their leisure time watching terrestrial TV, the usage of VCRs and, eventually, computers, PC communication, and the Internet rapidly increased, challenging the homogeneous and standardized sense of mass media consumption. As people could access and share more information about overseas popular content more quickly than ever before, they came to serve as mediators of international pop culture who helped the local consumption of pop culture be aligned with global

36  Dong-Hoo Lee tastes and trends. In the 1990s, the media environment in Korea blurred the boundaries between analog and digital or between material and immaterial and facilitated the individualization of Korean society. It allowed the popular common culture and individualized and selective subcultures to coexist. The 1990s were the heyday of mass media usage as well as the era of emerging personalized media usage. The imaginative distance and temporal gap between global popular culture and the local one became narrower. The Korean popular culture industry began to produce culturally hybridized content whose qualities and quantities could appeal to domestic audiences as well as audiences across East Asia. The early Korean Wave in East Asia The Korean Wave in China began when What is Love All About was broadcast on CCTV 1, receiving an average audience rating of 4.3 percent, which was the second highest of all overseas programs imported up until that time (Yoo et al., 2008). In 1999, Star in My Heart was also popularly received, and, since then, Korean TV dramas have been regularly aired on Chinese TV channels; in 2002, the number of Korean drama series broadcast in China reached 67 (KOCCA China Office, 2012). Dae Jang Geum, also known as Jewel in the Palace and broadcast by Hunan Satellite TV in 2005, got an average audience share of 15.3  percent, which was the highest of all programs with the same time slot and the highest of all overseas TV dramas ever aired (KOCCA China Office, 2012). One of the “grounds” that made the influx of Korean dramas possible in China was related to the media environment of China at the time. The number of TV stations increased from 41 in 1981 to 943 in 1996, and television coverage grew from 49.5 percent in 1981 to 86.2 percent in 1996—an audience of 1,055 million. There was one station at the national level, 32 at the provincial level, and the rest were at the municipal and country levels (Chin, 2016, p. 80). From the 1980s to the mid1990s, the number of local territorial and cable television stations rapidly increased, and more than 100 foreign satellite television channels were introduced, leading to the commercialization of television stations (Keane, 2015). These new television stations needed programs; thus, What is Love All About was aired on CCTV, the sole national broadcaster in China. Overseas television programs were vital resources that filled the shortage of in-house production programs and boosted the channels’ competitiveness, and Korean dramas became one of the most popular types of overseas content. Dae Jang Geum was broadcast by Hunan Satellite, the best-known provincial channel, which was started in 1997 by the Hunan Broadcasting System and searched for highly marketable programs that appealed to wider audiences. Meanwhile, Korean popular music was introduced on Seoul Music Studio, a weekly show on Beijing Music Radio since 1997, whose producer, Woojeon Soft, found a niche in the Chinese music market and tastes and

Media ecologies and transnational flow  37 released the first official album of Korean pop groups like H.O.T, gaining vast popularity among the Chinese youth. H.O.T hosted a successful concert at Beijing’s Workers’ Stadium in 2000. Subsequently, CNR (China National Radio), the national radio broadcaster, started a show in 2001, airing Korean popular music for one hour every Saturday and Sunday (Kim, 2001). Radio programming contributed to introducing Korean pop music into China and supported the popularity of album sales and concerts. The Korean Wave in Japan began differently. Korean drama began to be exported to the Japanese market in 1996 when CS digital broadcasting, whose channels included Korean programming channels like KNTV and K-channel, launched in Japan (Kim, 2017). However, since such channels were based on paid subscription, they did not receive much popular attention. Winter Sonata was first broadcast in 2003 via NHK-BS2 satellite broadcasting, which had a larger audience than CS broadcasting, and was well-received among middle-aged women. Due to its popularity, it was broadcast via the terrestrial NHK TV from March to August 2004, and even though it aired late at night, its audience rating surpassed those of primetime programs. Korean dramas were gradually exposed to larger audiences by being moved from CS and BS broadcasting to terrestrial TV, and they expanded thanks to a devoted fan base (H. Shin, 2013). After Winter Sonata, NHK BS and terrestrial NHK continued to ­schedule Beautiful Days, All In, Damo, Dae Jang Geum, and others, and Fuji TV and Nippon TV—commercial terrestrial broadcasters with nationwide ­networks—began to air Korean dramas. In addition, more satellite and cable channels emerged as broadcasting Korean programs, including KBS Japan, KBSWorld, Mnet Japan, and ASIA Drama HD channel. The Korean Wave in Japan grew after the 2002 Korea—Japan World Cup, which fostered bilateral cultural exchanges, and Japan’s multi-channel television industry sought content that could produce high audience ratings at a low cost. Meanwhile, BoA, who made her debut in Japan in 2001, became the first Korean singer to top Japan’s Oricon chart, selling a million albums and participating in the celebrated HNK Red and White Year-end Song Festival for nine consecutive years. Her popularity in Japan came not only from her strategies of localization, including cooperating with Japanese entertainment agency AVEZ and singing in Japanese, but also from her frequent appearances on broadcasting programs that helped her achieve more public recognition. The early Korean Wave in China and Japan emerged on the ground of the media environments at that time. First, Korean pop culture could be widely delivered and popularized through broadcasters with broad coverage within national boundaries. More people spent time watching TV, and Korean pop culture content became one of the most viable resources meeting the needs of broadcasters seeking low-cost but appealing programs to fill their channels. Second, broadcasting programmers played a significant

38  Dong-Hoo Lee role by circulating and publicizing Korean popular culture content in their countries. There were also international intermediaries that selected Korean content suitable to local cultural tastes and acted between program buyers and sellers (H. Shin, 2013). The transnational flows of Korean popular culture content depended on a handful of programmers and international intermediaries. Third, there was always a gap between when a show was first broadcast in Korea and when it was broadcast in other countries. What is Love All About was broadcast in Korea in 1991 and in China five years later. Winter Sonata first aired in Korea in early 2002 and was picked up by NHK-BS in 2003 and on terrestrial NHK in 2004. Although Dae Jang Geum had a reduced time gap, it did not break away from the asynchronous pattern of programming. Fleeting vs. persistent Because the early Korean Wave boomed around a handful of hit content, the lack of such prominent content created an impression that the Korean Wave was declining. Moreover, the Korean Wave in East Asia appeared vulnerable to historical and political conflicts between countries because its formation depended on broadcasting systems bound by nation-states. Broadcasters and other mass media agents acted as facilitators and controllers of transnational flows of Korean popular culture. The Chinese government introduced new regulatory measurements against the influx of Korean content whenever Korean content acquired great popularity. For instance, when Dae Jang Geum recorded high ratings on the national scale, it implemented a protectionist policy that restricted the number of overseas programs that could be aired and barred the programming of foreign programs during prime time (Kwon, 2016). After the deployment of the THAAD weapon system in Korea in 2016, the Chinese government banned the influx of all Korean popular culture, although it has not officially declared its containment policy. The Korean Wave in Japan also seemed to subside under influence from bilateral conflicts between Korea and Japan; in 2005, when clashes over the Dokdo issue and controversial Japanese history textbooks broke out, terrestrial broadcasters decreased the programming of Korean dramas, and in 2015, it was difficult to find Korean dramas on terrestrial TV due to the deterioration of Korea—Japan relations after Shinzo Abe’s conservative government took power and anti-Korean sentiments diffused in Japan (Park, 2018). Although the Korean Wave in China and Japan experienced highs and lows, these two countries have been major importers of Korean popular culture content since the late 1990s. According to Korean Content Industry Statistics, annually released by the Korean Ministry of Culture, Sports, and Tourism, the share of these two countries in the export of Korean popular culture content has been high; their share of the amount of Korean TV program exports was 62.1 percent in 2016, compared to 56.2 percent in 2006, and 84.9 percent in 2016, compared to 91 percent in 2006 for Korean music exports (see Table 3.1).

Japan

China

Japan

China

78,179 (30.7) 79,902 (31.4) 98,362 (22.2) 277,292 (62.7) 52,583 (24.3) 70,975 (32.9) 89,761 (23.2) 242,370 (63.6) 56,935 (22.2) 79,017 (30.8) 52,798 (15.7) 235,481 (70.2) 26,139 (10.9) 138,687 (57.9) 10,186 (3.7) 221,739 (80.0)

11,000 (6.1) 112,088 (62.4) 8,806 (3.7) 189,512 (80.6)

17,241 (10.2) 102,058 (60.4) 6,836 (3.5) 157,938 (80.5)

15,568 (12.3) 49,713 (59.7) 3,627 (4.4) 67,267 (80.8)

6,339 (6.1) 65,279 (62.6) 2,369 (7.6) 21,638 (69.2)

4,512 (4.8) 65,627 (69.9) 1,844 (11.2) 11,215 (68.1)

5,295 (5.7) 53,494 (57.4) 1,665 (12.0) 9,431 (67.9)

7,979 (8.1) 47,632 (48.2) 850 (5.1) 14,309 (85.9)

Note: Numbers in parentheses indicate the share of the total amount of Korean content exports (in percent)

Source: Annual Korean Content Industry Statistics from 2007 to 2017 from Korean Ministry of Culture, Sports, and Tourism

Music

TV Program

2016

2015

2014

2013

2012

2011

2010

2009

2008

2007

2006

Table 3.1  Amount of exports from South Korea to China and Japan (in thousands of US dollars)

Media ecologies and transnational flow 39

40  Dong-Hoo Lee The amount of TV content exports to China increased by about ten times from 2006 to 2016, and the amount to Japan doubled during the same period. In 2006, Japan was the major importer, yet in 2016, China spent almost the same amount as Japan on importing Korean TV content. The amount of music content exports to China and Japan increased from $850,000 to $98,362,000 and from $14,309,000 to $277,292,000, respectively. These figures suggest that the Korean Wave has expanded its base in the region, with or without killer content and regardless of tough regulatory policies and geopolitical situations. They also imply that the Korean Wave is not merely a temporary boom but a sustained phenomenon and that East Asia is still a major region for the Korean Wave (see Figures 3.1 and 3.2).

160,000 140,000 120,000 100,000 80,000 60,000 40,000 20,000 0 2006 2008 2010 2012 2014 2016 to China

to Japan

Figure 3.1  Amount of Korean TV content exports (in thousands of US dollars)

300,000 250,000 200,000 150,000 100,000 50,000

2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016

0

to China

to Japan

Figure 3.2  Amount of Korean music exports (in thousands of US dollars)

Media ecologies and transnational flow  41 Although Korean popular cultural content has had less chance to be aired on terrestrial TV, the decline does not mean that the Korean Wave is dead in the region. Part of the reason for the endurance of the Korean Wave is the emergence of alternative outlets that back up transnational media flows. As the early Korean Wave emerged in response to cultural and industrial needs along with changes in media environments at that time, so does the presentday Korean Wave seem to be sustained by changing media environments. The next section examines the main features in the changing media environment that have shaped the modes of accessibility to Korean pop culture content and how they have conditioned the viability of transnational media flows like the Korean Wave.

Changes in modes of accessibility and reception East Asian media environment since the 2000s There have been three major transformations in media environments since the 2000s. Since the early 2000s, we have witnessed the digitization and dramatic increase of Internet usage in East Asia. In Korea, more than 50 percent of the population accessed the Internet in 2001; in Japan, it happened in 2004, and in China, the rate of Internet penetration began to increase rapidly in the mid-2000s (Figure  3.3). Second, as more people in East Asia could use the Internet, the Internet and social media came to play significant

72.7 73.5 56.6

59.4

78.1 78.8

65.5 62.4

66.9 68.7

81

74.3 75.4

81.6 83.7 83.8 84.1 78

78.2 79.1 79.5

44.7 46.6 48.4 38.5

22.6

30 2.6

4.6

6.2

7.3

8.5 10.5

34.3

38.3

84.8 84.3

45.8

85

85.7

52.2 49.3 51.3

16

20 00 20 01 20 02 20 03 20 04 20 05 20 06 20 07 20 08 20 09 20 10 20 11 20 12 20 13 20 14 20 15 20 16

1.8

28.9

42.3

89.7 90.6 90.9 91.1

China

Japan

S. Korea

Figure 3.3  Internet usage in East Asia from 2000 to July 1, 2016 Source: Internet Live Stats (www.InternetLiveStats.com) that elaborate data from International Telecommunication Union (ITU), World Bank, and United Nations Population Division Note: Internet user (unit: millions) means individual who can access the Internet at home, via any device type and connection

42  Dong-Hoo Lee roles in searching for and sharing transnational content and information.4 Via social network services with increased information processing capabilities, people can actively share their favorite content and related information online. Third, in the 2010s, the rapid increase in mobile media usage, primarily smartphone usage, in East Asia has further facilitated the individualized media usage pattern, cross-media practices on mobile interfaces, and synchronous media consumption across borders. In China, as of June 2017, the number of Internet users accounted for 54.3 percent of the total population, and the number of mobile users among Internet users accounted for 96.3 percent (CNNIC, 2018).5 As more people can access media entertainment through their mobile apps than before, the percentage of Internet users using mobile online music was 67.6 percent, and the percent using mobile online videos was 72.6 percent (CNNIC, 2018). In Japan, as of 2016, the smartphone ownership rate among individuals was 56.8  percent, and the percentage of individuals who used smartphones to access the Internet was 57.9 percent.6 In Korea, as of July 2017, the rate of Internet users aged 3 and older was 90.3 percent, and 88.5 percent of them used mobile Internet (KMSIT & KISA, 2017). Since 89.5 percent of individuals aged 6 and over owned smartphones, the number of users accessing the Internet via smartphone was increasing (KMSIT & KISA, 2017). Each country’s different rate of digital network media usage reflects its political economy, including the national income level, media capital, and IT policies, technological infrastructure, and existing media system. And yet, the media usage gap between East Asian countries has narrowed over the past 20 years (see Figure 3.3). In the 2000s and 2010s, digital media with the capability of network connectivity and mobility have increasingly penetrated everyday life in East Asia, allowing people to act as “media users” (Picone, 2017) of different kinds of media content, devices, and platforms. Individuals can use functionally differentiated media for their own needs and purposes within their media systems without spatial or temporal constraints. They can select media sources (what), usage time (when), platforms and apps (how), locations (where), and communication partners (with whom), constructing personalized media systems or “networked individualism” (Rainie & Wellman, 2012) where people are connected as individuals with communication power. They can pursue their personal interests and needs for communication while being networked as global audiences. As the Internet, social media, and smartphones have deeply penetrated Korea, Japan, and China, their speed, volume, and scale have dramatically restructured the ground for transnational cultural exchanges and circulation. However, the changing media environments have not eliminated traditional media. Rather, the relevance of television has been gradually altered.7 As more Chinese people, especially young people in their teens to their thirties, use the Internet and mobile media in their daily lives, they tend to spend more time on digital and mobile devices than on watching traditional TV (eMarketer, 2015, 2016). Video content that used to be delivered via

Media ecologies and transnational flow  43 broadcasting and cable networks is available online, and people can enjoy it through their mobile screens. More people have turned to digital screens in part because they offer more appealing content than TV with linear programming of limited resources. Online videos are more likely to be played on mobile devices; as of 2017, 75  percent of Chinese Internet users used online videos, and 71 percent used online music, and most were accessed via mobile devices (CNNIC, 2018). In Japan, TV still maintains its relevance as an everyday medium, yet more people, young people in particular, have become less dependent on it. According to The Japanese and Television 2015 Survey conducted by the NHK Broadcasting Culture Research, many viewers have continued to be satisfied with television as a “familiar” and “necessary” media in their daily lives. However, the percentage of those who watch television every day has fallen to under 80 percent, and television viewing hours have decreased, especially by people in their 20s to their 50s (Kimura et al., 2016). Over the past two decades, the relevance of traditional media, such as terrestrial broadcasting, has changed, and people have become more used to using digital mobile media and constructing personalized media systems. Although digital mobile media are widely used, people’s media practices are not homogenous; regarding media skills and habits, device ownership and subscription and personal needs and preferences take on different characters. As people adhere less to traditional media practices, their transnational media consumption is relying on replacing them to a lesser degree. Reconfigured “contact routes” Since the late 1990s, as media consumers have become more mobile, digitized, and social, the relevance of old and new media for their media practices has gradually altered. People’s contact routes for the Korean Wave reflect such changes. According to the 2018 Oversea Hallyu Survey by the Korea Foundation for International Culture Exchange, there has been a gradual shift in the media through which Korean popular culture is accessed (see Table  3.2). More Chinese respondents accessed Korean popular culture content via free online and mobile networks, such as Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, iQiyi, YouKu, and others, than through TV. For them, mobile social media served as major “routes” to view or listen to transnational media content. Meanwhile, most Japanese respondents got their Korean popular culture content through TV, even though the percentage has gradually decreased. In addition, online and mobile networks have become more important routes for Japanese media consumers to connect with Korean media content. The findings of this survey suggest that the Chinese and Japanese have slightly different patterns of transnational media consumption in terms of contact routes, and these differences parallel the usage patterns of digital media and television in each country.

44  Dong-Hoo Lee Table 3.2  Contact routes for the Hallyu content8 TV drama

China

Japan

K-pop

2017

2016

2017

2016

Free online/ mobile 61.6% TV 59.2% TV 81.5% Free online/ mobile 25.5%

Free online/ mobile 58.0% TV 55.4% TV 88.3% CD/DVD 11.0%

Free online/ mobile 56.5% TV 48.1% TV 70.5% Free online/ mobile 41.9%

Free online/ mobile 58.0% TV 55.4% TV 83.7% Free online/ mobile 17.4%

While the proliferation of social media and mobile Internet in the region has transformed the methods of accessing Korean popular culture, people in each country use different modes of transnational consumption, reflecting slightly different media usage patterns and the varying relevance of television in the local media environment. Chinese users are more likely to consume K-content via online mobile media, while Japanese users are more likely to consume it via TV. Each country’s media environment has shaped the accessibility of transnational media content. While older media usage habits become reconfigured in mobile media environments, they also tend to contextualize new media usage. Transnational media consumption tends to reflect such interrelations between old and new media usage. Multiplication of entry points While the consumption of Korean dramas in China and Japan depended on terrestrial TV as well as cable and satellite TV in the early to mid-2000s, digital media have provided alternative methods of access. For instance, in 2013, Korean dramas such as The Heirs and My Love from the Star were popular in China; they drew popular attention via online video sites including PPS and iQiyi. iQiyi, China’s largest online video platform (called the “Netflix of China”), bought the exclusive rights to South Korean dramas to promote its membership subscription, while Korean producers found alternative routes to evade the tough preliminary review required for foreign programs to be broadcast. My Love from the Star hit one billion views during its release and recorded two million searches per day. Its popularity coincides with the increasing use of online video platforms, especially among young people in their teens to their thirties (KOCAA, 2019). Immediately after the show’s mega success, the State Administration of Press, Publication, Radio, Film, and Television in China announced the policy that

Media ecologies and transnational flow  45 the number of foreign TV series on a single platform should not exceed 30 percent of the purchased domestic series and that they should go through preliminary reviews (Oh, 2018). The state continues to play a major role in regulating transnational media flows by imposing a strict quota of foreign programs as well as a compulsory preliminary review. After the deployment of THAAD in South Korea, China has fully suspended the influx of Korean popular culture via any media. Since Chinese broadcasters and online video platforms have not provided any new Korean content, as of May  2018, popular Korean dramas listed on online video platforms were still confined to those officially imported before 2016 (Choe, 2018). Although the Chinese government has strictly regulated the way foreign content is distributed in the Chinese media system, unauthorized paths for transnational media flows exist. Mobile social media environments have allowed undercurrents of the circulation and sharing of pirated content. More recent Korean programs can be searched for and accessed via illegal sites and apps. For instance, in early 2017, even though Goblin (2016), a hit Korean drama, was not officially exported to China, it was ranked high on the list of words searched for on Baidu, China’s largest search engine. A year later, while the Chinese government still prohibited Korean popular content, streamed videos of Sky Castle (2018), a popular Korean drama, with Chinese subtitles, could be accessed within a couple of hours after its airing in Korea via illegal streaming sites, whose links were searched for on well-known Chinese online video platforms, such as Tencent and Youku (Shin, 2019). Digital connectivity affords multi-entry points where people can access or distribute unauthorized foreign programs, regardless of the formal blockage of their influx. In Japan, it has been difficult to find Korean dramas on terrestrial broadcasters other than TV Tokyo since the 2010s. While the relevance of terrestrial broadcasting for accessing Korean programs is shrinking, the BS and CS broadcasting channels, with specialized target audiences, DVDs, and online sites, provide entry points to Korean media content (Jung, 2017). On BS digital broadcasting, as of June  2017, 50 Korean TV series were programmed via 11 channels, more than double that in 2006 (Kim, 2017). The number of Korean programs and channels on CS broadcasting has also increased. BS and CS broadcasting, DVDs, and online VOD provide diverse entry points to Korean programs, which contributes to the sustainability of the influx of Korean popular culture. Meanwhile, online video sites, like YouTube, and other social networking sites afford alternative routes for accessing and consuming K-pop content. As Korea—Japan relations have become aggravated due to historical or territorial issues, Japanese terrestrial broadcasters are reluctant to present K-pop content and artists. However, K-pop artists circulate their music videos and directly interact with their audiences online. While BoA used a localization strategy to enter the Japanese music market and appeared on Japanese TV programs to maintain popular attention in the early 2000s,

46  Dong-Hoo Lee Girls’ Generation have tens of thousands of fans in Japan without an official debut, and their debut single “Genie” was ranked fourth on the Oricon chart on the first day of its release. Korean idol groups use social media and online video platforms to promote their content beyond the local media market.9 The proliferation of social media usage has ecologically transformed the modes of consuming transnational content; rather than replacing the old modes of distribution and consumption based on TV or the physical exchange of tangible commodities, such as CDs and DVDs, it has multiplied the entry points for accessing Korean popular culture content, increased cross-media usage, and allowed people to have different consumption modes according to their personal media systems. Individuals can consume more content on demand within their own media systems and bypass the traditional ways of accessing transnational media content. Recent bans on Korean popular culture in China and conflicting relations between countries further facilitate the mode of transnational media consumption based on digital mobile media, which allows users to contact de-territorialized media space unbounded by the nation-state, to construct virtual connections with other users, to share their interests and preferences, and to acquire media content they want to consume even without official imports. Networked resonance beyond national boundaries Many scholars have discussed how social media sites, such as YouTube, have contributed to the expansion and globalization of K-pop because they enable users to become active participants who are willing to share, curate, or promote their favorite content (Jin & Yoon, 2016; Kim & Kang, 2013; G. Lee, 2016). Yet, the role of social media in the Korean Wave in East Asia has a different nuance. Its network connectivity helps sustain the transnational circulation of Korean popular culture in spite of negative geopolitical situations and regulations. As network connectivity speeds up the circulation of content, reduces cultural latency, and expands the circulation of content beyond national boundaries, it affords real-time streaming or near-synchronous circulation, leading to immediate and responsive practices of consumption. Individuals can bypass the traditional distributors and become intermediaries for the circulation of their preferred content. For instance, some active Chinese media users livestream the airing of Korean dramas in the form of short video clips, and others share their reviews online despite formal bans on Korean content. Japanese media users consume their favorite content via YouTube, Twitter, Instagram, or V Live and share their feelings and comments with other users despite nationalist sentiments against Korean popular culture. Social media provide networked spaces that can connect and produce resonance among people with similar preferences and interests across national boundaries, temporarily leaving behind nationalist concerns.

Media ecologies and transnational flow  47 Digital mobile media environments support the autonomy of individual users in choosing their own media content and the people they interact with. They can have various levels of engagement with transnational cultural flows through practices like curating, hashtagging, trending, commenting, subtitling, sharing, remixing, and creating related content. They can also make transnational media flows sustainable by seeking various entry points to access and by serving as intermediaries. Although national media policy and geopolitical situations in the region have sometimes affected transnational media flows in a negative way, the changing media environments still open up alternative routes for informal and individualized transnational media consumption. The fragmented and personalized media uses via individualized networks as well as the increasing permeability and connectivity among different media uses have enabled the Korean Wave to persist.

Concluding remarks Media environments in East Asia have transformed in terms of digitalization, network connectivity, and mobility; people’s everyday lives have become more mediatized, and each individual has a different personal media system. This transformation process coincides with the diversified processes of transnational media flows in East Asia; formal and informal media flows are closely intertwined, and old media usage takes on different modes of consumption. As media environments have transformed in the last 20 years, the methods of accessing transnational media content have also become easier, more diverse, and more individualized. East Asia is where the Korean Wave emerged, but the transnational media flow is vulnerable to historical and diplomatic conflicts, nationalist sentiments, and protectionist national media policy. While the network connectivity of the concurrent media environments helps the Korean Wave to circulate beyond East Asia, it continues to accumulate transnational media experiences within the region and to make the Korean Wave constitute a part of the mediascape of the region rather than a mere fleeting fashion. Media users in the region have experienced the Korean Wave in the process of the reconstruction of media environments and have witnessed historical and political conflicts and regulatory policy intervening in its flow, and, nonetheless, have consumed and shared it within their personal media systems. The Korean Wave in the region has evolved along with the accumulation of such experiences, has served as a shared cultural currency, and has increased the likelihood of developing a regional common culture.

Notes 1 East Asia includes China, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Japan, and Korea. And Taiwan, whose early adoption of cable TV systems needed to import foreign programs from Japan and later from Korea, has played a significant role in the development of the Korean Wave in East Asia, especially in intermediating the distribution of

48  Dong-Hoo Lee Korean TV programs to mainland China in the late 1990s and the early 2000s (H. Shin, 2013). However, this chapter focuses on the transnational flows of Korean popular culture, especially Korean TV programs and music, in China and Japan because they have been the major importers of Korean popular cultural contents, and their media ecologies as well as geopolitical situations have notably contextualized the presence of the Korean Wave in the region. 2 McLuhan, with his famous aphorism of “medium is the message,” suggests a figure/ground analysis that focuses on “the ground or underlying structure, of a situation,” which “provides the conditions for experiencing any part that presents itself as figure” (McLuhan et al., 1977, p. 14). 3 In 1993, the National Survey reported that the most popular activities during leisure time were sleeping and housekeeping. In 1996, TV viewing became the most popular way for people to spend their leisure time (The Hankook Ilbo, July  7, 1997, p. 9). 4 According to a 2017 report produced by We Are Social and Hootsuite, the percent of monthly active accounts on the top social networks in each country, including Facebook, YouTube, WeChat, Teiba, Weibo, and others, accounted for 57 percent of the population in China, 51 percent in Japan, and 83 percent in Korea. 5 See the 41st Statistical Report on Internet Development in China published by the China Internet Network Information Center (CNNIC). It was released in July 2018. 6 See the Communications Usage Trend Survey in 2016 compiled by the Chinese Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications on June 8, 2017. 7 This concept of “relevance of the older” comes from Walter J. Ong’s argument that “the advent of newer media alter the meaning and relevance of the older” (Ong, 2002, p. 314). While he disputes the linear approach of media evolution in accordance with the sequential order of the appearance of newer media, Ong suggests that old and new media are “overlapping” or coexisting with different relevance. The habits of old media usage have not disappeared overnight but remain with changing relevance in new media environments. 8 The survey was conducted among 500 people per country aged 15 to 59 who had experienced the Korean Wave. Respondents were allowed to give multiple responses. 9 For example, in the first half of 2018, two K-pop groups enjoyed great popularity based on their influence on social media. A Korean girl group, TWICE’s CD sales in the Japanese music market ranked sixth, and they were number one in terms of Japanese streaming, tweets, and video viewing times. BTS also ranked fourth in CD sales, second in tweets, third in video viewings, and fifth in streaming (H. Kim, 2018). Mobile social media serve as a virtual place where users can directly consume, talk about, and share K-pop. Also, see G. Lee (2016)’s The K-pop age that traces how communication technologies from cassette to streaming have affected the consumption of K-pop.

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4 Converging East Asia Cultural politics toward cultural regionalization Dal Yong Jin

Introduction In the early 21st century, East Asia has been culturally integrating. Several East Asian countries, including Japan, Korea, and China, have developed their own unique popular cultures, such as movies, television programs, and popular music, as well as digital technologies and culture, and exported them to neighboring countries. Most of all, Japanese cultural products have been widely distributed throughout East Asia. During the 1990s and the early 2000s, Japanese television programs, anime, and music (known as J-pop) in particular carved out an integral position in the East Asian markets (Iwabuchi, 2002; Otmazgin, 2018). In the early 21st century, Korean popular culture is also leaving a strong mark on East Asia’s cultural scene. Korean television dramas, movies, music (K-pop), and digital games have “gained immense popularity throughout the region, adding a variety of new images and consumption opportunities” (Otmazgin, 2016, 7; McLaren & Jin, 2020). China has developed its own popular culture, including films, to be exported widely, as it develops soft power as one of the major cultural policy measures (Yecies et al., 2019). Based on the growth of these East Asian popular cultures, Asian cultural producers have recently advanced cultural integration through various forms of collaboration; from a film co-production to the remake of television programs, and to digital media storytelling with the growth of anime (Japan) and webtoon (web comics in Korea). While several East Asian countries, broadly including China, Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Singapore, have imported either Japanese or Korean popular culture, they also work together to create cultural content through these diverse models, resulting in the cultural integration of the region. Cultural collaboration is not new in the region. Several East Asian countries, however, one after another, have paid attention to the increasing role of popular culture for the national economy and politics, and they have advanced regional integration through sharing national cultures and financial resources. By utilizing several forms of cultural cooperation, such as formats and co-productions, they have advanced pan-East Asian cultural products.

Converging East Asia  53 This chapter documents the cultural collaboration process of the East Asian regional market that is becoming one integrated market for the popular cultural industry. It explores the possibilities of forming one distinct cultural sphere in East Asia. It also examines the influences of regional political economy in the cultural market, and therefore, cultural integration. Instead of emphasizing only one side, it converges the two main aspects, both stateled top-down and private cultural producers-led bottom-up, in order to fully understand the growth of regional integration. In doing so, it discusses the major characteristics of pan-Asian cultural products. Finally, it discusses the ways in which shifting cultural politics has expedited both cultural convergence and cultural de-convergence.

Converging East Asian collaboration Since the mid-1990s, people have witnessed a remarkable trend of globalization in culture. Globalization in the field of popular culture has interconnected the world, both culturally and economically. In the cultural industries, until the early 1990s, East Asia, other than Japan, was less significant than Western regions. However, East Asia has become one of the largest cultural markets with the rapid growth of Korean and Chinese cultural industries in addition to Japan’s. Cultural corporations in the region have pursued cultural cooperation and collaboration through diverse strategies. East Asian countries have created new forms of cultural collaboration strategies to advance a pan-Asian cultural sphere. They have especially continued developing globalization as a form of regionalization in culture. Based on their fieldwork in China, Keane et al. (2007, p. 8) indeed argued that there is ample evidence to suggest that “program flows and cultural influences are more regional than global,” although this claim needs to be carefully reexamined. As John Lent (2013, p. 2) argues, in East Asia “the connectedness of cultures is acknowledged more today than in the past as various forms and artifacts of popular culture are transformed into hybrids blending foreign and indigenous characteristics in often innovative and culturally appropriate ways.” Due to the swift growth of cultural collaboration in East Asia, several scholars have attempted to interpret this emerging trend through diverse perspectives, such as cultural regionalism (Keane et al., 2007), cultural regionalization (Jin & Lee, 2007), cultural formation and geography (Otmazgin, 2005, 2016), inter-Asian referencing (Iwabuchi, 2013), and regional convergence (DeBoer, 2015). Among these, the two most representative theoretical frameworks explaining cultural collaboration in East Asia are regionalism and regionalization, which share common ideas but imply different directions. As Dent (2008, p. 6) points out, regionalism “is one the key defining features of the contemporary international system,” which refers to “the structure, processes and arrangements that are working toward greater coherence within a specific region in terms of economic, political, security,

54  Dal Yong Jin socio-cultural and other kinds of linkages.” As Gamble and Payne (2003, p.  50) already claimed, “regionalism is a state-led or states-led project designed to reorganize a particular regional space along defined economic and political lines.” Meanwhile, Dent (2008, p.  7) points out that there is another form of regional integration driven by the private sector, referring to “micro-level processes that stem from regional concentrations of inter-connecting private or civil sector activities” called regionalization. In other words, regionalization would be “an indirect and bottom-up process that increases the proximity between markets, institutions, and communities, in geographical and conceptual domains broader than two states” (Otmazgin, 2016, p. 3). With the same terminology but a different perspective, Jin and Lee (2007, p. 32) point out that cultural regionalization can be differently understood “as a comprehensive and multidimensional process, which implies increasing regional cooperation and integration with respect to a number of dimensions, not only political and economic, but also cultural dimensions.” What Jin and Lee argue is that cultural integration in East Asia should be the extension of cooperation and collaboration in terms of co-productions and program formats between filmmakers and broadcasters supported or initiated by the nation-state in different countries, and therefore, one could understand the complexity of various players and factors. With these distinctions, what both regionalism and regionalization in the realm of culture attempt to argue is that at the very least, there exist a significant role of regional flow (e.g., inter-Asian cultural flow) and integration. Unlike previous works, in this chapter, I use cultural regionalization as a multidimensional process, encompassing both public and private activities, instead of only referring to the private-driven integration. In other words, I converge two different approaches, both more of a policy-driven top-down process and more of a societal-driven bottom-up process, instead of eliminating one aspect from the other, so that we may understand the complexity of regional cultural collaboration in the 21st century. More practically, I  believe that cultural regionalization needs to understand several significant forms of collaboration beyond cultural flows within the region as their examples of these theoretical frameworks. Two exemplary collaborations that I focus on are television formats and film co-productions. On the one hand, a program format has become a unique form of cultural integration. The format is a guide to the remaking of a program adaptation in another country, and in East Asia, previously several Japanese television programs and films, and currently many Korean cultural products have emerged as a major trend in East Asia. As Moran (2008, p. 461) points out, therefore, once this kind of format has occurred, “there is an opportunity to license a re-broadcast of the program in other parts of the world. What is put to air is a new program produced in this new territory using the format of the original as a template that helps to direct the remaking of the adaptation.” Although several Western countries have advanced television

Converging East Asia  55 formats, as they are swiftly becoming a major business norm, a few nonWestern countries, including Korea have developed their own formats in the early 21st century. These East Asian countries pursue formats as they work as a “distinctive form of joint venture” (Keane & Moran 2008, p. 158). On the other hand, cultural cooperation as a form of co-production among East Asian countries has been prospering (Jin  & Su, 2019). East Asian cultural producers, in particular film corporations have vehemently developed co-productions since the late 1990s, which creates the cultural integration of the region. As DeBoer (2014, p. 2) points out, co-production “engendered a production form that could better address the regional cultural geography. Here intensified exchanges of capital and popular culture would bring into being a new regional production culture, if not a whole new regional geography.” Co-productions have been active in East Asia. As Lisa Leung (2013, p.  116) points out, co-production encourages collaboration between two media organizations in two different countries which otherwise could not be done by a single producer. Producers could benefit from a share of expertise and creativity, and co-productions often result in more diversified film location choices. Consequently, the product “enjoys potential textual hybridization so that it appeals to different audiences.” Collaboration and cooperation in East Asia have gradually created cultural regionalization or have had an enormous potential to create cultural regionalization. These major forms of cultural integration, initiated either privately or publicly, but mostly combined, have rapidly grown and facilitated cultural integration and collaboration in East Asia (Jin, 2020). As several East Asian countries have paid attention to these strategies, collaboration among East Asian cultural producers has been increasing, resulting in cultural regionalization and/or cultural convergence.

A societal-driven cultural regionalization—television program formats in East Asia East Asian cultural producers have developed cultural collaboration in popular culture, and one of the major convergence models is the format. As will be seen later, the majority of formats and co-productions in East Asia began since the late 1990s or the early 2000s after East Asian governments pursued the growth of national popular culture; however, some private or civil sector activities started television formats even several decades ago. The integration process in the broadcasting industry has shifted from an illegal piracy stage to a legal format import; therefore, it is crucial to document the illegal process mostly conducted by the private sector. In Asia, television formats emerged in the late 1990s when Japan developed its formats. Japan started to develop regional formats learned from the US With the success of many American television programs, the most significant dynamic in the Asian broadcasting sector has been “adaptation,

56  Dal Yong Jin transfer, and recycling of narrative and other kinds of content” developed by other countries, in particular the US (Keane et al., 2007, p. 6). As Keane et al. (2007, p. 74) argue, “Japan’s business success was founded on copying, assimilating, and localizing Western models.” Japanese awareness of Western culture, including American television programs and music resulted in successful adaptation of American cultural forms, in turn allowing Japan to develop a pan-Asian and/or trans-Asian model by which popular culture could be remanufactured and formatted in the East Asia region (Iwabuchi, 2002, 2004). In fact, several Japanese television programs already copied American films, and it is not farfetched to argue that several East Asian countries have experienced a similar path in the modernization process in the realm of culture. For example, NHK—a Japanese public broadcaster—developed a program titled My Secret (1955) by adapting America’s program I’ve Got a Secret (1952–1967), and Fuji TV’s Emergency Hospital 24 copied America’s ER. As Castells and Cardoso (2012, p. 827) argue, “piracy cultures have become part of our everyday life in the network society,” and what is significant is that they eventually develop their own programs based on these processes to be culturally strong countries. Of course, Japan later imported American programs and formats to develop its own unique television programs. What is at stake is that East Asian countries blocked Japanese popular culture until the late 1990s. While Japan had developed television formats and exported them to other countries, its influence in East Asia was limited. However, the illegal adaptation of Japanese programs in East Asia had been rampant, and this kind of cultural integration could be considered as the starting stage of the cultural regionalization in the region. In East Asia, in fact, Taiwan opened its cultural market to Japan in the mid-1990s, which means that Japan exported its formats to Taiwan, but not to other countries, including Korea and China. Korea had blocked Japanese popular culture until the end of the 1990s due to the legacy of Japanese colonialism; therefore, there was no official trade in popular culture between these two countries. Partially because of this historical dimension, Korea had no way to enjoy Japanese popular culture, and some Korean broadcasters plagiarized Japanese television programs until they officially started to buy Japanese formats since the late 1990s. As D. H. Lee (2004) pointed out, Korean broadcasters with limited financial resources until the late 1990s sought to mimic Japanese television content. She especially discussed unlicensed and licensed format adaptations, and explained that unlicensed format could be divided by three sub categories, like cloning, developing and collaging types. For example, a 1999 MBC drama Youth (a.k.a. Cheongchun) finished after its tenth episode because it allegedly copied Japanese television program Love Generation. The 1997 SBS drama Dedicated Daddy Challenge also ended earlier than planned as it plagiarized Japanese drama Happy

Converging East Asia  57 Family Plan aired on TBS. According to Amera, a Japanese weekly, about 30 Korean television programs were distrusted as plagiarizing Japanese television programs in the late 1990s (Ohmynews, 2000). What is interesting is that this kind of illegal adaptation of Japanese formats by Korea and China has consequently contributed to the growth of these countries’ national television programs. Although these piracy activities are not mutual collaboration, the process certainly helped the legal collaboration process as East Asian countries start to talk to develop more formal ways than informal piracy. Later Korean broadcasters gradually started to buy Japanese programs and began to practice licensed adaptations. In 1999 MBC purchased the license for the format of Boys and Girls in Love from Fuji TV to make Eve’s Castle (D. H. Lee, 2004). The success of Korean television programs learning from Japan through both illegal and legal adaptations has consequently helped Korean broadcasters compete in the Asian broadcasting markets (Keane, 2004). Of course, as Korea copied several Japanese television programs until the late 1990s, China has followed a similar path. Although China has imported several Korean formats, China has copied several Korean television programs in the midst of the increasing popularity of the Korean Wave—referring to the sudden growth of local cultural industries and the export of Korean popular culture in many parts of the world (see Yoon & Jin, 2017)—in China. Several Korean programs, such as Yoon’s Kitchen (tvN), Hyori’s Bed and Breakfast (JTBC), Show Me the Money (Mnet), Infinite Challenge (MBC), and Gag Concert (KBS 2) are some examples that Chinese broadcasters have allegedly copied in recent years (Chosun Ilbo, 2017). Korean netizens also argue that Chinese rapper competition program The Rap of China blatantly copied Korea’s Show Me the Money in terms of the logo, rules, and concept of The Rap of China, which are the exact same as the Korean competition series. The Rap of China did not officially purchase the copyrights (Allkpop, 2017). In July  2017, Chinese television network Hunan TV announced its new schedule for the second half of the year, and an entertainment program named Zhong Can was included. The show’s introduction states, “Five celebrities set up a Chinese restaurant overseas for fifteen days and proudly promote China’s cuisine.” The format is strikingly similar to Youn’s Kitchen, which had four celebrities set up a small restaurant in Indonesia for ten days, selling Korean food (J. K. Kim, 2017). As a media critic clearly points out (Chosun Ilbo, 2017), China has been copying Korean television programs in the critical transition period as Korean broadcasters copied Japanese programs between the mid-1990s and the early 2000s. As is detailed later, Chinese broadcasters have recently blamed the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) crisis, which was announced its launch in Korea in June 2016 and finally actualized in October 2018, as one of the major reasons why they copy Korean programs instead of buying the formats and/or finished programs. As the Chinese

58  Dal Yong Jin government has banned Korean cultural products since July 2016, several Chinese broadcasters allegedly copy some Korean programs because they acknowledge that Korean broadcasters could not win the legal battles in China under this circumstance. In East Asia, pirated cultural products are almost everywhere, from Japan to Korea, and Korea to China alike, and people watch those products. As Dent (2012, p. 32) clearly points out with the case of Brazil, piracy has two mixed feelings “between piracy as cultural intimacy (that which is embarrassing but nonetheless crucial to national identity) and piracy as a critique of the injustice of the international market.” In East Asia, “the desires both to practice piracy and to eradicate it” have common roots in the midst of building national soft power. “Without piracy, there is no legitimate circulation” (Dent, 2012, p. 31). Regardless of its negative aspects, we cannot deny copy and/or plagiarism in the cultural sector has contributed to the growth of cultural integration in East Asia. It does not mean that we admit these illegal processes as an appropriate way to achieve regional convergence. What I am arguing is that for once culturally weak countries with no fundamental narratives, man power, and financial resources, these illegal means have played a key role in the early stage of growth and integration. Cultural piracy has eventually resulted in the construction of the legal trade between East Asian countries, not only from the culturally advanced countries to less-developed countries, but also vice versa. The milieu surrounding the broadcasting industry has changed as intellectual property and formal collaborations are emphasized in the early 21st century. Under this circumstance, East Asian broadcasters have rapidly developed television formats since the early 2000s. There have been several adaptations based on Japanese programs, and several Asian countries have recently adapted Korean-based television programs since the mid-2000s. This means that these East Asian countries have actively engaged with television formats as two advanced countries in the broadcasting industry started to create formatted programs. They have especially paid attention to television formats since the Korean Wave boom emerged. As several Korean broadcasters have swiftly developed format learned from Western countries, other East Asian countries have worked with Korean broadcasters to produce television programs based on Korean television formats. More specifically, Korean broadcasters have developed several television programs and exported the formats to other Asian countries since the mid2000s. Several drams, including Hotelier (2007), Full House (2008), Coffee Prince (2008), Successful Story of a Bright Girl (2010), and Dream High (2011) as well as a few reality shows, including Dad Where are You Going (2013) and Running Men (2010) have become popular in several Asian countries. Over the past decade, for example, Japan has imported several Korean formats and television programs as Korea has become one of the major production centers. A Japanese remake of You’re Beautiful, a 2009 Korean

Converging East Asia  59 television series made by SBS, released in July 2011, became one of the most successful adaptations. Several East Asian countries, including China, Japan, and Taiwan and other Asian countries, such as Vietnam and Philippines have created their own version of Korean television programs, including dramas, quiz shows, and reality competition shows through format and license contracts. Of course, as Cho and Zhu (2017) already points out; the regionalization of culture in the format phenomenon directs our attention to regional specificities of the pop flows between Korea and China. In comparison to the narrow sense of localization, the broad sense of localization attests to inter-Asian natures of the format phenomenon. A  notable example is that the television formats are converted into various genres such as film, animated series, and online games in China. Among the many TV show formats adapted in China, Father! Where Are You Going? and Running Man have been made into several films, each with huge box-office success. (p. 2341) East Asian broadcasters have also rapidly adapted and developed nondrama formats, and in the 2010s and 2020s, they have received as many as Korean non-drama formats, including reality shows, which were not seen much previously. These reality programs have become a new major genre that Korean broadcasters develop (Jin, 2016). The popularity of reality shows started with the success of the Korean version of American Idol, Superstar K, which first stated in 2009 on cable music TV channel Mnet. While importing several Korean dramas, East Asian countries, in particular China have greatly increased their reliance on Korean reality shows. As Chalaby (2005) points out, television has been closed bound to a national territory; however, in the 21st century, several East Asian broadcasters are at the heart of the transformation of regional media cultures, and they have developed television formats or adapted them within the same region. In the East Asian cultural markets, television formats have proven the potential to fulfill cultural integration. As East Asian broadcasters attempt to share finance, talented man power, and audiences, they continue to expand their collaborations. Of course, while these conditions are crucial for cultural convergence, there are several obstacles as they are not mostly culturally driven. Instead, East Asian broadcasters, in particular, private firms pursue cultural convergence mainly due to financial reasons—for instance, saving production and marketing cost. What they have to emphasize should not money only, but culture that they can share.

A state-driven top-down collaboration: film co-production East Asian countries have recently developed co-production as one of the major forms of regional collaboration in the realm of culture. Co-production

60  Dal Yong Jin among East Asian countries goes back to the early 20th century; however, they have mainly developed co-production since the mid-1990s. East Asian countries have developed co-production strategies for several reasons, such as the emergence of regional economy, the influences of the Korean Wave, and the shifting regional geopolitics. In fact, Korea-China, Japan-Korea, and Japan-China, as well as ChinaHong Kong have advanced many co-production films. Hong Kong has been one of the forerunners among the co-production parties in Asia, with the earlier co-production with Japan and Korea. In particular, “since the mid2000s, a host of willing collaborators—national and international investors, firms, and creative practitioners, mainly from East Asia—have engaged in various models of collaboration with Chinese companies” (Yecies, 2016, p. 771). This kind of new movement was expected as the Chinese film market became one of the largest in the world in the 2000s. To begin with, co-production between Korea and China and others has been prospering partially due to the Korean Wave phenomenon in Asia. As Otmazgin (2016, p. 1) argues; East Asia in the last two decades has experienced a cultural renaissance rooted in economic growth and booming urban consumerism, and manifested in the dense circulation of popular culture products. . . . The Korean Wave constitutes an important part of these developments. While many of these popular culture confluences and waves originated in Europe and the U.S., a significant proportion are now produced and disseminated locally or within the Asian region. Confluences of Korean, Japanese and popular cultures, in particular, have not only intensified in recent decades, reaching consumers of different national and linguistic boundaries, but have also inspired a variety of transnational popular culture collaborations and co-productions involving creative personnel from different parts of Asia. As China vehemently attempts to develop its own soft power, referring to a form of national power that relies on cultural attractiveness instead of hard power like military power, and therefore, the government utilizes in international relations to enhance national images (Nye, 2004), with financial resources as well as an immense number of consumers, the Korean Wave has affected many parts of China (Keane, 2004). In other words, the transitory nature of East Asian popular culture forms is evident as the Korean Wave has swept East Asia (Lent, 2013). This means that Korea-China co-productions relied on the involvement of Korean directors and actors in Chinese movies. Chinese film corporations and television broadcasters have been recruiting established Korean directors, like Park Yu-hwan, Jo Jin-kyu, Kwak Jae-yong, Hur Jin-ho, and Heo In-moo. The outcomes of these collaborations have included some co-production movies between these two countries, like A Good Rain Knows (2009), Dangerous Liaisons (2012), The Mysterious Family (2016), and

Converging East Asia  61 Passion Heaven (2006) (Yecies, 2016). Of course, China-Korea co-production has occurred in Korean cinema as well. Japan and China have also gradually advanced their co-productions. In March 2017, for example, Japanese production house DandeLion Animation Studio, LLC and Chinese company Da-Jiang Innovations Science and Technology Co. (DJI), joined forces to co-produce a new anime series, titled RoboMasters: The Animated Series, which will portray college students participating in a RoboMasters competition, while the tournament will be presented in CGI to depict thrilling battle sequences (The Asahi Shimbun, 2017). Most of all, cultural convergence in East Asia has been deeply embedded in the region’s politics. Although several scholars argued that cultural regionalization could be driven when East Asian countries produce films and television programs together because they share common cultural grounds, which needs to be carefully interpreted, cultural geopolitics has certainly played a major role in the cultural convergence process. As several East Asian countries have developed their own cultural products in the name of soft power, which potentially enhances national images, and therefore, national economy, they also politically engage with the regionalization process. Cultural politics surrounding cultural convergence in East Asia have played a role as a double-edge sword, however. East Asia’s significant history, Japan’s colonial legacy in Korea has massively influenced the swift growth of the cultural industry. Due to Korea’s colonization by Japan in the early 20th century, as well as its concern about a Japanese cultural invasion in the post-colonial era, Japanese popular culture, including films and television programs, was not officially marketed in Korea other than a few exceptional occasions (Chan, 2008). Up until 1998, the Korean government banned Japanese cultural products which included console games, film, and music. However, loosening cultural barriers in the region have become a fundamental dimension for the penetration of each mark into another. As briefly discussed, in the 1990s, Taiwan and Korea opened their own cultural markets to Japanese popular culture after a long-standing block due to the Japanese occupation until the mid-20th century. With the ban lifted during the Kim Dae-jung administration (1998–2003), Korea gradually opened the market to Japanese culture, with Japanese culture, including console games from the country making their appearance in the Korean market by 2002 (Chan, 2008). For example, 2009: Lost Memories (2002) was a co-production between Korea and Japan, coinciding with the 2002 FIFA World Cup, held jointly in Japan and Korea. Asako in Ruby Shoes (2000), another co-production between Korea and Japan features a Korean man infatuated with a Japanese girl he meets over the Internet (Alford, 2001). Although many Koreans were still concerned about the legacy of Japanese colonialism, once the Korean

62  Dal Yong Jin government loosened decades-long restrictions against Japanese films and other mass entertainment products in the late 1990s, these two countries began to develop collaboration in the cultural sector. The change has been witnessed in Japan as well. Japan itself was “restrained in talking about regional cultural influence because of lingering memories and sentiments of the history of Japanese aggression unleashed on the rest of Asia during the Second World War” (Chua, 2012, p. 17). In Japan, the government feared Japanese cultural flow in East Asia would “resurrect old grievance rooted in Japanese colonialism and wars with Asia, a time when it sought to impose its culture; however, following the cusses of the private sector, most governments view the cultural industries as a way to instigate industrial change, upgrade national images, improve the economy, and seek new areas for intervention” (Otmazgin  & Ben-Ari, 2012, p. 9). The Japanese government, therefore, has started to pursue the Japanese cool project that the government has driven since the late 2000s. The cool Japan project mostly initiated in the 2010s emphasized the appeal of Japanese culture, lifestyle and clothing food and housing and contents (e.g., anime, television, drama, and music) into additional value, which means the commercialization of the Japanese appeal, in addition to the traditional industry such as cars and home electronics (Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry of Japan, 2014). Japan and Korea have developed several coproductions, such as 26 Years Diary (2006), Like a Dragon (2007), Golden Slumber (2009), Tokyo Taxi (2009), Café Seoul (2009), Higanjima (2009), Saying Good-bye Oneday (2010), and Miss Granny (2016). Regardless of increasing collaboration between two countries, like ChinaKorea and Korea-Japan, there are no mega-scale collaborations with three or four countries working together, which proves the lack of true regional cultural politics. We cannot deny that sometimes several countries coproduce films together. For example, several Asian countries co-produced Three . . . Extremes in 2005. It is a horror film collaboration consisting of three segments by three directors: Fruit Chan (Hong Kong), Park Chanwook (Korea), and Takashi Miike (Japan). This is a sequel to Three (2002). This kind of pan-Asian horror genre co-production was not new. As N. Y. Lee (2012, p. 106) discussed: in the late 1990s and early 2000s, so-called J-horror (Japanese horror movies) became a cultural trend, leading to box-office success in some Asian countries followed immediately by Asian remakes and copies of the genre. The Ring Virus, the Korean remake of Ringu, was made in 1999, and Whispering Corridors (1998—also from Korea), whose success led to the prolific horror series set in a girls’ high school, was made in awareness of the popular success of Japanese school horror movies. Meanwhile, Seven Swords, the co-production movie between Hong Kong, China, and Korea in 2005, was made in three languages, including

Converging East Asia  63 Cantonese, Mandarin, and Korean. The action movie by Tsui Hark, in which seven warriors come together to protect a village from a diabolical general in 17th-century China, was nominated as the opening film for the 2005 Venice Film Festival. The Promise (Wu Ji in China), made by Chen Kaige with Korean actor Dong-Kun Jang as well as a well-known Japanese actor, Hiroyuki Sanada, was also nominated for a Golden Globe award in 2006. Set in an enchanted, fantastical China where the boundaries between the human and the supernatural are as blurred as some of the computergenerated imagery, “The Promise occupies a curious landscape somewhere between opera and cartoon, “and reportedly as “the most expensive movie ever made in mainland China, the movie is full of grand, widescreen set pieces” (Scott, 2006, paras. 1–2). China, Japan, Korea, and Hong Kong also co-produced a fusion movie, Battle of Wits, in 2006, through co-investment of $16 million. The four film producers in these countries divided the production costs evenly. This movie was made by a Hong Kong director with two co-stars from China and Korea; however, the original script came from Japan. Daisy, filmed by Korea I Production, was also a fusion-style Asian movie. I Production put together a Hong Kong director, a Japanese music director, and Korean actors. However, these rare co-productions between China, Japan and Korea have never been repeated. Outside these few exceptional films, they have not developed any collaborations on this level between the three countries. While China and Korea have become regular collaborators, there has been very little cooperation between China and Japan. Oft-cited reasons include China’s import quotas and age-old political tensions between the two countries, but today’s speakers pointed to other business and cultural reasons. Japan’s fear of piracy is another issue—piracy is still rampant in China, while Japan has mostly managed to contain the problem and still has a thriving DVD industry. “Generally, the issue is a lack of trust because the Japanese know their release window is behind everyone else and that encourages piracy” (Shackleton, 2016, para. 4–5).

Cultural politics toward noncooperation in the East Asian region The milieu surrounding East Asia has not always been rosy as several sociopolitical conflicts drive a noncooperative nature in the realm of culture. As popular culture in East Asia has become one of the most significant soft powers, shifting political situations have sometimes negatively influenced the regional integration of popular culture. As cultural integration in East Asia has been prospering due to several policy-driven top-down measures, the same geopolitics in the region have acted as a major barrier for the panEast Asian cultural integration. The three most distinctive examples are China’s entry into the WTO system, an anti-Korean Wave phenomenon, and the aftermath of the THAAD crisis, which are directly related to geopolitics.

64  Dal Yong Jin To begin with, China-Korea and other countries’ co-production can be identified with the emergence of China, both politically and economically, after China joined the WTO in 2001, which is a form of cultural politics. Several East Asian countries and even Hollywood have recently increased their co-production strategies by signing co-production agreements with China. The cinematic relationship between China and Korea has been flourishing since this agreement, as evidenced by a series of Korean-Chinese co-productions including 20 Once Again, a Chinese-language remake of Korean hit Miss Granny. Film markets in these two countries need this type of collaboration. For Korea, as the film industry reaches saturation point, Korean talent has been exploring additional room for growth, most notably in China. For China, since its own production infrastructure is unable to keep up with the fast-growing demands of local filmmakers and audience, China has approached Korea and began to bring in talent (e.g., directors, actors, and technicians) and intellectual properties (S. Kil, 2015). One of the major benefits of the co-production agreements between the two countries is the resolution of nationality and potential commercial benefits. Under the terms of the pact, co-productions between these two countries would be treated as local films rather than more heavily regulated imports and therefore would not come under China’s quota of 34 films a year on a revenue-share basis as of 2014 (Coonan, 2014). Several movies, including Meet Miss Anxiety (2014), 20 Once Again (2015), Mermaid (2016), The Mysterious Family (2016), and Passion Heaven (2016) have become co-produced movies since the agreement. In particular, entry into the Chinese cultural market has been heavily influenced by national politics. In 2006, for example, “the State Administration of Radio, Film, and Television in China announced its intention to impose an annual quota on Korean drama imports.” This quota has encouraged Korean broadcasters to pursue co-production arrangements with Chinese partners (Chua, 2012, p. 17). Although burgeoning cultural industries may create a new environment to the authoritarian model, the Chinese government “is very determined to guide, supervise, and retain a high level of control over industry sectors rather than allow any ideological liberalization” with some room to negotiation (Lo, 2012, p. 188). From the Korean Wave to Japanese cool, and again, to the Chinese soft power policy have somewhat related to these governments’ distinctive cultural policies, which have sometimes resulted in cooperation and at other times in conflicting noncooperation among East Asian countries. Secondly, the Korean Wave has subsided in a few countries because of government measures to protect national cultural industries in the early 21st century. As the popularity of Korean cultural products rose in Asia, East and South East Asian countries, such as China, Japan, and Taiwan, have attempted to reduce the volume of Korean dramas and films on their local channels, resulting in Korean dramas and films struggling in these countries (Jin, 2016). In Taiwan, the National Communications Commission in 2011

Converging East Asia  65 demanded several cable channels to adjust their prime-time programming because the number of hours devoted to Korean dramas was deemed too high (Taipei Times, 2011). Of course, anti-Korean cultural product mentalities do not create an automatic decrease in the market share of Korean popular culture in these countries (Jin, 2016). The anti-Korean Wave sentiment is prevalent in Japan and China as well. While the Chinese government and Japanese government have tried to develop their own cultural products in the name of Chinese soft power and Japanese cultural cool, these East Asian countries are very sensitive about the growth of the Korean Wave in their countries. Many parts of the antiKorean Wave phenomenon have not directly related to these governments’ cultural policies; however, this trend is also the reflection of the history and geopolitics surrounding these countries. In fact, several Korean dramas, films, and actors touch on several sensitive issues, such as the portrayal of Japanese colonialism, the South-North division, and a territory issue involving Dokdo, a small island located between the eastern Sea of Korea and the western Sea of Japan. These governments have either directly or indirectly influenced the Korean Wave phenomenon in their own countries. Last, but not least, the Chinese government has utilized cultural politics to hurt the Korean Wave phenomenon in the country. When Korea decided to host a Terminal High Altitude Area Defense system—an advanced American missile defense technology—to better defend itself against North Korea’s constant military threats, China clearly started to oppose it, saying its deployment on the Korean Peninsula threatened Chinese national security interests. In retaliation to this decision, “China banned the airing of Korean television content, media widely reported in August” (CNBC, 2016, para. 5). Korean popular culture is emerging as a surprise victim of the worsening geopolitical feud between these two countries (CNBC, 2016). As Patrick Frater (2016) reported in Variety in August  2016, China appeared to have confirmed that it is to ban Korean cultural content from its TV screens in reprisal against the Korean government’s decision to deploy the US-made THAAD. In fact, “Chinese-Korean co-productions and talent are to be restricted as part of the reprisal measures. Several Korean companies said that their Chinese partner had been given verbal instructions from China’s Film Bureau that planned co-productions would not be approved.” China has been one of the top markets for Korean popular culture. However, China has denied permission for Korean entertainers to perform or appear on television shows in China since October 2016, three months after Seoul agreed to host THAAD; After the ban, some of the popular singers, such as Psy and Hwang Chi-yeol, appeared on Chinese shows with their faces blurred out. In some cases, their appearances were edited out altogether. Most recently, China blocked access to newly updated clips of Korean music

66  Dal Yong Jin and dramas on the country’s online video sharing platforms. . . . The ban has deprived many smash-hit Korean TV shows and their stars a chance to make big money in mainland China. For instance, KBS 2TV’s hit romantic drama Uncontrollably Fond, broadcast simultaneously in Korea and China from July to September 2016, has chalked up more than 4.1 billion views on China’s largest online video portal Youku as of last year’s end. The figure is catching up to the 4.4 billion view count of the runaway hit series Descendants of the Sun aired via iQIYI, also an online video service. (Shim & Youn, 2017) According to the Bank of Korea (2017), the THAAD crisis had directly influenced the Korean Wave in China as the trade surplus in the realm of the cultural sector, including film, broadcasting, and music dropped 24.4 percent in the first quarter of 2017, compared to the fourth quarter of 2016. The Bank of Korea explained that the major reason for the significant drop of service account surplus in the cultural sector was because Korean cultural products could not penetrate the Chinese cultural market in the middle of the THAAD crisis. Several previous works (Appadurai, 1990; Keane et  al., 2007) claimed that the nation-state no longer determines cultural representations. Keane et al. (2007, p. 23) issued a “call for the convergence of modernity” and “its fragmentation into alternative or plural modernities illustrate a world in which the nation-state no longer over-determines cultural representations.” However, as these examples clearly indicate, the nation-state partially driven by East Asia’s geopolitics still plays major a role in the realm of culture as both regulator and deregulator. East Asian countries have expanded their level of cooperation in the cultural industries, although intrinsic tension and contradictions among countries remain, and consequently, cultural collaboration has been deterred unlike what was promised. DeBoer (2015, p. 215) especially argues, “within the more recent production logic of ‘scaled convergence’, the transformation of local or regional cinemas toward wider transnational markets, both across East Asia and beyond, has been sought in the production of large-scale, ‘big’ blockbuster pan regional films.” For DeBoer, these recent collaborations are bolstered, moreover, by what has widely been coined a “New Asia” coalescing in the intensified networks of film and media industries, and in the expanding markets and technologies linked to East Asia’s media capitals from the turn of the new millennium. (DeBoer, 2015, p. 215) However, the real cultural integration, not between two countries, but within the entire region, in East Asia has not yet achieved mostly due to contemporary geopolitics surrounding the regional media and cultural industries.

Converging East Asia  67 As such, geopolitics in the East Asian region has become a barrier for the regional integration although it facilitates collaboration between two countries. Although this is not the only reason, East Asia needs to develop more progressive and practical cultural politics toward the bigger and better form of cultural convergence. Since East Asia as a whole has continued to feel the colonial legacy of Japanese invasion, they are highly sensitive to cultural politics, which makes the region unique. Each country’s cultural activities are heavily reliant on its geopolitical history, and therefore, the process of cultural integration cannot be free from cultural politics. This implies that there are several dimensions, both state-led top town and cultural producersled bottom up models, that explain the emergence and growth of cultural cooperation in East Asia. East Asian countries have continued to develop their generally cooperative, yet sometimes, conflicting relations with these non-Western transnational forces.

Conclusion and discussion This chapter has analyzed the soaring trend of cultural collaboration in East Asia in the early 21st century. It has examined the major trends driving cultural regionalization emphasizing the multidimensional processes. As East Asian countries have paid attention to culture for both national economy and soft power, they develop several forms of cultural convergence, and thereafter, cultural regionalization. From television formats and transmedia storytelling, some countries in East Asia, like Japan, Korea, and China, have advanced cultural collaboration, which potentially contributes to the growth of pan-Asian cultural convergence. Cultural collaboration in East Asia in the early 21st century can be made possible because of several key dimensions: the regional circulation of media content, the growth of various cooperation strategies, and shifting cultural policies. Needless to say, the emergence of China as both the largest consumer and the potentially biggest producer has facilitated cultural collaboration in East Asia. While there are several major dimensions in the cultural regional process in East Asia, three major elements have substantially influenced cultural regionalization. To begin with, East Asian countries have developed collaboration initially from an illegal process toward a legal collaboration process. Several East Asian countries have plagiarized neighboring countries’ popular culture, and consequently, advanced television programs. This means that East Asian countries started to develop a private-led bottomup integration process. When they had no skills, narratives, man power, and financial resources, cultural corporations copied Western programs or advanced Asian programs. In the 2010s, however, East Asian countries have substantially developed legally driven cultural integration as they import television formats while co-producing films. Then, East Asian cultural integration has been increasing mainly because of the cultural convergence between these bottom-up and private projects

68  Dal Yong Jin and the state-led or support top-down cultural initiatives. East Asian countries have indeed developed the top-down collaboration as these countries have experienced a unique historical milieu due to several key dimensions, including the legacy of Japanese colonialism, the South-North Korea division, and the gradual capitalization of China. The East Asian region cannot avoid any kinds of cultural policies involved in cultural integration. Admitting the increasing role of the private sector for the process, the nation-state has deeply influenced, either positively or negatively the collaboration trend. On the one hand, as Chen (2017, p. 386) argues, “having been imported into an authoritative state, which has strict censorship and changeable cultural policy, Hallyu could not have achieved such large-scale popularity without the consent and support of the Chinese government. The attempt by the Chinese party-state to fit the innocuous content of Hallyu into its own ideological system has facilitated the legitimization and dissemination of Hallyu.” On the other hand, the current THAAD-related crisis in the realm of popular culture cannot avoid state involvement. This implies that the nation-state has played a key role in the processes of both cultural integration and cultural de-convergence. Cultural integration in the East Asia region should be understood as a result of cultural convergence between these two major players, both public and private. While cultural producers and corporations have rapidly driven cultural collaboration, East Asian countries’ governments have legally and financially supported the growth of cultural cooperation. The convergence of top-down and bottom-up models in East Asia has especially been peculiar as these countries attempt to utilize soft power for the enhancement of national images and economies. Of course, top-down and bottom-up models are not entirely exclusive, as several broadcasters in East Asia are government-owned or directed, meaning they also play as government-funded agencies. What I want to emphasize is that both public and private entities work together to advance cultural convergence in the East Asian context. Collaboration in the realm of culture does not automatically guarantee cultural regionalization in the East Asian context. East Asian countries have attempted to maintain their own unique taste, although they are financially and systematically cooperating with each other. There are growing concerns as China aggressively tries to tap into the East Asian region with its increasing capital power. Several Chinese entertainment firms have already taken over some Korean cultural firms or invested in East Asian cultural corporations. The competition in the cultural business in East Asia is not only about culturally involved but also financially driven; therefore, it is not only about who has creativity and narratives but it is also about who has money and effective planning. In this regard, it is crucial to acknowledge that cultural regionalization in East Asia as of now is mostly skewed and limited.

Converging East Asia  69 In sum, East Asian governments and private sectors work together to develop the pan-East Asian cultural entity, at least partially, in not entirely. Cultural producers in these East Asian countries have worked together to form alliances that facilitate the growth of a pan-Asian cultural market; however, geopolitics surrounding the regionalization process has sometimes shown cooperative, and at other times conflicting aspects. Therefore, the contemporary process of cultural convergence in the East Asian context asks policy makers, cultural producers, and cultural consumers not only to develop new approaches, encompassing diverse dimensions in the collaboration processes, but also to work together to resolve geopolitical crises.

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Part II

Transnational convergence of culture

5 New Generation Dance Music The beginning of K-pop and J-pop’s influence Gyu Tag Lee Introduction Though K-pop has been recently recognized as a unique genre even on its home turf (see Shin, 2011), its emergence was precipitated by several factors. Like every other popular music genre, K-pop has its musical roots and influences in several styles, including especially the “New Generation Dance Music” that swept the country in the early and mid-1990s as well as several global and international musical genres. And while this genre was heavily influenced by global popular music of the time such as house, techno, and hip-hop, above all things, we cannot think of it without the direct and indirect influence from Japanese popular music. This chapter explores the transformations of the Korean music industry in the early 1990s, which became the basis of the emergence of current K-pop. During the 1990s electronic dance music became the most popular genre in Korea and its emergence was deeply related to technical shifts of that period, both in global and local terms. Digitalization of music production, which had been proceeding globally since the late 1980s, played an important role in the development of New Generation Dance Music in the early 1990s. This technological advancement brought with it a greater opportunity for imitation and even outright plagiarism of global popular music and J-pop among others. Though imitation quickly gave way to creation, which became an immediate foundation of the K-pop genre, the business model as well as music of J-pop in the 1980s and 1990s has been a major influence on the construction of the current K-pop industry.

Digitalization in music producing One of the key factors in the shift of Korean music industry in the late 1980s to the early 1990s is digitalization in music producing. Before discussing the influence of digitalization on the Korean music industry, it is necessary to examine the meaning of digitalization and how it has affected the overall music industry.

76  Gyu Tag Lee The popular music industry was affected by digitalization earlier and more directly than any other area in cultural industry. In the music industry, musical instruments and recording studios were increasingly moving from analog to digital in the late 1980s and early 1990s because digital methods had the advantage of less interference, more accurate reproduction, and more manipulability. And as digital musical instruments have become less expensive, it has become easier for creators outside the traditional center of popular music production (i.e. Anglo-American music industry) to purchase digital machines to make quality electronic music with low costs. The rapid development of the Korean music industry was propelled by the globalization of digital technologies, along with the economic development. First of all, producing music in digital formats has a great advantage in terms of costs. Computer-based digital machines can perform all of the music producing procedures without any other musical instruments. Therefore, if there are two or more computers, machines, and specific programs, creators can produce music without professional session instrumentalists and/or big studios. This means that producers or music corporations can cut down expenses that would have been paid to session instrumentalists, engineers, and studio owners. In addition, since the early 1990s, the price of integral digital machines—such as digital audio tapes (DAT), multi-track recorders (MTR), digital sequencers (sequence), sampling synthesizers (sampler), and musical instrument digital interfaces (MIDI)—has fallen dramatically down to almost 90 percent less than the price in the 1980s (see Théberge, 1997; Ugaya, 2005). High-performance computers, the basic device running the digital machines for music production, became more widespread in the early 1990s. As a result, devices became more accessible with relatively lower prices. Though new musical technologies such as synthesizers and MIDI already became popular and were used by many creators and musicians since the 1980s, those technologies were only available to those who could afford them—creators and musicians from developed countries such as US, UK, Western Europe, and Japan. However, the decreasing machine prices in the early and 1990s made digital technologies more accessible to creators outside those regions. These changing dynamics resulted in the global diffusion of digital technologies for music production (see Ugaya, 2005, pp. 46–52; Sony Global, 2012). In addition to drop in prices, there has also been an improvement in the quality of music produced by those digital instruments since the late 1980s (see Kusek & Leonard, 2005; Byrne, 2012). When those instruments first appeared, music produced only by them was criticized for being of lesser quality than music produced using analog methods. Also, intense controversies and debates sprung up over whether or not these new technologies made music-making less creative and less collaborative than traditional methods (Katz, 2004). A common lament among some musicians and audiences has been that, despite the apparent power and diversity of new musical instruments and recording devices, everyone’s work was beginning to sound the

New Generation Dance Music  77 same. Some critics have complained that digitalization drains the “soul” out of music because creators tend to play their parts separately rather than as a band when using digital recording techniques (see Warner, 2003). However, technological advances since the late 1980s have greatly improved, and one can produce good “musical-quality” music even without any “real” or “original” (i.e. analog) musical instruments. Others have noted that digital musical instruments are hybrid devices that alter the structure of musical practice and concepts of what music is and can be, which places musicians and musical practice in a new relationship with consumer practices and consumer society as a whole (Théberge, 1997, pp. 2–3). Toynbee (2000, p. 35) argues that in popular music, “the unit of creativity is a small one”—musicians work in a context of the “possible,” where possibility of innovation is subject to the constraints posed by digital production systems. It has expanded the scope of innovative possibility more than ever before. Digitalization could lead to more creativity and democratization, since difficult operations become easier to perform and the availability of digital technologies becomes wider so that more people can be involved in musical creativity such as home studio music production. Among others, electronic dance music (or “EDM”) and hip-hop are the two representative genres that depend on this new type of creativity and democratization. Important musical aspects that create and define the aesthetics of these genres such as the repetitive short rhythmic pattern and the sampled phrases are produced by the technique called “cut-n-paste,” which only became available by digital instruments such as the digital sequencer and sampler. Then how did digitalization influence the Korean music industry in the early 1990s? As mentioned previously, the drop in prices of digital instruments and the improvement in their level of performance encouraged the globalization of digital music production. This became a key factor in the development of Korean music industry because these efficient technologies made it possible to meet the sudden increase of cultural demand. Creators and producers could respond quickly and produce “quality music” with much lower cost than before. In addition, pitch correction and quantization, techniques developed in the early 1990s, enabled creators and producers to “produce musicians” swiftly and easily. Pitch correction is the process of correcting the intonation of an audio signal without affecting other aspects of its sound. Quantization is the process of transforming performed musical notes, which may have some imprecision due to expressive performance, to an underlying musical representation that eliminates this imprecision (Price, 2005, p.  136). In addition to making production simple and fast, these techniques also allow producers and engineers to create a perfectly in-tune performance from musicians who are otherwise not skilled enough to give one, known as “studio magic” (see Daley, 2003). This means that anyone can be a musician with the help of producers using digital technology and that anyone can produce musicians with the help of digital machines.

78  Gyu Tag Lee Therefore, in the process of digital music producing, conventional assumptions surrounding musical authorship simply do not hold. The process of musical production is guided by the producer’s twin desires for economic efficiency and technical control. Longhurst (2007, p. 81) argues that this has resulted in the “rationalization in the studio” led by the development of new technologies of musical production. In this process, producers or recording companies are the main agents and do not need to depend upon the expertise of musicians. Thus, many producers and recording companies “do not engage in a dialogue with the musicians or carry out their wishes” (Longhurst, 2007, p. 81). Instead, digital sampling and mixing technologies allow producers to take control of the studio and the process of producing music. This “studio magic” and the “rationalization in the studio” that became possible through digital technologies formed the basis of the new music production system in the Korean music industry. Such a production system—generating products not by a small numbers of craftspeople but by machines—was a kind of standardized production system. Interestingly, while digitalization of music producing has made mass production possible, the shift to youths as the main audience has made mass consumption available.

Emergence of youths as the main audience One of the most important changes that occurred in the late 1980s and early 1990s in Korean popular music scene was that teenagers became the most influential audiences. In the 1970s and 1980s, the main audience of Korean music was people over the age of 20 (see Shin et al., 2005). In addition to Anglo-American popular music, people in their 20s usually enjoyed contemporary folk music and pop ballads, while audiences over 30 preferred trot, the oldest genre of contemporary Korean popular music of which the origin is older Japanese popular music, called enka. During the late 1980s, however, the age of the main audience shifted to younger listeners and the purchasing power of teenagers born in the 1970s increased enormously. The emergence of teenagers as the main consumers of popular music was made possible due to the increase of the average level of household income, the result of the development of the national economy during that decade. At the same time, popular music became the most important means for them to relieve their stress. The education system in Korea is notorious for its excessive competitiveness. Especially in the decade between the 1980s and 1990s while the demand for higher education increased significantly because of the nation’s rapid economic growth, the educational infrastructure was underdeveloped so there were not enough colleges and universities to meet the need.1 Therefore it became extremely competitive for teenagers to enter higher educational institutions, and popular culture became the most important means to escape from the so-called exam hell.2 Among other forms of cultural products, teenagers of this time relied on

New Generation Dance Music  79 popular music to express their desire, hopes, despair, sentiment, and struggle (see H. S. Kim, 1999; G. T. Lee, 2012, pp. 252–254). It is beyond the scope of this chapter to discuss the Korean education system and youth culture in detail. It is of utmost importance, however, to emphasize the fact that the emergence of youths as the main audience of popular music has had a profound effect on the Korean music industry. The emergence of the teen audience expanded the size of the market and young people came to have the largest purchasing power in the music industry. For this reason, the industry began making changes to suit their tastes. Conversely, the lifestyle of youth culture has been much influenced by popular music, including of course the music itself, but also stylistic images associated with artists, including their fashion and distinctive expressions of affect and attitude. It was not totally new that music and style became important cultural resources for young people in Korea (in this, Korean youths have much in common with youths across the globe).3 However, in that period, the relationship between youth culture and popular music became more visible and interdependent. As consumption by teenagers in Korean cultural industries increased rapidly, their cultural tastes became more important than ever. Korean youths’ active acceptance of new digitalized music had a great influence on the industry, much in the same way that American baby boomers’ embrace of rock music in the 1960s changed the American music industry. Like rock music in the 1960s, music produced by digital technologies was new, trendy, and cool. Moreover, it was the defining characteristic of “global” musical genres in the Korean music industry. In fact, the “contemporary globality” is one of the most appealing features of cultural products for youth in the peripheral social and cultural contexts—it is global, therefore it is highbrow and better than old, out-of-date, and unchic domestic (traditional) culture (Zolov, 1999; Dunn, 2001; Veloso, 2002; Mori, 2009). For instance, when discussing Mexican rock and roll music, Zolov notes that youths tend to consume global/international cultural products conspicuously to show off their modernity, not only in material terms but also in the more abstract sense of seeming to embrace development itself (Zolov, 1999, p. 6). In the case of Korea in that period, Korean adults often condemned accepting this digitized global culture as unpatriotic. Also, the Korean intelligentsia criticized it as an agent of cultural imperialism. And yet, Korean youth adopted this latest global music trend and technologies as an agent of modernity and globality. That is to say, young audiences felt modern and cultivated when listening to the newest global sound; it allowed them to think of themselves as more sophisticated compared to old audiences who mostly enjoyed outof-date trot or ordinary pop ballads (for example, see Shin, 2002). Young people yearned to be a part of the global culture on the basis of economic development and the newly achieved democratic society, which is discussed later in this chapter. This tendency of youth during the late 1980s and early

80  Gyu Tag Lee 1990s to consume new, modern, and global cultural products significantly influenced the shift of Korean music industry thereafter.

New Generation Dance Music on the rise Until the late 1980s, dominant genres in Korean music industry were trot and pop ballads. Although some dance music became big hits in the mid1980s such as songs of Sobangcha, Nami, PARK Nam-Jung, and KIM WanSun, dance music was still a minor genre until the early 1990s. Of the 12 number one songs in Gayo Top 104 in 1990, eight were pop ballads, and two of them were dance music (see Table 5.1). By 1995, however, the situation changed dramatically. Dance music became the most popular genre by far. Among 14 no. 1 songs of the Gayo Top 10 in 1995, 11 were dance music, while only two songs were pop ballads (see Table 5.2) and none were trot songs. New Generation Dance Music began to dominate not only the music industry, but also the whole cultural industry including television, radio, and fashion. Many of New Generation Dance musicians were from the “dance floor.” In other words, before their debut as musicians, they began their careers as backup dancers of popular singers or club DJs, where they developed their dancing skills and production abilities in famous nightclubs.6 Due to the development and globalization of digital music producing, it became much easier for them to create diverse rhythmic patterns. In producing electronic dance music, the rhythmic pattern is the most important element because the music is intended to get audiences to dance to the beat (Shin et al., 1998). When producing electronic dance music, the composer first creates a short and repetitive rhythmic pattern that continuously flows through one song; and then he or she layers a melody line on top of that rhythmic pattern.

Table 5.1  No. 1 singles of KBS Gayo Top 10, 19905 Song title

Musician

Genre

Nasty Boy With a Big Smile Coming Back to You Wishlist Don’t Forget Even that Pain Raindrops on the Window It’s Only Love Like an Indian Doll In the Military Train Missing Face A Girl who Doesn’t Look in the Mirror

KIM Ji-Ae LEE Sun-Hee BYUN Jin-Sup BYUN Jin-Sup CHOI Sung-Soo CHO Jung-Hyun Hatbitchon KIM Min-Woo Nami KIM Min-Woo MIN Hae-Gyung TAE Jin-Ah

Trot Pop Ballad Pop Ballad Pop Ballad Pop Ballad Pop Ballad Pop Ballad Pop Ballad Dance Pop Ballad Dance Trot

New Generation Dance Music  81 Table 5.2  No. 1 singles of KBS Gayo Top 10, 1995 Song title

Musician

Genre

There’s no Secret Ridiculous Reason Don’t Leave Me Unhappy Meeting I Wanna Love Don’t Give Up You in My Imagination Murphy’s Law Eve’s Warning Law of Farewell Heungbo at a Loss I Wanna Marry You Come Back Home I Am Happy

Roo’ra PARK Mi-Kyung PARK Jin-Young KIM Gun-Mo Noksack Jidae SUNG Jin-Woo Noise DJ DOC PARK Mi-Kyung R.ef Yookaksoo PARK Jin-Young Seotaji & the Boys LEE Sora

Dance Dance Dance Dance Pop Ballad Dance Dance Dance Dance Dance Dance Dance Dance/Hip-hop Pop Ballad

Digital music producing technologies enabled musicians to create diverse rhythmic patterns with unerring precision, which is why a number of subgenres of electronic dance music such as house, techno, rave, trance, and trip-hop developed during 1980s. As former DJs and backup dancers, musicians of New Generation Dance were more sensitive to global electronic dance music trends than others. Musically, the verse and chorus of New Generation Dance Music were made of simple, catch, and trot-inspired melodies, and were influenced by ­contemporary British and European electronic dance music (such as ­Hi-NRG, house, Euro-Dance, and Eurobeat). New Generation Dance Music ­creators were also influenced by the latest trend of US dance music—hip-hop. Along with these rhythmic patterns, the Korean musicians always added rap during the bridge or pre-chorus part instead of instrumental solos.7 Some musicians of New Generation Dance Music aggressively emphasized their trendiness to young audiences and claimed that they were pioneers of the latest global music genres.8

Importation of international popular music into Korean music scene: the question of originality As New Generation Dance Music gained popularity, music critics and even some audiences began to question the originality of the genre. Many claimed that although New Generation Dance Music was made by Korean producers, creators, and musicians, it did not reflect any noticeable Korean-ness.” Moreover, critics argued the genre did not even satisfy the basic requirement of creativity that many New Generation Dance Music hit songwriters were accused of serious plagiarism. New Generation Dance Music can be seen

82  Gyu Tag Lee as, therefore, the music of a transition period. The Korean music industry and its audience tried to become a part of the global music scene, and they succeeded in becoming “saturated” by globalization in some ways, but they did not reach “maturation” (Hannerz, 1998). Larkey (1992) argues that when local music scenes face the flow of global music (usually Anglo-American music), they indigenize the imported music by four different stages of integration: first, consumption; second, imitation of global/international music by local musicians; third, de-Anglicization; and fourth, ethnification. In the last stage, global musical genres merge into local contexts to form new genres which depend on different sources (see also Gebesmair & Smudits, 2001). While the root and origin of a specific local popular music genre often comes from ‘elsewhere’, there is also possibility that “re-proposals of foreign musical styles can still express local cultural practices and concerns” (Mitchell, 1996, p. 142). As a local music genre influenced by global Anglo-American popular music, Korean popular music also has experienced stages suggested by Larkey. For instance, when accepting acoustic folk music mostly from US and UK musicians such as the music of Carole King, Joni Mitchell, and James Taylor during the 1960s and 1970s, Korean audience enjoyed songs directly imported (consumption). Then several Korean musicians such as CHO Young-nam, SONG Chang-sik and YOON Hyung-joo covered American and European acoustic folk songs with Korean lyrics (imitation). During the procedure they and other musicians such as KIM Min-ki, Yang Hee-eun and LEE Jang-hee created their own acoustic folk music reflecting Korean context (de-Anglicization and ethnification). Besides Anglo-American popular music, Korean popular music has been significantly influenced by Japanese music due to the geographic and cultural proximity, and Japan’s earlier successful modernization, which made Japan as the unofficial ‘role model’ of modern Korea even while Korea has resisted admitting Japanese cultural influences—not to mention the Japanese colonial rule (1910–1945). In 1955, two years after the Korean War ended, the 8th US Army’s headquarter moved from Japan to Yongsan in Seoul, Korea. After that, the 8th US Army (Mi-Palgoon) became the name among Korean people used to reference the whole US army stationed in Korea. The 8th US regularly held shows to entertain their soldiers and staffs, which included extravagant dancing, gags, and musical performances. This show was known as ‘MiPalgoon Show’ (the 8th US Army Show) by Korean public. Though the show was only for insiders in the US Army, it soon became the biggest show in Korea as the country did not have such a big show at that time. In the decade from the late 1950s to the 1960s, the 8th US Army spent 1.2 million dollar per year to hold the show, which was almost the equivalent of Korea’s total annual export income at the time (Shin et al., 2005, p. 25). Therefore, Mi-Palgoon Show was the biggest opportunity for Korean musicians to succeed, and those who attempted to appear on that stage

New Generation Dance Music  83 tried to catch up with and imitate the latest American popular music trends. To be showcased at the Mi-Palgoon Show, musicians had to audition with American show directors who selected those who could most appeal to the taste of American soldiers. Many famous and influential musicians who contributed to the development of Korean modern popular music in the 1960s such as SHIN Joong-Hyun, CHOI Hee-Jun, Patty Kim, and Wicky Lee,9 made their debut as professional musicians in the Mi-Palgoon Show. After cultivating their musical skills on the Mi-Palgoon Show stage, they introduced the latest Anglo-American popular music to Korean audiences by translating world-wide hit songs to Korean lyrics. Therefore, it was the early and mid-1960s when Korean popular music began to adapt global popular music to their domestic music scene. However, Anglo-American popular music and the domestic Korean pop music directly influenced by it was not popular among wider audience. Rather, it became the music of urban dwellers and the higher-educated elite. The headquarters of the 8th US Army were located mostly in big cities such as Seoul, Busan, and Daegu. Therefore, musicians who were regularly featured at the Mi-Palgoon Show mainly performed in small clubs of those big cities where mostly white-collar workers and college students lived. In rural areas and among lower classes, it was the trot that was the most popular genre among the audience (Shin et al., 2005). The differentiation of musical genres according to the area, the education level, and the class were important factors in the early stage of Korean popular music and this tendency continued until the mid-1980s. For example, acoustic folk music mentioned previously was the cultural symbol of college students and white-collar workers in the 1970s. In contrast, blue-collar workers and rural people still clung to trot at that time. Anglo-American style popular music was consumed by the urbane, intellectual, and young, while trot represented rural, working class, and old-fashioned tastes. These two imported musical genres—Americanstyled contemporary folk and Japanese-styled trot—have been the pivotal references in the development of Korean modern popular music. This dualism began to dissolve since the late-1980s. Trot still maintained its dominance over the older generation and blue-collar listeners. However, its market share weakened as pop ballads and rock musicians captured the tastes of younger audiences. Also, due to the rapid urbanization and growth of metropolis, urban culture became the mainstream during the 1980s. While previous Western-influenced genres such as acoustic folk in the 1970s emphasized its modern and intelligent characteristics and intended to avoid trot’s musical aspects consciously to differentiate itself from the ‘old and vulgar’ trot music, pop ballads musicians in the 1980s integrated trot’s characteristics into its own modern style. Their strategy was practiced by hybridization of trot melody line directly influenced by Japanese music and trendy rhythmic patterns from US an UK. Even Korean rock musicians in the 1980s, who resisted the out-of-date and banal image of trot and outwardly emphasized young and rebellious ‘rock spirit’, used the

84  Gyu Tag Lee similar strategy when producing their music. The commercial and musical success of the hybridization strategy—Japan-influenced Korean trot melody lines layered with America-influenced trendy rhythmic patterns—became the fundamental element of Korean musical innovation thereafter.

How to access Japanese music officially banned: pirated CDs and public video screenings Although the strategy that “melodies from Japan, and rhythmic patterns from America” was a widely accepted musical hybrid form in Korean music industry, this fusion was at odds with the Korean government’s cultural policies, which banned opening its market to Japanese culture and some of other international cultural products based on the strict censorship. The import of American (Western) popular music into South Korea was often excessively censored because of their ‘explicit lyrics’ about sex, drugs, alcohol, violence or using slang or abusive terms, and visual images in album cover art, booklets, and music videos as being vulgar and lewd. Moreover, following the experience of Japanese colonialism, the Korean governments maintained even a stricter oppositional stance toward Japanese cultural products. Especially, military regimes from 1961 to 1993 that came into power through illegal and violent military coups and thus lacked legitimacy emphasized patriotism and nationalism by denying Japanese influences as well as strongly opposing North Korea communists to establish authority and maintain power. The official reason for Korean government to enforce a ban on the import of Japanese cultural products was ‘to protect Korean people from “waesaek 왜색 [wæsæk] culture” ’, meaning too much Japan-esque culture. However, several scholars note that the attitude of the Korean government was based more on the fear rather than on the concern for its people (Y. Lee, 1998; S. M. Kim, 2017). As Appadurai (2000, p. 32) points out, Japanization has often been more worrisome than Americanization for Koreans, especially for politicians who tried to establish their legitimacy in the name of patriotism. Like other suppressive cultural policies of the Korean military regimes between 1960s and 1980s, they declared that Japanese TV dramas, films, or music could not be aired on TV or radio, performed on the stage, or shown in the theaters, let alone being sold in the market. The only Japanese cultural product allowed into the country and the only route to encounter Japanese popular culture was through TV animation and cartoon dubbed and translated in Korean with perfectly hiding its country of origin. It was not of great concern until Korean audiences began to pay closer attention to the latest Japanese music trends. However, due to the emergence of teenagers as the main audience it became more important than before that audiences and creators/producers alike wanted to keep up with the latest trends. And yet, formal and legal opportunities for Korean audiences to access global music trends were highly restricted. Before ‘Third

New Generation Dance Music  85 Open-Door Act toward Japanese Popular Culture’ completely lifting the ban on importing Japanese cultural products in 2004, Korean musicians and audiences who wanted to listen to the latest Japanese popular music could only access to it in informal (and illegal) ways. Among various avenues, purchasing bootlegs, smuggled and pirated CDs, and watching music video tapes at public video screenings were the most common to access international music trends. First, audiences could access the latest Japanese (and American) music through smuggled musical products, mainly music CDs. However, it was not easy to buy those smuggled CDs because only a small amount of them were brought into the market, and they usually cost one and a half times or twice as much as legally ‘licensed’ CDs. Therefore, audiences preferred pirated CDs to the smuggled ones. In fact, there had been pirated records even before the late 1980s, usually in the form of vinyl and cassette tape. When music is copied into those analog media, a serious loss in its sound quality is inevitable. However, the CD offered a new alternative. The CD is a digital format that can be copied exactly the same without a single loss of sound quality. Also, unlike the analog media that would get abrasion when being copied, the copy of one CD to the other did not do any harm to the original copy even if it was copied dozens of times. Therefore, the CD ushered in a new where music piracy became more rampant and effective than before. Usually, small record shops and street vendors produced a number of pirated CDs from an original and sold them in public or in secret. Most of those pirated CDs were copied from unreleased and unlicensed albums, because it was riskier for those small retailers to sell illegal pirated CDs of licensed ones due to the strict copyright laws since the late 1980s. Unlicensed or unreleased albums were in a blind spot—copyright holders did not actively crack down on the smuggling and piracy of unlicensed CDs while audiences actively sought to access them. Small shops and street vendors dealing illegal music CDs were usually located in big cities such as downtown Seoul (Gangnam, Myung Dong, Apgujeong, and Shinchon), Busan (Nampo, Seomyun, and Haeundae), and Daegu (Joong-Ang Ro and Dongsung Ro)—the places where their main audiences (the younger ­generation) usually gathered. There are no official records of the sales of those illegal music CDs, but experts and industry insiders speculate that it was too high to be neglected.10 Second, audiences who were eager for the latest Japanese popular music could access it through watching satellite music video channels such as MTV Asia, Channel [V] International,11 NHK and other Japanese television networks. In Korea, the cable television industry only launched its service in 1995. Until then, there were only 5 channels—KBS 1, KBS 2, MBC, EBS, and SBS. KBS, MBC, and EBS are all public TV networks, and SBS was the first private TV network which began its service only in 1991. Since those networks offered general service including news, dramas, documentaries,

86  Gyu Tag Lee sports, and movies, they could not meet the rapidly increasing cultural demand in the late 1980s and the early 1990s. Moreover, since four of five television networks were public managed and controlled by the Government, they were an oligopoly in the broadcasting industry that was conservative with regard to popular culture and did not pay much attention to young audiences. In that situation, watching international satellite music channels offered a way to encounter Japanese latest popular music. And yet, like directly (and illegally) imported CDs, international satellite televisions were also too expensive at that time to enlist broad consumption. Audiences who wanted to watch international satellite televisions needed an antenna (or ‘dish’) to receive scrambled satellite signals, but the dish cost more than 1.5 million KRW (about 1,500 USD) while the monthly salary of the average white collar worker in the early 1990s was less than 1 million KRW (about 1,000 USD) (H. S. Choi, 1999). Moreover, there was a serious limitation to watch international satellite televisions because these satellite channels were not legally or officially licensed in Korea. In fact, international satellite televisions only became available in Korea thanks to the development of communication technology which enabled Korean audiences to pick up broadcasting signals originally for viewers in Japan and other East Asian countries geographically close to Korea. It means it was a stealing satellite signals without payment.12 However, even if one could afford the satellite, he/she might not be able to watch the satellite channels if they lived in the place far from the signal coverage. Usually, in cities close to Japan such as cities in Gyeongsangnam-Do (Busan, Changwon, and Ulsan, among others), or close to China such as the Seoul metropolitan area, Incheon, and some cities in Jeollanam-Do (such as Gwangju and Mokpo) audiences could get a relatively acceptable quality of satellite signals. In other regions, it was almost impossible to access. Young Korean audiences solved the problems posed by limited availability of international satellite music channels by hosting public video screenings. By the late 1980s and the early 1990s, BBS (bulletin board system) had diffused rapidly among Korean teenagers and those who were in their twenties, based on the development of telecommunication systems and increasing prevalence of personal computers. Among others, music audiences were one of the most active groups (see Lim, 1996). Lacking widely accessible sources, young cultural consumers used the BBS to share the information about contemporary American and mostly Japanese popular music that was not officially available. In this way, using the BBS, the public video screening became one of the most common and popular ways for members to see ‘what’s going on’ in those music scenes. First, some members who had the satellite dish—usually leaders and active participants of the BBS—videotaped music videos, music programs, and live performances aired on international satellite channels. They, then, announced on the BBS that they would hold a public video screening of those recordings. Public video screenings were regularly held in

New Generation Dance Music  87 small cafes or clubs mostly located at Shinchon, Gangnam, Apgujeong, and Hongdae areas in Seoul. Through these public video screenings, audiences shared information with each other and accessed the latest global music trends even if they did not have the dish at home. At screenings, copies of those videotapes were also sold for about 4,000–5,000 KRW (4–5 USD), which was usually affordable price even for the young audience. Those cafes and clubs also showed international satellite music channels during their business hour so fans often gathered there besides regular meetings to watch videos and listen to music. In addition to the audience, amateur, prospective, and even professional musicians also based themselves at those cafés or clubs to access the latest global music trends. At that time, of course, purchasing and listening to smuggled and pirated CDs, as well as holding, supporting, and participating in the public screening was illegal. If one wanted to legally screen music videos in a cafe or club, 1) the videotape which he/she wanted to show had to be an officially licensed and 2) the cafe or club had to pay a royalty to the copyright holder (or its agent). However, public video screenings did not meet either of the requirements. The installation of the satellite dish was also illegal. The government never permitted international satellite television providers to broadcast in Korea, and those providers actually did not intend to do so. In addition, the dish itself was not authorized or guaranteed by international satellite networks.

Acquiescence of illegal: global as a sign of development Ironically, though both these ways of receiving global popular music were illegal and unofficial, the Korean government, which should ban the import of Japanese music, nearly overlooked most of these practices. Pirated or smuggled CDs were sold by street vendors and small record shops openly in the crowded downtown of Seoul and were policed only very occasionally. BBS, which organized the public video screenings, was not subjected to serious restrictions, if any. Cafés and clubs publicly advertised that they offered the international satellite television to their customers, but they were not subject to restrictions either. At times, the government even indirectly encouraged consuming those “officially not-allowed” cultural products. During the era of the rapid economic development, it was considered as a sign of the nation’s improvement to adopt the latest global popular culture, not only in material terms but also in the more abstract sense of development itself. Even now, the economic development and growth of the middle class has been considered as an accomplishment of the Korean Military Regimes. Through their direct and indirect control over the media and popular culture, these military regimes actively promoted a discourse with promises of modernity, all aimed at constructing a middle-class to prevent any direct opposition to their authoritarian dictatorship. Though the last military regime declined through the

88  Gyu Tag Lee movement for democracy by the people and was finally replaced with the civilian government in 1993, the basic logic of national propaganda did not change. The new government has tried to emphasize the evidence of development by showing how much Korea has been modernized and globalized. At this point, it is necessary to consider the distinctive character of Korean popular music in contrast to its more developed counterparts—Japanese music. In popular music studies, the nature of popular music is often understood by ethnic/cultural hybridity. According to these studies, the most representative global popular music genres are products of hybridization of ethnically diverse cultures. As Mori argues, hybridity in the West is “further defined when one considers, in particular, ‘high culture’ forms like classical music, which emphasizes the traditional and authentic” (Mori, 2009, p. 219). However, within a specific context of South Korea, popular music is distinguished not between “high” and “hybrid” levels, per se, but between domestic music and international (mainly Anglo-American and Japanese) music. In this context, highbrow culture is seen as something from developed countries (Zolov, 1999; G. T. Lee, 2011). For instance, in the beginning of Korean hip-hop culture, authentic fashionable items of the hip-hop culture such as FUBU baggy jeans, New Era baseball caps, and Nike basketball shoes, which were as important as the music itself in hip-hop culture, were expensive and difficult to find for audiences, unless they lived in the big cities. Therefore, the audiences who could easily access global (American) hip-hop culture, the newest trend of that period, were the middle- and upper-middle class youths living in big cities. Only these consumers had the money and ability to buy (illegally imported) expensive CDs, subscribe to satellite music channels, and purchase hip-hop fashion items. Like having dinner at TGI Friday’s, drinking a cup of coffee at Starbucks, or wearing a pair of jeans by Guess, conspicuous consumption of hip-hop cultural products in Korea became one of the symbols of the middle- and upper-middle class youths’ own highbrow culture—Americanized, and therefore, highly cultivated. Also, the situation was not different when consuming Japanese popular culture usually considered as more sophisticated, trendy, and modern by Korean audience. Richer youths could get more information about the latest Japanese music and easily access to it. Korean government administered a two-pronged strategy. Officially and on the surface, the government tried to protect Korean popular culture by controlling cultural imports from foreign countries—especially Japan. However, unofficially and on a deeper level, the government connived leaving it to the underground youth culture. This two-faced attitude of the government lasted until 2004 when it officially shifted to the open-door policy toward Japanese popular culture. As a result, by the late 1980s and the mid-1990s when cultural industries were rapidly growing to meet the newly increased cultural demands for modern and trendy music, the way of adopting, hybridizing, and indigenizing foreign popular music into the local was

New Generation Dance Music  89 oddly distorted. This distortion had a negative influence upon the music industry, in the form of plagiarism.

Plagiarism in new generation dance music Though recording companies and musicians of New Generation Dance Music continued to assert that they were pioneers who were bringing the trendiest and coolest dance music of the world into the Korean popular music scene, they were not as challenging as they proclaimed. Rather, their “challenge” was largely cosmetic and their rhetoric largely empty. For example, R.ef, one of the most popular New Generation Dance groups, claimed to be the “introducer of Rave Music” that they named themselves from an abbreviation of “Rave Effect.” However, their actual music was nothing to do with popular rave music in its country of origin UK. In fact, their music was not much different from that of other New Generation Dance Music bands that similarly proclaimed themselves the introducers of different genres such as Roo’ra (reggae), Goofy (techno), or Noise (house). Several other musicians also claimed to be pioneers or challengers of various genres, but few of them really tried to adopt something ‘original’. Regardless of their assertion, most of their music was based on the rhythms of the Euro-Dance, disco, house and of course, J-pop with a dash of R&B and hip-hop thrown in. It was true that New Generation Dance Music was something new to most Korean audiences, but it was not original or creative in the traditional sense. In fact, the way of mixing patterns was already established by several J-pop musicians (Ugaya, 2005). The Korean music industry tried to follow the path of hybridization and localization that Japanese music industry had paved. It might have not been a serious problem if New Generation Dance Music producers and musicians had just referred to what Japanese musicians had already done. However, they chose an easier way—to simply plagiarize J-pop (Cha & Choi, 2011; Han, 2011; G. T. Lee, 2016). It was not the first time that Korean songs were accused of plagiarism of Japanese songs. As mentioned earlier, the Korean music industry had been influenced by Japanese popular music in the establishment of the first Korean modern popular music genre trot, which was deeply rooted in Japanese enka. Even after the independence from Japan in 1945, and in spite of the closed-door policy toward Japanese popular culture, South Korea still referred to Japanese style of music making and producing. However, the scale of plagiarism of Japanese music by the Korean music industry in the early and the mid-1990s was unparalleled in its history (Y. Lee, 1998; Lim, 1998). The pervasiveness of plagiarism secretly done by many composers and producers came to the surface by a big scandal in the 1990s—the Roo’ra Scandal. Roo’ra, the most popular New Generation Dance Music band in the early 1990s, released their third album Chun Sang Yoo Ae (천상유애, Love in the Heaven) in December 1995. The first

90  Gyu Tag Lee single from this album, Chun Sang Yoo Ae which many audiences had been looking forward to, went straight to the top as soon as it was released.13 However, right after its release, several fans and critics accused Roo’ra for plagiarizing a previously released Japanese song, Omatsuri Ninja (お祭り忍者, Festival Ninja) by Ninja. After an examination, the Korea Media Rating Board (the national committee of censorship and rating on cultural products, hereafter KMRB) declared that Chun Sang You Ae was the result of plagiarism of Omatsuri Ninja, and ordered the recording company to recall all of the records. After the verdict LEE Sangmin, the leader of Roo’ra, attempted suicide in despair (fortunately, he did not succeed) and the band went on hiatus. The scandal was shocking and aroused public discourse that asked for a thorough investigation into the plagiarism rampant in New Generation Dance Music and the whole Korean music industry. Journalists and music critics began reporting several cases of plagiarism in songs of New Generation Dance Music (see H. Y. Lee, 1996). Soon after, the KMRB which had not actively intervened in plagiarism before 1995 officially began to investigate the problem. According to Y. W. Lee (2002), between 1995 and 1996, the KMRB banned 22 songs for plagiarism. This was a huge number considering the fact that from 1966 (the year when KMRB was established) to 1994, the total number of banned songs was only 74. Also, in the past, reasons for the ban of songs were usually political issues (such as “lewdness” and “impure ideology”) while plagiarism was rather a rare case. Moreover, the KMRB did not investigate all songs under suspicion of plagiarism and journalists, industry insiders, music critics, and fans expected that there were more songs of plagiarism than what KMRB revealed. For example, SHIN Yong-Hyun, a former SBS radio music program producer, drew up a list of songs suspected to be plagiarized but not banned by KMRB (Y. W. Lee, 1998, p. 171; see Table 5.3). It should be noted that most plagiarism of that period was focused on Japanese music, not Anglo-American music, which was more dominant in the global market. During the period of rapid growth, the Korean music industry tended to rely on the proven way of hybridization and indigenization— adopting foreign music into the domestic culture. Moreover, while AngloAmerican music was officially released though it was heavily censored, Japanese music was not officially allowed in the Korean music market. Based on the fact that most Korean audiences had no exposure to it (see Lim, 1996; Shin et al., 2005), many producers and musicians thought that it was only they who knew the latest information about Japanese music, which was a big miscalculation. These dynamics incited the explosion of plagiarism. It had already been apparent that Korean audiences liked Japanese style melodies, so it was somewhat natural for lackadaisical creators, musicians, and producers to pay attention to Japanese trends in dance music and to copy it.

New Generation Dance Music  91 Table 5.3  List of songs suspected to be plagiarized in the 1990s Korean songs suspected to be plagiarism

Original Japanese songs

Silver Knife by Soo Jealousy by YOO Seung-Bum My Own Reason by Zam Too Proud to Beg by Sechs Kies You & I by URI

I Can’t Let Go by Zard Fly by Hound Dog Season of the Sun by Amuro Namie** To the Sea by Southern All Stars Theme from Marco Jjang, the TV animation Try Me by Amuro Namie Doubt by Hide Jumpin’ Jack Boy by Wands Cross Road by Mr. Children Baby You’re My Home by B’z Is It Love by Zoo Ticket to the Loneliness by Wands** You’re My World by Matsuda Seiko Telephone Line by TMR Enjoy by Club Maharaja Endless Rain by X-Japan

I Can’t Do That by NRG Another Bad Day by HOT Come Back to Me by Route One What Should I do by Pinocchio Like We First Met by YOON Jong-Shin Missing You by Coco Short Promise by KIM Won-Joon Above the Sky by LEE Moo-Song* For Me by The Blue Screaming in the Silence by R.ef Farewell without Preparation by Noksaek Jidae Always in My Dream by JANG Hye-Jin I Will Love by LEE Sang-Eun

Under the Sun by Hamada Koko** Just a Man in Love by Kuwata Band

Contrary to the expectation of Korean music industry and musicians, it was the audience who found the widespread plagiarism of J-Pop that an ordinary BBS user firstly accused the plagiarism of Roo’ra to the public (K. W. Kim, 1996). He uploaded the original Japanese song on the BBS for other users to compare it to Roo’ra’s Chun Sang Yoo Ae, which had become a huge issue of discussion over the whole BBS—the cyber space of the era 1990s. Soon after, several users organized a signature campaign against the plagiarism both on-line and off-line and reported it to the press (ibid.). Through this procedure, audiences of ‘forbidden music’ were officially disclosed to the public including the music industry, which saw in these populations the possibility of potential consumers. Those plagiarism scandals evoked the discourse of opening the cultural market to global products without active control and penetration by the government. In this process, the power of young audiences in Korean music industry grew stronger that they proved themselves to be not passive consumers but active listeners. After a number of plagiarism scandals, New Generation Dance Music rapidly declined in the market. However, while New Generation Dance Music might be regarded as forgettable in considering its roots in plagiarism and industrial immaturity, it still proves to be influential over two decades after its rise because the current K-pop originated from that genre.

92  Gyu Tag Lee The industry has discarded the shameful tendency of plagiarism and begun to use different ways such as remake, sampling, remix, and co-produce instead, yet it borrowed musicians’ images as well as the legacy of combining trendy dance rhythms with domestic melody lines. The rise of K-pop in the late 1990s demonstrated the possibility that the domestic music industry could produce music of global quality despite its beginnings in plagiarism. The main transformation in the music industry from New Generation Dance Music to K-pop has been the creation of a well-­established industrial system and a great musical competence of both musicians and producers.

Conclusion The 1990s were a transition period for the Korean music industry. While the development of technologies such as digitalization and the emergence of youths as the major audience had a great influence, the industry could not keep up with the pace of growth in demand by newly risen younger audiences who wanted something new, modern, and different. The Korean government regulations on importing Japanese music, which had been strong and fierce, were loosened by the strong resistance by young audiences and musicians—literally the New Generation. This time was a period of transition where Korea began to enter into the global market through media production technology, the copyright system, and the economy. All of these factors deeply influenced the Korean music industry. New Generation Dance Music was result of this transition. Though it could not have a “happy ending,” audiences, producers, and musicians alike got a lesson from the rise and fall of this musical genre and matured through it. In the decade from the late 1980s to mid-1990s, like those of several other developing countries, the Korean cultural industries were also in danger of being encroached by global/multinational conglomerates. However, the whole system of the music industry in the 1990s, established based on transformations at that period, was improved and modified to produce global products and support their first-ever global culture brand. It is K-pop—the direct descendant of New Generation Dance Music which is the outcome of cultural hybridization between Korean and Japanese music along with AngloAmerican music. In this procedure of accepting Japanese music and producing a new genre based on it, Korean popular music got similar with J-Pop. Among others, K-pop’s idol and agency system which entertainment agencies train and educate prospective idols (trainees) and strictly manage and even control them after their debut originated from J-Pop and have established similar cultures between two music industries. However, they also got diversified according to different social and cultural contexts (G. T. Lee, 2016). Therefore, it shows how the cultural convergence and divergence between two countries

New Generation Dance Music  93 has happened while there have been always barriers for cultural exchanges based on historical and political conflicts.

Notes 1 Many public and private colleges/universities were established during the YoungSam Kim era (the 13th president of Korea, 1993–1998). 2 ‘Exam hell’ is a phrase that is commonly used by Korean media, students, parents, and teachers to show hardship that students should take because of the college entrance exam. 3 See Hebdige (1979), McRobbie (1993), and Bennett (2000) for detailed description of the relationship between youth culture, popular music, and stylistic images. 4 Gayo Top 10 was the most famous and reliable television music chart program (such as British TV show Top of the Pops), broadcasted by Korean Broadcasting System (KBS). This program was broadcasted weekly for 17 years, from February 10th, 1981 to February 11th, 1998. 5 All of song titles are originally in Korean, translated by the author. 6 For example, among New Generation Dance musicians seen in Table 2.2, the dance music trio DJ DOC and R.ef consist of three former DJs; two members of the hip hop trio Seotaji & the Boys were backup dancers of Hyun Jin-Young & the Wa-Wa, one of the famous dance groups in the early 1990s. And members of Noise and Roo’ra were backup dancers of other dance music musicians of the 1980s. 7 The structure of popular music usually consists of: verse—pre-chorus— chorus—verse—pre-chorus—chorus—bridge—chorus. In pre-chorus or bridge part, ­instrumental solo is inserted such as a guitar solo, harmonica solo, or keyboard solo. 8 For instance, while popular dance music quartet Roo’ra touted their music as ‘the original Jamaican dancehall reggae’, a dance music trio R.ef insisted that they were the first musicians to bring rave music to Korean popular music scene (the name R.ef is an abbreviation of ‘Rave effect’). Also, dance music duo Deux emphasized their music as original American hip-hop, quartet Noise as house, and Goofy as techno (see I. K. Kang, 2011). 9 Among them, Joong-Hyun Shin was named as ‘the progenitor of Korean rock music’, and Patty Kim as ‘the mother of Korean pop ballads’. 10 For example, Sweet 19 Blues (1996), the debut album of the famous Japanese musician Namie Amuro, was surmised to be sold nearly a million copies unofficially. It was not allowed to officially release Japanese music in Korea until 2004; therefore her album could sell only through piracy and smuggling (Hong, 2005). 11 Channel [V] International is a satellite broadcasting music channel owned by Rupert Murdoch. Its main base was located in Hong Kong. It was founded after MTV Asia parted ways with the Star TV network, a Murdoch-owned Asian satellite television network. 12 Unfortunately, there are not official records about the penetration rate of this ‘unofficial’ dish for the international satellite networks, because neither Korean government nor those international satellite networks did not pay much attention to these ‘secret’ Korean viewers. In some region—such as Gangnam and Apgujeong—where middle and upper middle class resided, it was said that 10~20 percent of every household had the dish to watch international satellite networks mostly, but not limited to, Japanese broadcasting channels such as BS-CS400 (Shin, 2001). 13 According to Huh (1996), this album was pre-ordered over two million copies before its release.

94  Gyu Tag Lee

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6 The past, present, and future of Boys Love (BL) cultures in East Asia Jungmin Kwon

Introduction The growing fandom for male-male romance, which ranges from Asian countries and the Middle East to the Americas and Europe and which has historically been closeted, is becoming increasingly visible in contemporary global pop culture (Kwon, 2019). Diverse figurations and appellations orbit this fandom, which revels in producing, circulating, and consuming queer stories about male leads. Among these story types, boys love (BL), which originated in Japan, is gaining the most ground worldwide, with some fan studies’ scholars advocating the need for transnational BL studies to help unravel cross-cultural fan culture at a deeper level (Nagaike & Suganuma, 2013, para. 6). BL is an umbrella term for “Japanese and Japanese-influenced male-male romance [both] for and by women” (Madill et al., 2018, p. 418). Female fans of manga and anime in late 1970s Japan began creating romantic and/or sexual stories between two male characters from their beloved media text— a fan behavior that was soon co-opted by publishing houses. Another term, yaoi—which combines “yamanashi”  (no climes), “ochinashi”  (no point), and “iminashi” (no meaning),” first appeared to indicate the fan-produced artifacts that were widely used; however, the term “BL” has gained more currency in the 2010s. Some argue that yaoi is a secondary amateur work within the fan community, while BL is a commercial piece by a professional artist/author. These terms are interchangeably used in most contexts, yet, as stated, BL is now the more common term, and it encompasses both types of artifacts (Kwon, 2019, p. 6). The fandom for BL has spread to neighboring countries in East Asia, such as South Korea (hereafter Korea), Taiwan, and China, and its popularity in the region is growing immensely. Korean BL fans read Japanese BL books, write fan fiction (fanfic) about male K-pop idols, and pay for commercial BL webtoons (digital comics). In Taiwan, a country that has maintained a friendlier attitude toward Japan than either Korea or China has, many BL fans enjoy Japanese BL artworks and visit Japan to feel closer to their favorite BL characters (Martin, 2017). By contrast, mainland China is

Past, present, and future of Boys Love  97 well-known for censoring media content about nonheteronormative topics and themes, which forces Chinese BL producers and consumers to go online for relative freedom from governmental surveillance. In the digital space, they can find numerous literary websites and fan communities for danmei (耽美), a name for Chinese BL (Chao, 2016; Yang & Xu, 2016; Yi, 2013). Calling themselves rotten girls—fujoshi (腐女子) in Japan, bunyeoja (婦女子) in Korea, and funü (腐女) in China—“to describe their enthusiasm for ­fantasizing narratives seemingly rooted in male homosexuality,” female BL fans in each country have been building unique local BL cultures, which will be discussed later in this chapter (Zhou, 2017, p. 93). At the same time, I postulate that local BL fan cultures in East Asia possess strong commonalities. This argument does not intend to efface or totalize the unique textures of each BL fandom; rather, it aims to ask a fundamental question about the broad circulation of BL texts in the region across linguistic and national barriers: What makes this group (i.e., female fans of BL from East Asia) eager for male-male romance? East Asian countries share a long history of multifarious interactions among them that can be traced back to the Before Christ period. Geographical adjacency necessarily led to sociocultural proximity, such as similarities in languages, art forms, religion, and family norms. In the current age, the relationships among the aforementioned countries take multiple modalities due to complex political, cultural, and historical reasons. For instance, per one Chinese policy, Taiwan halted its diplomatic relationship with Korea soon after Korea and China established a relationship. In addition, Japan sustains a more strained relationship with Korea and China than it does with Taiwan due to Japanese Occupation-era incidents and territorial disputes surrounding the Dokdo/Takeshima and Diaoyu/Senkaku Islands. Anti-Japanese sentiment that stemmed from the collective historical trauma even resulted in Korean and Chinese governmental decisions to ban the import of Japanese cultural items. The regulation ended in 1998 in Korea, but it remains today in China. The relationship between China and Korea is also sometimes poor due to issues that are related to their ties with North Korea and the United States. In the mid-2010s, for example, the relations were aggravated as the United States deployed the anti-missile defense system Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) in Korea because China and North Korea considered it as an aggressive action toward them. However, such tensions have not completely extinguished cultural exchanges among the adjacent countries. Indeed, subcultural interactions between BL fans have intermittently occurred on an individual level (a trip or study abroad within the region) or through the black market. In addition, advances in digital technology since the 1990s have tremendously contributed to the promotion of cultural communications among local fan groups from different countries (Chen, 2017; Zhang, 2016). Media convergence, whether it be content, platforms, technology, or production, is expediting and updating BL fans’ activities in East Asia. In China, an online BL novel

98  Jungmin Kwon was adapted into the successful period TV drama Nirvana in Fire (Langya Bang, 2015). Soon after its broadcast in Korea, the historical recreation grabbed the attention of the country’s BL fans (Zhao et al., 2017, p. xix). Popular Korean commercial BL writers were offered opportunities to publish their pieces on the Chinese online market (Kwon, forthcoming). Both the fansubbing and the scanlation of Japanese BL products are important subcultural behaviors that overcome any barriers to cultural exchanges (Yang, 2017, p. 377). Within this context, I return to the question of how this particular subculture (i.e., BL fandom in East Asia) could obtain strong fan bases across national boundaries and beyond political, cultural, and historical conflicts. I posit that the shared sociocultural backgrounds of East Asian nation-states have enabled the BL trend in the area. More specifically, I suggest that the ulterior desires of female fans in the region are directly associated with the region’s deep-rooted heteropatriarchy, which is based on Confucianism, and contemporary changes in the status of women and their gender and sexuality awareness. Put simply, BL is a cultural venue in which this fan group can release their socially and culturally oppressed feelings and manifest their rising power. To unfold this argument, the chapter is organized as follows. I firstly historicize BL culture and its development in each East Asian country, with a focus on reciprocal actions. This first section includes a short discussion on academic assumptions and explanations for why BL has a huge following. In the second section, I explore the root of shared fantasies about the male body that are described in BL content among BL participants and offer culturally specific backgrounds regarding BL’s origin, such as Confucianism and the oppressive education system. I  also respond to concerns and critiques toward BL fandom about whether the collective fantasy about the male body either involves feminist, gender nonconforming messages or it perpetuates heteronormative, antiqueer structures. Next, I  move on to examining recent, noticeable BL phenomena that are commonly discovered in East Asian popular cultures. The notion of media convergence is applied to explain the multilayered, cross-cultural, and translingual pop cultural trends, especially in terms of intertextuality, new platforms, and commercialization.

The birth and distribution of Boys Love (BL) in East Asia In this section, I  briefly map the history of BL to discern how BL moved to other cultures from its origin in Japan. The history of BL traces back to the birth of yaoi. In the late 1970s, some young female fans of manga began working on pieces of their own that could easily circulate through printing technology at the time. Their publications involved male characters from their favorite manga stories and included homosexual romance and/or eroticism. The artworks were mostly distributed through dōjinshi, a

Past, present, and future of Boys Love  99 fan-produced magazine (fanzine), until the first commercial magazine (June) for the fan genre came out in 1978. Since then, both self-published fanzines and commercial periodicals have continued, and they have established the male-male love story by pairing up existing fictional characters from manga, animation, or video games to create one of the most popular literary genres in Japan. Its narrative frequently accompanies thick eroticism, violence, incest, and/or rape between two male leads, who are illustrated as possessing both conventionally determined masculinity and femininity as well as a gender-ambiguous physical appearance (Kee, 2008). However, the characters tend to follow the existing gender hierarchy in some cases: one character will have more emphasis on masculine traits and thus be the lead; he will push the relationship with a male who embodies more femininity than he himself does. The masculine lead is nicknamed “seme” (attack in English, meaning top) and the feminine male is the “uke” (receive in English, meaning bottom). Other than the projection of existing gender stereotypes, other contentions surround this subculture, such as the removal of the female body (despite the gender of the most fan authors and readers), the characters’ hidden or self-isolated identities, and the objectification of the gay body. Yaoi Dispute (Yaoi Ronso) exemplifies it well: it was a heated debate between female fans of BL and gay activists in Japan in the 1990s. However, the female fandom for BL has only flourished as a result, and more fans are enjoying their fujoshi identity. The gay boom in the 1990s media market helped BL culture rise and manifest in Japanese society (McLelland, 2001). In the mid-2000s, the fujoshi even began grabbing the mainstream media’s attention and replacing the withering otaku, which is a male-oriented fandom (Kamm, 2013, para. 2.9; Suzuki, 2013, para. 2.3). During the past four decades, Japanese BL culture has been constantly stretching out locally and transculturally through a variety of routes, including traditional avenues, such as dōjinshi and fan-centered comic markets, and novel paths, such as social media and web communities. It is understandable why Japanese BL culture diffused to its closest country (Korea) soon after its nascence. Although Korea banned the import of cultural products from its neighboring country until the late 1990s, Korean fans of Japanese popular culture indulged in a variety of Japanese cultural items, ranging from publications to video to broadcasting via multiple channels (H. M. Kim, 2003a). Along with other manga genres, yaoi materials were introduced to Korean fans in the 1980s; they then formed fan circles and circulated self-created donginji, a Korean equivalent to dōjinshi. The two terms sound similar because they are based on the same Chinese term 同人誌, of which a denotative meaning is a self-published written text by a group of people who share similar cultural tastes. Thanks to the popularity of BL dōjinshi/donginji, the term is usually thought to indicate fan-produced artifacts about male-male romance. Notably, BL’s popularity surged in the 1990s, and several interanimating factors worked together to support that increase. Digital technology that supported production, distribution, and

100  Jungmin Kwon consumption expanded the fanbase, which contributed to the increase in the number of BL artists—particularly commercial authors—as well as BLoriented manhwa (manga in Korean) magazines, such as Issue and Wink. In addition, the open-door policy to Japanese pop culture that launched in 1998 allowed a greater inflow of BL texts. Korean fans of BL, who are selfnicknamed yaonyeo and more recently bunyeoja, which is borrowed from the Japanese fujoshi, relish consuming both online and offline BL pieces by amateur and professional artists from Korea and Japan. Fanfic, which is also a prevalent BL subgenre in the country, involves two real-life celebrities, usually two male K-pop singers from one group, and it narrates their love story. According to Park (2004), the fanfic culture is pervasive in teenaged girls’ culture insomuch that most female students in a middle school that was surveyed confirmed their experience with it (p. 42). Dissimilar to yaoi, fanfic is primarily circulated digitally because the generation grew up with various online communication tools, such as dial-up and the internet. The subculture in Korea was influenced by its Japanese counterpart, which is predictable when considering that the Korean idol system was heavily affected by that of J-pop. As K-pop singers begin gaining attention worldwide, especially in East Asia, fanfic about them is likewise being sought after by fans overseas. Taiwanese fans of Japanese manga and animation were quick to welcome BL culture in the late 1970s. Political censorship for excessive nudity and/ or violent visuals did exist, but it was not rigorously applied to pirated Japanese BL content, and the regulation itself ended in 1988 (Chang, 2017, p. 179; Martin, 2017, p. 367). As a result, Taiwanese fans could have more BL resources than their counterparts in other East Asian countries. Like Korean fans’ donginji, Taiwanese local BL culture proliferated through grassroots periodicals named tongrenzhi following dōjinshi. This distribution widened fanbases and made BL hugely popular in 1990s Taiwan, which triggered the emergence of commercial BL literature. These fans have also enjoyed fan-produced magazines by their cultural allies in mainland China and Hong Kong as well as Japan, which became very commonplace with the advent of the internet (Martin, 2017, p. 368). Increased technology particularly led to more active interactions and interdependence among Chinesespeaking writers and readers, which resulted in more visibility of BL culture in the region. By the late 1990s, Hong Kong saw BL spreading to the city via Taiwan, and it became a bridgehead to BL’s expansion to mainland China (Liu, 2009). Danmei is BL’s Chinese name/pronunciation of tanbi (耽美), which refers to “decadent, highly aestheticized literary forms [that are] often applied to literature dealing with male homosexuality” in Japan (McLelland & Welker, 2015, p. 11). Danmei emerged in the 1990s when pirated Japanese BL manga from Taiwan and Hong Kong crossed over to China. As the time dovetailed with the distribution of the internet, Chinese BL was primarily disseminated through this digital tool, even though its popularity was

Past, present, and future of Boys Love  101 initiated by offline tongrenzhi. Several literary websites that target women, so-called “online forums,” including Baidu Post Bar, and social media platforms, such as QQ and Sina Weibo, provide a space for danmei amateur and commercial artists, consumers, and potential publishers to converge and mingle. Among them, Jinjiang Literature City (a free-turned-commercial literary website), Gongzi Changpei (a forum), and Lofter (light blogging) are currently the most preferred by Chinese BL participants, or so-called “funü” (Chen, 2017, p.  32). All three are not limited to danmei content, but the genre enjoys the greatest popularity and garners the most discussion and attention among genre categories (Chao, 2016, p. 73; Yang & Xu, 2017, p. 5). Other reasons that online BL flourishes more than offline publications are government surveillance and social backlash. The Chinese administration red lines all graphic descriptions of sexual relationships and homosexuality in all media forms. Along with this policy, its society denounces the funü community for being obsessed with the gay body and potentially detrimental to its (heteronormative) structures (Yi, 2013, para. 3). In one rare case, the BL hardcopy magazine BLue successfully survived governmental scrutiny; however, most magazines were forced to shut down (Yang & Xu, 2017, p.  6). Unfortunately, cyberspace is increasingly less safe. In 2011, more than thirty danmei writers, mostly young women in their late teens and twenties, were seized in Zhengzhou, Henan Province for publishing online novels, including those that contained male-male eroticism. Accordingly, since the late 2000s, many literary portal websites have removed the danmei genre and encouraged authors to exclude erotic descriptions, although some danmei forums have simply moved their servers to other countries. To circumvent being controlled, the funü created special BL jargon and code words. Notwithstanding these challenges, “danmei fever” has not waned (Yang & Bao, 2012; Yang & Xu, 2016, Yi, 2013; Zhang, 2016; Zhao et al., 2017). Rather, BL is becoming a fast-growing media genre that combines local and global aspects of BL culture (Yang & Xu, 2017, p. 3). For example, the pairing-up of characters ranges from Chinese premodern/ classic novels (e.g., Romance of the Three Kingdoms) and domestic and foreign TV shows to real-life stars and from sports players to Japanese and Korean idol stars (Yang, 2017, p. 376). Many academics have considered why straight women are attracted to gay romance in East Asia (Galbraith, 2011; Kee, 2008; M. J. Kim, 2003b; Kwon, 2019; Martin, 2017; McLelland et al., 2015; Noh & Nam, 1998; Otomo, 2015; Park, 2004, 2005; Yang & Xu, 2016; Yi, 2013; Zhang, 2016). In reply to that question, Pagliassotti (2008) suggests the following reasons: “shifting points of view/multiple identifications, androgynous protagonists, egalitarian love relationships, and graphic depictions of sexual activities” (p. 7). In addition to the internal features of the genre, Yi (2013) and Martin (2017) emphasize the fandom’s role as a community in which friendship and solidarity among marginalized female authors and readers can be formed. Elsewhere, I  gathered reasons that were proposed by preceding works as

102  Jungmin Kwon well as those that I based on my meetings with BL producers and consumers in Korea (Kwon, 2019). The most commonly discussed reason is cisgender hetero women’s dissatisfaction with existing heterosexual romance, which reproduces gendered stereotypes and sexist social structures. Male-male romance offers fresh narratives, characters, their struggles, and romance motifs, about which straight women have limited knowledge in real life. In addition, what differentiates the male-male story from a heterosexual novel is the less gendered relationship between the two leads, which can likely not be fulfilled in a heterosexual genre that reiterates “men lead, and women follow.” No matter with whom the female reader identifies, she can be liberated from the social gender trap. Even more pleasant to women is that BL makes them the owner of the gaze. Women can, perhaps for the first time, fully manipulate two male bodies in whatever form they wish, from romantic sex to brutal rape, and appease their sexual curiosities and desires without the discomfort of seeing a female sexualized and perverted, which is not uncommon in the existing media about heterosexual romance. Hence, BL is an imaginary space in which straight female fans can escape the gender hierarchy and dare to actualize their bold fantasies. These discussions have led some BL researchers to argue BL’s sociocultural and political potentials to disrupt heteropatriarchal society. Thus far, I have presented that East Asian BL fans share many historical backgrounds, such as pirated content, state censorship, and the internet, which have either promoted or deterred BL in each culture. In addition, I have discussed why BL piques the interest of women in the region, which may be transferrable to BL fans in other cultures. These discussions do not intend to proclaim that BL cultures in East Asia have undergone the same developmental stages or are identical. Despite some commonalities, each BL culture does preserve unique aspects and inhabit multiple camps. For example, the dissimilar degrees of cultural and political surveillance over BL culture have resulted in differences regarding the primary routes through which BL is produced, circulated, and consumed. Offline BL publications are still prevalent in Japan, which is not a strong case in China. Korea no longer censors Japanese cultural items or (explicitly) portrayals of homosexuality, but its existence before the mid-2000s affected how BL culture developed. Accordingly, the level of eroticism in Korean BL is generally lower than that of Japanese BL that was not monitored (Mukai, 2016, p. 28). The online BL culture in Korea also led to the birth of BL webtoons (digital comics), which are expanding the BL fan community (Kwon, forthcoming). In addition, individual fans demonstrate various degrees of engagement with communal BL spaces (Zhang, 2016, p. 263). The common theory is that BL fans enjoy interacting with others in the cyber BL community. However, Zhang (2016) discovered that not all fans are either interested in community building or appreciate the sense of belonging. Therefore, the particulars in each culture can be dissimilar. Nonetheless, interactions that are based on geographical and cultural proximity in the region have engendered common threads in

Past, present, and future of Boys Love  103 East Asian BL cultures insomuch that I can suggest more culturally specific assumptions regarding from where East Asian female fans’ fantasies stem, which will be investigated in the following section.

Shared fantasies in Boys Love versus heteropatriarchal gender paradigms in East Asia Women’s status in East Asian cultures has been tremendously affected by Confucian ideology. In the traditional heteropatriarchal economy, the role of women was evident: they were required to physically and emotionally support their family and carry on a family line by giving birth to a son. It was taken for granted that women’s agency was unthinkable and unattainable. In China, the birthplace of such a paradigm, women were obligated to their fathers, husbands, and sons, and they had to practice virtues, including polite speech, humanity, morality, and housekeeping skills (Yi, 2013, para. 10). Young women in contemporary East Asia can achieve equivalent education to men and receive familial support in a nuclear family, sometimes as an only child (Kwon, 2019; Zheng, 2016). Unfortunately, women perennially encounter sexist discrimination at school and work, and they face gender stereotypes in most relationships. According to the Global Gender Gap Report (2018), an annual document that was announced by World Economic Forum, the worldwide average distance completed to parity was 68 percent, indicating a 32 percent gap between men and women regarding economic participation and opportunity, educational attainment, health and survival, and political empowerment. The material detailed that China, Korea, and Japan all scored below average at 67.3 percent, 65.7 percent, and 64.5  percent, respectively.1 While the difference between the global average and these nation-states is not remarkable, it is still lamentable when considering their statuses in the global economy and their roles as important axes in world politics. Other close Asian countries, such as The Philippines, Thailand, Vietnam, Indonesia, Malaysia, and Singapore, had higher percentages than the average or at least higher than the three East Asian countries. The official report even pinpointed that women in Korea and Japan spent time performing unpaid labor, such as housework and household care, five times more often than their male counterparts did. This conservative gender culture in East Asia permeates the school system as a way to suppress (female) teens’ sexuality. Confucian ideology regards sex and sexuality as a taboo topic, and women are particularly discouraged from discussing and expressing sexuality. In the modern era, it is becoming less a violation, but it is still quite present for young women, especially teenaged girls going to a secondary school. Female youth are considered asexual, and it is thought that they should be unaware of their sexuality. This is somewhat contradictory to East Asian pop cultures, which are well-known for extremely sexualizing and objectifying the young female body. Namely, they cannot be the subject of their own sexuality, yet they can be the object of others’ desiring

104  Jungmin Kwon (patriarchal) glances. Accordingly, these women do not receive proper sex education during their teen life from either family or their schools. The school system not only fails to furnish proper sex education but also fails to provide an enjoyable school life. China and Korea are notorious for their excessive and heavy-handed competition in college entrance examinations, and overbearing school systems push students to extremes regarding academic achievement (Tian, 2015, p. 258). Therefore, reading BL and joining a BL community function as exits through which these young women can temporarily digress from an unbearable reality and become culturally and politically empowered in an imaginary realm. BL is a perfect fantasy for East Asian young women who are (forced to be) ignorant of sex and sexuality. While envisioning the fantasy, they become acquainted with men and the male body. BL also becomes a space in which BL fans can flesh out their ideal men, who do not exist in the real world. In fact, fantasized BL characters are not groundless. Citing Louie’s work on Chinese masculinity (2002), I have argued elsewhere that a man with wen in premodern China and a seonbi during the Joseon Dynasty, which was the last kingdom in the Korean Peninsula, were the dreamy lovers in each culture (Kwon, 2019). Louie (2002) described a man with wen as “a delicate, hyper-sensitive youngster with [a] pale face and narrow shoulders who falls ill at the slightest disappointment” (p. 94). These traits, which are based on the image of a Confucian scholar, are shared by a seonbi who is “a well-educated son of a noble family and a high-ranking official” (Kwon, 2019, p. 18). This type of feminized masculinity is commonly found in East Asian BL content, which begs the question: Is masculinity shown in BL historical and native to the region? The answer is yes but also no. Ironically, both wen-oriented men and seonbis occupied the top spot of the heteropatriarchal economic system in premodern China and Korea. Accordingly, their image as ideal lovers was likely influenced by class and wealth less than it was by their masculine attributes per se. Actually, androgynous men in premodern East Asia were typically appreciated by men. Young male crossdressers in Joseon’s Namsadang Nori, the Beijing Opera, and Kabuki were “the objects of homoerotic desire by ‘connoisseurs’ from the moneyed classes” (Louie, 2014, p.  933; Yang, 2007; Zhao  & Madill, 2018). Contemporary women looked for a new kind of man who would deviate from the traditional gender paradigm, whether it be wen-equipped men or seonbi men and would respect women. Such a man could only emerge if he first became psychologically and physically feminized because women are more likely to treat women in a non-discriminatory manner. This novel masculinity was incarnated in the Western body that East Asian women encountered during modernization. The influx of Western pop cultures and metrosexual trends molded the ideal male body that fantasy seekers were seeking out: they projected their imagined qualities about an indefectible man into the Western male body. In this sense, it is not surprising that early BL fan texts had their spatial background in Europe with Anglo-Saxon

Past, present, and future of Boys Love  105 characters, which is exemplified in The Poem of Wind and Trees (Kaze to Ki no Uta, 1976–1984, Japan) and Has Spring Come to Mr. Lewis? (Luiseussiege Bomeun Wassneunga?, 1990, Korea). Overall, the in-between masculinity that enthralls contemporary straight women in East Asian cultures is a mélange of women’s backlash against Confucian masculinity and their imagined Western male body. This newly fabricated and romanticized masculinity is dubbed “soft masculinity” by media scholars, (Jung, 2011) and it now influences the region’s popular culture and real-life men in East Asia about how the male body should look like (Kwon, 2019; Louie, 2012; Miller, 2006; McLelland & Welker, 2015). Such pop cultural items, such as Korean and Japanese pop stars, cyclically reinforce what comprises ideal masculinity in East Asia (Louie, 2002). With this explained, it becomes clearer why new masculinity involves the gay body: the gay man is new to straight women like the Western male body was to East Asian women. Thus, they can project their fantasy about men onto an unknown being, regardless of what gayness truly signifies (Chang, 2017). Aspirations for gay love even lead straight women to want to have gay male friends (Hori, 2013; Kwon, 2019). This is where BL becomes a moot point: is it right for straight women to take advantage of the gay body to fulfill their heterosexual desires? Is the BL fantasy either conforming or transformative? BL fandom in contemporary East Asia is inarguably a highly contested space in which authors, readers, scholars, activists, media discourse, and gay people offer a multiplicity of positions and sometimes engage in fierce debates. The arguments between gay men and BL fans in the region, such as the earlier-mentioned Yaoi Dispute, are unfinished, and scholars are divided into pros and cons regarding whether to acknowledge subversive capabilities of BL.2 Such ongoing contestation will never (and will never have to) lead to a clear answer about what BL culture is and what it should be like. Rather, the diverse textures and qualities of BL will enrich and complicate the discourse about gender and sexuality in East Asia (Zhang, 2016). As I discovered elsewhere, some straight BL fans may have an openminded attitude toward sexual minorities, and others who have a negative impression of homosexuality may have an opportunity to confront and reckon the irony that is embedded in their fan activities (Kwon, 2019). Increasing nonheteronormative male readers of BL can revisit either their relationship with straight women or suggest alternative options for BL content (Baudinette, 2017; Wood, 2013; Yang, 2017; Yang & Xu, 2016; Zsila & Demetrovics, 2017). Indeed, according to Yang and Xu (2017), on an online community, a gay danmei fan described the necessity of seme and uke (top and bottom in Japanese), which are criticized for representing traditional masculinity and femininity, respectively, and reproducing conventional gender culture. The thread spawned discussions in which BL fans reconsidered the taken-for-granted characterization. In addition, Zhang (2016) discovered that the feminine uke was gaining strength. In

106  Jungmin Kwon a broader context, it is undeniable that East Asian popular cultures are becoming relatively less heteronormative than before (Kwon, 2019; Lin, 2018; Zhao et  al., 2017). Importantly, “less heteronormative” does not necessarily mean that sexual minorities are always welcome to join and participate in those cultures. As explained earlier, mainstream cultural products that originate in BL have not, in many cases, moved beyond queerbaiting or the commodification of BL fandom and sexual minorities. Therefore, some BL fans and gay men are ambivalent and have agonized over the media visibility of the gay body, although they are grateful for BL’s growth, regardless of from where the product emerged (Kwon, 2019). Thus, confrontations over BL and queer media products continue, but I consider the debates productive and advantageous. Jenkins (2012) used the notion of monitorial citizenship in the discussion of the efficacy of social media activism. Social media has made it easier that citizens and activists mobilize for social justice and political engagement. Unfortunately, however, its simplicity and ubiquity can cause the distribution of misinformation or dispersion of attention and, as a result, hamper organized movements via the platform from achieving claimed goals or having lasting consequences in many cases. The digital media scholar examined KONY 2012, a short documentary about an abusive and brutal leader of a Ugandan guerrilla group, and its related social media movements. The activism revealed several archetypal problems of social media activism and garnered controversy about social media’s legitimacy and efficiency as a campaigning tool. Nonetheless, Jenkins (2012) remained sanguine because he believed that social media activism created a space based on the awareness it mobilized in which citizens could consider and discuss a raised issue, and experts could collaborate to provide more knowledge and solutions, which made trials and errors of social media activism meaningful. Though different contexts, I believe that monitorial citizenship is applicable to what is occurring within the giant BL sphere in which BL fans, scholars, activists, commercial media, and sexual minorities perennially collide over the value and impact of BL. The variety and complexity of their discussions and critiques about East Asian BL fandom cannot transform the current subcultural and mainstream BL activities into a “desirable” queer culture on which all of the parties involved can agree. However, we are witnessing the BL sphere offer a space wherein those involved with BL cultures consider and discuss a raised issue (objectifying the gay body and perpetuating a heteropatriarchal structure) and collaborate to provide more knowledge and solutions, thereby improving their gender and queer sensibilities. This monitorial citizenship in the BL sphere is becoming more feasible via new BL generations in East Asia who are more familiar with sexual minorities in the real world and gaining more exposure to a variety of BL content that is facilitated by media convergence, which will be explored next.

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Boys Love (BL) convergence The BL culture in East Asia is currently facing many changes. The development and proliferation of media technology in addition to geographical propinquity is significantly enlarging BL fandom in the region and escalating transregional and transcultural interactions among East Asian BL fans. In addition, the involvement of commercial entities in BL production is redefining BL as a robust subculture and a lucrative media genre. The internet has definitely been playing a vital role in the consolidation of the BL community. Forums or (micro-) blogging sites function as a public sphere in which BL fans exchange BL resources and share their fantasies. For example, Japanese BL fans on Twitter create bots of their favorite BL characters and collectively play with the bots, thereby strengthening ties among them (Nishimura, 2013). The webspace not only reinforces existing BL fandom but constantly helps distribute BL content (Chen, 2017; Zhang, 2016). Many webtoon (digital comics) sites, such as kakaopage and Lezhin Comics, that thrive in Korea list BL as their most popular genre, and several BL-oriented commercial websites, such as BLancia, have opened (Park, 2017). The dissemination is also transcultural. Chinese-speaking cultures can cross-consume online BL texts: Taiwanese and Hong Kong BL fans can read BL on Jinjiang, a Chinese web literary page with the biggest stock of BL. BL participants in mainland China who are seeking more graphic BL can satisfy that desire by visiting the Taiwanese literary website. Transcending language barriers with online translating programs or based on language skills, Chinese and Japanese fans of K-pop idols can consume Korean fanfic about their beloved K-pop celebrities. Korean consumers of Japanese BL can easily find fan-submitted BL online. The increase in consumption demands greater production, which can happen cross-culturally. For example, the online Taiwanese literary industry hires mainland Chinese writers who are unable to find jobs in their country (Chen, 2017, p.  16), and Korean BL writers sometimes publish their work in mainland China, in which Korean pop culture has greater currency (Kwon, forthcoming). The commercialization of BL content and fandom is not a new occurrence. The media industry jumped into the BL market when the substantial demands for such content became clear. BL-influenced musicals, including The New Member (Xin Sheyuan) in Taiwan and Thrill Me in Korea, are drawing young female audiences (Kwon, 2016; Lin, 2018). Boys Love (Bōizu Rabu, 2006) and Boys Love, the Movie (2007), which spawned from the commercial hit Boys Love, were released in Japan. Boys Love was later made into a namesake manga. Quasi BL content with cross-dressed characters, such as a Hong Kong film He’s the Woman, She’s the Man (Jīn Zhī Yù Yè, 1994, Hong Kong) and a Korean TV drama Coffee Prince (Keopipeulinseu 1hojeon, 2008) once flourished in East Asia. Even the Chinese entertainment industry occasionally alludes to their connection to BL, although this is a rare and tenuous event. For example, the performance of two male

108  Jungmin Kwon musicians during CCTV’s Spring Festival Gala of 2012 has been frequently discussed regarding how the Chinese media industry “incorporate[s] subcultural entertainment, especially male homosexual jokes from BL culture” (Zhou, 2017, p. 100). The expansion and capitalization of the BL sphere unquestionably take advantage of media convergence which occurs at various levels ranging from technological convergence to industry mergers to transmedia storytelling. BL stories can easily cross over to web novels, webtoon/digital comics, TV shows, animations, games, or films, so BL authors can advance to other media platforms. For instance, some Korean webtoon platforms launched web novel service and offer BL novels adapted from BL webtoons. Some BL authors have forged a new path as transmedia storytellers. Chai Jidan, a Chinese BL writer, produced the BL web drama Addicted (Shàngyǐn, 2016), which was based on her web novel Are You Addicted? (Nǐ Ya Shàngyǐn Le?, 2015). Due to its low budget, the production quality of Addicted is poor, yet it became enormously popular in the country as well as in other East Asian cultures upon its release. Unfortunately, the Chinese government feared the proliferation of such gay content and thus censored some erotic scenes. They even eventually banned the show’s production and took it offline. Nonetheless, its popularity continued: the two male leads became A-list stars on the East Asian entertainment scene, and the original web novel was translated and published in other Asian countries. Despite administrative regulations, similar attempts that were inspired by the success of Addicted are constantly made in mainland China, which demonstrates the potential of BL as an intertextual genre. In addition, it is not uncommon to identify intertextuality between mainstream media platforms and online BL content. Recently, mainstream BL content began sprawling across transmedia texts. The director of Three Kingdoms, a Chinese TV series that was based on a famous historical novel Romance of the Three Kingdoms, cast a feminine looking teen idol for a traditionally masculine character, which Tian (2015) considered an influence of the Three Kingdoms danmei. The 2008 Korean TV drama You’re Beautiful (Minamisineyo) “appropriate[d] fanfic tropes and insert[ed] queer possibility into narratives,” thereby fulfilling BL fan’s fantasies (Lessard, 2019, p. 164). The drama was remade in Japan and Taiwan and was received well in both places. This BL cooptation is not an entirely top-down process, from traditional media makers to fan consumers. Several scholars who investigated specific cases of mainstreamed BL reiterated that fans are constantly encouraged in the commercialization process because media producers value the positive role of fans’ contributions and loyalty in the media system (Hemmann, 2015; Kwon, 2016; Lin, 2018). Considering the birth and nature of BL as a fan-produced work, the media industry may well incorporate fans’ participation. It seems that BL participants and the industry are building a symbiotic relationship in the age of media convergence on cross-cultural multi-platforms.

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Conclusion Starting with an old name, yaoi in the 1970s, BL spread to other regions, formed a vast fandom across the world, became a trendy media genre, and invited other stakeholders to its space, such as sexual minorities, scholars, and activists, in addition to its producers and consumers. BL is now a transcultural, translingual, and transmedia phenomena, without a doubt. In particular, BL is a strong manifestation of the rise of issues in gender and sexuality in East Asia that have been suppressed by the Confucian/heteropatriarchal system for an extended period of time. Yet the BL fandom is not always considered entirely revolutionary or radical in terms of gender politics, although its fan activities involve subversive potentials. In fact, its fans are less interested in challenging the patriarchal structure. Rather, BL is a cultural, entertaining play, transcending geographical and linguistic borders and boundaries of media platforms. Therefore, it would be also meaningful to discuss the impact and effect of such play besides tackling its political legitimacy. However, the politics within the BL sphere should not be brushed away. All participants in the space should contemplate how they view and handle the situation in which their desires for a new gender order wind up objectifying and otherizing other marginalized groups. This is more so considering BL is being mainstreamed and influential on multiple platforms. When participants constantly revisit how to address multilayered relationships between men and women and between straight and nonstraight within the BL culture, it may likely differentiate itself from existing heteropatriarchal paradigms and justify its value.

Notes The report did not survey Taiwan. 1 2 Yang and Xu (2016) explained a conflict between danmei fans and gay men who want to marry a woman to succeed their family line (p. 254).

References Baudinette, T. (2017). Japanese gay men’s attitudes towards “gay manga” and the problem of genre. East Asian Journal of Popular Culture, 3(1), 59–72. Chang, W. (2017). Exploring the significance of “Japaneseness”: A  case study of fujoshi’s BL fantasies in Taiwan. In M. Lavin, L. Yang, & J. J. Zhao (Eds.), Boys’ love, cosplay, and androgynous idols queer fan cultures in mainland China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan (pp. 179–194). Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press. Chao, S. C. (2016). Grotesque eroticism in the danmei genre: The case of Lucifer’s club in Chinese cyberspace. Porn Studies, 3(1), 65–76. Chen, X. (2017). Boys’ love (Danmei) fiction on the Chinese Internet: Wasabi Kun, the BL forum young nobleman Changpei, and the development of an online literary phenomenon. The University of British Columbia.

110  Jungmin Kwon Galbraith, P. W. (2011). Fujoshi: Fantasy play and transgressive intimacy among “rotten girls” in contemporary Japan. Signs, 37(1), 211–232. Hemmann, K. (2015). Queering the media mix: The female gaze in Japanese fan comics. Transformative Works and Cultures, 20. Hori, A. (2013). On the response (or lack thereof) of Japanese fans to criticism that yaoi is antigay discrimination. Transformative Works and Cultures, 12. Jenkins, H. (2012, March  12). Contextualizing #Kony2012: Invisible children, spreadable media, and transmedia activism. Confessions of an Aca-fan Website. http://henryjenkins.org/blog/2012/03/contextualizing_kony2012_invis.html Jung, S. (2011). Korean masculinities and transcultural consumption: Yonsama, Rain, Oldboy, K-pop idols. Hong Kong University Press. Kamm, B. O. (2013). Rotten use patterns: What entertainment theories can do for the study of boys’ love. Transformative Works and Cultures, 12. Kee, T. B. (2008). Rewriting gender and sexuality in English-language yaoi fanfiction. In A. Levi, M. McHarry, & D. Pagliassotti (Eds.), Boys’ love manga: Essays on the sexual ambiguity and cross-cultural fandom of the genre (pp. 126–157). McFarland & Co. Kim, H. M. (2003a). The inflow of Japanese pop culture and the historical ­construction of fandoms in South Korea. Korean Cultural Anthropology, 36(1), 149–186. Kim, M. J. (2003b). A study on fanfic as a women’s cyber subculture: Focusing on the relation between fantasy and gender identity. Ewha Womans University. Kwon, J. (2016). Co-mmodifying the gay body: Globalization, the film industry, and female prosumers in the contemporary Korean mediascape. International Journal of Communication, 10, 1563–1580. Kwon, J. (2019). Straight Korean female fans and their gay fantasies. University of Iowa Press. Kwon, J. (2021). The commercialization and popularization of boys love (BL) in South Korea. In Queer transfigurations: BL media in Asia. University of Hawaii Press. Lessard, J. (2019). Transnational slash: Korean drama formats, boys’ love ­fanfic, and the place of queerness in East Asian media flows. In P. Demory (Ed.), Queer/adaptation: A  collection of critical essays (pp.  155–174). Palgrave Macmillan. Lin, W. (2018). A queer fantasy world of the new member: The phenomenon of the first boys’ love musical in Taiwan. Asian Theatre Journal, 35(2), 418–442. Liu, T. (2009). Conflicting discourses on boys’ love and subcultural tactics in mainland China and Hong Kong. Intersections: Gender and Sexuality in Asia and the Pacific, 20. Louie, K. (2002). Theorising Chinese masculinity: Society and gender in China. Cambridge University Press. Louie, K. (2012). Popular culture and masculinity ideals in East Asia, with special reference to China. The Journal of Asian Studies, 71(4), 929–943. Louie, K. (2014). Chinese masculinity studies in the twenty-first century: Westernizing, Easternizing and globalizing wen and wu. NORMA, 9(1), 18–29. Madill, A., Zhao, Y.,  & Fan, L. (2018). Male‒male marriage in Sinophone and Anglophone Harry Potter danmei and slash. Journal of Graphic Novels and Comics, 9(5), 418–434. Martin, F. (2017). Girls who love boys’ love: BL as goods to think with in Taiwan (with a revised and updated coda). In M. Lavin, L. Yang,  & J. J. Zhao (Eds.),

Past, present, and future of Boys Love  111 Boys’ love, cosplay, and androgynous idols queer fan cultures in mainland China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan (pp. 195–219). Hong Kong University Press. McLelland, M. (2001). Local meanings in global space: A  case study of women’s “Boys love” web sites in Japanese and English. Mots Pluriels, 19. McLelland, M., Nagaike, K., Suganuma, K., & Welker, J. (Eds.). (2015). Boys love manga and beyond: History, culture, and community in Japan. University Press of Mississippi. McLelland, M., & Welker, J. (2015). An introduction to “boys love” in Japan. In M. McLelland, K. Nagaike, K. Suganuma, & J. Welker (Eds.), Boys love manga and beyond: History, culture, and community in Japan (pp. 3–20). University Press of Mississippi. Miller, L. (2006). Beauty up: Exploring contemporary Japanese body aesthetics. University of California Press. Mukai, S. (2016). The examination of BL (boys’ love) through the framework of pure love. Korea University. Nagaike, K., & Suganuma, K. (2013). Transnational boys’ love fan studies. Transformative Works and Cultures, 12. Nishimura, K. (2013). Where program and fantasy meet: Female fans conversing with character bots in Japan. Transformative Works and Cultures, 12. Noh, S., & Nam, E. J. (1998). Reading yaoi by female manhwa fans: Interviewing members of manhwa club in PC communication (dial-up service). Presented at the Fall Conference of Korean Journal of Journalism and Communication Studies. Otomo, R. (2015). Politics of utopia: Fantasy, pornography, and boys love. In M. McLelland, K. Nagaike, K. Suganuma, & J. Welker (Eds.), Boys love manga and beyond: History, culture, and community in Japan (pp.  141–152). University Press of Mississippi. Pagliassotti, D. (2008). Better than romance? Japanese BL manga and the subgenre of male/male romantic fiction. In A. Levi, M. McHarry, & D. Pagliassotti (Eds.), Boys’ love manga: Essays on the sexual ambiguity and cross-cultural fandom of the genre (pp. 59–83). McFarland & Co. Park, S. J. (2004). A study on teenagers’ fanfic culture and attitudes toward homosexuality: Focusing on middle school girls. Ewha Womans University. Park, S. J. (2005). A study on women’s cultural competency and YAOI as women’s sexual fantasy. Ewha Womans University. Park, S. H. (2017). A study on domestic inflow and genre specialization of BL (boys’ love) adult cartoon. Sejong University. Suzuki, M. (2013). The possibilities of research on fujoshi in Japan. Transformative Works and Cultures, 12. Tian, X. (2015). Slashing three kingdoms: A  case study in fan production on the Chinese. Modern Chinese Literature and Culture, 27(1), 224–277. Wood, A. (2013). Boys’ love anime and queer desires in convergence culture: Transnational fandom, censorship and resistance. Journal of Graphic Novels & Comics, 4(1), 44–63. World Economic Forum. (2018). The global gender gap report 2018. www. weforum.org/reports/the-global-gender-gap-report-2018 Yang, K. S. (2007). A study on education program about intangible cultural heritage: A case study of namsadangnoli. Chung-Ang University. Yang, L. (2017). Platforms, practices, and politics: A  snapshot of networked fan communities in China. In G. Goggin & M. McLelland (Eds.), The Routledge companion to global Internet histories (pp. 370–383). London: Routledge.

112  Jungmin Kwon Yang, L., & Bao, H. (2012). Queerly intimate. Cultural Studies, 26(6), 842–872. Yang, L., & Xu, Y. (2016). Danmei, Xianqing, and the making of a queer online public sphere in China. Communication and the Public, 1(2), 251–256. Yang, L.,  & Xu, Y. (2017). Chinese danmei fandom and cultural globalization from below. In M. Lavin, L. Yang, & J. J. Zhao (Eds.), Boys’ love, cosplay, and androgynous idols queer fan cultures in mainland China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan (pp. 3–19). Hong Kong University Press. Yi, E. J. (2013). Reflection on Chinese boys’ love fans: An insider’s view. Transformative Works and Cultures, 12. Zhang, C. (2016). Loving boys twice as much: Chinese women’s paradoxical fandom of “boys’ love” fiction. Women’s Studies in Communication, 39(3), 249–267. Zhao, J. J., Yang, L., & Lavin, M. (2017). Introduction. In M. Lavin, L. Yang, & J. J. Zhao (Eds.), Boys’ love, cosplay, and androgynous idols: Queer fan cultures in mainland China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan (pp. xi–xxxiii). Hong Kong University Press. Zhao, Y., & Madill, A. (2018). The heteronormative frame in Chinese Yaoi: Integrating female Chinese fan interviews with Sinophone and Anglophone survey data. Journal of Graphic Novels and Comics, 9(5), 435–457. Zheng, X. (2016). Borderless fandom and contemporary popular cultural scene in Chinese cyberspace. University of Washington. Zhou, E. L. (2017). From online BL fandom to the CCTV Spring festival gala: The transforming power of online carnival. In M. Lavin, L. Yang, & J. J. Zhao (Eds.), Boys’ love, cosplay, and androgynous idols queer fan cultures in mainland China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan (pp. 91–110). Hong Kong University Press. Zsila, Á.,  & Demetrovics, Z. (2017). The boys’ love phenomenon: A  literature review. Journal of Popular Romance Studies, 6, 1–26.

7 Sharing gender imagination in East Asia An essay on soft masculinity and female digital scopophilia in East Asian mediaculture Seok-Kyeong Hong The popularity of Korean pop culture in East Asia is not meaningful simply in terms of industrial success. In the early 2000s, Korean pop culture content became surprisingly popular in many East Asian countries, gaining the name Hallyu (the Korean Wave) (Yoon & Kang, 2017; Hong et al., 2017). Hallyu, which has been greatly influenced by Japanese pop culture and wellreceived in the huge pop culture markets of China, Japan, and Southeast Asia, has opened a new channel for a transnational cultural phenomenon within East Asia. Although there were contextual differences in the acceptance by country, common cultural practices were found in various countries in East Asia. Among the various content that make up Hallyu, celebrities, who are active across dramas, K-pop, movies, fashion, and advertisements, became a particularly interesting transnational symbol as new East Asian stars. In any country, female audiences supplied the key energy for the Hallyu phenomenon, and as a result, male celebrities appealing to female audiences were mass produced. This cultural phenomenon, in which women are the main agents of cultural reception, naturally provides an interesting site for cultural studies in which cultural practices within a new gender dimension can be observed. In human history, there have been countless discourses of sexual attraction from different cultures, and the standards for attractiveness have varied. In any era, sexual attraction has been defined as a power embodying the dominant values of the society. As production of images became industrialized in modern times, Hollywood, which established an effective mass content production system, spread the image of attractive men and women. Hollywood produced them from their perspective, and its influence persists to this day. For a long time, Hollywood-produced stars have been representatives of masculinity and femininity, and children and teenagers around the world still grow under the influence of Western standards of beauty and visual order. Korea was no exception, and Western pop culture’s influence ranges from children playing with dolls filtered by Disney, to videos of stars that stimulate the sexual curiosity and fantasies of teenagers. Although the dolls with blonde hair and blue eyes from our childhood are now more

114  Seok-Kyeong Hong diversified in skin tone, eyes, and hair color, the West-centered visual order advertised throughout the 20th century is still maintained. Whether it is a melodrama, action, or a Disney animation, Hollywood’s narrative device added a dominant value not only to visual order but also to sexual identity. A  man of universally accepted hegemonic masculinity is rational, strong-willed, and has the strength to perform these abilities in times of crisis. He does not express his feelings or weaknesses easily, has a sense of humor, and is always viewed as better for having an attractive appearance. While many Western stars do not meet all of these criteria, they were not evaluated simply for their appearance. Visual pleasure for women is not taken into consideration by the hegemonic Western male image. This chapter aims to assert that a cultural industry which produces transnational male celebrities in East Asia exists and that these good looking East Asian celebrities show a soft masculinity that is distinguishable from the usual hegemonic masculinity. We will especially focus on the fact that significant cultural practices that produce this soft masculinity are being carried out by female agents of East Asian pop culture. These questions will be answered through three observations. First, the way female fandom prevails in East Asian convergence culture, taking examples from idol production systems and fandom as well as characteristics of media content, will be explained. Second, through the example of transnational male celebrities, one of the results of the East Asian convergence culture and dominant female fandom, the making of new masculinity and its sharing in East Asian celebrity fandom will be shown. Third, female fandom’s digital consumption of the male image will be analyzed, developing the notion of digital scopophilia and emphasizing its difference to male cinematic scopophilia. Ultimately, this chapter will argue that the soft masculinity of East Asia driven by female cultural agents is a cultural infrastructure that forms the transnational pop culture of the region and shares a identifiable gender imagination.

Is convergence culture gendered? This chapter began with the question of whether the North American convergence culture discussion developed by Jenkins (Jenkins, 2006) implicitly presupposes male audiences as the subject. Such question arose from the observation that in East Asia, female audiences are decisive subjects in the transnationalization of popular culture, and which can be said to be the converging force of the East Asian convergence culture. The convergence of popular culture industry in North America has been developed through transmedia production and participatory audience culture (Jenkins, 2006). American transmedia franchises, made of superhero comics, games, science fiction films, and sci-fi oriented TV series and web

Sharing gender imagination in East Asia  115 content, are considered masculine not only because of the dominance of the male characters in them but also in terms of audience composition,1 and intermediaries of production as well as the production culture itself. Geek Culture has massively investigated the superhero series and endorsed the phenomenon. Recent superhero film productions with female leads such as Wonder Woman (2017) or Captain Marvel (2019) are the reaction toward these male-oriented productions and the dominance of masculine imagination of the superhero story. In East Asia, as several chapters of this book have shown, the transnational flows of popular culture have been developed through decades: imports and exports of cultural industry systems and products (Keane  & Moran, 2003; Otmazgin, 2013; Waterman & Rogers, 1994), adaptations and remakes of TV drama, films, and manga (Deppman, 2009; Jirattikorn, 2018; Ngo, 2015; Yasumoto, 2015), East Asian celebrities in Hong Kong Pop, Japan Pop, and Hallyu (Jung, 2011; Kim, 2014; Lin, 2012; Morimoto, 2013). These existing cultural practices developed a converging force in terms of shared genres (variety show formats, trendy dramas, audition programs), recurrent themes and stories (women disguised as men, boyish girls, etc.), and shared affection for certain East Asian celebrities (Jin Yan, Lesley Chung, X Japan, and many K pop and K drama celebrities). This does not mean that local characteristics have disappeared from popular culture in the region. The same program format produces different social meaning because the process of adaptation includes appropriating the dominant value system of the reception country. Similarity always presumes difference, and converging forces presume divergence as well. The complexity of the convergence and divergence process, within many East Asian countries, provides new flows of cultural production, distinct from those before, and is creating transnational cultural forms and practices. The rapid growth of digital culture in three East Asian powerhouses, Japan, Korea, and China, brought new developments to the existing converging cultural practices. Advanced digital culture in the region made a powerful fandom culture visible, that also shares different fandom experiences and practices (Black et al., 2010; Zhang & Negus, 2020). Regarding theses transnational characteristics of the East Asian Cultural Industries and their flows, we can now discuss an East Asian Convergence Culture with its own production and consumption practices (Hong, 2017). Compared to North American and Western formation, one of the major distinctive elements of East Asian convergence culture is its gender dimension. Manga has played a central role in the formation of the East Asian convergence culture. Shonen manga and its anime and film adaptations have a considerable transnational fandom in the region, and certain titles have met a global success. Therefore, many East Asian adaptations and remakes are from shojo manga. The imagination that traverses this inter-medial and intertextual transformation is female as far as its content (genre) and target audience. Beyond manga, the East Asian culture industry is heavily

116  Seok-Kyeong Hong influenced by the female spectator as well. Compared to the Japanese culture industry where not only shojo manga but also Shonen and Heinen manga play an important role, the South Korean culture industry seems to be more severely dominated by female audience’s tastes and desires (Hong, 2012). This gendered dimension of East Asian convergence culture is creating major differences in comparison with that of the North American entertainment system. If the latter produced superhero characters that DC and Marvel films celebrate, the former elaborated an idol system that the East Asian entertainment industry exploits in their various productions. Indeed, idols are the central mediators of East Asian cross-industrial and transmedial projects. Korean popular culture provides the best observation field with extremely well-organized idol fan communities. Their creative, participative, and engaging activities are producing a huge amount of fanfics in different languages and a special interface of intimacy through the intense use of SNS (Jin & Yoon, 2016; Chi, 2017). They show the high capacity of governance in caring and celebrating their beloved idols. Tribute and collective donation for the name of beloved idols are common fan activities in South Korea. Even though North American convergence culture is explained as a neutral, unmarked, and universal phenomenon, the nature of the production and concrete audience realities show the contrary. Recent trials of the industry making franchised action films with heroines are the counter evidence of the male-orientedness of the North American convergence culture. When Walt Disney Co. bought the Star Wars producer Lucasfilm, it had to make efforts to reach out to women and girls to broaden the franchise’s maledominated audience. Disney produced Star Wars: The Force Awakens, casting Daisy Ridley as the film’s star, and a flood of R2-D2 purses, BB-8 dresses, and other merchandise were released in order to reach the Hunger Games and Twilight fan base to join.2 Marvel comics are also trying to introduce and enlarge female and ethnic heroes in order to target new audiences.3 This North American case makes further salient the gendered dimension of the East Asian convergence culture, which largely depends on a female fan base. East Asian female fans have developed a peculiar gendered practice that originates from shojo manga traditions. Many transmedia products in East Asian convergence culture are under the influence of this female fandom.

Understanding East Asian idols: idol as trans-national, cross-industrial, and transmedial affective force Understanding idols has a crucial importance in order to comprehend the East Asian cultural industry as convergence culture. They are at the center of the discourses on sexuality on which East Asian gender imagination find the resources for different gender identities. The idol is a unique type of East Asian entertainment industry worker, the prototype of which has been invented in Japan in the 1960s by Jonny’s Entertainment. Idols are produced

Sharing gender imagination in East Asia  117 as multi-functional performers and managed to each have their own specialty: through elaboration of styles in music, look, characterization of each member of a group, they answer to different needs in audience’s identity policy.4 While an important number of idol groups are making their debut every year, only some of them reach the fandom size sufficiently big enough for survival. Through their story of ordinary youths turned celebrities and stars after hard training and perseverance, idols mobilize a special set of class, gender and race-related discourses and imagination. Their emotional and affective labor in everyday and mediated life as idols are huge (Puzar & Hong, 2018) and constitute the major capital for the whole entertainment industry. They are originally destined to be singers, but trained to sing, dance, and sometimes even act. They are formed to appear in various broadcasting programs assuming various roles as well. With this capacity to traverse industries, they create links between medias, sectors, and industries. Specifically, manga-drama adaptation and the cross-industrial penetration of drama-music industry have played an important role in the formation of the East Asian Convergence Culture. Multi-talented idols have facilitated this cross-medial movement. The example of Hanayori Dango (a.k.a. Boy’s Over Flowers) shows the mechanism of this process: the original manga has been successively adapted into a TV series in Taiwan (2001), Japan (2005), South Korea (2009), China (2018), and even in Turkey (2013); in the Taiwanese, Japanese and Korean adaptations, some of the main characters were played by idols, who made visible the existence of this cross-medial promotion between the music industry and TV drama production. Many global fans of East Asian TV drama discovered the charm of East Asian pop through idols playing in TV dramas, and fans of East Asian Pop music entered into the East Asian drama world through the participation of their beloved idols in TV dramas. Meticulously developed OST (Original Sound Track) production has consolidated this cross-industrial relationship: idols playing in a drama often interpret one of the OST and the OST, when it is sung or herd out of drama, promote the fiction out of its context (Hong, 2013). The adaptations between media transfer not only the content but also the proper imagination for each media (manga to TV drama in Japan and webtoon to TV drama in South Korea). The recurrent theme of “mistaken identity” in TV dramas is an example. First introduced in manga form,5 females disguised as male characters is one of the recurrent themes exploited in the romantic comedy genre of TV dramas.6 This theme is often alternatively showcased by boyish girl instead of a disguised girl. As explained in the previous chapter, this dramatic invention allows the female audience to develop specific shojo manga’s imagination of a safe and fantastic heterosexual relationship. It also makes it possible for the female audience to identify itself with the disguised girl in order to penetrate the male world, which is incarnated by attractive idols and celebrities, and observe them in a very intimate way. Idols forming a group often live together in the real world,

118  Seok-Kyeong Hong and this narrative invention has a dual effect: it helps female spectators realize the voyeuristic desire having vicarious pleasure toward the real life of their beloved idols; it also gives them chance to live a fictional pleasure given by the characters played by them. In general, the idol production system and its role in the cultural industry have been invented by the Japanese entertainment culture, improved by the South Korean counterpart, and propagated all over the East Asian cultural industry. Practices of transnational, cross-industrial and transmedial productions mediated by idols are often observable in East Asia. Japanese idol girl group AKB48 exported the same format to Thailand, Vietnam, China, and Taiwan in order to create local AKB groups. Taiwan produces idols that are closer to singing actors and use them in idol plays. Propelled by the immense success of K-pop, Korean entertainment companies are incorporating non-Korean members for their idol group, and are now exporting this system to other Asian countries.7 Even though these practices are not dominant in terms of quantity, this system is powerful enough to influence, transform, and characterize the East Asian geography of popular culture. Whether it is a girl group or a boy group, the majority of idol fans are female. As female fans dominate the transnational idol fandom phenomenon in East Asia, the flow of transnational programs in East Asia has been greatly influenced by the preferences and tastes of female audiences. Efforts to create a transnational female idol group in East Asia have been driven by the entertainment industry, and among these efforts, the most popular case is Produce101 (2016, Mnet, South Korea), which has been successfully adapted by Chinese television.8 However, the East Asian female idol culture does not seem to provide an alternative resource to disrupt the existing gender hierarchy in terms of gender imagination. The BL contents about male idols within female fandoms do not challenge heteronormativity either (Kwon, 2019). However, it should be noted that the female fandoms of male idols open up a space for observation and discussion about a new masculinity, which is becoming an important space for cultural practice in East Asian convergence culture. Helpful, pleasant, good-looking, and sometimes androgynous male idols represent a new idea of masculinity in East Asia, where traditional masculinity go through a severe accusation and transformation. So far, we discussed the general characteristics of the idol culture in Japan, the birthplace of the idol, and in Korea, where idol culture is developed through a more competitive system. Although the success of the K-pop idol system directly affects China and the entertainment industry of other countries in East Asia, the gender imagination and social discourse operated by idol groups in many East Asian countries are not the same. While a girl/ boy next door ordinariness is valued in Japanese idols, extraordinary looks and performance skills are expected from Korean idols. Korean male idols, despite their idol visuals, embody masculine values with a strong and powerful performance, which makes them sexually appealing to female fans in

Sharing gender imagination in East Asia  119 East Asia. Within fandom culture, they still maintain a much closer relationship with fans compared to Western stars. However, the successful K-pop boy idol group has a greater star and celebrity status compared to Japanese idols. K-pop female idols also possess familiarity, beauty, and cuteness, but have a more perfect type of appearance, style, and performance, distinguishing them from Japanese idols, whose moe-like cuteness is excessively emphasized. In other words, the transnational idol culture cannot be the same across nations, due to differences in gender history and social relations in each nation. What is important here is that beyond these national differences, the transnational female fans in East Asia are sharing the imagina­ tion on the sexual attractiveness as subject of gaze and cultural practice. The development of digital culture and the spread of the Internet in this region have broadened the potential for cultural expressiveness and the live practice of such female subjects. For the reasons described earlier, Hallyu, which has produced many celebrities, provides advantageous examples to observe this process.

East Asian singing actors and soft masculinity The East Asian singing actor is another example of celebrity that illustrates an early stage of transnational formation of gender imagination in East Asia. As Shim explained in his chapter on Jin Yan, East Asia knew the transnational celebrity phenomenon since the 1930s. Although we only refer to the near past, Hong Kong cinema’s singing stars have traversed the frontiers in the 1980s and Japanese rock groups met the transnational audience in the 1990s. Through the Hallyu fever, Korean male actors became transnational celebrities since the early 2000s. Before diving into the stories of male Hallyu actors who gained popularity in East Asia, it is necessary to discuss how the discourses of gender and masculinity were formed in Korean society and Korean popular culture. In Korea, masculinity as a traditional patriarch was accused as unable to protect both the state and the women during the colonial era. The dominant masculinity as breadwinner was born in midst of the developmental state of the 1960s. After the IMF Crisis in 1997, which led to massive job losses, the dominant masculinity as breadwinner diminished. In addition, the rise of gender consciousness and feminism along with the expansion of women’s education further weakened the meaning of dominant masculinity and led to women’s desire for a new alternative masculinity and gender relations. Korean society achieved democratization through the 1980s. During the 1990s, cultural desires that had been suppressed before exploded and created a very dynamic popular culture. Korean television dramas and early K-pop culture of the 1990s, which became the driving force of Hallyu, produced an unrealistic but alternative male image that replaced the unappealing dominant masculinity in response to the exploding desires of female audiences.

120  Seok-Kyeong Hong Since the rise of the Hallyu discourse, good-looking South Korean actors have been very popular in the region. From Yon Sama of the famous TV drama Winter Sonata (2002) to Minho Lee, Jungi Song, not to mention the mega K-pop star Bi-Rain, Hallyu stars represent the Asian male charm and sex appeal that precedent Asian stars could not offer. Never have Asian male stars inspired their female audience with such infatuation. East Asia was already aware of transnational stars during the 1930s in the city of Shanghai, and the Hong Kong stars of romance and action genres provided a cultural pattern of transnational celebrity in East Asia. The multi-talented Hong Kong stars of the 1980–1990s such as Chu Youn Fat, Lesley Chung, Lei Ming performed as actors and singers, publishing albums and producing concerts in Hong Kong and other countries of the region. Following them, Korean actors continued this double performance as actors and singers. Musical performances became almost compulsory to organize a fan meeting. Many Hallyu stars nowadays sing and even dance in their fan meetings in East Asia. In some concerts, it can be guaranteed that the stars will sing the OST of the drama that they starred in, as well as some covers and even original songs.9 Their concerts or fan meetings are full of female fans of all ages, as opposed to idol concerts which attracts a rather younger, teenconcentrated audience. An actor-singer has a big cross-medial advantage: the actor on the stage can instantly remind the public of the drama story he was in, and reproduce the romantic ambiance singing the OST. Singing actors can magnify the theatrical charm that only a singer can give off. These good-looking male stars are all actors of romantic comedies and melodramas, where they play the roles of romantic men in love or action men showing their slimmuscular, well-shaped sporty bodies. They are sensitive and caring toward fans, just like the characters that they play are toward their female partners in the dramas and films. The masculinity they represent does not satisfy the idea of dominant masculinity, which had been considered to be the guardian of the East Asian patriarchy (Louie, 2002). It doesn’t assure East Asian men confident of themselves, but stars who incarnate this new masculinity please the eyes of their female audience; the media qualifies them as “flower boys,” borrowing the term from the world of manga (Hong, 2012). Their sex appeal is less based on the physical power like robust corps and muscles in action, more on the pleasure that their delicate looks procure and the sentimental security that their romantic sincerity assures. Sometimes their looks are androgynous, like idol stars; sometimes they even stimulate in women the protection desire with their fragility. In both cases, male celebrities are consumed as images, and the subject consuming them is women. This reverses the existing dominant discourse about the subject-object in visual culture. Female popular culture consumers in East Asia have emerged as new cultural actors in the region, taking advantage of the participatory potential brought by digital culture amidst the growing flow of transnational cultures in East Asia.

Sharing gender imagination in East Asia  121

Female subject and digital scopophilia in East Asian convergence culture Currently, most of the transnational Hallyu celebrities in East Asia are male, and their popularity is largely based on their looks and stories surrounding them. The previous section did not explain the nature of popularity of K-pop idol stars, who do not form an image through fiction. However, because they contact fans everyday through social media, they maintain a more intimate relationship with fans. K-pop superstar BTS is exhibiting influence around the world with the use of transmedia to connect members’ stories and fiction. K-pop is an important part of Hallyu, and its visual cultural characteristics is as important as its musical dimension. YouTube music videos also became a key channel for the globalization of K-pop. The “handsomeness” embodied by Hallyu stars works as a fundamental value of becoming a transnational star. What is special with this new male visuality? What are the new problematics that this new visuality provokes to the hegemonic masculinity in East Asia and beyond? Isn’t a reverse othering of body and fetishization? We’ll discuss from here, the differences between the female gaze on male Hallyu stars and the male gaze on female stars commonly observed in classic Hollywood films. This requires an exploration into how and the degree to which the female gaze related to digital fandom culture is free from the Freudian family theatre scene and voyeuristic scopophilia that film theorists have developed in order to explain the power of cinematic dispositive (Baudry & Cohen, 2004). In the digital media environment, fans are not alienated under the cinematic structuration of the male gaze. Cinematic dispositive objectifies and fetishizes female characters and bodies because the audience is bound to watch a film in three masculine points: the director’s gaze, the camera’s gaze, and the gaze of the male characters inside the films. Although Mulvey’s theory was later revised to include the gaze of the female subject, it is still a major reference to the way the male gaze operates. Female fans in the digital environment collect the images of their beloved stars on the Internet and process them. Through the labor division in fan communities, a large amount of star images are produced directly by fans, who curate, edit, and publish them in fan communities and networks (Jenkins, 1992). Images produced by fans depict the stars in their most glamorous angles during performances, narrative videos, or public appearances. Compared to licensed images produced by agencies, fan-produced images are more communicative and affective. They are curated to procure the female scopophilia and maximize it. Even though stars appear in fiction, the digital images that fans elaborate for pleasure are under less guidance of narratives. Digital scopophilia of female fans works to escape from the narrative structure. If they decide to stick to the story of the fiction, it is done so to give a positive value to their

122  Seok-Kyeong Hong star, rather than for a “revenge” toward their harmful charm as the theory of narrative vengeance explains (Mulvey, 1989). In general, they only refer to parts of the story, not the entire narrative, as is the case of the male gaze for the female characters in Hitchcock films (Esquenazi, 2006) Instead, female fans elaborate intimacy with theirs stars through the digital collection and curation of emotional faces, dancing bodies, postures, voices, scenes, commodified advertising images, everyday shots, departing and arriving videos and fancam shots; through this, they communicate and share emotions with other fans in networked communities. Images transport emotions that they have experienced in the past, and sharing those images on social media is a way to endure the absence of a beloved star together. This can be named a shared economy of pleasure. Fans share their visual pleasure with other fans on social media, posting what they collected and what they produced through time. They create a virtual intimacy not only with the stars, but also with other female fans. Sometimes this relationship develops into offline visits and meetups. These fan activities remain within heteronormative order, but create a new realm of female solidarity beyond patriarchal pressure. In short, in the activities of digital fandom, the female subject of digital scopophilia is the subject of sharing emotion: they are objectifying male stars’ bodies, faces, moves and personalities, without othering them, and growing more intimate through these activities. Oh observed that even through watching K-pop boy bands’ music videos showing hot dance movements, fans appreciate not simply the muscles-salient body but also the way dance movements make body dynamics (Oh, 2015, 2017). Female fans give more importance to the intimacy and the affect the stars produce than their extravagance. Their experience less resembles the night dreams explained by film theories of male scopophilia than the daydreams in which people negotiate and control their desires.

Conclusion: East Asian celebrities go global? A strange case of BTS’s soft masculinity This chapter explains that a dynamic convergence of cultural industries, comparable to those in North America and Europe, is being found in East Asia. It explains that such transnational development of digital-driven popular culture adds to older transnational cultural flows. It also shares the idea that the Hallyu phenomenon is an optimal resource to observe the operation and results of the past and present transnational pop culture convergence in East Asia. This chapter focuses on female audiences as an important driving force behind this phenomenon, through the sharing of various gender imaginations. The roles of the singing actor and idol, both entertainment workers performing unusual cultural labors that are unique to East Asia were analyzed along with the space for transnational gender and sexuality imagination they create.

Sharing gender imagination in East Asia  123 These celebrities that embody the new achievements and gender imagination created by East Asian pop culture are currently appealing to the world, demonstrated by the explosive success of the 7-member Korean idol group BTS since 2018. Although BTS values a hip-hop ​​ identity, they flourished within the idol system and through the effective use of social media, gained a global fandom that outgrew the local market. As a result, they adhere to the idol culture principle of providing visual pleasure and maintaining friendly intimacy with fans. In their daily lives revealed on social media, the seven men of BTS laugh and cry together, and illustrate the epitome of an all-male community that tolerates homosocial mentality and physical intimacy. This new aspect of male relationships has been welcomed by global fans for offering a new resources of gender imagination. In my field study of BTS fans that was conducted between 2018–2020, American fans identified the dominant white male masculinity represented by President Trump as “toxic,” and the soft masculinity displayed by BTS as a liberating energy to fans of all cultures and gender identities. Moreover, they are East Asian men, an ethnic group that was once depicted as the least sexually appealing by American media, which have been dictating the code for the world’s pop culture. The soft masculinity embodied by BTS is the result of the extensive cultural practices of female audiences in East Asia that provides an alternative form of masculinity to global audiences. Moreover, this chapter places female audiences seeking visual pleasure at the core of this phenomenon. Male stars performing in front of tens of thousands of audiences have always existed in popular culture, and men who give women visual pleasure are not necessarily a new subject. Beautiful men have always existed throughout history. But for a long time, a man’s sex appeal was charisma and he did not always have to be “objectively” beautiful. A handsome appearance counted if only embodying the various abilities and values of the dominant male. Stars only had to showcase these values and superior physical conditions to stand out. It was rare for men, with the exception of celebrities, to have to provide visual pleasure to women to earn their love and be sexually appealing to them. The “flower boy” discourse of Korean popular culture beautifies male stars not to uphold male standards and embody masculine values, but rather to satisfy the expectations of the female spectators and to give them visual pleasure (scopophilia) (Hong, 2012). In this chapter, we assert that women’s visual desire is a new aspect of East Asian pop culture that contrasts with western cinematic apparatus, which is rather built on the male gaze. As analyzed in the previous chapter, these cultural practices of female fandom were influenced by the homoerotic BL fantasy that was born of the East Asian female subcultures. Therefore, this is not a fantasy coming from women trying to escape the limits of heterosexuality, but a collective imagination projected by the desire for an equal, safe, and heterosexual relationship free from the dangers and pressures of the usual patriarchal relationship. As

124  Seok-Kyeong Hong such, it faces the criticism of not being fully liberating, and even conservative to some extent, as it does not completely refute the patriarchy and heteronormativity. However, as stated in this chapter, the female subject’s pursuit of visual pleasure is not regressive like the male subject’s gaze in the western cinematic apparatus, but is productive and seeks social interactions through sharing. Their pursuit of sociality in global popular culture seems to be more emancipatory, opening a space for gender and racial identity games with many alternatives.

Notes 1 The Star Wars series is the one of the first transmedia story that the North American Cultural Industry has produced. Its audience, at the time of the theater releases as well as the fan production on the series, is considerably masculine. Share of adults who have seen Star Wars in the United States as of December  2017, by movie and gender. (2018). Retrieved August  26, 2020, from www.statista.com/ statistics/790495/star-wars-viewership-gender/. 2 Reuter’s Entertainment News, December  14, 2015. Retrieved March  31, 2019, from www.reuters.com/article/us-film-starwars-women-analysis-iduskbn0tx1j 720151214 3 Retrieved March  31, 2019, from www.scmp.com/culture/article/1988468/marvelsdiversity-strategy-targets-new-audiences 4 Hiroki Azuma (2009) explained how Japanese culture industry create characters producing differences in his postmodern critics on Otaku culture. 5 It is the case of For you in full blossom (2007, Fuji TV) as well as Hatori Bisco’s Ouran high school host club (2001–2010) and Muto Hiromu’s Never give up (1999–2007). 6 Korean TV drama exploited this narrative invention in the following dramas and met a huge success in and out of South Korea. Coffee Prince (2007). You’re beautiful (2011), Sunggyunkwan Scandal (2010). 7 The cases are three-member K-pop girl group Lime (2014), who debuted through a Vietnamese audition program, and NiziU (2020), a Japanese girl group created in Japan by JYP through a global audition project. 8 This program is an audition program that dramatically shows the formation of a male idol group through competition and an audience vote system. The format was successful in both countries in terms of audience, and drew attention to the way it staged the competition which is acceptable by respective audience. 9 The list is long. We can cite Siwon Ryu, Joonki Lee, Geunsock Chang, Chanwook Ji, Bogum Park, Minho Lee, Chongsuk Lee, among others

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Sharing gender imagination in East Asia  125 Deppman, H. C. (2009). Made in Taiwan: An analysis of meteor garden as an East Asian idol drama. In Y. Zhu & C. Berry (Eds.), TV China (pp. 90–110). Indiana University Press. Esquenazi,  J. P.  (2006). Hitchcock  et  ses  femmes  massacrées.  Culture  &  Musées, 7(1), 99–116. Hong, S. K. (2012). A study on the female fandom of the Korean idol culture and gender discourses in France. Korean Journal of Journalism  & Communication Studies, 56(1), 185–208. Hong, S. K. (2013). Hallyu in globalization and digital culture era: Full house, gangnam style, and after. Hanul. Hong, S. K. (2017). Hallyu beyond East Asia: Theoretical investigations on global consumption of Hallyu. In T. J. Yoon & D. Y. Jin (Eds)., The Korean wave: Evolution, fandom, and transnationality (pp. 67–86). Lexington Books. Hong,  S. K., Park, D. M.,  & Park, S. J. (2017). Knowledge network analysis on Hallyu research. Korean Journal of Journalism & Communication Studies, 61(3), 318–353. Jenkins, H. (1992). Textual poachers: Television fans  & participatory culture. Routledge. Jenkins, H. (2006). Convergence culture: Where old and new media collide. New York University Press. Jin, D. Y., & Yoon, K. (2016). The social mediascape of transnational Korean pop culture: Hallyu 2.0 as spreadable media practice. New Media & Society, 18(7), 1277–1292. Jirattikorn, A. (2018). Thai television dramas, a new player in Asian media circulation: A case study of full house Thai. In N. Kawashima & H. K. Lee (Eds.), Asian cultural flows, creative economy (pp. 167–182). Springer. Jung, S. (2011). Korean masculinities and transcultural consumption: Yonsama, rain, oldboy, k-pop idols. Hong Kong University Press. Keane, M., & Moran, A. (2003). Television across Asia: TV industries, programme formats and globalisation. Routledge. Kim, S. (2014). The semiotic strategies and significations in constructing a transnational star: In the Case of Hallyu star Jang Keun Suk in Japan. Korean Journal of Broadcasting and Telecommunication Studies, 28(4), 74–116. Kwon, J. (2019). Straight Korean female fans and their gay fantasies. University of Iowa Press. Lin, H. S. (2012). Emotions, desires, and fantasies: What idolizing means for YonSama fans in Japan. In P. W. Galbraith & J. G. Karlin (Eds.), Idols and celebrity in Japanese media culture (pp. 166–181). Palgrave Macmillan. Louie, K. (2002). Theorising Chinese masculinity: Society and gender in China. Cambridge University Press. Morimoto, L. H. (2013). Trans-cult-ural fandom: Desire, technology and the transformation of fan subjectivities in the Japanese female fandom of Hong Kong stars. Transformative Works and Cultures, 14. https://core.ac.uk/download/ pdf/147823781.pdf Mulvey, L. (1989). Visual pleasure and narrative cinema. In Visual and other pleasures: Language, discourse, society (pp. 14–26). Palgrave Macmillan. https://doi. org/10.1007/978-1-349-19798-9_3 Ngo, T. H. (2015). Korean masculinity in TV dramas and local fantasies: A  case study of full house and its Vietnamese remake Ngôi Nhà Hạnh Phúc. In J. Lim &

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8 Pirate cosmopolitanism and the undercurrents of flow Fansubbing television on China’s P2P networks Jinying Li At the center of the current trade war that is dramatically unfolded between China and the US is the long-existing discourse that depicts China as the world’s most notorious copyright offender and a leading threat to the US industries. Such continuous efforts to sensationally condemn and criminalize the act of copyright infringement from the legal and economic perspective of the global capital, however, largely overshadow the profound social, cultural, and political impacts that piracy has in emerging economies, where pirated media access often plays a significant (and sometimes foundational) role in local media infrastructures and the socio-cultural formations of people’s everyday life (Joe, 2011; Larkin, 2008; Sundaram, 2010). In China, the practices of copyright infringement and enforcement are both intertwined with the complex situations of profound economic reforms and developments, when this post-Socialist country is marching toward free-market capitalism while maintaining an authoritarian regime (Pang, 2006, 2012; Wang, 2003). The Chinese government’s maneuver of IP enforcement, which is often concurrent and interwoven with information censorship, highlights a rather hidden but significant function of media piracy—its role as an alternative, underground channel for cultural circulation and consumption that can evade the state control. This alternative cultural space developed through piracy, as I  have demonstrated previously, has profoundly transformed China’s film culture (Li, 2012). Independent and banned films that could not be legally released reached Chinese audience through the shadow distribution circuit of digital piracy, which constituted a powerful viral infrastructure for an influential underground film culture that successfully evaded the state censorship and cultural control. The impact of this viral system of media piracy is far beyond the film culture, because this unruly, underground network of cultural circulation is potentially powerful, or even subversive, in a country that is infamous for both information suppression and IP infringement. In the recent decade, the vibrant grass-roots culture of media piracy that used to thrive in urban China is now moving to the Internet, migrating from video stores and street vendors to online platforms such as video streaming services (e.g. YouKu, TuDou, Aiqiyi, Bilibili) and peer-to-peer

128  Jinying Li (p2p) file sharing networks (e.g. YY, BTChina, TLF). The infrastructure of media piracy thus transformed from the industry-organized, commercial manufacture of optical disks to user-generated, peer-to-peer content sharing on computer networks. Through these p2p networks, active user communities were quickly established, distributing and consuming a wide array of media products that cannot be legitimately released in China due to quota or censorship. Since 2009, the Chinese government has launched numerous anti-piracy campaigns specifically targeting p2p networks. Conspicuously, the agency that was taking the lead in crashing down p2p networks was neither the National Copyright Administration (the office responsible for copyright protection) or the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (the major administrative body regulating the Internet). But instead, the anti-piracy campaign was mainly organized by the notorious SARFT (the State Administration of Radio, Film and Television), the executive branch that is responsible for censoring media content under the direct order of the Ministry of Propaganda.1 SARFT’s central role in the administrative counter-piracy effort suggests that piracy in China is never simply an act of copyright infringement, but it is also a potential threat to cultural control (Li, 2012). When the pirated media platform is moving from optical disks to online networks, its cultural function as an underground circulation channel is further highlighted, because the peer-to-peer structure of piracy networks makes it more viral, distributive, and infiltrating. Therefore, in the case of p2p file sharing, what is considered undermining and has to be suppressed by the government is not copyright offence, but is a powerful, underground channel of transnational cultural flow that has been flourishing among Chinese youth for the past decade. Since its early days, p2p file-sharing technology has been used in China primarily as a distribution network for unauthorized access to foreign media contents, mostly in the form of fansub, which refers to a unique version of video materials that are translated, subtitled, and distributed by fans and among fans for free (Condry, 2010). Dubbed “Zimuzu” in Chinese (literally meaning “subtitle groups”), the fansubbing communities emerged in China in the early 2000s, first among anime fans who began translating, subtitling, and distributing Japanese animations online for the Chinese audience. Fansubbing activities quickly spread on China’s cyberspace and were widely practiced by Chinese fans to translate and disseminate foreign media contents—mostly in the forms of TV shows—from the US, Korea, and Japan. The development of fansubbing activities and community went hand in hand with the expansion of the p2p file-sharing networks in China. In fact, some of the most popular p2p sites such as BTPig, YYeTs, TLF, and YDY were all developed by the fansubbing community to distribute their own fansub videos. Therefore, it is safe to say that it is the fans’ need to translate, distribute, and consume foreign media contents, which were largely unavailable through legitimate circulation channels (e.g. commercial

Pirate cosmopolitanism  129 TV networks), that gave rise to the wide popularity of the illegitimate p2p file-sharing practice in China. The fansubbing practice that is widespread on China’s p2p networks complicates the relations between media infrastructure, digital access, and cultural globalization, because it puts forward an alternative mode of transnational traffic that is radically different from both the state-­regulated cultural importation with quota and censorship and the corporate-­ initiated global media market with centralized copyright control. However, the social, cultural, and political meanings of fansub in relation to the nation-state and the global capital remain ambiguous. Describing the Chinese fansubbing activities as “underdetermined globalization,” Bingchun Meng rightly points out that the ways in which “Zimuzu members relate to digital content, to their fellow participants, and to the global media industries are underdetermined and contingent upon their practices” (Meng, 2012, p. 470). This chapter examines such underdetermined and contingent relations by studying the complex process of identity formation, particularly, a cosmopolitan identity that is constructed, represented, and communicated in the active practices of producing and consuming fansubbed television shows in this transnational media arena existing in the shallow space of p2p file sharing. By closely examining the socio-cultural implications of this fan-initiated, grass-roots organization of media access on p2p networks, I hope not only to tackle the long-existing debates on the balance between IP protection and public access in the context of globalization, but also to rethink the transnational, transmedial processes that are often described as “convergence” or “media mix” (Jenkins, 2006a; Steinberg, 2012). Situating TV fansubbing within the wider digital culture of media convergence, this chapter argues that the so-called “convergence” never takes place in the transnational arena as harmonious cultural mixing or smooth transcultural flow, but instead, it is negotiated through contested, contradictory, and conflicting contacts of various kinds. The result is a cosmopolitan experience that is situated, diverse, and disjunctive. My focus is on the imagined cosmopolitan community that is created through the self-organized communication sphere of fansubbing. An alternative frame of identity formation, which I call “pirate cosmopolitanism,” emerged through fansubbing in the dynamic contact zone between text and paratext, between the televisual and the informational, between global media networks and local cultural particularities. These uneven and disjunctive contacts lead us to rethink the multiple meanings and implications of “flow,” a key concept that has been taken as the central logic for both television and information networks. By questioning the theoretical foundation of flow, I argue that the fansub culture presents alternative routes—the undercurrents—of flow that takes the notion as less a technological condition of the medium than a social function of the community. The pirate media access does not consider flow as a precondition that is to be taken for granted, but instead, the fansub

130  Jinying Li community generates their own trans-medial, trans-national flow through active social activities and communications, which leads to their collective but uneven cosmopolitan experience.

Pirate cosmopolitanism Cosmopolitanism is a contested term loaded with debates, and its meanings and implications have often shifted considerably. It used to refer to an old Enlightenment ideal that imagines a free-floating, open-minded intellectual subject seeking universal knowledge, which then turns to a neoliberal idea of global citizenship that takes a deterritorialized stance of democracy and governance to accommodate an encompassing free-market global economy (Beck & Cronin, 2006; Hannerz, 1990; Held, 1995; Nussbaum, 1997; Vertovec & Cohen, 2003). Either a privileged, detached, and abstract worldview of universality, or a neoliberal vision of unification advocated by global capitalism, the notion of cosmopolitanism has been criticized as elitist, Eurocentric, oppressive, and imperialist (Cheah, 2003; Miyoshi, 1993). But on the other hand, a more localized, situated, and multicultural approach has been advocated to rethink cosmopolitanism (or “counter-cosmopolitanism”) as particular and plural in hope to account for the actually existing cultural encounters between the local and global in nuanced varieties of different contexts (Appadurai, 1996; Bhabha, 1996; Cheah & Robbins, 1998; Cohen, 1992). The cosmopolitan experiences generated by the global flows are particular rather than universal, and they have to be understood through the locally bound lives from below rather than the “free-floating view from above” (Bruce Robbins, 1998, p. 1). As Paul Rabinow suggests, cosmopolitanism should be defined as “an ethos of macro-interdependencies, with an acute consciousness (often forced upon people) of the inescapabilities and particularities of places, characters, historical trajectories, and fates” (Rabinow, 1986, p. 258). This new wave of rooted, decentralized and vernacular approach to cosmopolitanism is not only a response to the widespread postcolonial (and neocolonial) conditions with deterritorialized yet un-even developments in the process of globalization, but also a resonance with the shift of intellectual paradigm that has become increasingly invested in popular cultures and mass media. Unlike the old ideal of philosophical universalism that often anchors its abstract knowledge in high cultures and enlightenment values, the vernacular, postcolonial experience of cosmopolitanism is rather manifested through the production and consumption of various kinds of popular cultures including cinema, television, music, and sports. In fact, the development of this new lexicon of particularized and localized vernacular cosmopolitanism went hand in hand with the rise of cultural studies that take popular culture seriously as meaningful expression and communication of identities. This is exactly the case in some of the most informative studies of the cosmopolitan experience in post-Socialist China, such as Lisa

Pirate cosmopolitanism  131 Rofel (2007)’s comprehensive examination of how gender and sexuality are expressed in Chinese popular cultures through cosmopolitan desires, as well as Louisa Schein (2000)’s anthropological study of the ways in which ethnic Miao people expresses cosmopolitan identities through fashion, music, and videos. This re-conceptualization of cosmopolitanism through localized studies of popular cultures echoes the notion of “pop cosmopolitanism” that was raised by Henry Jenkins (2006b) to describe the mode of global cultural circulation that is initiated by the collective participation of fans and consumers on the transnational media networks such as online forums and p2p portals. The phenomenon of fansub is one of the prime examples in Jenkins’s characterization of such a transnational participatory culture that he calls “global convergence,” which he believes can “inspire new forms of global consciousness and cultural competency” (Jenkins 2006b, p. 156). Jenkins’s notion, however, has been questioned for its overtly utopian belief in consumer participation as a bottom-up, grass-roots counterforce against the top-down, industrial operation of cultural imperialism. Considering that his examples of fan culture almost exclusively focus on western consumers’ patronization of non-western cultures from Japan, Hong Kong, and India, one cannot help but notice that Jenkins’s notion of “pop cosmopolitanism” is somewhat tinted by a hidden undertone of “pop orientalism,” whereby the popular perception of “the East” is inextricably associated with a romanticized notion of “cultural coolness” as well as a utopian imagination of “free” cyberspace (Said 1978). Indeed, the concept of “pop cosmopolitanism,” which reductively equates appreciating cultural difference with global awareness, ultimately fails to address the postcolonial situations where the daily encounter between western cultures and non-western ones has become a ubiquitous norm that often hides the violent act of hegemony and dominance by the global capital. While Jenkins’s “pop cosmopolitanism” hinges upon a utopian imagination of “global convergence,” I would argue that convergence as such never took place in the transnational cultural arenas that are still dominated by global unevenness, inequality, subjugation, and discrimination. Instead of a seamless convergence through popular consumption, the cosmopolitan identity that is expressed in the transnational, participatory culture of fansubbing is rather experienced as contested and conflicting contacts that are full of tension, disjunction, and unevenness. Therefore, the concept to characterize such uneven cosmopolitan experience from the bottom is not pop, but is pirate, by which I refer to both the practice of copyright infringement and the cultural imagination of maritime outlaws from which piracy gained its conceptual root. By aligning the conceptual history of cosmopolitism with that of piracy from ancient Greece to the digital era, I want to propose the notion of “pirate cosmopolitanism” as an alternative framework to interpret the un-authorized, often-illicit transnational cultural traffic as the actually exiting cosmopolitan experience that is organized by the collective

132  Jinying Li participation of global fandom in local particularities, as in the case of television fansubbing in China. According to Adrian Johns (2009), the ancient origin of “pirate” had an honorable connotation. “The word piracy derives from a distant IndoEuropean root meaning a trial or attempt, or (presumably by extension) an experience or experiment. It is an irony of history that in the distant past it meant something so close to creativity”(Johns, 2009, p. 35). This honorable origin of piracy in association with creativity, however, was quickly overshadowed with the rise of Athens, one of the first civilized cosmopolises in history. Civilization was developed and defined as the antithesis to piracy, and the pirates thus had to be condemned as organized criminals outside the city, who were feared not because they were thieves or robbers but because they represented an alternative social organization that was beyond the law and order of a civil society. From then on, pirates were described as the enemies to the universal humanity, and thus the antithesis to the philosophical value of cosmopolitanism that also “has its origins in the Greek words for ‘order, world,’ and ‘citizen.’ ” (Malcomson, 1998, p. 233). However, the worldly order that is worshiped by the Greek and Roman cosmopolitans, under the influence of Stoicism, is not so much about the united common good as it is about geographical exploration and conquering (Ibid). Therefore, what the pirates really threatened is less the universal value of humanity than the law and order of the empire. With the rise of global trade during the colonial expansion in the 17th and 18th centuries, the pirates, once again, staged themselves as a powerful, subversive counterforce against the normative order of imperial dominance, fashioning an alternative kind of worldly mobilization. Marcus Rediker (1989), in his vivid historical account of the maritime world of the 18th century, explores the social and cultural organization of the pirates as an international working class. With their worldly experiences, international solidarity, collective egalitarian impulse, and self-chosen ways of life outside societal norms, the pirates stood as a serious imperial crisis, because they managed to create an alternative mode of global organization that challenged the social order of colonial hegemony. As such, the maritime pirates may well be described as the pioneers of counter-cosmopolitanism in the colonial era, whose unruly, freewheeling experience of worldly mobilization existed as a powerful antithesis against the abstract ideal of universalism and its imperial pedigree. In the same historical moment of the 17th and 18th centuries, unauthorized reprinting began to flourish in urban centers such as London and Paris, nurturing what Adrian Johns (2009) calls “piratical enlightenment,” in which pirate printers became a major force in disseminating enlightenment works across national borders against the censorial control of both Catholic Church and royal courts, paving the way for the development of cosmopolitan ideals in Europe. Immanuel Kant, whose essays “Perpetual Peace” and “Idea for a Universal History with a Cosmopolitan Purpose” define the

Pirate cosmopolitanism  133 modern concept of cosmopolitanism, is one of the primary authors whose works got reproduced and distributed massively across Europe thanks to pirate printing. For Kant, “a universal cosmopolitan existence” is first and far most an intellectual ethic that is deeply anchored in the Enlightenment belief in a universal knowledge sphere. But this knowledge sphere of Enlightenment, in fact, was largely a pirate sphere, because the low cost of un-authorized reprinting generated an enormous amount of affordable and portable books for knowledge dispersal and reproduction. In the words of Adrian Johns (2009): “No piracy, we might say, no Enlightenment” (p. 50). These multiple genealogical connections between piracy and cosmopolitanism suggest that the pirates, as either copyright offers or maritime criminals, have long presented an alternative mode of organizing worldly experience that is unruly and anarchic, countering the norms of a privileged, disciplined, and elitist cosmopolitan subjectivity in western philosophy. Contrary to the idealized cosmopolitanism envisioned in the abstract vacuum of lofty universality, the actually existing cosmopolitanism in the dynamic space of international cultural traffics is often located in the shadow—the illegal trading in pirate ships, the unauthorized reprinting in underground bookshops, and the un-licensed digital copying and downloading on p2p networks. A universal cosmopolitan existence imagined by Kant, in everyday practices and in vernacular realities, is largely pirated in various local contexts. In this light, the pirated media culture, as in the case of Chinese fansubbing, can teach us a new way to approach the vernacular version of cosmopolitanism and its socio-cultural implications in the context of the continuous expansion of global information networks as well as the continuous existence of global unevenness and inequality.

Pirate cosmopolitanism in Chinese fansub community The pirate activities of Chinese fansubbing mediate cosmopolitan experience mainly through two ways: 1) by creating a self-organized, deterritorialized knowledge community whose production and consumption of meanings can potentially evade the cultural and economic control from the state and the global media industries; 2) by forming a dynamic “contact zone” where the discrepancies between the normative and the pirated media accesses, as well as between different local and global cultural references, are foregrounded and negotiated. The community function of fansub is clearly pronounced by its Chinese name, zimuzu (subtitling group), which highlights a collective identity and egalitarian solidarity with the notion of a “group.” Through carefully organized and well-maintained forums and discussion boards, as well as the frequent use of discursive onscreen notes and glosses in their videos, fansubbing groups made a great amount of efforts to create and sustain a strong sense of community. The onscreen notes in fansub video are especially effective in generating subcultural communications among fellow

134  Jinying Li fans, facilitating conversations and discussions of shared knowledge and sensibilities. For example, an onscreen note is provided by fansubbers in this fansub video (Figure 8.1) to suggest viewers to skip this particular moment and to fast-forward to “50’24”,” possibly because this part of the video has no story progression. This insider’s knowledge and suggestion, which may appear to be obnoxious in other contexts, is actually welcoming and welcomed among fans, for it creates a sense of comradeship and community—it is not unlike sharing a secret or a tip among one’s close friends. The ways in which fansub communicates shared knowledge, however, also sometimes betray the uneasy tension in a local community’s cosmopolitan encounters, especially for Chinese youth whose cosmopolitan experience is often juxtaposed with a strong sense of cultural and geopolitical isolation due to China’s unique post-Socialist situation. For instance, when China-shaming became increasingly popular in American TV shows, Chinese fansubbers couldn’t help but shared their complaints. The phrase “communist China” in the English dialogue inevitably prompted the fansubbers to protest in the on-screen note: “When would demonizing China ever stop?” (Figure 8.2). Exemplifying the notion of “collective intelligence” (Lévy, 1997), fansub forms a self-organized community that is based on fans’ participatory practice of producing, sharing, and consuming collective knowledge. This is what Pierre Lévy (1997) calls a “knowledge community”—a new kind of social organization that emerges out of the deterritorialization of traditional geographical and social bonds. Lévy defines it as “cosmopedia,” a cosmopolitan cultural sphere that is organized by the collective experience of knowledge sharing in a thinking community. “Not only does the

Figure 8.1 A fansub video with an on-screen note that suggests to viewers to fastforward to 50’ 24”

Pirate cosmopolitanism  135

Figure 8.2 The dialogue in the TV show makes reference to “Communist China,” which prompts the fansubbers’ on-screen comment: “When would demonizing China ever stop?”

cosmopedia make available to the collective intellect all of the pertinent knowledge available to it as a given moment, but it also serves as a site of collective discussion, negotiation, and development” (Lévy, 1997, p. 216). From this perspective, the knowledge community that is constituted by Chinese fansub is indeed a cosmopolitan one. Many of these Chinese fans have experience of studying, working, and living overseas. In fact, the early founders of several major fansubbing groups such as YDY, YYeTs, and TLF are either oversea Chinese students in Japan, North America and Europe or expat westerners living in Beijing and Shanghai. And the fact that most Chinese fansubbers obtain the original videos of foreign TV shows from international BitTorrent sites, such Pirate Bay, RARBG, and Limetorrents, indicates that they belong to a global network of unauthorized copy culture. Through their collective activities of producing, sharing, and developing shared knowledge and media contents, the Chinese fansub community cultivated a vibrant cultural sphere of cosmopedia on the transnational networks of piracy and p2p file sharing. Such a shadowy, pirate operation of cosmopolitan cultural trafficking is not necessarily opposing to the normative global media market, but it certainly presents itself as an alternative domain that is relatively autonomous from the control by the Chinese state or the multinational copyright industries. Although Chinese fansubbers rarely advocate any radical positions, they pride themselves as the antithesis to the official, state-run media

136  Jinying Li industry. The international TV shows that are subtitled by fans are mostly unavailable on Chinese television networks, often due to the tight quota system for importation. Even when some foreign TV shows are licensed and released in China, these shows are often re-edited and revised to pass censorship. For instance, when the American TV show Desperate Housewife (ABC, 2004–2012) was broadcasted at China Central Television (CCTV), most of the sex scenes were deleted and sexual references in the dialogues were either omitted or purposely mistranslated. The fansubbing community strongly condemned this “cleaned” version and promoted their own subtitled videos as “un-censored.” This “un-censored” channel of transnational cultural flow, on the other hand, is not completely unruly. The Chinese fansubbers, exemplifying Toby Miller (1993)’s notion of the “well-tempered self,” often try to work within the limit of cultural control and exhibit a certain degree of self-discipline and self-management. By and large, the knowledge community of Chinese fansubbers, as well as their pirated media sphere of cosmopedia, is in tune with the cultural logic of what Deleuze defines as a “control society,” where continuous control and instant communication are hand in hand in positioning the subject as a well-mannered cultural citizen in neoliberal capitalism (Deleuze, 1992). However, the good manners of the fansub community are not without contradictions, which are often exposed in the moment of crisis. In 2009, when the Chinese government shut down BitTorrent services during the infamous anti-piracy campaign, a huge outcry was generated in the public, especially among the knowledge community of online fandom. After BTChina, one of China’s earliest and largest BitTorrent sites, was shut down, the well-tempered netizens could no longer sit peacefully with self-control. They launched a massive virtual demonstration on the Internet, creating and disseminating various textual and visual memes to protest against the loss of a crucial cultural access. The oppositional edge in their cosmopolitan desire became most visible in its negative determination of being suppressed. The cosmopolitan experience that is mediated through fansub is neither transparent nor homogeneous. But instead, it forms an active contact zone where different local and global cultural identities clash and negotiate with each other, generating new meanings and sensibilities that are highly unstable. The fansubbers often pride themselves as experts of international cultures and thus claim to have produced more “authentic” translations than the state-run commercial TV networks whose translations are often criticized as inaccurate and old-fashioned. This is a stance that certainly tries to highlight the fansub community’s privileged cosmopolitan identity, because many of them have firsthand experience living in the West. But at the same time, the fansubbers also frequently take the liberty to insert local Chinese flavors, such as local dialects, traditional poetry, cultural references, and indigenous memes, into their translated subtitles (Figure  8.3). Sometimes these local flavors can be quite political. For instance, one subtitle translates a profane line (with the F word) to “Grass Mud Horse” (草泥马), an

Pirate cosmopolitanism  137

Figure 8.3 A  provincial dialect is used in the subtitle to translate the character’s dialogue in Spanish

obscene pun that has become a popular meme on Chinese cyberspace to ridicule and undermine the state censorship (Figure 8.4). In these cases, the process of unauthorized translation by fans becomes a discursive remediation interface between the global and the local on the platform of language. It is also an active subcultural communication between fansubbers and fan viewers on the transnational networks of pirate media, constructing, sustaining, and situating their collective cosmopolitan identity that is heterogonous, vernacular, and deeply rooted in the local context. The collective cosmopolitan identity within the fansub community, however, is uneven and disjunctive. Not everyone has the privilege to travel abroad or even live in an urban place. Some of them come to access to this cosmopolitan center from social margins. A famous example is Liang Liang, the leader of China’s biggest fansubbing group YYeTs, who came from a rural background and often openly expressed his feeling of uneasiness working among those privileged cosmopolitans with oversea life experience. Furthermore, the mastery of foreign language, particularly English, is a crucial element in constructing and mapping the uneven cosmopolitan identities among the fansub community. Many fans admit that the main reason for them to participate in the production and consumption of fansubs is to improve their English skill, which is considered a significant cultural capital and an aspirational means for social mobility in contemporary China. Different levels of English skills also determine the unseen hierarchy in the fansub community, because the cosmopolitan identity of this

138  Jinying Li

Figure 8.4  The F-word is translated as “Grass Mud Horse” (草泥马) in the subtitle

knowledge community is largely based upon the translingual practice of translation. The clash between global media and local fandom, as well as among fans’ uneven experiences of cosmopolitanism, characterizes the fansub culture as a dynamic contact zone, where “disparate cultures meet, clash and grapple with each other, often in contexts of highly asymmetrical relations of domination and subdomination—such as colonialism and slavery, or their aftermaths as they are lived out across the globe today” (Pratt, 2007, p. 7). Such a volatile contact zone is precisely what is entailed in the cosmopedia, a cosmopolitan thinking community that is made possible only by collective discussions, debates, and negotiations among diverse knowledge, identities, and cultural references on a transnational media network situated within local particularities and differences. This contact zone is achieved by the participatory activities of producing, sharing, and consuming fansub, which functions as a cultural interface between different languages, cultures, and identities. The interface effect of such a contact zone is literally visualized in a unique interface called “danmaku” (弹幕) that has become very popular on streaming platforms for sharing fansub videos in China. Danmaku, which means “bullet curtain,” is an interface design that was first introduced by

Pirate cosmopolitanism  139 the Japanese video-sharing platform Niconico, and it has a peculiar function to render user comments flying over videos on screen. The interface was quickly adopted by Chinese video-sharing websites ACFun and Bilibili, two of the major platforms for the fansub community to share videos. As I have argued previously, danmaku interface functions as “a volatile contact zone for conflicting modes, logics, and structures of digital media,” as well as among disparate frameworks of cultural expression and identity formation (Li, 2017). In the case of fansub, the danmaku interface effectively visualizes and mediates the cosmopolitan contact zone as a layer of paratextual comments on screen (Fig 8.5). The visual presentation of viewer comments as a “bullet curtain,” overlapping and obscuring the original moving images of the foreign TV show, creates a provocative experience of volatile contact between transnational media content (the TV show) and local cultural interpretations (the Chinese user comments). It is a cosmopolitan encounter that unfolds on screen in real time. The contact zone that is visually presented on the bullet curtain, moreover, also exposes the uneven and disjunctive experiences of cosmopolitanism within the fansub community. The discrepancies among fans’ different cosmopolitan identities become visible in the clash between the “timedifference group” (时差党) who live overseas and the “local group” (本土党) who are based in China. Since the oversea group often has the first-hand resources and inside information about foreign cultures, they like to share their knowledge with their fellow fans in China; whereas the local group, though appreciating the conversation, sometimes complaints about the

Figure 8.5 The danmaku interface on video-sharing platform Bibibili with viewer comments flying over a fansub video on screen

140  Jinying Li “pretentiousness” of the oversea group, criticizing them for “showing off.” The debates and arguments between these groups often take place in a highly visible manner on the interface of danmaku, laying out the internal conflicts of the fan community on the opaque surface of the bullet curtain. The dynamic interactions between the two groups simultaneously enrich and problematize the fansub culture, exposing its internal discrepancy and unevenness while at the same time providing a discursive interface for fans to communicate and negotiate their different local/global identities and experiences. Such is precisely the cultural function of pirate cosmopolitanism— an active contact zone that foregrounds, critiques, and potentially reforms the contradiction between the imagined desire of universality and the lived experience of inequality.

The undercurrents of “flow” The sense of pirate cosmopolitanism that is constituted by collective knowledge sharing is propelling and propelled by a transnational, transmedial process that is often described as “flow.” Indeed, what Manuel Castells (2000) has famously called the “space of flow”—the information network and its socio-economic order—is where p2p file sharing is located, and piracy has also frequently been characterized as the cultural signature (or symptom) of networked flow (Wang 2003). However, the transnational cultural encounter that takes place in the contact zone of fansub, as I have characterized earlier, is far from a smooth, continuous process that is implied by the notion of flow. In fact, the disjunctions between different frames of cultural identifications in the process of transcultural translation and subtitling, as well as the discrepancies among diverse experiences of cosmopolitan encounter within the fansub community, all suggest that what pirate cosmopolitanism represents is less a triumph than a crisis of flow. This crisis leads us to rethink the very concept of flow. What exactly do we mean under what assumptions when we speak of “flow”? How can we situate the pirate media access such as fansub within the actually existing “space of flow,” which, in reality, is full of tension, unevenness, disjuncture, and division? Although “flow” has been described as the cultural logic of the so-called network society, the term predated the rise of digital media. The concept was first and foremost associated with television studies when Raymond Williams (1974) began to use “flow” as a key word to characterize the distinctive structure of television broadcasting as “one of sequence or flow” (p. 80). Through the concept of flow, Williams tries to distinguish television—as a cultural form and a technology—from other media such as cinema and literature that are consumed as singular texts. In television, what is experienced is not discrete units, but is “a planned flow, in which the true series is not the published sequence of programmed items but this sequence transformed by the inclusion of another kind of sequence, so that these sequences together compose the real flow, the real ‘broadcasting.’ ”(Williams, 1974, p. 84) As

Pirate cosmopolitanism  141 a technology and culture of flow, television is thus interpreted by Williams as a medium of non-differentiated texts, in which the heterogeneity and disjuncture among different textual contents (e.g. news, dramas, commercials) matter less than the televisual system of organization and delivery as one continuous stream of programming and broadcasting. In the words of Mimi White, “the medium transformed the nature and notion of textual hierarchies, which were superseded by flow” (White, 2003, p. 100). From this perspective, Williams’s concept of televised flow predicted Castells’s notion of networked flow, for both prescribe flow as the technological foundation of a medium (television or computer networks) that precedes any textual viabilities. In such a system, the discrepancies and disjunctions among different contents, meanings, and expressions become irrelevant visà-vis the encompassing force of flow. Thus, online delivery systems of content in any kind are all described as “streaming,” which echoes the concept of televisual flow with the same connotation that emphasizes continuity, immediacy, and homogeneity. In the case of information flow on computer networks, the sense of non-differentiated textual qualities is also reinforced by the process of digitalization, because the digital, according to Kittler (1999), eliminates the material differences among signs—image, text and sound all become binary digits. Therefore, for the networked system of digital information flow, “(i)t is not about signs, but about signals” (Terranova, 2004, p. 16). For Castells, the networked flow of information signal is also the infrastructural base for the global flow of capital, labor and commodity, for “the dual logic of capitalism and informationalism collapses into the singular logic of the space of flows” (Bromley, 1999). This tethering between flow and globalization has also been predicted by Williams’s earlier conceptualization of televisual flow, which, according to Mimi White (2003), was “discovered” when Williams encountered American TV shows as a traveling visitor. Contemporary with Williams’s theory of television flow were the studies of global media flow in social science (Curtin, 2003). Both “implicate television as an object of study in various forms of global mobility” by using the concept of “flow” (White, 2003, p. 94). By associating television and information networks with global mobility, the logic of flow is taken as the foundational condition that is pre-given, a prior whose promise is to be fulfilled but not to be challenged. As White (2003) argues, the concept of flow suggests that the medium “has always functioned this way, as an apparatus of global mobility and dislocation,” the precondition and presumption of which are taken for granted rather than being questioned (p. 107). However, as Jane Feuer points out, “(fl)ow as such is neither natural nor technologically determined. It is an historically specific result of network practice: ‘flow charts’ are constructed by network executives prior to being reconstituted by structuralists” (Feuer, 1983, p.  16). Even Raymond Williams admits that the structure of flow in television is “planned” not pregiven. In fact, when television content is remediated and accessed through

142  Jinying Li the pirate circuit of fansub, the well-planned illusion of flow, in either televised or networked systems, is all but shattered. Fansubbers first have to separate television shows from their original programming, taking them out of the “flow.” Television content has thus become discrete units of individual texts that are to be recontextualized, reproduced, and redistributed: the dialogues are to be translated, subtitles will be inserted, and the digital coding of the video has to be recoded for redissemination on p2p networks. The original television flow is a planned artifact that is organized by the institutional practice of programming based on the commodity logic to maximized viewer engagement. But the logic for commercial TV programming collapses when the content is pirated by the non-commercial practice of fansubbing. In other words, flow is not a pre-determined nature of television, but is its special manifestation as a commodity culture. But when television content is recontextualized into the sphere of fansub through the collective activities of knowledge sharing among fans, it transforms from a commodity culture to what Lévy (1997) calls a “knowledge culture.” As such, the fansubbed television content no longer sustains the system of a planned flow or its commodity logic of programming. Although the programmed structure of a continuous flow is shattered, it does not mean that the concept is irrelevant for the cultural phenomenon of TV fansub. Instead, the fansub community creates an alternative experience of flow that does not take textual continuity and homogeneity for granted, but rather foregrounds disjuncture and discrepancies as multiplied undercurrents of flow. In the system of television fansub, what constitutes the experience of flow is not a continuous strip of programmed series, but is the intertextual mediation between the original and the translated, as well as the transcultural encounter between the international TV content and local receptions. Whereas the programmed TV flow takes precedence over all textual disparities, fansubbed flow rather thrives in various kinds of textual and intertextual differences that generate dynamic discussion and knowledge sharing to sustain a “flow” of conversation among fans. For instance, the abundance of onscreen comments and glosses in fansub videos, which share translation notes, insiders’ tips, and cross-cultural knowledge (Figures 8.1 and 8.2), creates a rich interface mediating diverse textual elements for subcultural communication. When viewers watch fansub videos that are translated and subtitled by their fellow fans, while at the same time reading these layers of notes and comments on screen, this experience of dynamic textual interaction and convergence is akin to the sense of televisual flow that combines different television programs into one continuous strip. But unlike the planed flow that is meticulously put together by the TV networks, the convergent intertextual flow through fansub videos is rather constituted cooperatively by fans’ shared knowledge and collective participation. The danmaku interface that is favored by the fansub community is a prime example for such a heterogeneous intertextual flow, in which the “floating” texts on screen converge with the video content, creating a continuous flow

Pirate cosmopolitanism  143 of conversation, discussions, and social communication among fans (Figure 8.4). Furthermore, the ways in which Chinese fansubbers integrate local cultural flavors into their subtitles (Figure  8.3) also transform this intertextual communicative flow into a transcultural flow. The Chinese fansubs often make explicit references to local television cultures, such as reality TV stars and popular commercials, in their subtitles of American shows, generating a cultural experience of flow between global media commodities and local cultural particularities. If the traditional television flow often (negatively) prescribes a passive TV viewer who is likely to be absorbed into the programmed continuity, then the intertextual, transcultural flow in fansub videos rather calls for an active participatory fan who is eager to join the subcultural communication with other fans. The fansubbed flow is thus often hidden from the plain sight: you have to belong to the subcultural community in order to be able to download the videos, to recognize the references, to communicate with fellow fans, and to enjoy the flow. Unlike the planned flow that is readily provided by the TV industry as a pre-given condition of television, the subcultural flow in fansub rather has to be actively discovered and collective pursued by the fan community. We may call them the “undercurrents of flow,” for they are often hidden in the shadowy space of media piracy. These undercurrents don’t take the logic of flow for granted and they don’t assume flow as the pre-given condition of media in association with global mobility. But instead, the undercurrent of flow is a process to be initiated, facilitated, and realized through collective activities. In other words, flow is not to be located in the technological infrastructure of the medium (television or computer networks), but is to be constituted by the social activities of the community. Identifying flow in the social, the pirate undercurrents thus challenge the normative notion of flow that is often taken as the technological foundation of media networks. Although neither Williams nor Castells characterizes flow as technologically determined, they both situate the condition of flow within the technological and institutional systems as the material basis, which gives little space for actual social activities and communications. The audiences are expected to be subjected to the televisual or informational flow as a precondition of the media, rather than to create a flow as social practice for themselves. What fansub exposes and challenges is precisely this long-held assumption of flow as a pre-given condition. For the Chinese audience, what they experience through commercial television and information networks is far from a smooth, seamless flow: most foreign shows are either unavailable on domestic television networks, or are frequently censored, modified, or inadequately translated by commercial distributors to suppress the sense of cross-cultural distance and otherness. Even networked video streaming is constantly interrupted by technical glitches, buffering, and delay, not to mention the tightly controlled geoblocking system that is used by most video-streaming services to manage different local

144  Jinying Li markets (Alexander, 2017). Instead of a flow, what the network provides is an organized spatial-temporal control that is full of gaps, disjunctions, and ruptures. The fansub culture emerged precisely to address such inadequacy and the failure of flow. For the fansubbing community, flow is not a natural condition that is pre-given by the televisual or informational networks, but is an unfulfilled desire that is to be actively pursued and realized by collective social activities and communications. Flow, therefore, is less technological than social. As Brian Larkin (2008) reminds us, mediation does not automatically occur on technological media themselves, but are rather enabled by the everyday interactions and communications of active social agents such as audiences, exhibitors, video vendors, and pirate distributors. The undercurrents of flow are enabled by the social activities of fans rather than by the technological infrastructure of media networks. Through active social practices, such as organizing group members to conduct translation and subtitling, sharing knowledge via online forums and onscreen comments, and distributing fansub video on p2p networks, the fansub community successfully generates a dynamic flow of transcultural meanings and sensibilities, which provides them a socio-cultural platform to be in contact and negotiate with various kinds of cosmopolitan experiences.

Note 1 In 2013, SARFT was merged with the General Administration of Press and Publication to form the State Administration of Press, Publication, Radio, Film, and Television (SAPPRFT). The merge has strengthened its administrative control of Internet content, because the new agency, SAPPRFT, has the authority to censor online distribution of media in any forms including text, audio and video. In March 2018, it was announced that SAPPRFT would be abolished and replaced by three administrative units (Administration of Press and Publication, Film Bureau, and Administration of Radio and Television) to control press, film, radio and television separately. It remained unclear which administrative agency would be responsible for controlling online video content.

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146  Jinying Li Miller, T. (1993). The well-tempered self: Citizenship, culture, and the postmodern subject. Johns Hopkins University Press. Miyoshi, M. (1993). A borderless world? From colonialism to transnationalism and the decline of the nation-state. Critical Inquiry, 19(4), 726–751. Nussbaum, M. C. (1997). Kant and stoic cosmopolitanism. Journal of Political Philosophy, 5(1), 1–25. https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-9760.00021 Pang, L. (2006). Cultural control and globalization in Asia: Copyright, piracy, and cinema. Psychology Press. Pang, L. (2012). Creativity and its discontents: China’s creative industries and intellectual property rights offenses. Duke University Press. Pratt, M. L. (2007). Imperial eyes: Travel writing and transculturation. Routledge. Rabinow, P. (1986). Representations are social facts: Modernity and post-modernity in anthropology. In J. Clifford & G. E. Marcus (Eds.), Writing culture: The poetics and politics of ethnography (pp. 234–261). University of California Press. Rediker, M. (1989). Between the devil and the deep blue sea: Merchant seamen, pirates and the Anglo-American maritime world, 1700–1750. Cambridge University Press. Rofel, L. (2007). Desiring China: Experiments in neoliberalism, sexuality, and public culture (annotated ed.). Duke University Press. Said, E. W. (1978). Orientalism. Pantheon Books. Schein, L. (2000). Minority rules: The Miao and the feminine in China’s cultural politics. Duke University Press. Steinberg, M. (2012). Anime’s media mix: Franchising toys and characters in Japan. University of Minnesota Press. Sundaram, R. (2010). Pirate modernity: Delhi’s media urbanism. Routledge. Terranova, T. (2004). Network culture: Politics for the information age. Pluto Press. Vertovec, S.,  & Cohen, R. (2003). Conceiving cosmopolitanism: Theory, context and practice. Oxford University Press. Wang, S. (2003). Framing piracy: Globalization and film distribution in greater China. Rowman & Littlefield. White, M. (2003). Flows and other close encounters with television. In L. Parks & S. Kumar (Eds.), Planet TV: A global television reader (pp. 94–110). New York University Press. Williams, R. (1974). Television: Technology and cultural form. Routledge.

Part III

Digital platforms, cultural industries, and East Asia

9 The rise of digital platforms in the networked Korean society Dal Yong Jin

Introduction In the early twenty-first century, digital platforms have become some of the most significant digital technologies and cultures. Digital platforms—such as search engines (e.g. Google), social network sites (SNSs; e.g. Facebook), on demand internet streaming media (e.g. Netflix), and smartphones and their operating systems (e.g. Android and iOS)—are swiftly becoming ubiquitous in everyday life, and they are deeply woven into our daily activities, politically, culturally, and technologically. In particular, digital platforms are symbols of economic growth in many parts of the world, and digital platforms as the primary drivers of modern capitalism have played a major role in accumulating capital in the hands of a few platform designers and owners. Digital platforms tend to be US platforms, such as Google, Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter (Fuchs, 2015). However, because of the significant role of digital platforms in both the digital economy and culture, several non-Western countries, such as South Korea and China, have developed their own digital platforms. Korea has especially advanced digital platforms, including smartphones (e.g. Samsung Galaxy), internet portals (e.g. Naver and Kakao), and instant mobile messengers (e.g. KakaoTalk and LINE). The increasing roles of these platforms are signals of Korea’s transformation, which emphasizes digital platforms as new driving forces in the realm of information and communication technology (ICT).1 Therefore, several previous works (Kim et al., 2015; Park et al., 2014; Steinberg, 2020) written in the local context argue that local platforms such as Naver and Kakao provide opportunities for Korea to challenge American hegemony in the domestic market.2 By employing political economy as an analytical framework and focusing on power relations between global forces and local forces in the realm of digital platforms, this chapter aims to develop a critical analysis of Korea’s platform technologies. It first identifies the major characteristics that signal the growth of digital platforms as a corporate sphere in which their operation is greatly defined by market forces (van Dijck, 2013). Then, it

150  Dal Yong Jin analyzes the nature of the development of local digital platforms in order to determine whether locally made digital platforms have controlled their own market and, additionally, expanded in the global markets. Finally, given the remarkable growth of several key digital platforms, it discusses whether US-based digital platforms have continued to dominate or influence the local market, constructing a new form of imperialism, which this chapter calls “platform imperialism,” in the Korean context. The term, as defined by the author elsewhere, refers to “an asymmetrical relationship of interdependence in platform technologies and political culture between the West, primarily the US, and many developing countries, including two great powers—both nation-states and transnational corporations” (Jin, 2015a, p. 12). For this reason, it not only examines hardware architecture but also pays close attention to the commercial and cultural values embedded in digital platforms.

Understanding platform imperialism The digital platform has emerged as a major domain in digital media studies in the early twenty-first century (Bogost  & Montfort, 2009), as platform technologies have rapidly become part of our networked society. Previous works emphasized platforms as either hardware or software. Ballon and van Heesvelde (2011, p. 703) argue that the platform is “a hardware configuration, an operating system, a software framework or any other common entity on which a number of associated components or services run.” In their case study of the Nintendo Wii as a platform, Jones and Thiruvathukal (2012) also primarily analyze the mechanics of the Wii hardware, such as the console itself, the iconic Wii remote, its controller, and Nintendo’s distribution system. Meanwhile, Hands (2013, p. 3) claims, a platform is, in its most general sense, a software framework running on the world wide web or Internet, in the forms of social media interfaces, apps, or most commonly Web 2.0 portals that gather users in interfaces with each other and with the Web and Internet itself. As these previous works indicate, “a focus on technical rigor and the material architecture of computing technologies is a hallmark” of digital platforms (Leorke, 2012, p. 261). Most of all, several scholars (Gillespie, 2010; Mansell, 2015) consider platforms as intermediaries. Gillespie (2010, p.  349) defines platforms as “the online services of content intermediaries.” Gillespie (2018, p.  254) identifies platforms as a delivery system: sites and services that host, organize, and circulate users’ hared content or social exchanges for them: without having produced or commissioned [the majority of] that content; beneath that circulation, and

Digital platforms in Korean society  151 infrastructure for processing that data (content, traces, patterns of social relations) for consumer service and for profit. This includes Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, Tumblr, Pinterest, Google +, Instagram, and Snapchat . . . but also Google Search and Bing, Apple App Store and Google Play What he (2018) emphasizes is that these platforms do not produce the content, but they make important choices about that content: what platforms distribute and to whom, how they connect customers and producer and their interactions. Unlike Gillespie, who mostly considers digital platforms the business of information delivery, van Dijck (2013, p. 29) has decided that the platform is a mediator, rather than an intermediary, because it shapes the performance of social acts, instead of merely facilitating them. technically speaking, platforms are the providers of software, (sometimes) hardware, and services that help code social activities into a computational architecture; they process (meta) data through algorithms and formatted protocols before presenting their interpreted logic in the form of user-friendly interfaces with default settings that reflect the platform owner’s strategic choices. van Dijck argues that platforms play a significant role in influencing our daily lives as mediators. Because I critically view digital platforms as mediators instead of intermediaries, I  believe that the political economy of digital platforms needs to identify the explicit amalgamations of several key elements, such as the technological, economic, and cultural dimensions of platforms (Jin, 2015a). These three aspects together provide fundamental characteristics that demonstrate whether US-based platforms have dominated the local markets in the midst of the emergence of locally made digital platforms. To begin with, platforms can be understood through their computational meaning (Bodle, 2010), which is an infrastructure that supports the design and use of any applications. As several scholars (Ballon & van Heesvelde, 2011; Hands, 2013; Jones & Thiruvathukal, 2012; Tech Coders.com, 2012; Steinberg, 2020) point out, regardless of their limitations, we should understand platforms as both hardware and software that allow other programs, such as applications and software, to run. Platforms are also commercial, because they not only provide opportunities for the users to communicate with one another but also afford platform designers and owners the opportunity to sell their platforms as commodities. This means that platforms can be explored from the perspective of the corporate sphere as “their operation is substantially defined by market forces and the process of commodity exchange” (van Dijck, 2012, p. 162). It is critical to understand the role of users in the process, given that platform users are the major commodity.

152  Dal Yong Jin Finally, because digital platforms are also technologies, we need to comprehend a platform’s value, which is embedded in design. As several theoreticians (Feenberg, 1991; Flanagin et  al., 2012; Salter, 2005) argue, technologies, including platform technologies, are not value neutral but, rather, have a cultural bias that embeds the values and communication preferences of the platform designers. Without a doubt, digital platforms mostly have commercial value because these platforms are designed to accumulate capital gains for platform designers and owners, which are now media mega giants. As such, I find that platforms indicate not simply a functional computational shape but also one with commercial and cultural values, including corporate values. As the nature of new media cannot be separated from society, a closer interpretation of the technical functions and traits of digital platforms connected to the corporate sphere, in this case their commercial and cultural values, is crucial. In particular, this kind of comprehensive and critical analysis of digital platforms helps determine challenges and opportunities in understanding global platforms as a new driver of imperialism. In the Korean context, locally based digital platforms, such as Naver, LINE, Daum, and KakaoTalk, as well as Cyworld (now defunct), have had the opportunity to control their own market and even global markets. Because of the emergence of Korea’s digital platforms mentioned earlier, followed by those from other countries, including Japan and China, some might claim that the arrival of a few non-Western countries, in particular Korea, as major players in the platform market balances out asymmetrical power relations. It is, indeed, a significant matter because our understanding of global platforms may differ, depending on whether Korea’s platforms have been reorganized as part of the global flow of digital platforms and developed a balance between Western and non-Western countries. In other words, it is critical to analyze whether locally based digital platforms are able to challenge American-based digital platforms in their own markets, a possibility that may change the notion of platform imperialism. Therefore, this analysis, with its emphasis of the crucial role of local digital platforms in the midst of the increasing dominance of US digital platforms, will shed light on our current debates about platform imperialism.

Search engines as digital platforms: Naver vs. Google Korea has several important local platforms. This chapter, though, focuses on a few major areas, including search engines (internet portals in Korea),3 smartphone and relevant apps, and social network sites, each of which has substantially changed cultural lives and resulted in capital accumulation. Naver and Daum are the two largest web portals and developed or advanced the two most popular mobile instant messaging apps, LINE and Kakao, respectively. These two locally based portals have advanced their unique

Digital platforms in Korean society  153 functions to compete against US-based search engines, and this means that companies like Google and Yahoo have not penetrated the Korean market to the same extent as markets in other countries.4 To begin with, Naver has been the most popular internet portal in Korea since 1999, when it was launched (Naver, 2016a; Park et al., 2007).5 At the early stage, it was not popular because webpages in Korean were relative few in number. As the New York Times (Choe, 2007) reported, when NHN set up the search portal in 1999, the site looked like a grocery store where most of the shelves were empty. Like Google, Naver found there simply was not enough Korean text in cyberspace to make a Korean search engine a viable business. To fill this void, in 2002 Naver began to create Korean-language text using its “Knowledge Search” (Knowledge iN) service.6 After it developed Knowledge iN, Naver was able to utilize its users to connect to advertising as seen on other digital platforms, such as Facebook. Advertising as a share of revenue increased from only 9.7 per cent in 2001 to 72 per cent in the first quarter of 2015 (Han, 2010; Naver, 2015). Instead of remaining a major news delivery engine, Naver expanded its offerings to become a platform, adding local information search services in 2004, blog services in 2005, and webtoon (web comics) services in 2006.7 The strategy worked well because of its advanced infrastructure, including broadband. In fact, in the latter part of the 2000s, more than 70 per cent of the population used the Internet, most of them with high-speed connections, and they did not just want information; they also wanted a sense of community and the kind of human interaction provided by Naver’s Knowledge iN real-time question-and answer platform (Choe, 2007). Naver, as the largest internet portal, made up 83.7 per cent of Korea’s search-engine market in June 2016, followed by Daum (13.65 per cent), Zum (1.05 per cent), and Google (0.9 per cent), based on the real number of visits (Internet Trend, 2016). Naver has also been the most profitable internet corporation in Korea. As of May 2016, Naver’s market value was as high as $19 billion, and it had 5,564 employees (Forbes, 2016). Naver’s annual revenue soared from 2.121 billion Korean won (comparable to $1.854 billion) in 2011 to 3.251 billion Korean won (comparable to $2.843 billion) in 2015 (Naver, 2016b). Thanks to the strong presence of Naver and Daum, Google has not been dominant in Korea’s PC search engine market. However, understanding digital platforms is more complex and nuanced than previously assumed, mainly because Google’s influence is not negligible in the local market. Most of all, Google’s market share in mobile search has greatly changed. Although Naver continues to be the leader in both PC-based and mobile-based search engines, Google surpassed Daum in the smartphone sector a few years ago, to take second place. According to the market research firm Nielsen Korean Click (see Kim, 2014), in

154  Dal Yong Jin September 2013 Google’s monthly market share was 12.02 per cent, surpassing Daum (11.4 per cent) for the first time, and in April 2015 Google’s share increased to 14.5 per cent. Google increased its market share in the mobile sector primarily because it relies on its own operating system (Android). Android smartphones automatically use Google as the basic search engine, so people simply access Google instead of switching to Naver or Daum (Y. L. Choi, 2015; Y. J. Kim, 2014). Second, Naver and Daum-Kakao (now Kakao) have not penetrated global markets. Based on its rapid growth in the Korean market, Naver has certainly developed its transnationalization strategy, which is one of the greatest assets for the company. For example, Naver established NHN Japan, which is the Japanese arm of Naver Corporation. In 2011, it launched a new service that took on a life of its own. LINE was developed in Japan after the devastating 2011 earthquake and tsunami. Widespread damage to Japan’s telecommunications infrastructure obliged NHN Japan employees to rely on internet tools to communicate. Engineers responded by developing LINE, which was released to the public in June of that year (Saito, 2012). The explosive success of LINE led to the creation of Line Corporation in February 2013. The firm, based in Japan, is home to internet operations such as LINE, Naver Japan, and Livedoor (Park et al., 2014).8 However, Naver and LINE have not penetrated Western markets. Google has extended its dominance globally as a media company. Mainly because of this critical issue, Lee Hae-Jin stepped down as Naver’s chairman in October 2016 to “focus on mapping out Naver’s overseas business strategies and finding start-ups in Europe” (S. R. Park, 2016). By doing this, he hopes to help the company expand to other major markets, including Europe and North America. Lee emphasizes that Naver cannot compete with global platforms such as Google and Facebook without finding a new driver engine in the global market. Despite its weak presence in Korea, Google has a commanding position among global search engines. In January  2019, Google had an 89.95 per cent worldwide desktop market share, followed by Bing (3.99 per cent), Yahoo (2.84 per cent), and Baidu (0.56 per cent) (Statista, 2020). Except in a small number of countries, such as China, Russia, and Korea, Google is the world leader in search engines. Bing and Yahoo, which are runners-up in many countries, are also US-based platforms, thus American-based search engines have cemented their supremacy on the global market. Finally, only a few countries, including Korea, have been able to develop their own search engines and compete with their American counterparts. The majority of countries are not able to develop these platform companies because they lack the know-how, money, and manpower, and they have no choice but to increase their use of US-made digital platforms. In Korea, as discussed, Naver has become a dominant player in search engines; however, Google’s influence in the Korean market cannot be discounted because of the

Digital platforms in Korean society  155 many platforms that Google has created and managed, such as YouTube— the largest user-generated content platform, including in Korea—and Google Play, which is discussed later. Even though Naver has maintained its role as the dominant search engine in the local market, an asymmetrical relationship remains between the United States and Korea and therefore other countries. In particular, in most platform areas where profits can be generated, “American-based corporations have been able to convert beachheads into monopoly fortresses and generate endless profit” (McChesney, 2013, 151). The reach of Google as a global digital platform has intensified its global dominance with a few exceptions.

Smartphones as capitalist social platforms: emerging Korea vs. dominant United States Smartphones offer some of the most significant digital platforms both as gadgets as well as free mobile instant messaging devices and in allowing access to operating systems. Platforms are considered mainly as a way of converging hardware and software, and, therefore, it is critical to understand them as a whole. In other words, although platforms are treated separately, they need to be understood comprehensively. However, the smartphone sector has clearly shown contradictory and unbalanced trends. Korean smartphone makers, including Samsung Electronics and LG Electronics, have developed and sold their handsets in global markets and made Korea a smartphone wonderland. Aside from handsets, Korea has been far behind the United States in that American operating systems and applications control the domestic market as well as the world market.

Emergence of Korea’s smartphone sphere Several significant dimensions can be discussed with respect to the smartphone sphere in order to address the conflicts and tensions between locally made and globally made smartphone platforms. To begin with, Koreanmade smartphones, such as Samsung’s Galaxy series and LG’s X series, have competed with iPhones and increased their global market share since their introduction in 2009. When Samsung focused on feature phones (i.e. mobile phones that are not smartphones) in 2008, its share of the global market for mobile phones was 3.6 per cent. In 2010, however, Samsung became the second-largest maker of mobile phones, with a 20.1 per cent market share, and then became the number one maker and exporter, with 23.4 per cent in 2012, surpassing Nokia (IDC, 2012, 2013). In the second quarter of 2016, Samsung had nearly 10 per cent more market share than Apple, as the iPhone continued a downward trend, with a decline of 7.7 per cent in market share during the same period, compared to the second quarter of 2015 (Gartner, 2016). However, the increasing popularity of iPhones in the

156  Dal Yong Jin Korean market shows that domestic handset manufacturers do not have a lock on the Korean market. According to the market research company Counterpoint (2015), in November 2014 Apple captured a record one third of smartphone sales in Korea, threatening Samsung’s strong foothold in its home market for the first time. No foreign brand has ever held more than a 20 per cent market share of Korea’s smartphones. The situation continued in 2017, as the iPhone was very competitive although Samsung consisted of the largest share at 56 per cent (J. Y. Cho, 2018). In addition, in the 2010s, free mobile instant messaging (IM) apps have experienced phenomenal growth, and Korea has developed its own IM apps. As is well documented, in Korea as elsewhere, smartphones have rapidly replaced feature phones, and people use their smartphones for much more than making phone calls, predominantly for IM, using apps such as WhatsApp, WeChat, Kakao, and LINE, as well as Facebook. The corporations that created these apps have turned into symbols of ‘a corporate sphere’, which amplifies their market value by offering all kinds of services on their platforms while gathering data on their users for profit (van Dijck, 2012), making the users the most desirable digital commodity. In the Korean market, Kakao Talk, the largest IM service, has been trying to enter the IM app market (Kim & Kang, 2014). In addition to offering its own messaging features, KakaoTalk enables users to access several apps, extending its functionality. Since its introduction in March  2010, the number of subscribers has soared. As of April 2014, KakaoTalk held 87.8 per cent (about 30  million) of the Korean market share, followed by Facebook Messenger (6  million users) and LINE (5.5  million users) (Y. H. Chang, 2015). Based on its domestic success, the company has invested in Southeast Asia, mainly in Indonesia, the Philippines, and Malaysia, as it seeks growth (Song 2014). This soaring number states that KakaoTalk’s overseas user base is growing. Koreans do not use the app just to chat: it is also a popular platform for playing mobile games, which is the largest source of revenue for Kakao, and for sending both digital and physical gifts (Economist, 2014). In 2014, KakaoTalk merged with the domestic internet-portal operator Daum, which highlights the increasing commodification of digital platforms as they have become some of the most significant companies in the digital age. Daum undoubtedly hopes this merger will increase Kakao Talk’s functionality and thereby its competitiveness with Naver. Kakao bought Daum Communications in an all-stock deal, hoping to boost its presence in web and mobile services. Under the deal, which gave the unlisted Kakao a valuation of $3.03 billion, Kakao gained 75 per cent ownership of a new company called Daum Kakao (M. J. Lee, 2014). This merger occurred right after Facebook’s acquisition of WhatsApp, which it announced in February 2014, for $19 billion in cash and stock (M. J. Lee, 2014). Among the many reasons for the recent convergence with IM service corporations, one of the most significant is the platform function of this

Digital platforms in Korean society  157 new service engine. After the merger of Daum and Kakao, Sir-goo Lee, the co-CEO of Daum Kakao, clearly stated, “mobile, life, platform and connection are the four keywords that represent Daum Kakao’s directions. We are aiming at becoming mobile lifestyle platform leader” (Bahk, 2014; Daum Kakao, 2014), a sentiment also announced in a press release by the new firm in October 2014. Korea has advanced the penetration of its own smartphone handsets and IM applications, in competition with Apple and WhatsApp in global markets, which shows the possibility for locally made platform technologies to emerge.

Intensifying American hegemony Countries such as Korea, China, and Japan have expanded their presence in global markets for smartphone handsets and IM apps, however, the United States has remained dominant in operating systems, with both Google’s Android9 and Apple’s iOS producing IM and other applications in addition to their popular hardware. Most of all, Android’s commanding penetration comes from demand for mid- to low-end smartphones in emerging markets as well as for its high-end smartphones, especially after a number of key Android players introduced their new high-end devices, such as Samsung with the Galaxy S7. As Roberta Cozza, research director at technology market research firm Gartner (2016), points out, Google is evolving the Android platform fast, which allows Android players to remain at the cutting edge of smartphone technology. Facing a highly commoditized smartphone market, Google’s focus is to further expand and diversify the Android platform with additional functionalities, like virtual reality, enabling more-intelligent experiences and reach into wearables, connected home devices, in-car entertainment, and TV. Android, which was invented in 2003 and integrated into Google, has been the world’s best-selling smartphone OS. The two largest American OS—Android and iOS (12.9 per cent)—accounted for 97.1 per cent of the market in the second quarter of 2016, which is not the case in other market segments. Because Samsung is the largest handset provider globally, it is Google’s largest customer. In addition, the United States has expanded its lead in global IM markets. According to eMarketer (2015), mobile IM apps were by more than 1.4 billion consumers in 2015, up 31.6 per cent over the level the previous year. In addition to iPhones in the United States, in October 2016, Google launched two smartphones, the Pixel and Pixel XL. “The two Android smartphones are the first to carry Google’s branding without being associated with another manufacturer and are a clear mark in the sand by the Android-maker” (Gibbs, 2016). Therefore, these two US-based smartphones may compete with non-American-made smartphones. Kakao Talk in Korea, LINE in Japan, and WeChat in China are almost unchallenged domestically, the two US-based IM apps are the largest

158  Dal Yong Jin globally. Although the IM app market is crowded, WhatsApp and Facebook ­Messenger—now both owned by Facebook—are two global powerhouses, with significant reach in more than twenty countries (eMarketer, 2015). Since October 2014, with its acquisition of WhatsApp, Facebook has increased its global dominance.10 At the same time, Facebook provides a business model for converging with an IM, which is one of the most valued features of digital platforms. Because Facebook is a cornucopia in the platform market, after it develops certain types of business strategies, they are must-take-andfollow business trends for other platform owners. In the process, Facebook’s commercial ideology has been adopted by locally based platforms. Meanwhile, two American app stores, Google Play and Apple’s App Store, are primary players in the local market, as in many other countries, and hence exert control over the Korean app economy. The Korean mobile content market increased from approximately $3.18  billion in 2014 to $4.55 billion in 2015. The mobile content market includes fee-based apps and advertising in apps (Korea Mobile Internet Business Association, 2014; Yonhap News, 2015a). In Korea, Google Play alone made up 51.8 per cent of the mobile content market, and the App Store comprised 31.3 per cent, which means that these two Western-based platforms accounted for a combined 83.1 per cent of the Korean app economy. Other markets, including Samsung Galaxy Apps, were not significant. This trend will continue because two US-based operating systems— Android and iOS—consist of more than 95 per cent of the market in domestic operating systems. Because Google Play and the App Store are preinstalled on Google and Apple smartphones, respectively, they have inherent advantages, so naturally they can extend their market share in the local market. Because of the rapid growth of several key ICT sectors, Korea could be one of the major app economies; however, it cannot make its own counterparts to these US based operating systems and applications despite its efforts to make operating systems (e.g. Samsung’s Tizen and Galaxy Apps). The power of apps, in terms of operating systems, creates new resources and new productive capacity, and its strategic use has tremendous benefits for app developers and corporations that own app (van Couvering, 2012). The current monopolistic capitalism controlled by Android and iOS consequently extends inequalities between the United States and other countries, including Korea. In the 2010s, applications, in particular operating systems and app stores on smartphones, play a major role as a fundamental resource for the growth of the platform economy and ­culture, and the app market is a new battleground created by the accumulation of capital.

Social network sites as platforms: Cyworld vs. Facebook Social network sites have become some of the most significant digital platforms, and American-made platforms dominate the Korean market.

Digital platforms in Korean society  159 Although Korea developed Cyworld and m2day, comparable to Facebook and Twitter, respectively, these two local SNSs could not survive because of the two major US SNSs. In the Korean market, a locally made SNS, known as Cyworld, was a major player until 2015, when it officially closed down, and as of October 2016, Facebook is the largest SNS. Cyworld was created as a personal information management system by individual inventors at the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST) in 1999, ahead of Facebook, which was created in 2004. Cyworld was initially thought of as a personal contact website, a way to connect to a user’s immediate circle of friends. However, it gained popularity as an SNS in 2001 with the launching of its template-based homepage service (H. J. Choi, 2006).11 By the end of 2008, almost half of Koreans were connected through Cyworld, and more than 90 per cent of twenty- to twenty-nine-year-olds used it on a regular basis (H. S. Kim, 2009). The growth of Cyworld relied on the increasing number of young users who dedicated their time and energy to continuing their connections with others (Jin, 2015b). Like many other SNSs, Cyworld became a commodity, and it was sold to SK Communications—a subsidiary of SK Telecom, the largest provider in South Korea of wireless services—in 2003 (C. S. Lim, 2003). Cyworld, however, did not survive, as Koreans moved to Facebook and Twitter. Unlike Facebook and Twitter, which rely on smartphones, Cyworld did not develop smartphone-based services and eventually went out of business (Baek, 2015). Until the late 2000s, because of Cyworld, foreign-based social network sites did not penetrate the Korean market. However, as detailed later, Cyworld could not sustain its supremacy and disappeared in part because of Facebook’s increasing popularity in Korea. Since the early 2010s, Facebook has increased in market share, and it held 59.8 per cent of the Korean SNS market in December  2015, followed by Kakao Story (17.1 per cent), Instagram (10.3 per cent), Band (a local SNS, 8.2 per cent), and Twitter (2.4 per cent) (DMC, 2015). The number of Facebook users in Korea has risen rapidly, from 2.1 million at the end of 2010 to 16 million at the end of 2015, meaning about 31 per cent of Koreans have Facebook accounts (Yonhap News, 2015b). Cyworld was vulnerable because it remained mainly a simple social network site, while Facebook has developed into a platform with an advanced role in aggregating services. In 2006, Facebook introduced the Facebook Development Platform (Facebook, 2006b), a new set of services that enable developers to create outside applications to work with Facebook. In 2007, Facebook also launched the Facebook Platform (Helmond, 2015, p.  1). Since May 2007, Facebook users have been able to download and interact with Facebook applications as well as those developed by outside companies that access Facebook’s platform (Cohen, 2008; J. S. Shim, 2016). The process of platformization has been a critical dimension of the growth of social media (Helmond, 2015). Several US-based social media platforms

160  Dal Yong Jin (e.g. Facebook) and search engines (e.g. Google) have been very successful at platformization based on their global users, both individual customers and corporate users, resulting in the massive accumulation of capital in their hands. Their global dominance has increased as their market share has continued to grow, and the advantage of platformization will contribute to the power asymmetry caused by platform imperialism. Facebook has maintained its rate of growth and generates thousands of new user registrations every day. The number of total users grew from 585  million in December  2010 to 1.13  billion daily active users on average in June 2016. In addition, it had 2.6 billion monthly active mobile users on average in March 2020—a 10 per cent increase from the ­previous year in the midst of COVID-19 (Facebook, 2020). These users are important because they contribute to the high valuation assigned to Facebook. As of June  2016, approximately 84.5 per cent of daily active users were outside the United States and Canada. This implies that Facebook has expanded its domination of global markets, resulting in another form of asymmetrical power relations in the realm of digital platforms (Facebook, 2016a). Several countries have developed their own SNSs, and locally based SNSs are market leaders in Japan (Mixi), China (QQ), and Russia (VK.COM). However, as Cyworld in Korea clearly exemplifies, locally based platforms are vulnerable because Facebook as a social media platform has penetrated most countries. As Cohen (2008) and O’Reilly (2005) points out, Facebook is the leader of interactive, participant-based Web 2.0, which creates value from the sharing of information by users. As the number of Facebook users has soared, advertisers and corporations have focused more on Facebook, of course, and other leading social network sites, as an alternative advertising medium in the era of digital platforms (Jin  & Feenberg, 2015). As discussed elsewhere (Jin 2015a, pp. 59–60), SNSs have gained attention as online spaces and platforms for both young people and adults in the 2010s, and American-based digital platforms have rapidly penetrated the world and enjoyed sizable capital gains. Most of all, as Helmond (2015, p. 1) argues, the global presence of Facebook was made possible mainly because, again, Facebook has transformed from a social networking site into a social media platform. In this regard, American-based platforms are technologies, products, or services that create value primarily by enabling direct interactions between two or more customer or participant groups. Prominent examples of multisided platforms and the participants they connect include Facebook (users, advertisers, third-party game or content developers, and affiliated third-party sites); Apple’s iOS (application developers and users); Google’s Android operating system (handset manufacturers, application developers, and users) (Hagiu 2014, p. 71). Cyworld and Facebook have had different results. Both started as SNSs to provide a new networking tool for users to connect with friends; however, it is Facebook that has survived and dominated global markets,

Digital platforms in Korean society  161 including Korea, primarily because of its successful transformation into a digital platform.

Emergence of local platforms vs. asymmetrical power relations As Naver and Kakao Talk in Korea exemplify, some countries have developed their own digital platforms in the midst of a geopolitics of platform domination by the United States. However, as proven in Korea, with a few exceptions, the United States, as the largest provider of digital platforms, has continued to dominate digital platforms, resulting in the advent of platform imperialism. Most of all, what is certain is that the United States has controlled several key platforms, including smartphone applications and operating systems. Apple’s App Store and Google Play have become the two major places to get all kinds of applications. As one of the most significant standards determining the role of digital platforms is their global presence, Korea cannot penetrate the global markets due to the increasing role of these US-based platforms. Some Korean platforms, such as Kakao Talk and LINE, are popular mainly in Korea and Japan, not in Western markets. Platforms also have a commercial value. On the one hand, US-based platforms have much bigger commercial value than locally based platforms, because they have global users, unlike locally based platforms, which mainly target domestic users. As van Dijck (2013) argues, the contemporary political economy approach in the platform era must consider users the major focus of its analysis, because they are not only consumers but also producers. Digital platforms rely heavily on people’s access to and use of their platforms, and US-based platforms have benefited from their global presence because they appropriate soaring user bases in order to transform their daily activities into revenue resources. Owners of platforms use the data gathered from users as they create. On the other hand, platforms have become commodities, to be sold and bought. As seen in Facebook’s purchase of WhatsApp and the merger of Kakao Talk and Daum, platforms have become the most wanted commodities, mainly because platform power grows with the number of users. As van Dijck (2012, p. 162) aptly puts it, a platform operation is “defined by market forces and the process of commodity exchange” that characterizes the corporate sphere. As such, platforms and their owners mediate and coordinate among various players (Ballon & van Heesvelde, 2011), both globally and nationally. In particular, platform owners follow the norm established by US-made platforms. Global digital platforms have certainly influenced locally based digital platforms in that they offer new business models. Finally, the cultural values embedded in platform designs eventually go on to cultivate both commercial and cultural values. As Feenberg (1991) points out, again, technologies, in this case, digital platforms, reflect the cultural

162  Dal Yong Jin bias, values, and communication preferences of their designers. Platforms as mediators are indeed economic entities, with both a direct economic role as creators of surplus value through commodity production and exchange and an indirect role, through advertising, in the creation of surplus value (Garnham, 1997). As Fuchs (2015, pp. 34–35) argues in the case of Chinese social media in comparison with US-based social media, they are primarily not a communication platform but large advertising agencies. The logic of commerce, capitalism, and advertising dominates digital platforms. “Free platform use makes it difficult for users to see the commodity logic underlying these platforms and the role their use has as unpaid digital labor that generates economic value” (Fuchs, 2015, p. 35). Gillespie (2010) claims that the participatory and economic dimensions of platforms are more significant than their computational aspects. In other words, social media platforms are private businesses and “some of their decisions will be craven, or financially motivated, or constrained in ways even they cannot recognize” (Gillespie 2015, p. 2). Digital platforms shape the social dynamics and “allow people to draw connections between the design (technical, economic, and political) of platforms and the contours of the public discourse they host” (ibid.). Digital platforms often reinforce the values of designers and those of targeted users  .  .  . the technological design of online spaces, tools, applications, and devices constitutes a contested terrain where the imposition of designers’ values and preferences are at odds with the values and preferences of the intended user base. (Bodle, 2010, p. 15) In fact, the increasing global domination of US-made platforms operates relatively uniformly at the level of physical and software interfaces. As Steinberg (2017, p. 98) aptly puts it: this is visible on an everyday basis in the increasing global dominance of iPhone and particularly Android devices around the world, monopolizing market share, and funneling users towards their proprietary apps and content ecosystems. This de facto infiltration of markets by Apple and Google gives the two companies an unprecedented reach into the cultural lives of their users—and this is particularly the case with users in Asia. What is important is that digital platform owners such as Google have “positioned themselves as champions of freedom of expression, and “platform” works here too, deftly linking the technical, figurative and political” (Gillespie, 2010, p. 356), proving the cultural biases and preferences

Digital platforms in Korean society  163 of designers embedded in platform technologies. US-based platforms have influenced locally based platforms with the formation of a corporate sphere in ways that are more substantial for capital accumulation and the expansion of hegemonic power. The US-made digital platforms have functioned as mediators, not only commercially but also culturally. In the 2010s, several locally based digital platforms are engaged in a fight for global platform dominance. However, US-based platforms have extended their global hegemony because they act as major mediators thanks to their advanced roles in aggregating multiple functions and services. The United States, which traditionally controlled non-Western countries with its capital and culture, seems to dominate the world with platforms, benefiting from these platforms in terms of both capital accumulation and the spread of American commercial values such as free trade, free expression, and skepticism about regulation (Jin, 2015a, p. 7; Manjoo, 2016). As the New York Times points out, in the rest of the world, “there is a deep fear of usurpation through tech’—a worry that platform giants ‘could grow so large and become so deeply entrenched in world economies that they could effectively make their own laws” (Manjoo, 2016). The current state of platform development implies a technological domination by US-based corporations that have substantially affected global customers. As Steinberg (2017, p. 98) also argues, “platform, interface and hardware device may well represent a renewed axis of American imperialism— as platform imperialism.” For him, “American platforms increasingly ­operate as the global distributors of content through their platforms.” Digital ­platforms are not an American monopoly, and Korea has proved that non-Western countries are able to develop digital platforms comparable to American counterparts. However, in Korea, domestically based platforms, even smartphones, have decreased in national dominance amid the strong presence of US-based platforms.

Conclusion This chapter analyzes the major characteristics of local digital platforms and the construction of platform imperialism in the Korean context. It focuses on a few locally created platforms, including search engines (e.g. Naver), smartphones (e.g. Samsung Galaxy) and relevant apps (e.g. Kakao Talk), and social network sites (e.g. Cyworld) and compared them to US-based platforms in order to determine whether Korean-based digital platforms are able to compete with Google, Apple, and Facebook so as to challenge platform imperialism. Digital platforms, such as search engines, social network sites, and smartphones, have gained significance in the digital economy, and this chapter explores digital platforms as mediators, instead of intermediaries. As Gillespie (2018) points out, platforms may not create the content, but they

164  Dal Yong Jin do create important choices about that content, meaning what digital platforms distribute and to whom, how these platforms, such as Facebook and YouTube, connect users and broker their interactions, and what they have to refuse. However, digital platforms are mediators. Digital platforms as sites of content containment, distribution, and management play a pivotal role as the mediators of production and consumption. In this regard, both the USbased Google and Facebook and Korea’s Naver have developed platforms as content-control ecosystems that sell and distribute existing content. Emphasis falls on the creation of platforms that open onto closed ecosystems of content, with digital platforms functioning as an architecture of diffusion and transmission, as well as creation (Steinberg, 2017). Daum-Kakao Talk and Naver-LINE as locally based platforms operate as a marked form of mediation that permits further creation. Korea has rapidly advanced its digital platforms, such as Naver, Kakao Talk, and Cyworld. In the local context, the transformation of the digital economy in Korea has offered opportunities for several platform owners, and Korea has presumably challenged US dominance. However, Korea’s seemingly solid platforms have shown weaknesses as well, as can be seen in the case of Cyworld. Although some locally based platforms have successfully penetrated regional markets, as the case of LINE shows in a few Asian countries, they cannot penetrate Western markets because of existing US-based platforms. The supremacy of US-based platforms, both locally and globally, is significant because it implies a continuation of American influence in terms of ideological hegemony and capital accumulation. Arguably, we still live in an imperialist era by way of platform imperialism even in Korea—one of the most advanced and networked societies. As Josifidis and Losonc (2014, p. 608) aptly put it, the notion of platform imperialism in particular “evokes the complex interactions of the dynamics of capital as well as technological innovations and inventiveness, and the diffusion of technology . . . and it is undeniable that US still holds a hegemonic position in the IT Sphere.” The United States has used its imperial power with digital platforms and has continued to actualize its global dominance. Therefore, a deeper critique of the embodied materiality of digital platforms situates the analysis of digital platforms more concretely within contemporary research on imperialism (Casemajor, 2015; Leorke, 2012; Parikka, 2012). Platform imperialism has become much more significant than other forms of imperialism, because the global penetration of US platforms signals the increasing role of the United States in all cultural areas, including production, distribution, and consumption. Digital platforms mediate the entire chain because they produce, distribute, and consume digital content, while commodifying the users, and, in that way, we cannot deny that US-made

Digital platforms in Korean society  165 platforms are global giants. Korea and a few other countries have developed several successful platforms; however, the bigger these US-based platform giants become, the less room they allow for local platforms, which consequently intensifies asymmetrical power relations.

Notes 1 Several scholars in Korea previously analyzed Naver and Daum (now called Kakao), and they focus primarily on business models, economic impacts, and internal organization (Han, 2010; Kim et al., 2015; Park et al., 2007, 2014). 2 Chinese platforms, including Baidu, QQ, and Weibo, have also become national leaders, competing with US-based platforms, such as Google and Facebook (see Fuchs, 2015). 3 Since October  2015, when Daum and Kakao merged, they have changed the company’s name to Kakao; however, the company still uses Daum as the name of a search engine and Kakao Talk as the name of a free mobile instant messenger. 4 For example, Yahoo was a prominent search engine in the 1990s; however, due to the rapid growth of domestic search engines, it virtually disappears in the Korean search engine market. 5 In 2001, it changed its name to NHN after the merger with Hangame, although later it turned its name back to Naver. 6 In Knowledge iN, users pose questions on any subject and select among answers provided by other users, awarding points to the users who provide the best answers. 7 In the digital era, webtoons—combining Web and cartoon (meaning comic strips originally distributed via the internet but now also via the smartphone)—have become one of the most interesting digital cultures and changed the new media ecology. Several individuals started to produce webtoons in the late 1990s, and the popularity of these webtoons has rapidly grown with the introduction of smartphones in the early twenty-first century. 8 LINE Corporation, a leading global platform for mobile messaging and communication services, content distribution, and advertising, began trading in July  2016 on the New York Stock Exchange, after its initial public offering. LINE raised $1.1 billion in gross proceeds (Business Wire, 2016). LINE is based in Tokyo, Japan, but controlled by Korea’s Naver and operates the LINE messaging app, a global service used in more than twenty-three countries. It offers free one-to-one and group messaging. Apart from its messaging app, which is used to send popular virtual stickers, it offers a wide range of nonmessaging services, ranging from games to photo sharing (Ibid.). 9 In addition to iPhones in the United States, in October 2016, Google launched two smartphones, the Pixel and Pixel XL. ‘The two Android smartphones are the first to carry Google’s branding without being associated with another manufacturer and are a clear mark in the sand by the Android-maker’ (Gibbs, 2016). Therefore, these two US-based smartphones may compete with non-Americanmade smartphones. 10 Mergers and acquisitions in digital platforms have become common because of their importance as profitable commodities that need to grow their user base. 11 The homepage, called mini-hompy, is a small online space that users get when they become members, and they express themselves to others there. Members can form buddy relationships by linking their mini-hompy to that of another user.

166  Dal Yong Jin

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10 War memory, globalization, and cultural convergence The trajectory of PRC-Japan coproduction from the 1980s to the present Wendy Su Introduction Never before has the contemporary bilateral relationship of two countries been as deeply complicated and profoundly vexing as that of China and Japan. Their relationship is overshadowed by historical turmoil and memories of the war, although the longing for peace and friendship increasingly gains momentum in the contemporary globalization era. The filmic collaboration between the two countries cannot escape from their historical burden either. This chapter intends to map out the historical trajectory of film collaboration between China and Japan from the 1980s to the present. Because of Taiwan’s unique status as a former colony of Japan, and Hong Kong’s special status as a buffer zone between mainland China and Japan, both have an interwinding relationship with Japan. This study accordingly centers on the film collaboration between mainland China, the People’s Republic of China, and Japan, whereas film coproductions of Taiwan and Hong Kong with Japan are beyond the scope of this study. The growth in PRC-Japan film collaborations is a result of booming regional cultural exchanges and the rapid development of East Asian cultural industries. The astonishing development and maturation of East Asian cultural industries have caught the entire world’s attention. Initiated and led by Japan, Asia’s first advanced industrialized power, and followed by Asia’s “four mini-dragons”—Hong Kong, South Korea, Singapore, and Taiwan— regional cultural collaboration and film coproduction proliferated between the 1970s and the 1990s. Since being joined by mainland China, Asia’s largest and newest rising power, the region’s film industry has witnessed new patterns of coproduction and cooperation entering the new millennium. In the past two decades, Asian cultural industries, Asian cinema, and cross-Asian cultural collaborations have become trendy research themes, opening up new space for media, cultural, and globalization studies (Iwabuchi, 2002, 2004, 2010; Huat, 2004; Keane et al. 2007; Jin & Lee, 2007; Huat & Iwabuchi, 2008; Berryet al., 2009; Lee, 2011; Taylor-Jones, 2012; Otmazgin & Ben-Ari, 2013; Jin & Otmazgin, 2014; DeBoer, 2014; Saluveer,

War memory, globalization, and culture  171 2014; Keane et  al., 2018). These studies have made significant contributions to the research of regional cultural industries, especially collaborations among media capitals of Japan, Singapore, Hong Kong, Taiwan, and South Korea. However, research remains scant on the collaboration between Asia’s two largest and often confrontational powers: Japan and the People’s Republic of China (PRC). It is the belief of this chapter that the construction of an East Asian cultural identity—a New Asia—or the convergence of East Asian culture is impossible and implausible without a sufficient understanding of the historically intertwined, deeply complicated Sino-Japanese relationship and their cultural exchanges that have influenced and will continue to have a profound impact on regional cooperation, people’s consciousness, and the construction of a pan-Asia film industry, market, and cultural identity. This study is a historical survey of the trajectory of Sino-Japan coproduction. It aims to investigate how the interplays of nationalism, transnationalism and globalism have fundamentally influenced the cultural expression of coproduced films and (un)altered the Chinese audience’s sense of cultural identity. Along the line of chronical narrative are major significant convergence points in film coproductions of both countries at which representative works are selected and discussed. Specific research questions include: How has PRC-Japan film coproduction evolved in the past two decades? How have the content, themes, and cultural essence of coproductions developed and changed? What common cultural elements can both sides embrace to form the basis of a convergence of East Asian culture? First, I  trace the origin and path of the PRC-Japan coproduction, followed by an analysis of film coproductions that share cosmopolitan Shanghai as a setting. Then I discuss the latest trend of purchasing Japanese intellectual properties (IPs) for remakes and coproductions. My central argument is that the PRC-Japan collaboration is characterized by a complicated love-hate relationship. While the PRC’s official discourse and popular culture foreground the memories of war and anti-Japanese nationalism, recent coproductions indicate a tendency to move away from the haunting ghost of war and to embrace mutual understanding, cosmopolitanism, modernity, and individualism—a trend that is welcomed by China’s younger generations. As a result, SinoJapanese coproductions harbor the potential to establish a foundation for the convergence of East Asian culture.

An East-Asian cultural identity and a New Asia? In one of the pioneering articles on East Asian culture, Chua Beng Huat argued that the production, distribution, and consumption of popular cultural products that cross national and cultural boundaries have made it possible to imagine “a potential ‘East Asian identity’ ” (Huat, 2004, p.  200) based on Confucianism and a “cultural China” (Tu, 1991). Within the common cultural sphere of Confucianism, and bounded by cultural proximity and the so-called Asian values of loyalty and duty to family and friends,

172  Wendy Su a common East Asian cultural identity is imaginable. These Asian values are further elaborated by East Asian state leaders as the “embrace of peace and harmony,” “Neo-Confucian tradition,” and an “Asian pragmatism” that combines individualism and social well-being (cited from Berry et al., 2009, p. 5). This “post-industrial globalized consumerism” and “individual freedom” are seen as “contemporary, open, transnational, and. . . ‘cool.’ ” “At the beginning of the 2000s, then, culture and the creative industries, it seems, have the capacity to effect historical reconciliation and shrink spatiotemporal distance to create a cosmopole of consumers who identify themselves as Asian” (Berry et al., 2009, p. 5). Another argument is that Asian identity derives from the Japanese colonial and imperial legacy, which is intertwined with East Asia’s desire for both technomodernity (DeBoer, 2014) and capitalist modernity. One vision of a pan-Asian identity and its cinematic representation was pioneered by the Japanese empire’s concept of a “Greater East Asian Film Sphere,” in accordance with its concept of the “Greater East Asian Co-prosperity Sphere” back in the 1930s (Taylor-Jones, 2012, pp. 127–128). The Japanese military empire and its brutal repression of other Asian nations aimed to create a pan-Asian sphere led by Japan to counter Western imperialism and domination. Since a number of East Asian regions were once conquered or fully colonized by the Japanese military empire—including Manchuria, Inner Mongolia, Taiwan, Korea, Hong Kong, Singapore, and the Philippines— the Japanese legacy lives on in many aspects of these societies. These places therefore share or mirror many elements of Japanese technomodernity and capitalist modernity. Furthermore, as Koichi Iwabuchi has pointed out, as these countries and regions skillfully mastered globalized styles and cultural expressions during the postwar and globalization eras, they established extensive transnational cultural connections and came to share “ ‘our’ East Asian (post)modernity” (Iwabuchi, 2010, p. 151). This is a different realm that is outside the sphere of the PRC. Despite Japan’s condescending attitude and its refusal to identify with its Asian neighbors, Kuan-Hsing Chen (2010) and Kate Taylor-Jones (2012) remind us of the imperative to reexamine the conduct, motives, and consequences of imperial histories to facilitate a simultaneous process of decolonization and deimperialization and an intellectual undoing of the Cold War. As such, this chapter invites consideration of the following provocative questions: What is the place of the PRC in this globalized East Asia? Can the PRC—a country emblematic of anti-imperialist and anti-feudalist revolution, a country that rebuilt itself from the ashes of civil war and the War of Resistance against Japan, and a country that experimented with socialist and communist alternatives and continues to enshrine its Marxist ideology yet has become increasingly integrated into the global capitalist market economy—play some role in the creation of a shared East Asian cultural identity? Is it plausible to even attempt such a creation or reconstruction without the PRC’s participation? Is the convergence of East Asian culture

War memory, globalization, and culture  173 possible without the reconciliation of the region’s two largest powers that are constantly competing for leadership? Can popular culture and coproduction enhance mutual understanding and healing? What is the basis for a common East Asian culture inclusive of the PRC? To Trace the trajectory of Sino-Japanese filmic collaboration may shed light on these questions.

The influence of Japanese technology and cinema in the PRC It is rarely acknowledged in the PRC that Japanese cinema and technology had a positive impact on early Chinese cinema, especially on the films produced by the Chang Chun Film Studio (originally the Northeastern Studio), one of the PRC’s oldest and most prestigious. Early on, the PRC’s nationalized film production system consisted of three major studios: the Hollywood-influenced Shanghai Film Studio, the Soviet-assisted Beijing Film Studio, and the Chang Chun Film Studio, which evolved from the Japanese Manchukuo Film Association and was taken over by the Chinese Communist Party after the defeat of Japan. In the 1950s, almost every one of new China’s red classics was produced by Chang Chun, with the assistance of a number of Japanese professionals from Manchukuo. These classics included Minzhu Dongbei (Democratic Northeast), Bai Mao Nv (The White-Haired Girl), Gangtie Zhanshi (Iron Soldiers), and Zhao Yi-man, depicting the famous anti-Japanese heroine (Z. Wang, 2012). No Japanese movies were available in the PRC until 1979, seven years after the two countries normalized their diplomatic relationship. That year, as part of a cultural exchange, Japanese Movie Week was launched, and the Japanese movies Kimi yo Fundo no Kawa o Watare (Manhunt and Dangerous Chase), Sandakan No. 8, and Fox Story were screened and caused quite a stir. After nearly thirty years of isolation from the international community, these Japanese movies, like the first American movies shown in mainland China, widened the horizons of young Chinese audiences and connected them to the outside world. Japanese star Ken Takakura—with his tough, cool-guy image and dark glasses—immediately became a model of masculinity and individual freedom who was emulated and admired by young Chinese men. Well-known Chinese film director Zhang Yimou, who grew up during this era, became a huge fan of Ken Takakura and eventually developed a friendship with the Japanese actor. He invited Takakura to star in his 2011 film Riding along for One Thousand Miles, fulfilling his longtime dream of working with this Japanese icon (Z. Wang, 2012). It is beyond the scope of this chapter to trace the diffusion and reception of Japanese movies and pop culture in the PRC, but it is imperative to provide a historical context for the beginning of the PRC-Japan coproduction. The economic reform and “open-door” policy initiated in 1978 have fundamentally transformed Chinese economy and cultural industry, re-introduced China to the global capitalist system and modernity, a crucial

174  Wendy Su transformation that allowed Japanese capital and labor to enter the Chinese cultural industry. Japan was one of the very first advanced economies to come to China with wealth of investments, technologies, and commodities. It is under this historical condition that the PRC-Japan coproduction, which was an influential phenomenon in the 1980s, gained its cultural significance, because it was one of the first international coproductions engaged by one of state-owned Chinese film studios, and the renewal of the Sino-Japanese relationship under the “open-door” policy was a determining factor. A review of the China-Japan coproduction indicates that its trajectory is heavily impacted by the bilateral relationship and governmental politics. Nationalism and globalism are the two forces that both shape the trajectory and define the content of coproductions. The first ten years after the normalization of the formal diplomatic tie was a “honeymoon” period in their bilateral relationship. Supported by their respective governments, film professionals of both countries initiated a series of coproductions which truly reflected their genuine hope and appeal for peace and reconciliation.

The “Go” masters: from war memories to Sino-Japanese reconciliation At the outset, the PRC-Japan coproduction was not a market driven and profit seeking commercial activity like the motivations and strategies of other coproducing countries that aim to pool talents and resources and share markets. Rather, it was a consciously and deliberately constructed political project initiated by leftist antiwar film professionals in both countries and supported by both governments during their honeymoon period following the normalization of their diplomatic ties. On the PRC side, the coproductions were considered a “political task,” and the Chinese actors were carefully selected and seriously pressured to accept their roles. On the Japanese side, prestigious Japanese actors voluntarily participated in the antiwar and anti—Japanese militarism movies, appealing for peace and reconciliation. It is an interesting phenomenon that the very first coproduced movie centers on a chess-like game that is popular in both China and Japan and is considered a symbol of human intelligence and East Asian wisdom—the game of Go. Followed by two other Go coproductions down the road, these three movies display the evolving trajectory and changing features of the PRC-Japan coproduction. The 1982 movie The Go Masters was the first coproduction between the PRC and Japan since the normalization of their diplomatic ties. Film professionals from both countries wrote, directed, shot, and starred in the movie—making it a true coproduction. Two Chinese amateur Go players, Li Hongzhou and Ge Kang, cowrote the screenplay and showed it to Chinese movie star Zhao Dan and director Jiang Yang of Beijing Film Studio. Both were deeply touched by the storyline and recommended it to their Japanese friends in the latter half of 1979. Zhao Dan even expressed an

War memory, globalization, and culture  175 interest in playing the main protagonist, Chinese Go master Kuang Yishan. In June  1980, Japanese film representatives traveled to China to discuss coproducing the movie. Well-known Japanese film director Noboru Nakamura was selected to direct this coproduction. However, both Zhao Dan and Noboru Nakamura were diagnosed with cancer and passed away in 1980 and 1981, respectively. Shooting finally started on January 14, 1982, in Kamakura, Japan. Beijing Film Studio and Japan’s Tokuma Shoten Publishing Co. Ltd. cofunded and coproduced the movie. Japanese director Junya Sato led the coproduction, and well-known Chinese star Sun Daolin played Go master Kuang Yishan. Other prestigious Japanese stars included Rentarô Mikuni, Misako Konno, Nobuko Otowa, and Yoshiko Mita. The film was released between September and October 1982 in China and Japan to mark the tenth anniversary of the normalization of the Sino-Japanese diplomatic relation (Penglaiwenzhang, 2016). This film is loosely based on the life of Chinese-Japanese Go master Wu Qingyuan—widely known as Go Seigen in Japan—but it is a largely fictionalized account. Wu is considered the greatest Go player of the 20th century. Born in China, Wu grew up and was educated in Japan in the 1920s and 1930s. He dominated professional Go for more than a quarter of a century, amassing a brilliant match record and defeating all the leading players of the day in a series of notable jubango (a contest between two players consisting of ten games). The real-life Wu became a Japanese citizen and was highly respected there. He died peacefully in Japan in 2014 at the age of 100. The Go Masters, however, turns Wu’s story into a tearful, heartbreaking tragedy that condemns Japanese militarism and its bloodshed and repression of innocent Chinese people. In the movie, the young Go master A Ming, son of the famous Chinese Go master Kuang Yishan, is caught in Japan when the Japanese invade his home country, and he is forced to choose between his triumphant career and his loyalty to China. He refuses to become a naturalized Japanese citizen and secretly decides to flee Japan and return to China. His choice profoundly alters the lives of his Chinese parents and his wife, who is the daughter of Japanese Go master Rinsaku Matsunami. Because of A Ming’s betrayal of Japan, he is killed by the Japanese police; this causes his wife to go insane, and she had to be hospitalized. His fatherin-law, Rinsaku Matsunami, is forced to join the Japanese army and is sent to China. A Ming’s mother and sister are both shot to death by the invading Japanese army. A Ming’s father, Kuang Yishan, holds Rinsaku Matsunami responsible for his son’s death and refuses to meet with the Japanese master after the war, who has come to China carrying A Ming’s ashes. At the end of the movie, Rinsaku Matsunami kneels down before Kuang Yishan, accompanied by his half Chinese, half Japanese granddaughter, and begs for forgiveness from her Chinese grandfather. The two Go masters eventually climb the Great Wall together while discussing the game, accomplishing a long journey of reconciliation and healing.

176  Wendy Su The storyline bears the strong imprint of bilateral politics and the PRC’s anti-imperialist ideology. The movie was heavily politicized and the plot was artificially distorted to highlight the PRC’s patriotic, anti-Japanese message. Nevertheless, the Japanese stars agreed to cooperate, indicating their moral consciousness and willingness to apologize to the Chinese people, their deep feelings of regret about the war, and their genuine hope for peace and friendship between the two nations. From today’s standpoint, the movie is premature in terms of plot and camera technique, but it does have a dramatic climax, sophisticated human characters, and excellent and delicate acting. It is the first coproduction to reveal the scars of war and its traumatic impact on ordinary people’s lives, while avoiding the extreme nationalistic mentality and tendency to demonize the Japanese people that prevail in many of today’s anti—Japanese invasion movies and TV dramas. The coproduction has a reserved documentary style, yet its stylish flashback narrative fits well with its mission of documenting the trajectories of two families’ lives. The film reflects strong nationalism or patriotism and an indisputable Chinese cultural identity. Following this first groundbreaking coproduction, the PRC and Japan coproduced the historical epic Dun Huang (Tonko) in 1988 and the TV drama Son of the Earth in 1995. Yet Dun Huang is not considered a coproduction in a strict sense, but assisted production with China. Dun Huang was a 4.5-billion-yen historical epic centering on China’s ancient Song Dynasty’s confrontation with a rising Xi Xia and based on well-known Japanese historian Inoue Yasushi’s novel, winning eight Japanese Academy awards in 1989. It was entirely funded, written, and produced by Japanese professionals; China merely provided labor, extras, and access to the landscape. The film features a unique historical worldview and highlights the triumphing glamour of culture and civilization compared with the passing pretentiousness of empire and military power. A sense of cultural globalism transcending the empire and national border prevails in the film. The TV drama Son of the Earth tells a heart-breaking story of a Japanese war orphan, Lu Yixin by his Chinese name, who is raised by a Chinese foster father but suffers brutal political prosecution during China’s Cultural Revolution period because of his Japanese identity. The drama was coproduced by Japan’s NHK and China’s China Central Television with a joint investment of more than 2.5  billion yen and 80  percent Chinese dialogues to celebrate the 70th anniversary of the establishment of NHK and in the memory of the 50th anniversary of the World War II. Film directors and stars from both sides of China and Japan joined the cast. Causing a big stir in Japan and repeatedly broadcasted for three times within six months at the request of the Japanese audience, the drama was one of the TV programs that achieved the highest rating in Japan’s history. It won the prestigious Golden Nymph Award at the 1996 Monte-Carlo Television Festival and the best TV Arts program awarded by Japan’s National Division of Culture. The drama was adapted from the well-known Japanese female

War memory, globalization, and culture  177 writer Yamazaki Toyoko’s novel, who dedicated the drama as a witness to Sino-Japanese friendship. The Chinese government granted unreserved support and assistance to the writing and production. The then Chinese General Party Secretary, Hu Yaobang, met Yamazaki Toyoko three times and arranged for her numerous interviews and field trips. Fulfilling her promise that she would send Hu a copy of her novel after its completion, Yamazaki Toyoko travelled to the remote “Communist Youth League City” located in Jiangxi Province, named by Hu, and dedicated a copy to Hu’s tomb there in 1991, two years after Hu’s death (Toyoko, 1991). In addition to profound humanitarianism carried through all TV episodes, Son of the Earth touches the unique issue of national identity. Being a Japanese war orphan raised in China at the age of 7, Lu Yixin forgets about his Japanese and only starts to relearn it at the advice of his cellmate at the labor camp, a Chinese who grew up in Japan and proclaims that it is an individual’s disgrace if he cannot speak his mother land’s language. Following China’s open-door policy, Lu begins to earn the trust of his comrades and shoulders more important duties in Japan’s massive aid to China for building the advanced steel mill. He even joins the Communist Party of China and acquires a distinct Chinese identity. For example, when he accidently hears Japanese representatives laugh at China’s backward blast furnace, he becomes very offended and angry, feeling that the Japanese is both impolite and arrogant. When he intervenes in the disputes over boxes of rust screw transported from Japan to China, he speaks to the Japanese director, actually his biological father, as he later discovers, that the screw was purchased by using hard-earned foreign currency and the issue of the rust screw was not small thing for the country’s industrialization process. After meeting his biological father and being asked to go back to Japan, Lu struggles between his different identities. At his father’s home in Japan, lighting a scent for all his passing family members, he develops a never experienced feeling of family root and belonging. However, he cannot abandon his foster parents who have sacrificed too much to raise him. Not sure what to do, he says with tears that “You are both my fathers.” In the last episode, he and his Japanese father visit the gorgeous Three Gorges dam and the grand Yangtze River, the mother river of China. He suddenly realizes that he is the son of this vast earth and that he belongs to here. The earth is his father and mother, who raised him and nourished his soul. By acknowledging his connection with the earth, he avoids directly responding to his biological father’s plea for him to go back to Japan, and acquires a lasting identity that seemingly transcends the national border but is distinctly Chinese in essence. During their honeymoon period from the 1980s to the first half of the 1990s, Sino-Japan film coproductions were heavily impacted by their bilateral relationship and geo politics. They were usually government approved or even directly sponsored without much market and profit consideration. The main mission was to strengthen bilateral cultural exchange ties. Both

178  Wendy Su sides showed enough sincerity and generosity in collaboration. A clear Chinese national identity and cultural heritage carried through the coproductions, while globalism seemed rare, vague, and far away. With the changing political context, the honeymoon mentality was gradually replaced by anger, anxiety, and frustration of both sides.

Deteriorating bilateral relationship and competing forces of nationalism vs. globalism With the ending of the Cold War in 1991, the accelerating economic reform in China and the breaking of the 1980 economic bubble in Japan, Asia’s economic and political landscape fundamentally changed and the power relationships underwent a major shift. During the same period when Japan entered into the long-lasting economic recession of the Heisei Era, China’s economy began to take off, gaining more than 8 percent of annual growth. Based on the statistics of the World Bank, China contributed 28.14 percent of the global GDP between 1990 and 2005, whereas Japan’s contribution share was merely 2.95 percent (Li, 2014). The ebb and flow in their respective economic powers subtly altered the mentalities of the two countries. The nationalistic mood of both countries developed and cumulated after 1995 and well into the first decade of the 21st century. On August 29, 1995, Japan froze a portion of its development assistance to China in protest against China’s nuclear test. Although the portion was only a small percentage of Japan’s overall aid to China and was restored less than two years later, the move symbolized a termination of the honeymoon period between Japan and China. Starting from July 1996, the rightwing group of Japan landed in the Diaoyu Islands (the Senkaku Islands) for four consecutive times, causing a fierce China-Japan diplomatic conflict. The event coincided closely with the 65th anniversary of Japan’s invasion of Manchuria and sparked Beijing’s official condemnation and popular protests in Hong Kong and Taiwan (Johnstone, 1998). The same month witnessed the then Japan prime minister Ryutaro Hashimoto’s visit to Yasukuni Shrine, breaking the 11-year record of no visit by any Japanese prime minister. 1995 marked the 50th anniversary of World War II, and 1997 was the 70th memorial of the Nanjing Massacre. A 1996 book, China Can Say No, reflected the heyday of China’s nationalistic mood. Responding to this mood and important historical events, Chinese film professionals made several anti-Japanese militarism movies, including a 1995 moive Nanjing Massacre directed by Wu Ziniu, the first movie depicting this massive massacre (Li, 2014). The bilateral relationship was further deteriorated by Japan’s refusal to offer a written apology for its 1937 invasion of China during Chinese President Jiang Zemin’s November 1998 visit to Tokyo, in sharp contrast to Japan’s earlier offer of apology to South Korea during President Kim Daejung’s visit to Japan (Johnstone, 1998).

War memory, globalization, and culture  179 Under such circumstances, the foundation for the China-Japan friendship and reconciliation laid and reinforced by the earlier generation of Chinese and Japanese leaders no longer existed, and coproductions based on government sponsorship lost their production condition. Furthermore, China introduced a revenue-sharing system in late 1994 to import Hollywood blockbusters, and the Chinese market had been conquered by Hollywood movies for nearly a decade until 2005 when China took the opportunity to transform its film industry to compete with Hollywood. Japanese movies’ influence diminished and China-Japan filmic collaboration almost ceased in the following decade. The China-Japan bilateral relationship plunged to its iciest point from 2001 and 2006 when hawkish Junichiro Koizumi assumed prime minister. None of any major Chinese leaders ever visited Japan during these five years, and Chinese people’s anti-Japan sentimentality culminated in 2005; a nation-wide anti-Japan protest broke out and the movement of resisting Japanese commodities became widespread throughout China. From 2007 to 2013, the bilateral relations went through ups and downs. Sometimes the relationship was calm if not entirely friendly, like the period around the 2008 Beijing Olympics when Japan’s domestic politics faced turmoil and instability. Chinese premier Wen Jiabao even initiated a socalled “Ice-breaking” visit to Japan in 2007, followed by a so-called “Spring Warming” visit by Chinese president Hu Jintao in 2008. Sometimes the relationship turned sour or worse again, especially in 2012 and 2013 with escalating disputes over the Diaoyu islands and Japanese prime minister Shinzō Abe’s provoking behavior and utterance (Li, 2014). With the massive production of anti-Japan movies and TV dramas encouraged by the Chinese government, coproductions between China and Japan were inevitably impacted and caught in the cross-fire. Lu Chuan’s 2009 movie Nanjing! Nanjing! (The City of Life and Death) is the most remarkable example. The film recounts the well-known history of the Japanese army’s slaughter of Nanjing residents in 1937 through the unique perspective of a Japanese soldier, employing black-and-white cinematography to achieve an arresting visual effect. The film profoundly reveals the atrocity of war, the distorted humanity of the Japanese soldiers, and the unbearable torture and misery suffered by the Chinese people, especially women. Unlike similarly themed movies, which portrayed the Japanese soldiers as evil “foreign devils” and the Nanjing residents as weak and passive victims, Lu Chuan’s version of the Nanjing massacre treats the Japanese as human beings. His movie also highlights the Chinese people’s bitter and desperate resistance, mutual assistance, and fortitude during this calamitous period. The use of brutally realistic black-and-white shots, along with angles and close-ups that create an unspeakably shocking impact on the audience, is reminiscent of Schindler’s List. The film was a huge success, earning 180 million yuan at the box office.

180  Wendy Su However, the film caused a lot of controversy and sparked outrage among audiences, especially in Nanjing, Shanghai, and other places in proximity to the site of the slaughter. The criticism came from both film scholars and ordinary citizens. Film professors Cui Weiping and Dai Jinhua condemned Lu’s use of the Japanese perspective, calling it tasteless and unnecessary, and they criticized his failure to depict the Japanese army’s actual atrocities against civilians (Brown, 2015). War survivors called Lu a “traitor” and accused him of creating “an anti-patriotic, pro-Japanese film” (Kraicer, 2010). On the Japanese side, Japanese actors were forbidden to accept roles in the film by their own agencies. Japanese actor Hideo Nakaizumi finally agreed to take the lead role of Sgt. Masao Kadokawa “only after establishing [that] the role would ‘set an image of [the] Japanese soldier totally different from the previous ones’ and that the movie would focus ‘more on the emotions and mentality of human beings in war’ than on Japanese accountability” (Xinhua News Agency, 2009, par. 34–35, cited in Brown, 2015, p. 530). In an interview with a Chinese journalist, Hideo Nakaizumi burst into tears when describing the fallout he endured for appearing in the movie. The film was rejected by many theaters in Japan. According to Lu Chuan, his intention in making such a movie was “to build up a bridge between China and Japan, a bridge of communication, that helps people to get more from the history” (Mong, 2009, par. 18, cited in Brown, 2015, p. 529). However, this “bridge” uncovered bitter memories and was rejected by both China and Japan, testifying to the extreme difficulty of achieving reconciliation between the two nations. Nevertheless, compared with Zhang Yimou’s 2011 vulgar The Flowers of War, Lu Chuan’s movie is a sincere and profound reflection on history and humanity. Media scholars have also acknowledged Lu’s bravery in “reintroducing the concept of Japanese humanity into Chinese culture and history,” because “acknowledging Japanese humanity is an important step in opening up a critical dialogue about the events of 1937.” And Lu’s film could “make it easier for this generation to begin a much-needed conversation about how to confront and ultimately overcome the violent history that lies between China and Japan, so that the two countries can find a new way forward” (Brown, 2015, p. 525). Nationalism and globalism are two competing forces that define and shape China-Japan coproductions. With the Chinese official discourse constantly and repeatedly emphasizing and reinforcing nationalism and popular TV dramas highlighting and exaggerating anti-Japan hatred and animosity, non-official coproductions picked up the themes of peace, humanity, and friendship. Interestingly enough, non-official productions once again centered on the game of Go. In 2007, another PRC-Japan coproduction based on the life of Wu Qingyuan was released. Directed by China’s fifth-generation director Tian Zhuangzhuang and featuring Taiwan actor Zhang Zhen and several Japanese stars, the movie completely avoided a nationalistic tone, downplayed the war and the Sino-Japanese conflict, and stressed the transcendence of

War memory, globalization, and culture  181 mundane politics. The movie has a dark, grey color, a quiet, dull atmosphere, and a very slow pace. It portrays the flow of Wu’s thoughts, disclosing his inner struggle. Wu believes that the game of Go should transcend nation, war, and politics, as the player pursues inner peace. Wu’s God-given talent merges with the spiritual and peaceful heaven, and his only purpose in life is the grand mission of playing Go. As a 21st-century movie, it is devoted to portraying the spiritual struggle between Wu’s heart and mind (China News Weekly, 2007). The younger Chinese seem more willing to move away from the shadow of war and embrace mutual understanding and Sino-Japanese friendship. Tokyo Newcomer, a movie released in 2012, signals this tendency. Interestingly, like 1982’s The Go Masters, this is another coproduction that tells the story of Chinese and Japanese Go players. A  young Chinese student studying in Japan is befriended by an old Japanese woman and her grandson, who come from a family of prestigious Go masters. They help the Chinese student, who is also a talented Go player, find a job and compete in Japan’s amateur Go match. The movie also portrays a melancholic love story between the grandson and a Taiwanese girl. Chinese star Qin Hao plays the young Chinese student, and well-known Japanese actress Chieko Baisho—very famous in China due to her roles in the movies The Yellow Handkerchief and A Distant Cry from Spring—stars as the old Japanese woman, and Hideo Nakaizumi plays the grandson. Shot in Tokyo and at the beautiful and tranquil Chiba prefecture, Tokyo Newcomer has been critically acclaimed as a “soul movie” full of the subtle and delicate aesthetic flavor of Japan, bringing a message of love, peace, and friendship, the Japanese cultural tradition, and beautiful rural landscapes to audiences. The movie erases the trauma and scars of war, praises a “don’t give up” attitude, and portrays the selfless assistance offered by ordinary Japanese people to a young Chinese stranger. The movie was selected as one of the official titles to celebrate the fortieth anniversary of the normalization of Sino-Japanese relations in 2012. The movie’s director, Jiang Qinmin, once studied in Japan himself. He completed the screenplay 20 years ago, but the original investor went bankrupt in 2002. It took another ten years to finally achieve his dream of making a movie that reflected his personal experiences and feelings about the ChinaJapan relationship. In an interview, Jiang revealed that his motivations for making the film were threefold. First, he wanted to make a meaningful contribution to the cultural exchange and mutual understanding between China and Japan, and he hoped the movie would resonate with both Chinese and Japanese people. Second, he wanted to convey his personal feelings about his experiences while studying in Japan, to tell a tale of “communication through soul and heart.” Third, he wanted to keep the promise he had made to Chieko Baisho: she loved the story, and he had promised her the role of the Japanese grandmother before the original investor went bankrupt. She eventually starred in the movie at the age of 70 (Sohu Entertainment, 2012).

182  Wendy Su It is worth noting that the completion of Tokyo Newcomer coincided with the shooting of Zhang Yimou’s war movie The Flowers of War. The Japanese actors who participated in that film faced immense criticism back in Japan. Since then, there had been massive production of anti-Japanese TV dramas and movies as a result of tense bilateral relations. But not all film professionals approved of using movies to provoke anti-Japanese sentiment. For example, Gu Guoqing, the president of Huaxia Film Distribution Company, criticized the proliferation of anti-Japanese dramas and said he was happy to distribute a movie like Tokyo Newcomer that contributed to bilateral friendship (J. Wang, 2012). The trend of globalism and searching for a new cultural identity in the heyday of China’s globalizing era is remarkably manifested in a series of China-Japan coproductions featuring Shanghai. Shanghai was considered the “Oriental Paris” during the semicolonized 1930s, and, in the 21st century, it is seen as a prosperous, cosmopolitan place with a modern, bourgeois lifestyle and a unique urban ambience—the perfect locale for a coproduction. To foreign travelers, it looks both modern, mysterious and exotic, “a representative Asian city” (cited in DeBoer, 2014, p. 178); to foreign businesspeople, it is emblematic of affluence, abundant opportunities, and a comfortable Western lifestyle. To Chinese citizens, it can be a place to achieve global aspirations and look beyond the confines of their communities. In an attempt to appeal to both domestic and foreign audiences, several PRC-Japan coproductions center on Shanghai, the symbol of East Asian modernity. They include The Longest Night in Shanghai (2007), Last Love First Love (2004), and About Love (2005), as well as the suspense-thriller Five Minutes to Tomorrow (2014). The Japanese company Movie-Eye Entertainment was the major coproducer of these films, and Shanghai Film Studio was the major Chinese partner. These coproductions are all about interpersonal, cultural, and societal encounters between Chinese and Japanese individuals that unfold in urban settings. They bring a transnational perspective to cosmopolitan Shanghai, Taipei, and Tokyo and attempt to bridge cultural and personal differences between peoples from China and Japan. The Longest Night in Shanghai is a unique collaborative project between Japanese and Chinese professionals. It stars Japanese actor Masahiro Motoki as a famous stylist who comes to work in Shanghai and Chinese star Zhao Wei as a female taxi driver. The movie captures Shanghai’s modern, cosmopolitan lifestyle and its strikingly beautiful urban landscape. The paths of a Japanese stylist and a Chinese taxi driver are unlikely to cross, yet the encounter between them leads to a romantic and exciting nighttime tour of the city. Through their eyes, a modern Shanghai is presented in full globalization mode: high-rises and skyscrapers, shining neon lights, international music festivals, beautiful performers in exquisite makeup, neverending nightclubs, and nightlife—all symbolizing the modernity of the city. The movie is a showcase of prosperity, rich culture, and the spectacular

War memory, globalization, and culture  183 sights and landscapes of Shanghai, with a pinch of oriental flavor, such as dancing old ladies, chess-playing old men, and an erhu player. In this cosmopolitan city, people come from all over the world, and they are all strangers. They don’t speak the same languages or share a common culture, but they can feel, sense, and understand one another. Obscured by the hustle-bustle of the city and the fast-paced rhythm of modern urban life are common human feelings—loneliness, disorientation, and the desire for love. The movie highlights a recurring theme and age-old topic: people on a journey to connect with others and establish relationships. The angel of a Japanese traveler appears creating a dream-like experience that blurs imagination and reality. The longest night is transformed into a temporal-spatial adventure of endless encounters, constituting the film’s unique aesthetic and cultural significance. Cosmopolitanism and an identity of global citizen crossing the national and cultural border are presented in the film, accomplishing a transition from parochialism to globalism.

Remaking of Japanese IPs—the latest trend The China-Japan relationship gradually warmed up after 2014 and culminated in 2018, the 40th anniversary of the Sino-Japanese Treaty for Peace and Friendship. The two countries signed up for a number of collaborative projects on May 9, including film coproductions, in the presence of Chinese premier Li Keqiang and Japanese prime minister Shinzo Abe. Coproduced films now enjoy the status of domestic movies and are tariff-free (Ma, 2018). It appears that the second honeymoon for the bilateral relationship finally arrived after 30 years of turmoil and uncertainty. Both countries are transformed tremendously and economically. China replaced Japan as the world’s second largest economy in 2010, and replaced Japan as the world’s second film market in 2012. China’s box office reached 55.9 billion yuan in 2017, whereas Japan’s number stood around 12.7 billion yuan for almost a decade. For the past 40 years, Japan did not need to explore overseas markets because its domestic market was big enough. However, with the aging population and shrinking domestic market, Japan’s film producers are increasingly facing a tough market situation. To them, the huge Chinese market has never been attractive as of now (Si, 2018). For China, there exists an imbalance between the market demand and the supply of high-quality films. China’s rapidly growing film market creates a huge demand for high-quality cinematic products, but China’s domestically produced movies often fall short of audience expectations, given their shoddy quality. Making matters worse, the cost of purchasing even lowquality original novels and screenplays is skyrocketing, with one ancientthemed screenplay selling for 20 million yuan. Under these circumstances, it may be a good choice for content-hungry Chinese producers to turn to Japan’s high-quality franchises. Japan has strict restrictions on IP exports, which helps keep costs down (Rong, 2017). Besides, since the 1980s,

184  Wendy Su Japanese imports such as Manhunt and Dangerous Chase, Sandakan No. 8, and Fox Story have impressed Chinese audiences, helping to establish a loyal fan base. These stories’ rich connotations, familiar family relationships, and reserved and delicate oriental style fascinate older Chinese audiences, creating a demand for high-quality Japanese films. Likewise, Japanese anime and manga create a loyal fan base among younger Chinese moviegoers. As such, with their cultural and geographic proximity, Chinese audiences of all ages find resonance in Japanese cultural products. Coproductions and the remaking of Japanese IPs now follow the market logic and are commercial activities aimed at pooling resources, lowering the cost and sharing the market. Japanese movies and animated films (anime and manga) are increasingly popular in China, especially among younger audiences, and they have a loyal fan base. Between 2006 and 2015, only seventeen Japanese movies were released in China, and none were released between 2013 and 2014. Among these seventeen titles, only five reached or surpassed the box office benchmark of 10 million yuan in China; the highest grossing film, Stand by Me Doraemon, made 530 million yuan in 2015. However, in 2016, eleven Japanese imports poured into China, exceeding the total of the previous five years. Among them, Your Name led at the box office with 576 million yuan. Three others—One Piece Film: Gold, Boruto: Naruto the Movie, and Doraemon: Nobita and the Birth of Japan—exceeded 100 million yuan at the box office in China. The trend of growing Japanese imports continued in 2017. By September, The 100th Love with You, Midnight Dinner 2, Gintama, A Silent Voice, and Sword Art Online the Movie: Ordinal Scale had all been released in China (Wenchuangzixun, 2017). In total, Japanese films released in China took in more than $50 million in 2017. Your Name finished its run in China in January with nearly $85 million—a record for a Japanese title in China (Blair, 2017). Japanese anime and manga have made big advances in the Asian market, with China playing a large part in that success. In 2011, the total Asian market was $1.2 billion for anime and $356 million for manga. By 2016, those figures had grown to $2.7 billion and $421 million, respectively (Schilling, 2017). To mark the forty-fifth anniversary of the normalization of diplomatic relations in 2017, the Tokyo International Film Festival witnessed the presence of a large bloc of Chinese buyers who were hungry for film content in October. The films of several Chinese film directors were screened at the festival: Zheng Yi’s Soul Inn, Chen Kaige’s Legend of the Demon Cat, and Dong Yue’s The Looming Storm. Chinese actor Duan Yihong won the Best Actor Award at the festival. The plans were announced for three Chinese cities—Shanghai, Kunming, and Shenzhen—to screen a selection of nine Japanese movies. The films chosen to premiere in China included Naomi Kawase’s Radiance, Masanori Tominaga’s Pumpkin and Mayonnaise, and Koji Shiraishi’s yet-to-be-released Impossibility Defense. A similar selection was scheduled to travel in the opposite direction in March 2018, with events

War memory, globalization, and culture  185 planned in Tokyo, Osaka, and Nagoya. At least three major Chinese films— the blockbuster Wolf Warriors II, John Woo’s Manhunt, and Legend of the Demon Cat—will get commercial releases in Japan in 2018 (Frater, 2017). The content-hungry Chinese film producers have turned to Japanese franchises for sources of inspiration. Acclaimed Japanese writer Keigo Higashino’s thriller novels and original screenplays are especially sought after by Chinese filmmakers. Two remakes based on his original works, The Devolution of Suspect X and Miracles of the Namiya General Store, were released in 2016 and 2017. Chinese buyers also purchased the rights to his novel Game. A  coproduction based on Takayoshi Honda’s novel, Five Minutes to Midnight, was released in 2014. Several films adapted from Japanese IPs, such as What a Wonderful Family, Midnight Dinner, and Manhunt, have been released. Adaptation rights to other Japanese IPs have been sold to Chinese film producers, and other Chinese adaptions have already been produced, including Solaso Bistro, The Best Divorce, Operation Love, and Date: What’s It Like to Be in Love? (Rong, 2017). However, most adaptations and remakes face the difficulty of transplanting original Japanese franchises into the Chinese soil. So far, the most successful adaptations have been The Devolution of Suspect X, and famous Chinese director Chen Kaige’s Legend of the Demon Cat. The Devolution of Suspect X is a thriller based on Keigo Higashino’s novel. It garnered more than 400 million yuan at the box office and was critically acclaimed. Its success can be attributed to the genre; the plot, full of suspenseful twists and turns, completely caught the attention of viewers. The thriller genre itself is a selling point because the context and cultural differences can either be largely neglected or localized without major revisions. The narrative unfolds around two or three main characters and centers on their homes or workplaces, requiring little interaction with specific cultural and national contexts. The storyline is thus largely devoid of cultural uniqueness and can easily be transplanted into a different cultural context. Legend of the Demon Cat is based on Baku Yumemakura’s novel that is well-known in Japan. The movie garnished box office of one billion yen in Japan and more than 500  million yuan in China, the only movie that earned decent box office receipts in both countries. Literary foundation, spectacular scenes and excellent cinematography, and Japanese audience’s interest in grandeur and civilization of the Tang Empire may contribute to the impressive box office record in Japan; and Chen Kaige’s personal reputation and intrigue provoked by this coproduction may contribute to its box office in China. Both films also testify the plausibility of cultural flows and adaptation, and the merger of East Asian cultural elements in the globalization era.

Conclusion PRC-Japan coproductions have come a long way. Initially politics driven and government facilitated, they have now become market driven. The

186  Wendy Su complicated bilateral relationship and turbulent politics of geography are inevitably embedded in the history of their collaboration. If China can be seen by Japan as “a gateway and reference for all that is imagined possible in the intensities of capital in the region and beyond” (DeBoer, 2014, p. 180), then Japan can be considered a source of both pain in China’s collective memory and cinematic and technical modernity for younger generations of Chinese. The first two decades of the 21st century witnessed deteriorating bilateral relations, increasing hostility as the two governments competed to lead Asia, nationalist sentiments, and even hatred toward each other. While the Japanese government remains reluctant to admit past crimes and apologize to its Asian neighbors, the Chinese government is always alert to the possibility of Japan reviving its militarism and its imperialist legacy. The year 2017 marked the eightieth anniversary of China’s victory in the War of Resistance against Japan. China’s official statement issued on December 8, the country’s Memorial Day, called for Chinese citizens to turn their victorious spirit into a drive for national rejuvenation and peace in Asia. Chinese popular culture is heavily influenced by politics, and the numerous TV dramas about China’s War of Resistance speak to the complexity of reconciliation and healing. Under such circumstances, coproductions between the two nations, although rare and beautiful, may open up the space for critical dialogue, leading to mutual understanding and the possibility for reconciliation and healing. One can only hope that the two nations will find ways to move forward and perhaps even establish a foundation for cultural convergence.

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11 Korea’s creative migration to media cities in China1 The space of flows and fluid assemblages Ju Oak Kim In his canonical book, The Rise of the Network Society, Manuel Castells (2010) claimed that globalization promotes regionalization, in which state actors have made regional connections in order to compete in the global economy. They have developed “networks of cooperation between regional institutions and between region-based companies”; moreover, they have established regional centers to effectively cultivate new markets in the region (Castells, 2010, p. 412). According to Castells, regionalization seems inevitable in the intensification of globalization. However, it also seems obvious that regional interactions come in many different forms due to the power struggles they have produced in historical, political, cultural, and geographical contexts (Castells, 2010). In this chapter, I aim to examine the spatial dynamics that East Asia has experienced in the process of regionalization, focusing on how South Korea (hereafter Korea) has sustained its initiatives in developing interregional collaborations. At the turn of the 21st century, the Korean government agreed to open its gates to let in Japanese popular culture. This gesture signified the Korea’s willingness to reconcile historical tensions that have stood between the two countries since 1945. The parallel efforts of both countries brought to fruition this collaboration in the media sphere. A representative example is the popularization of the Korean television drama, Winter Sonata (Yoon, 2002) in Japanese society. This drama fueled nostalgic sentiment among elderly female viewers and led Japanese audiences to consume other Korean media content and visit production sites in Korea (Mori, 2008; Mitsuya, 2004). The cohosting of the World Cup soccer tournament was another context in which the Korean and Japanese media industries made efforts to promote increased mutual understanding and good will through the co-production of the limited original series, Friends (Kang et al., 2002) and Shower, After the Rain Drops (Choi & Honma, 2002). In the early 2010s, the Korean media industry engaged in another distinctive trans-border interaction: Hunan TV advanced China-Korea media trade to the next level. At that time, the country’s leading satellite channel had localized Korean reality show formats, including I Am a Singer (Park, 2011–2015), Dad, Where Are You Going? (Seo, 2013–2015), and Real Men

190  Ju Oak Kim (Kwon, 2013–2015). With the sensational success of these adopted television programs, Hunan-TV has improved its brand image among its national audience and, not surprisingly, has encouraged other Chinese media providers such as Zhejiang TV, Dragon TV, Sichuan TV, Jiangsu TV, and Tencent to become interested in purchasing Korean television formats, and in collaborating with Korean media professionals in reality show production (Cho & Zhu, 2017; Liu, 2014). Observations of transborder media connections between China and Korea should be processed in the context of the Korean Wave phenomenon. Since the late 1990s, Korean media culture has attracted local audiences, leading the Korean media industry to consider itself as a hub of media transactions in the region. Korean media professionals, including television directors, writers, and celebrities, have migrated into neighboring countries to seek out more opportunities. However, the interregional networks of media production have not been as consistent due to neighboring countries’ political, economic, and cultural considerations. For instance, the Chinese government has modified China’s media importation policy to diminish the inflow of Korean media culture and practice (Frater, 2016). Similarly, Japanese television networks have avoided inviting Korean celebrities to their programs and broadcasting Korean media content due to political and economic tensions (Schreiber, 2012). The decline in the number of Korean-Japanese cultural exchanges was recognized after the former President Lee Myung-Bak visited Dokdo in 2012 (Yang, 2019). The strained ties between Korea and Japan have persisted; for example, the Japanese government imposed export restraints on Korea’s semiconductor materials in 2019 (S. J. Park, 2020). Against this backdrop, this chapter focuses on Korea’s creative migration to the Chinese television industry, with the presumption that the rise and fall of these two nations’ collaborations can unveil recent dynamics in the East Asian media landscape. Castells’ (2010) reconfiguration of space and time is helpful in exploring the industrial and sociocultural dimensions of interregional media production. He mainly pointed out that the space of production, which is geographically connected and industrially condensed in the information society, should be understood as “the historical specificity of social practices” (Castells, 2010, p. 441). His standpoint is well aligned with Siu et al.’s (2015) conception of Asia as “fluid assemblages made significant and meaningful by conscious human actions at cultural junctures” (p. 2). These scholars mutually argued that social actors have constructed the meanings of spaces at a given time and location. Therefore, Sino-Korean media interactions can be discussed as the historical moment when human agents reimagined the boundary of spaces in the Information Age. This chapter elucidates interregional collaborations whereby Korean media players are employed as instrumental texts for negotiating cultural infusions and political conflicts in an interregional context. The implications of East Asian media connections will be explored by answering the following questions: What drives the Korean media industry to develop interregional

Korea’s creative migration to China  191 networks in media production? How do Korean media actors deal with conflicts and tensions with their regional partners? Based on in-depth interviews with five Korean media professionals who either collaborated with Chinese media companies or observed the process of Sino-Korean media production, this chapter concludes that the spatial gravity of regionalization manifests Sino-Korean collaborations in reality show production.

The space of flows and fluid assemblages Castells (2010) made a proposal regarding the social form of space and time in association with transformations in the information technology paradigm. Put simply, his concept regarding “the space of flows,” referring to “the material organization of time-sharing social practices that work through flows,” derives from the observation that the new technological system has changed the patterns of economic activity and the spatial logic of societies (p. 442).2 According to Castells (2010), the dynamics of social structures deeply engage in spatial forms, as well as the interactions between two entities. On the one hand, a society’s organizations are asymmetrically structured in response to the maintenance of dominant social structures; furthermore, the dominant social interests largely determine the spatial flows of social actors. On the other hand, the society’s dominant interests continuously change. As a result, social actors play pivotal roles in identifying, valuing, selecting, and executing such dominant interests and functions (Castells, 2010). Castells (2010) also clarified a new pattern of industrial space. This pattern refers to “a specific set of relationships of production and management, based on a social organization that by and large shares a work culture and instrumental goals aimed at generating new knowledge, new processes, and new products” (Castells, 2010, p.  419). While admitting that the development of working environments is not necessarily influenced by spatial conditions, he illuminated the spatial specificity of the milieu in the information industry. According to Castells (2010), “spatial proximity” is a salient material condition in the innovation process, given that interactions indeed generate synergies and determine added values (p. 419).3 Castells’ (2010) notion of space of flows has been applied with respect to dissecting Asia’s ways of imagining spaces in a historical context. Considering trans-local resources as the foundation for constructing localities and identities, Siu et  al. (2015) argued that social actors who have performed economic and cultural activities across borders have in fact created “spatially significant moments” throughout the history of the region (Siu et al., 2015, p. 2). As an example, in the age of exploration, travelers established numerous meeting points and paths throughout Asia. These locations served as nodes of global finance, migration, and service in the late 20th century. They thus employed Castells’ (2010) term “spaces of flows” to conceptualize Asia as “fluid assemblages” rather than “bounded units” (Siu

192  Ju Oak Kim et al., 2015, p. 2). In their view, human actions have created cultural and economic spaces that move beyond “static configurations.” Moreover, these “physically compressed but structurally expansive” spaces have consistently experienced geopolitical tensions and cultural negotiations (Siu et al., 2015, p. 2). Castells’ (2010) emphasis on interactions in the information industry and Siu et al.’s (2015) critique regarding the spatial specificity of interactions are mutually important in articulating the transnational interactions between China and Korea in media production. The globally and digitally restructured media system has somehow forced local practitioners to seek out economic opportunities beyond their borders. In doing so, they have attempted to contest, negotiate, and innovate the spatial boundary of production; some of them have even displaced themselves into new spaces of production. These negotiators have developed a space of regional creativity in China based on cultural bonds and spatial proximity. However, it is also notable that they are culturally and historically embedded in a static position. Due to this static position, the imagination of spatial connectivity is often faced with disjunctive moments in the process of regionalization. This is also why contestation, negotiation, and innovation only continue to the extent in which the two societies’ efforts turn out economic synergies, and in which their political tensions are under control. In this sense, Sino-Korean media interactions offer us an opportunity to ask what has shaped the “spatial moments” in the region (Siu et al., 2015, p. 19).

The regionalization of the East Asian media industry Over the past two decades, East Asia has processed its integration as “a regional entity” in which East Asian people and societies have promoted economic exchanges, transnational businesses, structural integrations, and cultural flows on a regional scale (Dent, 2016, p.  2). According to Dent (2016), the players in the region’s export-driven economic development (under the shared objective of globalization) have learned from each other and have developed similar policies and regulations.4 Since the 2008 global financial crisis, market forces have intensified economic integration in the region “through the production networks in industries such as electronics, home appliances, and automobiles” (Capannelli & Kawai, 2014, p. 2). The regionally tightened network of transportation, media and communication, migration, and business is the structural basis for interregional transactions (Dent, 2016). As a result, East Asia has become an economically coherent entity in the global capitalist system. Equally important is that the expansion of interregional cultural experience has constructed a sense of East Asian identity among people in the region (Dent, 2016). By acknowledging the rise of inter-East Asian alliances, some media scholars have suggested that attention be shifted from cultural globalization to cultural regionalization (Choi, 2010; Iwabuchi, 2010, 2013; Jin &

Korea’s creative migration to China  193 Lee, 2007; Otmazgin, 2012). These scholars have mainly employed the angles of cultural proximity, cultural hybridity, and political economy to discuss the geopolitical linkage of cultural experiences. For instance, Choi (2010) called attention to the “geocultural spheres of proximity and intimacy beyond the nation-state’s boundary with identifiable logics and patterns of cultural production, circulation, and reproduction” in the East Asian media industry (p.  116). This notion resonates with the “geography, history, ethnic intimacy, cultural proximity, and emotional/esthetic immediacy” in geographic and historical contexts (Choi, 2010, p.  116). He further pointed out that shared cultural norms guide East Asian media practitioners to shape different modes of thinking with respect to cultural globalization. Iwabuchi (2010) considered the rise of inter-Asian cultural connections as the outcome of cultural hybridization among local media cultures and traditions. This argument was developed from Chua’s (2004) observation that the East Asian media industry has established its own media production culture over the decades: one country tends to remake television dramas and films that have already been popularized in another country of the region (as cited in Iwabuchi, 2010, p. 200). In Iwabuchi’s (2010) argument, interregional media production and consumption have possibly helped construct the East Asian identity, thus deconstructing a binary approach to the global and the local in the cultural dynamics of global capitalism. Otmazgin (2012) recognized the gravity of the political economy in the construction of Asian subregions. After the financial downturn of 1998, East Asian countries deeply acknowledged the salience of cooperation on a regional scale “in order to maintain political and economic stability in the region” (p.  19). Since then, the past two decades have witnessed unprecedented regional integration; entrepreneurs and media practitioners have formed collaborative relationships to construct regional markets for popular cultures, and to offer East Asian audiences “the imagery of the region” (Otmazgin, 2012, p. 20).

The centralization of regional connectedness Over the past two decades, governmental policies and regulations have been introduced to promote the exportation of media-related products and services in Korea. There are intense scholarly debates over the efficacy of governmental engagement in the media, and two theoretical strands have mainly been applied to the transnational expansion of the Korean popular culture industry (Kim & Jin, 2016; Kwon & Kim, 2013; Shim, 2006; Cho, 2011). Some scholars have claimed that the exportation of Korean popular culture and practice was meant to boost the national economy in the logic of neoliberal capitalism, whereas others have employed cultural nationalism to understand the government’s promotion of its national culture as ideological actions (Jun, 2017). Either way, it is hardly deniable that the exportation of Korean media products and services has contributed to

194  Ju Oak Kim reshaping its national image as an emerging center of the East Asian media industry, thereby deconstructing Japan’s hegemonic position in the regional market.5 Chua and Iwabuchi (2008) pointed out that the 1997 financial crisis, profoundly damaging the regional economy, was a focal point in turning Korean entrepreneurs and media providers’ attention to foreign markets. During that crisis, Southeast Asian media channels could not afford to purchase Japanese media products or services; consequently, Korean popular culture became a reasonable alternative for them. In response, the Korean media industry was proactive in exporting television dramas and pop music, thus creating the Korean Wave phenomenon. This view, to some degree, serves to explain what drove the exportation of Korean popular culture in the late 1990s. However, it is too simplistic to employ market conditions and revenue maximization as the significant reasons for why the Korean media industry expanded its scope of activities on a regional scale. Because the country’s export-oriented economy has restructured the production system of media institutions and companies and, media practitioners and businessmen have recognized the importance of maintaining actual exports. In Informant A’s view, the competitiveness of Korean media content cannot be sustained if Korean media actors do not consider international audiences in the pre-production stage. In other words, the necessity and desire to improve the quality of products and services have also encouraged Korean media actors to put forth efforts toward transnational expansion. [I think] that Japan would [not have done so in that way]. [Japan has] a huge market that has generated domestic consumption. [The total population] is over one hundred million in Japan, and the country’s per capita income has reached 33–34 thousand dollars. So, it is enough [for the media industry] to appropriate domestic need. However, because of its small-scale media market, [Korean media producers] must make inroads into foreign markets to recoup production costs and to sustain the structure of producing quality media content. (Informant A) Informant A’s testimony is insightful in understanding how the Korean media industry has developed its presence as a regional leader in media production. During the past two decades, Korean television content has gradually transformed its image from substitute goods of Japanese and western media content to unique and creative products embedded in East Asian values and traditions. In such a context, it is not surprising that Chinese television networks purchased numerous Korean reality television formats to increase their revenue in the early 2010s. In its early stage, however, Chinese media production companies had difficulties in localizing reality shows and

Korea’s creative migration to China  195 entertainment programs. Hence, Korean television directors and writers joined Chinese production teams to provide their supervisory services in the localization process. Korean media practitioners handed down the conventional codes of Korean reality television to their Chinese co-workers. Notably, according to Informant C, some Korean television producers and writers who temporarily worked for the Chinese media industry expected to create television programs in new forms and styles, moving beyond the conventional approaches that they had taken in the Korea television industry. At a certain level, that ambition led them to move to China. However, sooner or later, they discovered the disparity between expectation and reality: I had a desire to create something innovative that I could not [do] in the Korean media industry. However, it is not easy to change your mind if your mind is already filled with something. Their [Chinese companies’] demands were limited to imitate [Korean reality] shows like Infinite Challenge (Kim, 2006–2018) and Running Man (Jo et al., 2010–). (Informant C) For instance, only one camera operator was on a shoot for a reality show in China. However, [in Korean reality show production], at least 2–30 cameramen would perform specific roles under the command of the director of photography with portable radio communication. [Chinese media workers are] not familiar with such team play. . . . [they] return home if show production continues after midnight. (Informant B) Since the mid-2000s, major Korean networks have expanded reality show production; some renowned show directors and writers have developed travel-based reality formats. This type of show programming offers domestic viewers an opportunity to consume a sense of reality while observing the show host’s reactions to various situations. Tens of camera operators use handheld cameras to record every moment of the show hosts’ comments and performances in the production site. Because the ultimate objective of television content is to obtain high viewer ratings in the Korean media industry, show hosts and the production staff do not set working hours and continue shooting funny scenes for as long as they can. On the contrary, as addressed by Informant B, sociocultural and geographic settings yield significant differences in the production culture and practice of Chinese and Korean reality television. For instance, Chinese media creators are hardly motivated to produce successful programs for commercial ends. According to Informant B, during the process of interregional collaborations, Chinese media professionals learned not only Korea’s ways of creating reality shows, but also their desire for achievement in the market. It can be said that Chinese-Korean media collaborations have

196  Ju Oak Kim gradually transformed Chinese media workers’ perceptions regarding the quality of media content and the media channel’s brand image: They had completely different ways of thinking and working [from mine], and [I felt like I was talking] to a wall. . . . I also felt that [Chinese] working progress was exhaustively slow. I was drained to work [with them]. Such a large-scale production team should have made one episode within one working day [in Korea]; however, they [the Chinese team] spent 10–20 days making the same project. (Informant C) China has had a brief history of reality TV production; however, its television dramas and historical documentaries have remained strong [in its repertoire]. Because China is such a large country, a popular entertainer in one province [may be] unknown in another one. Due to this [geographic diversity], China’s standards of reality show production lag far behind [those of Korea]. At that time, [Chinese television producers] did not have any knowledge of setting up humor codes [in reality shows]. (Informant C) Korean media professionals also recognize that the unpredictability regarding changes in China’s regulations has considerably shaped the current production culture of its television industry. The Chinese government has consistently changed its importation policy, which has created hardships in the format trade.6 While Chinese media professionals have internalized these media environments, their Korean counterparts are not as familiar with the government’s intensive involvement in the production and distribution of China’s media content.7 Another point to mention is that the rapid growth of the Chinese economy has complicated the hierarchy between Chinese-Korean media collaborations. While working with Korean collaborators, Chinese media professionals could observe the behind-the-scenes production of the Korean show business and could therefore develop their own direction for becoming competitive in the global show business. According to Informant B, China has recently shown its potential as a major player in the global entertainment industry: Investment is the key [to shaping] show business. [The Chinese show business] is currently setting another goal and, therefore, Korean directors can no longer give them consultations. They are going to compete against the US [media industry]. (Informant B) The rapid growth of the Chinese show business echoes Castells’ (2010) articulation of “the milieu of innovation” in several ways (p. 420). First, the

Korea’s creative migration to China  197 relationship of production and management that the Korean and Chinese television industries have developed helps Korean media actors share their work culture with their Chinese partners. Second, their collaborations have contributed to generating new cultural forms, styles, and identities in Chinese show production, as well as to developing regionally bounded television formats, stories, and characters in Korean reality television. As Castells (2010) suggested, “innovative labor” is a key factor for innovative production, and the “innovative environment” is a material condition of production for innovative labor (Castells, 2010, p. 420). Therefore, a new space of production, created by this intraregional partnership, has developed the circumstances for inducing synergy through Korean media players’ creative migration, which has been promoted considerably by Chinese media capital (see Curtin, 2003).

Disjunctive moments: the logic of geopolitics While transnational activities and systems have created new spaces of production in the East Asian media industry, geopolitical and national ­security-related factors have always intervened in the process of regionalization (Dent, 2016). Sino-Korean media relations have often come to a standstill due to national security arrangements in connection with the United States and North Korea. As a recent example, the ground-based missile defense system THAAD sparked tensions between these two countries in 2016 when the former Park Geun-Hye regime (2013–2017) announced its installation in the city of Seong-Ju in the southern area of the country. Although the Korean government argued that THAAD was being installed to defend South Korea and the United States in response to North Korea’s threats, the Chinese government expressed its own concern regarding THAAD because “in theory, the system could be used to intercept Chinese ballistic missiles” (Taylor, 2017, para 5). Sooner or later, Chinese opposition to THAAD deployment led to unilateral trade sanctions against Korean companies (Taylor, 2017). The Chinese government set restrictions on Korean businesses in China, including the shutdown of Korean conglomerate stores. Chinese travel agencies have not been allowed to sell their products or make trips to Korea. This new policy has deeply impacted Sino-Korean collaborations in the media industry. Chinese networks stopped purchasing Korean television formats and stopped hiring Korean media laborers. Some Korean celebrities have also experienced the termination of their contracts by Chinese media agencies. Informants B and C recalled the immediate impact of THAAD on Sino-Korean media collaborations: There [was] no way [for Chinese media companies] to pay Korean media workers after [the Chinese government introduced] the restriction order

198  Ju Oak Kim of the Korean Wave. [Chinese networks] cannot produce media content with Korean [partners]. (Informant B) There is no business [between the two media industries] after THAAD. It seems that 3–4 percent of Korean workers stay in China secretly. (Informant C) Jun (2017) mapped out two different views on China’s reaction to THAAD in the Korean entertainment industry. On the one hand, the Chinese government has employed its hardline power to express discomfort concerning Korea’s decisions that may possibly threaten its national security. On the other hand, the Chinese government deployed this situation as a “perfect excuse” to control the popularity of Korean media content within Chinese society (Jun, 2017, p. 163). Korea’s Trade Minister appealed to the World Trade Organization regarding China’s regulations, which discourage Korean companies and organizations from actively collaborating with Chinese business partners (as cited in Jun, 2017, p. 163). Due to China’s ban, Korean television companies have had to find other regional partners with whom they could continue exporting their media products and services; otherwise, they would be compelled to downsize their production scale. As a result, Korean media conglomerates have actively contacted alternative regional partners, including Vietnam, Indonesia, and Malaysia. In addition, they have attempted to produce media content with emerging actors, directors, and writers, which helps reduce production costs. The informants stated that Korea’s frozen relationship with Chinese partners had forced Korean media practitioners to realize the importance of diversifying their markets abroad, as well as sustaining their position in the domestic market (Okada & Hwang, 2002). In my view, my company [a music agency] seems to decide on expanding the market scale globally. . . . Due to stiff competition, it is not easy [for the company] to dominate the domestic market in Korea. The company’s president seems to think that if we enter into other regional markets, such as Vietnam and Indonesia, we can be a part of the majority there. The company has shown interest in the Indonesian and Malaysian markets because such interest cannot be made in the Chinese market [at this point]. (Informant E) Thus, the major takeaway here is that the recent Korean scripted series, Stranger (Lee, 2017) and Fight for My Way (Moon, 2017), were written by emerging writers. . . . Since the Chinese market is blocked, [production companies] have had to reduce the production scale. [The

Korea’s creative migration to China  199 production companies] cannot cast top actors. In the Korean market, highly paid actors do not guarantee the series’ success. (Informant A) On the one hand, China’s cultural policy has led the Korean entertainment industry to show renewed interest in the Southeast Asian media markets. Some leading companies, having invested in production facilities and artist contracts, have had to sustain their revenue for corporate management. The expansion of overseas markets on a regional scale was, therefore, a somewhat forced direction. Similarly, Korean media practitioners have attempted to revitalize their relationship with Japan, which became strained due to the dispute over Dokdo Island in the early 2010s. Importantly, a series of Korea’s diversification actions indicate that the country deeply recognizes the regional forces of media connections. On the other hand, Korean production companies have recognized the importance of sustaining their presence in the domestic market. This perception emerged when a couple of large-scale Korean television dramas (which had initially planned to be simulcast with China) faced a financial crisis. A representative case was Saimdang, Memoir of Colors (Lee et al., 2017). The main role of the drama was played by Youngae Lee, who has maintained a notable reputation among Chinese audiences with her previous work, Jewel in the Palace (Cho, 2003–2004). Her return after a hiatus of almost ten years from the industry aroused tremendous excitement from audiences in both countries. As a result, the Korean production company could successfully attract investments, and the drama production was completed in 2016. However, due to the conflicts between the two countries, the drama was only broadcast on Korean network television and subsequently failed to become popular with the domestic audience.8 Relatedly, the success of Stranger (Lee, 2017) and Fight for My Way (Moon, 2017) have weakened major Korean networks’ preference for established writers, directors, and celebrities. In order to survive from stiff competition in the domestic market, they have sought out alternative stories and characters created by emerging producers and writers. These alternative stories and characters have helped reduce production budgets and have attracted young, sophisticated audiences. Korea’s media companies have been heavily dependent on their relationships with neighboring partners. Therefore, diplomatic and political tensions have wielded a considerable amount of influence over the industry. Put differently, at the realm of the East Asian media industry are consistent negotiations of sociopolitical, economic, historical, and cultural conditions (see Dent, 2016, p. 23). From a Korean context, thus, peace and stability in the Korean peninsula are deeply contingent on the interregional flows of capital, people, and products. Korea’s cross-border relations and foreign affairs have often unearthed potential and existing conflicts that deeply intersect with the national division between the country’s North and South regions.

200  Ju Oak Kim Importantly, THAAD was neither the first nor the last incident to strain the relationship between Korea and China. More importantly, despite the risk, the Korean media industry has maintained its interest in the regional market. In other words, the Korean industry’s response strategies to China’s shutdown have been to either seek out alternative markets or tighten its budget. However, the informants collectively claimed that these were not long-term solutions. History shows that regional economic interdependence has increased as a result of interregional trade in East Asia, as Chanda (2006) described the extensive trade system as “a leitmotif in the region” (p.  61). If this is the case, then Castells’ (2010) notion regarding the space of flows is applicable in terms of reinterpreting the situation. Korean and Chinese media players need to take initiatives in valuing interactions that are compatible with each society’s dominant interests and functions.

Cultural mediation and hybridization Siu et al.’s (2015) understanding of Asia as fluid assemblages and Dent’s (2016) emphasis on China’s hegemonic position in East Asia provide a better understanding of the characteristics of Sino-Korean media interactions. It is notable that China initiated the Korean Wave phenomenon in the early 1990s. Regional audiences have shared the East Asian cultural identity and have become familiar with consuming Korean media content on a regular basis. Informants B and C stated that the Chinese audience’s preference for Korean media content over US and Japanese content should be understood in terms of cultural intimacy: While disliking the country, Chinese people admire US content. However, it is too exotic to consume [for] them. Pop [genres], such as hiphop and rock music, have gradually spread out to China, but American rock and hip-hop are too much for them.  .  .  .  [Korea’s] review system also includes ridiculous elements. However, in China’s perspective, Korean media content is not dangerous but intimate to them. (Informant B) Emotional differences prevent [Chinese television] from adopting Japanese show trends. Korean reality shows contain up-and-down and practiced elements in storytelling. There are similarities between Korean and Chinese humor.  .  .  . Also, the popularity of Korean celebrities is an important reason [that leads to cultural intimacy]. Few Japanese celebrities win a fervent response from Chinese audiences. You can easily find posters of Lee Min-Ho and Jeon Ji-Hyun in the streets of Beijing, such as cosmetic stores and subway stations. (Informant C)

Korea’s creative migration to China  201 Many scholars have argued that the enormous sensation of Korean pop music occurred in East Asia because its hybrid form of western and Asian elements has reduced the unfamiliarity of western pop music (Shim, 2006). Korean pop songs contain relatively acclimatized themes and messages with respect to East Asian cultures and beliefs. What to point out here is that emotional bonds, constructed by geographic and historical conditions, deepen the cultural affinity between China and Korea. Thus, although Japan is part of the East Asian region, Chinese television has not been active in adapting Japanese reality formats. Informant C mentioned that Chinese viewers had developed a sense of intimacy with Korean celebrities in circumstances where Korean entertainers are omnipresent in their daily lives. Another point that the informants brought up in terms of interregional collaborations relates to communication with Chinese co-workers. Translation is the key to Sino-Korean media collaborations, and both Korean and Chinese people have played the role of mediators in these Chinese-Korean media collaborations. Their interpretations have thus become an important factor in the localizing process. Korean-Chinese people mainly play the role of translators. However, they are not media professionals and, therefore, they do not know the key terms in television production.  .  .  . The issue of translation has caused a lot of misunderstanding and trouble. (Informant C) Korean scripts were first translated into Chinese and were sent to China for modification to the Chinese context. [This system was established because] a Korean writer has no idea about the extent to which Chinese audiences accept [the story].  .  .  . Contention resulted when KoreanChinese writers completely changed the storyline in their way. (Informant D) Understanding the role of communication in the production of meanings and in the reinforcement of ideologies, Martín-Barbero (1993) made a persuasive argument about “mediations,” referring to “the articulation of different tempos of development with the plurality of cultural matrices” (p. 187). Martín-Barbero’s (1993) approach helps us better understand the conflicts between Korean and Chinese media actors as a process of negotiating relations between ethnic communities, cultural norms, political views, and social statuses. Thus, the dynamic links between Korean and Chinese cultures, forms, identities, and practices, mediated by Korean-Chinese translators, produced the hybrid media cultures of East Asia, while consistently generating conflict and tension between the two cultures (See Kraidy, 2005). The process of cultural mediation highlights the pattern of Chinese and Korean media linkages: they are emotionally intimate in terms of adapting

202  Ju Oak Kim stories and characters, but are not culturally identical. Thus, they should pass through the modification of verbal and behavioral expressions. Certainly these interactive processes have produced “spatially significant moments” that help people reconfigure the space of production through the configuration of regional connectivity (Siu et al., 2015, p. 2).

Conclusion This chapter is an attempt to situate Sino-Korean collaborations in reality show production in a logic of the globally networked system. Based on a renewed understanding of space, Castells (2010) proposed “a new logic of industrial location” (p.  417); the arrival of new technologies requires the convergence of location strategy and information technology devices in the production process. Moreover, the geographical and historical specificity of the production process involves the characterization of locational patterns (Castells, 2010). This perspective provides a better understanding of Sino-Korean interactions as a product of constructing the imaginary aspects of East Asia, and as a process of structuring social practices on a regional scale. Put differently, the historical specificity of regional linkages, including the transnational popularity of Korean media culture and the growth of the Chinese media industry, should be considered to better grasp the development of interregional media practices (see Chen, 2010). Nevertheless, it is notable that the nation’s interests always precede the regional community’s mutual needs; this is why Korea and China’s mutual efforts to develop connections are somewhat “contradictory trends derived from conflicts and strategies between social actors playing out their opposing interests and values” (Castells, 2010, p. 441). Despite sharp conflicts among national actors, the digital technology, networks, and media elites are significant considerations in terms of grasping the continuity of trans-border interactions in the East Asian media industry (see Castells, 2010). Digital technology has fundamentally restructured existing ways of connecting media practitioners. In a similar way, business leaders have developed interregional networks so as to sustain their competitiveness in the global market, given that urban and regional centers “cover the spectrum of time zones for the purpose of financial trading, and work largely as a unit in the same system of endless transactions” (Castells, 2010, p. 410). Equally important is the East Asian imagination, which has become a major part of the region’s identities and ideologies. These regionally formulated media cultures, practices, and networks have sustained the East Asian media industry as “a regional entity” under the influence of the global media system (Dent, 2016, p. 2). Finally, it is necessary to reiterate Chen’s (2010) argument regarding “the specificity of dynamic local histories” that become deeply involved in the structuring of global capital, as well as in the transformation of the local community’s formation (p. 66). By giving attention to the rapid centralization of

Korea’s creative migration to China  203 regional communities in the global system, he problematized “the absence of a reflexive decolonization of thoughts and practices,” which has possibly sustained the perpetuation of the cultural imperialism thesis (Chen, 2010, p.  65). In this context, I  argue that the Sino-Korean media sphere is an expression of East Asian society (see Castells, 2010, p. 440), thereby revealing “the plurality of geographical spaces and histories” (Chen, 2010, p. 66). I also point out that Korean media actors’ transnational activities somehow contribute to sustaining the region as “fluid assemblages” (Siu et al., 2015, p.  2), contesting geopolitical and historical boundaries, which are mainly shaped by the United States and China.

Notes 1 Curtin (2007) employed the notion of creative migration to explain how metropolitan cities have emerged as centers for creative production and distribution (p. 15). 2 For Castells, “space is the expression of society,” which means that the form, function, and meaning of space are considerably shaped by the people who have developed social relationships with space (Castells, 2010, p.  440). He further defined flows as “the expression of processes dominating our economic, political, and symbolic life” (Castells, 2010, p. 442). 3 Although he took a critical view regarding the emphasis on the “hierarchical spatial division of labor between different functions located in different territories,” Castells (2010) did not underestimate the gravity of the region generating interdependence within the spatial logic of global innovation (p. 423). 4 Multinational conglomerates have also intensified the integration of political, economic, and social structures in the region. Likewise, regionalism has led this economically coherent region to become part of the global system, despite the region’s divergences in many aspects (Dent, 2016). 5 It is necessary to remember that the Korean government’s deployment of cultural policy to boost the media industry was mainly inspired by “Japan’s ‘developmental state’ paradigm of state-business partnered capitalism and export-oriented industrialisation” (Dent, 2016, p.1). Of course, there are differences between Japan and Korea in terms of economic and social conditions; while the large-scale and solid profit structure of the domestic market discouraged Japan’s transnational promotion of cultural products (Iwabuchi, 2002), Korean media actors expanded their activities to overseas markets due to limited domestic market prospects. 6 At the time of the interview, the Chinese government issued the policy that each broadcaster could localize only one foreign television format. 7 For example, although a teaser for a television show may be released for today’s broadcast, the show could be canceled. 8 It began with 15.5 percent; viewership of the finale fell to 8.2 percent (AGB Nielson Korea, as cited in Digital News Division, 2017).

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206  Ju Oak Kim Taylor, A. (2017, March  7). Why China is so mad about THAAD, a missile defense system aimed at deterring North Korea. The Washington Post. www. washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2017/03/07/why-china-is-somad-about-thaad-a-missile-defense-system-aimed-at-deterring-north-korea/? utm_term=.da55b928e5a4 Yang, S. J. (2019, November 14). Twice will be appearing on Kohaku Uta Gassen despite Japan’s diplomatic freeze with Korea. Hankook Ilbo. www.hankookilbo. com/News/Read/201911142021341230?did=NA&dtype=&dtypecode=&prnew sid= Yoon, H. S. (Executive Producer). (2002). Winter Sonata [TV series]. KBS2.

12 Cultural industries and the state in East Asia Nissim Otmazgin

In the last three decades, Northeast and Southeast Asia (hereafter “East Asia”) has experienced a cultural renaissance rooted in the growth of its economies and booming consumerism, and has manifested in the massive circulation of pop culture products, such as movies, pop music, animation, comics, games, television programs, and fashion magazines. While many of these products originated in Europe or the United States, a significant proportion of them have been produced in and disseminated from places such as Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, or Hong Kong. These multidirectional pop culture confluences have gradually intensified, reaching consumers across different national and linguistic boundaries, and substantially decentralizing this region’s pop culture market (Jin & Lee, 2007; Otmazgin, 2013). Following the success of the cultural industries, governments in East Asia have recently become interested in the economic potential of pop culture and in cultivating new, lucrative export enterprises, not only for its cultural importance to the country but to reinforce nation-building and protect local traditions and cultures against foreign influence. As commodifying and exporting culture continues to gain momentum, governments have been reconsidering their policy toward commodified culture and now view the cultural industries as a way to initiate industrial change. Recent initiatives taken by the Japanese and South Korean governments indicate that they actively intervene in order to foster the growth of this sector within the national economies and are developing their own export-oriented cultural industries. Media coverage, for its part, was fast to deal with the issue of cultural exports, expressing support and nurturing hopes for this sector to grow. The opportunities found in the cultural industries have been echoed by a mainstream discourse encouraging the state to intervene. Advocates repeatedly emphasize the economic benefits of cultural exports and stress its possibility to contribute to the nation’s diplomacy as a means to boost the country’s image abroad. Governmental and media reports throughout East Asia routinely quote Joseph Nye’s concept of “soft power” to emphasize the diplomatic advantage of pop culture.1

208  Nissim Otmazgin However, in spite of the dramatic changes in East Asia’s pop culture markets in the last two decades, very little academic attention has been given to the economic and industrial aspects of cultural diversity and its impact on transnational cultural convergence. Although there are numerous works dealing with Western-based cultural industries (examples include Beck, 2003; Hartley, 2005; Hesmondhalgh, 2002; Mayer et al. 2009), there are very few which provide adequate information on the organizational aspect of pop culture in East Asia, especially regarding the dynamics of production, distribution, and capabilities of the local cultural industries. The majority of literature on pop culture in East Asia has taken an ethnographic and interpretative approach, focusing on specific case studies with a strong tendency to privilege analyzing the “content” of the product and its representational practices (for example, Chen & Tarling, 2018; Choi & Maliangkay, 2014; Inoue, 2010; Iwabuchi, 2004). On the other hand, studies on policy making and industrial relations in East Asia have given very little attention to this issue. Because they do not regard “culture industry” as a viable object of analysis, they largely overlook the policy implications resulting from the mass commodification and export of culture (for example, Beason & Weinstein, 1996; Kikkawa, 1998; Vogel, 2006; Woo-Cumings, 1999). In fact, it was only after the media and cultural industries became significant sectors of the economy did they become serious objects of scholarly study and led to the gradual opening up of the “hard” disciplines of economics and political science to the study of pop culture (Keane, 2006, p. 840). No single study has so far provided comprehensive and empirically grounded information regarding the capacity of Japan and South Korea’s cultural industries or critically examined their policy implications. This chapter addresses these lacunae and analyzes the impact of the cultural industries on state policy by looking at the emergence of the Japanese and Korean cultural industries and at the consequential governmental policies initiated. The central argument presented here is that these governments have recently shifted their attention to the economic benefits derived from the commodification of culture. It is an obvious case of a “tail that wags the dog”: the Japanese and the Korean governments have not initiated or lead the massive export of pop culture, at times they have even objected to it. However, following the success of the private sector, they have adopted the view that cultural industries can initiate industrial change and upgrade their economy, and are gradually looking for new ways to intervene. At the same time, however, their efforts to foster the production and export of pop culture are based on their experience in industrial promotion, which heavily emphasizes investment in infrastructure. This attitude, I suggest, is too rigid to accommodate the dynamism of the cultural industries and should be supplemented with a more creative approach, which takes into account the distinctiveness of the cultural industries.

Cultural industries and the state  209 In the context of this book, this chapter contributes to the discussion over the convergence of East Asian pop culture in three ways. First, Japanese and Korean cultural industries have been the two most important players in the regional circulation of pop culture over the past two decades. Their emergence as a regional cultural superpower, the soft power competition between them, and the fascination of many people in East and Southeast Asia over Japanese and Korean contemporary culture provide a powerful convergence power. Second, this chapter describes an overlooked aspect of cultural convergence in East Asia in the realm of policy. As this chapter describes, the potential economic and diplomatic benefits of contemporary cultural production has triggered a state response in both Japan and South Korea. The governments in Japan and South Korea are not only competing but also learning from each other about the way to promote their popculture related industries. As once explained by the head of “Cool Japan” division in Japanese the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry (METI) when asked about promoting facilitating better communication with local industries, “we sometimes basically copy what the Koreans are doing.”2 Finally, this chapter emphasizes the role of market forces in East Asia’s cultural convergence. It argues that bottom-up processes in the realm of pop culture are the main reason for the massive production and dissemination of contemporary culture in East Asia, and not the state which merely attempts to tap onto this process. In this sense, East Asia’s cultural convergence is essentially market-driven. Japan and South Korea provide good case studies for examining the relations between the cultural industries and state policy in the context of East Asia’s cultural convergence. Both countries share a strong developmental state legacy, their cultural industries are regarded as the most developed in East Asia in terms of production capacity and sophistication—and thus serve as models for the transformation of other cultural industries in the region, and in recent years Japanese and Korean cultural industries have been actively exploring new market expansion opportunities abroad and raising expectations for this sector to grow. At the same time, however, there are a few important differences which have had an impact on the policy outcomes. Japan has a longer tradition of developmental policy, going back to the creation of the Ministry of Commerce and Industry in 1925 (Johnson, 1982, pp. 83–115). In fact, the Japanese developmental model strongly influenced postwar South Korea’s developmental policy (Kohli, 1999). The Korean cultural industries also developed and expanded abroad later than the Japanese cultural industries. In East Asia, Japan’s pop culture reached its peak in the second half of the 1990s, while Korean pop culture followed the same path half a decade later. Finally, in South Korea cultural policy is more “nationalized” in the sense that the Korean government has been explicit in its attempts to utilize culture and art in the service of national goals. In Japan, however, the traumatic experience of militarism and war resulted

210  Nissim Otmazgin in a strong inward-looking cultural policy. Thus, for most of the postwar years the government was reluctant to promote its national culture in Asian countries, due to fears this will resurrect old grievances from the time Japan attempted to impose its culture on its neighbors. This chapter is divided into five parts. First, I briefly review the relationship between “culture” and “industry” in order to underline the challenges for policy makers. I then place the issue of commodifying and exporting pop culture in the wider context of Japan and South Korea’s developmental legacy and discuss the massive emergence of the Japanese and Korean cultural industries since the 1990s. I later analyze the way that the policies toward the cultural industries have shifted, the recent governmental initiatives to support the production and export of commodified culture, and provide a few examples of the domestic discourse they initiate. The attempt here is to show that it is in this “ecosystems” in both countries, made of interactions between policy makers and public discourse, that policies toward the pop culture sector are being constructed. Lastly, I outline the wider theoretical significance of this study to the process of policy making, and offer some policy recommendations based on the structure and organization of the cultural industries.

The industry of culture Cultural industries; sometimes referred to as “creative industries,” “copyright industries,” or “content industries,” are those which provide the conceptual and practical convergence of art and creativity in consumer-oriented economies.3 They share the same logic with manufacturing industries such as automobiles and electronics. Initially, they are all forms of capitalist commodity production. They are economically based, industrially constructed, require labor, and correlate to market demands. Their activities are realized through obtaining the necessary technology, resources, and equipment, followed by manufacturing, marketing, and consumption of the final product. The expansion of all industries to foreign markets is usually driven by crossborder market incentives and opportunities. Nevertheless, cultural industries have the ability to blur many of the conventional categories used by academics regarding “culture” on the one hand, and “industry” on the other. The cultural industries are obviously different from primary industries, like farming and mining, however it is not even clear if they should be categorized with secondary (manufacturing) or tertiary (service) industries (Bilton  & Cummings, 2010; Venturelli, 2005, pp. 393–394). For our purpose, I would like to underline only one conspicuous characteristic of the cultural industries, which presents a major challenge to policy makers: the production in cultural industries is essentially based on the cultivation and valorization of individual creativity.4 There is considerable autonomy for producers and technicians, within certain formats and genres, but the assembly system in cultural industries depends

Cultural industries and the state  211 ultimately on a form of creativity that must be extracted and mobilized as a part of corporate success, in a more extensive and systematic way than in other industries (Caldwell, 2008; Ben-Ari & Otmazgin, 2020). For this reason, the cultural industries are obliged to provide an adequate environment to accommodate their creative personnel, whose habits are different from many of the workers in the “other” industries. People who create culture, like musicians, animators, scriptwriters, and other artists, often have their own schedules and cannot be effectively forced to work within “usual” working hours. They need to find their own stimulating work environment (in this sense, the cultural industries are closer to knowledge industries such as Microsoft’s software design. Though both Microsoft software and cultural production is creative, they need to be lodged in high-tech hardware produced by other industries). This “special” nature of the cultural industries presents a new set of challenges to policy makers. The conventional ways used to foster the development of other manufacturing industries, such as investing in R&D, and technological and physical infrastructure, may not work, as they do not necessary allow the freedom and flexibility needed for artistic and cultural creation. To put the challenge more bluntly, if governments wish to develop their own successful economically driven cultural industries they need to study the work of the cultural industries more thoroughly, acknowledge this sector’s sensibilities, and eventually support a dynamic mechanism for nurturing, commodifying, and commercializing artistic and cultural creativity on a massive scale.

The emergence of the Japanese and Korean cultural industries Looking at the cases of Japan and Korea enables us to learn how industrial policy is being constructed, debated, and implemented in a market economy with a developmental-driven government. These cases show that industrial policy is not top-down, hierarchical, or centrally structured, but rather a set of contested initiatives and intentions which eventually generate actions. In contrast to the classic work on East Asia’s developmental state strategy (Johnson, 1982; Woo-Cumings, 1999), the case of the Japanese and Korean governments involvement in the cultural industries shows that the actions of the state are rather reactive and accommodating and not guiding or leading. However, by looking at the inter-relations and reciprocity between the arising cultural industries, the government, and the domestic discourse, it is possible to recognize the forces effecting policy making toward pop culture and more broadly examine how policy is being initiated toward a newly arising industrial sector. Japan and South Korea provide good case studies for critically examining the initiation and implementation of policy toward a newly arising industrial sector. First, both countries share a strong developmental legacy

212  Nissim Otmazgin of targeting, promoting, and guiding the investment in certain industries the government chooses (Beeson, 2009; Carlile, 2013; Evans, 1995; Wade, 1992). This is not to say that industrial policy was always successful or that it is the single most important explanation for the success of Japanese and Korean industries, such as the automobiles and electronic industries. Nevertheless, these two countries have a history of governmental intervention, not only for regulating the markets, responding to market failures, or creating the macro-conditions for economic growth, but also both explicit and implicit attempts to guide and direct the growth of certain sectors within the economy. Second, in both countries the local cultural industries have achieved a sufficient level and experience in commodifying, manufacturing and transnationally marketing various forms of culture. The following figures provide some indication of the size of the Japanese and Korean cultural industries. Japan is second only to the United States in cultural production. Approximately 10 per cent of the world’s production of content was made in Japan, contributing 2 per cent to the GDP.5 According to the Marubeni Economic Research Institute, Japanese global cultural export value, including the media, copyrights, publishing, fashion, and other related entertainments and fine art, tripled in the 11 years between 1993 and 2003, totaling as much as JPY10.5  trillion for the entire period. The rate of this export growth is stunning, especially given the fact that during the same period the total manufacturing sector’s exports from Japan increased only by 20 per cent, totaling JPY52 trillion (Sugiura, 2003). In South Korea as well, the media liberalization in the 1980s led to the opening of the Korean cultural market and invigorated a massive production of pop culture products under the banner of “Hallyu”. As it has been widely documented in the literature in the field, Hallyu started with TV dramas, K-pop, films, and video games but has more recently expanded to include such fields as Korean-made cosmetics, food, and Korea-inspired fashion (Jin  & Yoon, 2017). While there are no comprehensive figures about the exact size of this export or its overall economic value, it is obvious that it has been significant. According to one estimate, in 2014, Hallyu gave a boost of USD 11.6 billion to the South Korean economy.6 According to the Bank of Korea, in 2018 the proliferation of Korean cultural content overseas, including K-pop, food, TV programs and movies as well as PC and mobile games produced by Korean firms, created a USD 2.43 billion balance of payment surplus, up 73 per cent from the previous year. (The balance of payments represents the difference between the amount a country earns from exports and the amount it spends on imports during a given period.) The growth was attributed to the rising popularity of Korean games and music abroad the previous year.7 For our purpose, it is also important to emphasize that in both countries small companies and venture start-ups are vital for cultural production. The process of innovation, development, and commodification is shared by a

Cultural industries and the state  213 larger number of competitive players rather than by a few big producers. In Japan, for example, the animation industry includes approximately 450 production companies and 5,000 animators. The comic industry employs about 4,000 cartoonists and 28,000 assistants, while in the computer game industry the population is said to be 18,500, found in 146 mostly small companies. In addition, there are hundreds of so-called “indie” companies (an abbreviation of “independent”), involved in alternative, small-scale productions of music and visual images. In the South Korean television industry, most independent television production companies are small, sometimes ill-equipped. This makes the coordination between them and the major TV stations (MBC, SBS, and KBS) and the process of production and post production extremely complicated, not to mention the copyright ownership (Japan External Trade Organization, 2006; Media Innovation Lab, 2017; Shin, 2008, pp. 29–30). Third, both the Japanese and the Korean cultural industries have massively entered markets in East Asia during the last two decades in search for new market expansion opportunities. They maintain a salient presence in the cultural geography of this region, expressed both in the wider range of products and in their especially high availability. An exception is Japanese animation, which from its outset aimed at expanding to foreign markets and has since gained considerable success in North America and Europe, in addition to East Asia (Daliot-Bul & Otmazgin, 2017). Their timing, however, has been different. The wave of Japanese pop culture reached its peak in most East Asian markets sometime between 1997 and 1999, while the Korean pop culture started to become popular two to five years later and continue ever since. For example, Japanese pop music female artists, such as Chiba Mika, Namie Amuro, Utada Hikaru, and Hamasaki Ayumi, are probably known to every youngster in urban East Asia—but not in Europe, South America, or the Middle East. Japanese television dramas and variety programs have become an integral part of East Asia’s television scene. Japanese television dramas such as Tokyo Love Story, Long Vacation and Yamatonadeshiko, Japanese variety programs like TV Champion, various cooking shows, and especially Japanese animation such as Doraemon, Tiger Mask, and Detective Conan, are regularly broadcasted on public television and cable channels in Hong Kong, Singapore, Thailand, Malaysia, and Indonesia, and more recently in Taiwan and South Korea. Korean pop culture is also leaving a strong mark on East Asia’s cultural scene, creating the so-called Korean Wave, or Hallyu, as it is known among fans. While having its biggest presence in the Asian region, particularly Japan, China, Taiwan, and Hong Kong (Cho, 2011; Kwak, 2017, pp. 6–7; Shin, 2007), nowadays, Hallyu fans can be found in different parts of the world and across different ethnic groups—in North America, Europe, Latin America, and the Middle East (Yoon  & Jin, 2017). Korean idols have become phenomenally popular throughout the region. Won Bin and Song

214  Nissim Otmazgin Seung-hun are widely known to young East Asians through their parts in the hit television drama Autumn Fairy Tale. Other well-known South Korean idols include Jang Dong-gun (Friends), Cha Tae-hyun (My Sassy Girl), Lee Jung-jae (Il Mare), Kyon Sang-woo (My Tutor Friend), and Bae Yong Jun (Winter Sonata). Lastly, both the Japanese and the Korean cultural industries serve as a model for the transformation of the local cultural industries in other parts of East Asia. They are considered to be the most developed cultural industries in the region in terms of capacity of production and sophistication, and thus serve as an example for other local cultural industries. A few studies have shown how Japanese and Korean formats for producing animation, television dramas, and pop music have been widely adopted by the local cultural industries in places like Thailand, Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Mainland China, completely amending the structure of the local pop culture markets (for example, Aoyagi, 2000; Chua & Iwabuchi, 2008; Iwabuchi, 2002; Otmazgin 2008; Siriyuvasak & Shin, 2007). In this sense, the impact of the Japanese and Korean cultural industries is not only in manufacturing and exporting cultural commodities but also rooted in the overall industrial and normative impact they have on the development of the local cultural industries in East Asia.

Pop culture policy making in Japan and South Korea Following the success of the private sector, the governments of Japan and South Korea no longer perceive the cultural industries only in ideological terms but also as a potentially profitable economic activity. In the past, cultural policies represented ways for governments to emphasize and reinforce nation-building or prevent the infiltration of “foreign” cultures regarded as morally harmful or politically dangerous (Chua, 2000, pp. 12–13; Yim, 2003). However, in both countries the governments have gradually come to acknowledge the economic advantages of the cultural industries, and they constantly look for new ways to intervene. This entails a relatively new connection between industrial and cultural policies, where culture is linked to the developmental idea of amassing national wealth by promoting the export of cultural products. In this process, culture and cultural products are now valorized for their economic value, and culture thus becomes an object of policy that is seen as manageable through technological and political channels in the service of national economic goals. In actual terms, the governmental involvement focuses on supporting the infrastructure needed for the development of the cultural industries. This includes supporting the technology needed for delivering and consuming cultural content (infrastructure for the internet, cable TV or satellite broadcasts), nurturing human resources for the industry through supporting universities and training centers, and ensuring the availability of venture capital for producing movies, television programs, music albums,

Cultural industries and the state  215 animation, computer games, etc. In both countries, governmental ministries and agencies also routinely produce highly optimistic prospects for the cultural industries, nurturing more governmental involvement. The Korean government is supporting the development of its cultural industries in a much more strategic and organized way than the Japanese government. This is not only because of the lack of cooperation between the various Japanese ministries and agencies in this field (Kozuka, 2008, pp.  15–84), but also because of the difference in the size of the domestic Korean and Japanese markets. While the huge Japanese domestic market continues to be a first priority for the Japanese cultural industries, the Korean cultural industries put greater emphasis on export. This is because the Korean domestic market is much smaller than the Japanese market and the only way for Korea to become a leading cultural manufacturer is by exporting. Let us look at these two cases more closely. Japan For most of the post-World War II period, the Japanese government has done very little to support the commercial export of pop culture. In contrast to its support of other prominent manufacturing industries, such as the automobile and electronic industries, the government did not regard the cultural industries as worth investing in. In the case of East Asia, there were also fears that the export of Japanese culture would resurrect old grievances from when Japan attempted to impose its own culture on the local population. Thus, the Japanese government estimated that cultural imperialism is not a profitable business and pulled back from aiding the export of Japanese culture to Asia. However, the success of the Japanese cultural exports during the 1980s and 1990s caught the attention of the Japanese government and eventually compelled it into extending support. As interest in Japanese contemporary culture and lifestyle is growing, not only in neighboring countries but also further away, in places such as North America, Europe, and the Middle East, Japanese anime, manga, games, music, and their derivative products are viewed as “entrance points” for becoming interested in Japan and even getting to like it (Otmazgin, 2018). At present, a few governmental ministries are responsible for the country’s cultural industries. In 2002, the government launched the Strategic Council on Intellectual Property within the Prime Minister’s office. The aim of the Council is to promote the growth of the nation’s intellectual property, including patented technologies, designs, movies, and computer game software, as a means of revitalizing the economy. In its meetings (headed by the prime minister) and reports, the Council outlined the technical aspects of intellectual property, the need to promote creative research in universities, and collaboration between companies and research institutions (Japan’s Prime Minister Office, 2008). In these meetings, the participants include

216  Nissim Otmazgin representatives from Japan’s Strategic Council on Intellectual Property, police, Interior Ministry, Foreign Ministry, Finance Ministry, Agency for Cultural Affairs, The Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry (METI), Japan Patent Office, and Keidanren (Japan Business Federation), as well as Diet members, media personnel, academics, and journalists. METI and the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communication are charged with the cultural industries portfolio. They emphasize the contribution of culture to the national economy and the need to develop related infrastructure. METI’s research institute (RIETI) and the Ministry’s think tanks have been examining ways to encourage the development and export of cultural industries, mainly through studying the literature and the data on this subject. They routinely produce optimistic reports and “visions” predicting that the multimedia and culture-related industries will continue to occupy an increasing segment of the economy. Encouraged by its prospects, in July 2011, METI even established the Creative Industries Division, better known as the “Cool Japan” Division. The purpose of this division is to supervise the international promotion of Cool Japan and to assist Japanese small and mid-size culture-related firms to pursue a global strategy. The Ministry of Education, Science and Culture, for its part, is promoting research and education designed to assist the country’s cultural production. In June  2004, it started supporting a Joint Industry-University Education Program for Content Creation Science, aimed at cultivating human resources for the cultural industries. The program started at University of Tokyo, and was followed by other schools like Tokyo National University of Fine Arts and Music and Doshisha University in Kyoto (Yoda, 2005, p. 10). Cultural policy functions are also the responsibility of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA). Together with the Japan Foundation, they are charged with the international dimensions of cultural policy. In its publications and reports, Japan Foundation routinely highlights Japan’s cultural capabilities and gives testimony to the popularity of Japanese culture overseas. In April 2003, for example, the annual report of Japan Foundation’s “International Exchange Research Committee” underscored the potential of Japanese culture to draw a sympathetic “national image” of Japan and assist its overseas diplomatic aims, emphasizing the rising importance of new powers in today’s diplomacy, characterizing them as “soft power” (Japan Foundation, 2003). Encouraged by these assessments, in 2005 MOFA allocated JPY1.16 billion for promoting Japanese animation and pop music in China. In 2006, the amount was almost tripled to JPY3.11 billion, a move meant to preclude any further deterioration of Japan’s image in China following an upsurge in anti-Japanese sentiment sparked by Prime Minister Koizumi Junichiro’s visit to the controversial Yasukuni Shrine. In the same year, MOFA also decided to allocate additional funds for financing the export of Japanese animation to developing countries as a part of the ODA program (an annual budget of JPY10  million was already allocated in previous years). The justification

Cultural industries and the state  217 given for allocating the funds was that the animation programs would improve the perception of Japan in developing countries (Asahi Shinbun, 2005, 22 December, 26). The diplomatic advantages of pop culture were personally acknowledged by recent Japanese prime ministers. In December  2004, then Prime Minister Koizumi Junichiro established a think-thank to recommend how the government should promote the country’s cultural diplomacy. In September 2005, his successor, Abe Shinzo, announced during his election campaign that “pop culture” is one of Japan’s strengths. Later in that year, the Prime Minister’s advisory institute on foreign relations (Gaisoushimonkikai) recommended a “Manga and Animation Diplomacy.” The recommendations included organizing international events to promote Japanese culture, creating a “Japan Manga Award” for outstanding foreign animators, and forming a joint study group involving bureaucrats and industry personnel. Prime Minister Aso Taro, reportedly a fan of comics, has continued this position and has proposed designating Japanese anime characters, like Doraemon and Kitty-chan, as Japan’s cultural ambassadors to the world (Asahi.com, 2005, April 10, Yomiuri Shinbun, 2005, November 11). South Korea Post-World War II Korean cultural policy has a central ideological aspect. Since the establishment of the first republic in 1948, Korean cultural policy has been put to the service of constructing a national identity, protecting Korean traditions and values, and distancing Korean culture from the previously imposed Japanese culture. Throughout the 1970s and 1980s, the South Korean government has defined its role as the custodian and defender of the national public interest. It considered foreign cultures, especially American and Japanese cultures, as unsuited to Korea as they ostensibly provoke exaggerated materialism, individualism, and sexuality. The government’s protection has been regarded as important especially in an age of globalization, where cultures and norms transnationally intermix and overlap. Hence, the South Korean government had routinely taken defensive measures against the free inflow of imported cultures (Eckert, 2000, pp. 141–142; Yim, 2003, p. 177). However, following the success of Korean pop culture abroad and as a part of an understanding that in a market economy the government cannot entirely manage the cultural preferences of its citizens, the policy has gradually changed. Kim Dae Jung’s administration was the first to take action in 1998 by allowing Japanese culture back into Korea and announcing that promoting the country’s cultural industries is a national aim. The Korean government has since been supporting the development of what it calls the “creative industries” (music, movies, television content etc.), and promoting Korean pop culture as an export industry. Former President Park Geum-hye, has been pushing for her flagship policy, dubbed “the creative economy,”

218  Nissim Otmazgin which is based on taking creative business ideas and turning them into a reality. During her presidency, South Korea set up 17 innovation centers across the country and matched up local startups and venture firms with conglomerates, utilizing science, technology, and information technology. The fields and products of the governments’ promotion have thus greatly changed from focusing on cultural heritage and traditional arts during the 1970s and 1980s, to pop culture and cultural industries since the 1990s (Shin, 2008, p. 30). The Ministry of Culture and Tourism, through its Cultural Industry Bureau, is in charge of articulating South Korea’s cultural policy, while the Ministry of Information and Communication mainly supports the technological infrastructure for the country’s cultural industries. The Ministry of Culture and Tourism, for its part, has been holding international fairs to introduce Korean pop culture to possible buyers and has been encouraging cooperation among Korean companies in the production and marketing of cultural commodities. In 2005, the ministry announced that it will cooperate with local universities to create a graduate school specializing in cultural technologies and an academic program to develop expertise in the field of cultural industry (Lee, 2008, p. 179). The Korea Creative Content Agency (KOCCA) and Korea Foundation for Asian Cultural Exchange (KOFICE) are major players in designating and implementing the government’s policy toward the cultural industries. These are two government-supported agencies charged with nurturing the competitiveness of the country’s cultural industries abroad. They both hold public relations offices in the US, the UK, and Japan. KOCCA, which was established in 2001, is more export-oriented and focuses on improving the infrastructure, technology, and finances needed for the growth of the cultural industries. KOFICE, on the other hand, tries to invigorate the growth of Korea’s cultural industries through exchange of information and cooperation (KOCCA is much bigger than KOFICE, has ten times the budget and five times the personnel, symbolizing the greater emphasis given to infrastructure over cultural exchange). As in Japan, governmental ministries have been producing optimistic prospects for the cultural industries and calls for investment in infrastructure. In 2005, the Ministry of Information and Communication anticipated that South Korea’s digital content production would jump 22 per cent to 7.9  trillion KRW, and related exports would top US$600  million, up 39 per cent from a year earlier (South Korea’s Ministry of Information and Communication, 2005). In the same year, a similar report entitled “C/Korea 2010” was given to the president by the Ministry of Culture and Tourism. Encouraged by its prospects, the Ministry of Information and Communication plans to inject KRW 21.5 billion into the digital content industry in the coming years, as part of a plan to become one of the world’s top five digital content providers by 2010.

Cultural industries and the state  219 The Korean government has specifically targeted the game industry with the intention of making Korea the world’s leading country in this field. The launch of the site, dubbed “Global Test-bed,” came as the result of a onebillion Won investment project aimed at promoting Korean-made online games to gamers and internet users abroad and assisting Korean game producers to advance to international markets (South Korea’s Ministry of Information and Communication, 2006). The South Korean authorities have also been investing in developing the country’s animation industry. In May 2006 the 10th Seoul International Cartoon and Animation Festival was held. The festival, the largest of its kind in Asia, featured more than 1,200 cartoons and animation from 53 countries. It was sponsored by the Seoul Metropolitan Government, pledging a contribution of 1 billion (US$1.07 million) a year until 2012 (The Korea Herald, 2006, May 15). Amid concerns that Korea’s image abroad was deteriorating, in 2008 then President Lee Myungbak established the Presidential Council on Nation Branding to promote the positive representation of Korea in foreign countries, to better project its economic success story, and to better utilize its cultural resources (Kang, 2016, pp. 73–74).

Discourse and policy making Governmental initiatives in both Japan and South Korea are not completely isolated from the way the cultural industries are being perceived in the public. As noted earlier, cultural policy is not simply a top-down process; but a set of initiatives and actions shaped by the performances of the private sector and the way the public view the production and export of culture. It is for this reason that it is important to look not only at actions taken by the government but also at the way pop culture production and export is being discussed and debated in popular and intellectual circles. Domestic discourse compels policy makers to take action and eventually shapes the environment where decisions are being made. Discourse analysis in Japan and South Korea reveals that the mainstream domestic discourse has largely been supportive of the cultural industries. Academics, journalists, and bureaucrats have all been emphasizing the growing importance of commodified culture in the country’s future, encouraging the government to intervene, and at times even referring to the export of their country’s culture as a manifestation of “soft power.” Interestingly, a much more diverse discourse has evolved in South Korea, including a wider range of alternative voices that sometimes even criticize Korean cultural exports, labeling them as a form of “cultural imperialism.” This difference is rooted in the postwar perception and utilization of culture in these two countries. In Japan, given the traumatic experience of colonialism and war, the legitimacy to use culture as a political tool is still very weak. The Japanese government, together with wide parts of the public, had long feared

220  Nissim Otmazgin that exporting Japanese culture will resurrect old grievances from the time Japan tried to impose its culture on the people of East Asia (the word “cultural policy,” or bunka seisaku in Japanese, was officially mentioned only in 1993 in a governmental White Paper). In South Korea, on the other hand, the issues of cultural flows and cultural policy have been widely discussed and debated, and the government does not see any problem in using “culture” as a tool in the service of the nation in order to, for example, preserve Korean values and keeping Koreans away from foreign cultures. However, a closer look at the recent discourse in Japan and in South Korea shows that the recent mainstream view in both countries is highly supportive of cultural exports, and serves as a tailwind for more governmental involvement in this sector. Discourse in Japan The success of Japanese pop culture abroad has invigorated a widespread discourse placing this topic high on the national agenda. Reform-minded government officials and journalists looking to change Japan’s moribund political and economic system are increasingly advocating support for the development of the country’s cultural industries. For liberals, the export of contemporary culture is seen as reflecting the country’s “friendlier” side, whereas, for conservatives, the overseas success is viewed as a source of a national pride. Both sides hope that the enthusiasm in which East Asian consumers buy Japanese cultural products might also play a diplomatic role in healing the wounds inflicted by Japan’s imperialistic past (Iwabuchi, 2002, p. 201). A series of 23 columns published in 2004 in Nikkei Shinbun, Japan’s leading economic newspaper, exemplifies the mainstream attitude toward the country’s cultural industries. The articles outline the need to stimulate growth in Japan’s cultural industries in the new digital age and recommend that the government provide adequate support by building the right economic, legal, and educational infrastructure, in addition to offering complimentary incentives. A  few of the articles indicate pop culture’s appeal and power to swiftly change Japan’s image overseas. The articles quote Nye’s “soft power” and other attractive terms such as “Cool Japan” and “National Image” (Nikkei Shinbun, 2004, January  5–February  4, 1–3). A  similar attitude is expressed by Asahi Shimbun, one of Japan’s leading daily newspapers. On the first day of 2006, the newspaper dedicated an article on its front page to featuring testimonies of worldwide fascination with Japanese culture. The coverage included evidence for the success of Japanese culture in places such as Russia, China, Thailand, Europe, and North America. The newspaper emphasized the economic benefits of cultural production and export, suggesting that progress in these fields is the key for Japan to maintain its economic superiority over China and India.

Cultural industries and the state  221 The second part of the article indicated that cultural exports also support to diplomatic efforts by depicting Japan as a peaceful nation (Asahi Shinbun, 2006, January 1, 1–3). Evidence for the discourse regarding the impact of the Japanese culture abroad is also found in a wide range of popular publications, such as in books, journals, and tabloids. A recent example is a book with the catchy title Cool Japan: The World Want[s] to Buy Japan (Kuru Japan Seikai ga Kaitagaru Nihon), by Shodensha, a publisher that specializes in popular books on Japanese identity. The book documents the success of Japanese culture overseas, especially of animation and computer games, and calls for realizing the enormous business opportunities in cultural exports as a means to revitalize the economy and “replace Japan back to the center of world stage.” This way, people across the world (especially in the USA and Europe) will be convinced to invest in Japan, attracted to Japan in the same way that “the Beatles attracted the money of American fans.” In the diplomatic sense, “fans of [Japanese] animation will become supporters of Japan” and cultural exports will cultivate a favored image of the country among foreigners. According to the author, the Japanese government must support the infrastructure for the development of the content industries and organize international conferences for fans of Japanese culture (Suzuki, 2005). The mainstream discourse views the export of Japan’s pop culture as a highly positive occurrence that both assists the economy and reflects the country’s postwar “peaceful” sides. However, an alternative nationalistic discourse does exist, albeit very small. The repeated example given to exemplify this discourse is Ishihara Shintaro, the conservative, rightwing governor of Tokyo. For Ishihara, Japanese pop culture should manifest national messages, and above all, convey Japanese pride. In an anime Fair in Tokyo in 2006, for example, he declared: I hate Mickey Mouse. . . . He has nothing like the unique sensibility that Japan has. . . . The Japanese are inherently skilled at visual expression and detailed works.  .  .  . We can go further. We can make something that’s more revolutionary.  .  .  . Let’s make something extraordinary Japanese! (Quoted in International Herald Tribune, 2006, April 4, 1–2) The anime cartoonists in this event were, however, not impressed. Following Ishihara’s speech, Matsutani Takayuki, president of the Association of Japanese Animation, asked reporters to ignore Ishihara’s statements. His attitude is a better representative of the mainstream, which does not share Ishihara’s nationalistic enthusiasm or see pop culture as an arena for fighting with other countries. This view rather emphasizes the ability of pop culture to present a friendly picture of Japan and introduce its dynamic

222  Nissim Otmazgin contemporary culture, without arousing anti-Japanese sentiments (Aoki, 2004, pp. 8–10). Discourse in Korea Following the success of the Korean Wave (Hanryu), popular and intellectual discourses in Korea have changed greatly. Social movements, which during the 1970s and 1980s explicitly objected to the ideological and moral challenges that foreign cultures and lifestyles instigated, condemning consumerism as a culture of “excessive” and “wasteful” materialism became more supportive. Cultural critics, at first puzzled about the unexpected surge of Korean television dramas and music in Asia, started to look at this issue more seriously. As Hanryu continued to be a highly publicized cultural phenomenon, it also gained considerable legitimacy among South Korea’s business circles and bureaucrats. Even old-fashion conservatives became advocates, as they see it as a proud manifestation of national culture and as a way to preserve and strengthen Korean identity in the face of globalization (Lee, 2004, pp. 251–274, 2008, pp. 177–178; Yim, 2003, pp. 75–99). Keehyeung Lee (2008) divides the discourses in South Korea toward the Hanryu phenomenon into three positions: neo-liberal thinking, cultural nationalism, and the culturalists. The first is the mainstream discourse accentuated by governmental and media organizations which emphasizes cultural exports’ economic value and its ability to improve the country’s image abroad. Yi O-ryong, for example, the former minister of culture and tourism, sees in Korean cultural exports a manifestation of “soft power” that enhances Korea’s positive image in Asia as an independent and innovative cultural power. Similarly, Prime Minister Lee Hae-chan, has emphasized the need to translate the popularity of Korean culture abroad to create an image of Korea as an “IT Power” with increased investment opportunities. These mainstream views are supported by the business community and the bureaucrats, who all see in South Korean pop culture a golden opportunity for profitable export and for depicting Korea as a dynamic and innovative country. The second position is the cultural nationalism group which acknowledges cultural exports’ economic benefits but emphasizes the supposedly “superiority” of modern Korean pop culture. The idea is that South Korea’s surging cultural sector is a manifestation of the country’s cultural qualities and forward-looking national character. This conservative view tends to emphasize the role of Hanryu as the source of national pride and empowered collective images of South Korea. This group is not interested in reflecting the voices of marginalized groups in Korea or in initiating a cross-cultural dialogue in Asia. Their aim is much more instrumental—displaying Korean culture while reinforcing Korean patriotic sentiment. In contrast, the culturalist approach is critical of the economic and political gains of the Korean cultural industries. As opposed to the cultural

Cultural industries and the state  223 nationalism groups, which view Korean pop culture as a proud manifestation of Korean traditional values, the culturalist approach underlines the notion that today’s Korean pop culture is actually a new creation which has very little to do with Korean tradition. The culturalists argue that Korean cultural products, such as movies, pop music, and television dramas, are a hybrid mixture of influences and genres which reflect an array of generic audio-visual styles and images that are selectively borrowed from American and Japanese pop cultures and shaped by macro-global and societal developments. According to Lee (2008, pp. 179–180, 185): Progressive intellectuals and cultural studies practitioners in South Korea criticize the mainstream views on Hanryu for their lack of due cross-cultural sensibility and concern for inter-regional dialogue, as well as their emphasis on the willful commodification of culture and cultural differences. Instead, they approach and evaluate Hanryu more cautiously through a series of contextualizing efforts . . . in this fashion, the culturalist position attempts to bring in a much more critical and politicized reading of the Hanryu phenomenon by foregrounding these issues which are often disregarded or downplayed by mainstream discourses on Hanryu: the possibilities of cross-cultural or transborder dialogues from below that can be mediated through Hanryu texts and their audiences in various geopolitical regions. Thus, the culturalist approach challenges the instrumental use of culture in order to advance political and economical agendas and calls for a wider grassroots transcultural dialogue in Asia. It emphasizes that Korean pop culture is not “really” Korean in the sense that it has not evolved from Korean traditional values but is rather a mixture of influences. However, it seems that this group does not provide complete conceptualization for the desired role of the Korean cultural industries but rather focuses on criticizing the other groups. As such, its impact on the mainstream view is rather limited.

Cultural industry and policy making in a developmental-state: conclusion and recommendations Clearly, the awareness of cultural export promotion has been gaining momentum in Japan and South Korea—two countries with a strong developmental state legacy. The export of pop culture did not start with the governments’ vision but rather was driven by the market forces, together with the entrepreneurial exploration undertaken by the cultural industries themselves (Otmazgin & Ben Ari, 2013). However, these governments have been increasingly aware of the possibilities present in developing their own cultural industries and in fact have become involved in the promotion of the cultural industries. Encouraged by the domestic discourse, they have been examining

224  Nissim Otmazgin new ways to assist their country’s cultural exports in order to gain economic benefits and possibly nurture positive appreciation of their country overseas. In this context, the cultural industries are no longer considered a marginalized sector of the economy, but an important part of market activity. At the same time, both the Japanese and the Korean governments treat the promotion of the cultural industries in basically the same way they treat the country’s more renowned industries, such as the automobile and electronic industries. They appoint committees that produce optimistic prospects and recommendations and advocate investment in infrastructure. Their actions also indicate that they are fostering the export of commodified culture mainly by assisting the bigger companies—not necessarily because this is needed, but because it is easier. For bureaucrats, especially in a developmentalstate driven government, it is much easier to allocate resources to several key companies than to manage and coordinate a complex structure of companies and networks engaged in cultural commodification and production. However, as we saw earlier in the chapter, in both countries small companies and venture start-ups are vital for cultural production, and the process of innovation, development, and commodification is shared by a larger number of competitive players and not by a few big producers. Given the “special” nature of the cultural industries, governments should shift the focus away from neo-Schumpeterian strategies of state-directed industrial planning and state policies encouraging concentration of ownership and large-scale economies (policies that might be useful for other large-scale industries). The necessary flexibility in the process of commodifying and producing culture will most probably be hampered by the rigidity of centralized institutions. Highly institutionalized arrangements will not be able to catch up with and accommodate the dynamism of cultural industries and the volatilities of cultural markets. The government should rather keep a free sphere for culture to cultivate, where cultural innovations can freely evolve and interact with the established industry. The emphasis should be on stimulating the growth of small firms engaged in various cultural commodification and production, embedded in the local economy, yet aspiring to export their products and services abroad. More specifically, governmental policy should seek to nurture the development of the cultural industries in a few important areas. First, to initiate research projects that gather necessary information on regional and global cultural trends. As previously noted, there is a lack of comprehensive quantitative data on the cultural markets and the cultural industries in East Asia. Official statistics in East Asia have not yet mapped out the cultural industries sector, and relevant information is unavailable or is listed in a series of overlapping categories, including art, leisure, culture, media, sport, and the like. Second, the government should continue to invest in training personnel for the cultural industries. The enlargement of the cultural industries requires capable people to initiate, commodify, commercialize, and manage

Cultural industries and the state  225 culture. These include qualified creative and technical personnel, such as directors, sound engineers, camera operators, image editors, floor managers, and designers, as well as experienced producers who are able to mediate between the project and the wider cultural and economic surrounding (funding, market demands, distribution networks, etc.). An important recommendation is that the state should not attempt to deliberately obtain “soft power” from the proliferation of its pop culture. In pop culture, state-run institutions work much less efficiently than the forces working outside the domain of centralized control. The diplomatic course of cultural exports should be solely left to consumers to determine, as governmental attempts to wield political benefits have so far proven to be futile, if not harmful. In other words, governments should take an active role in fostering the development of their country’s cultural industries by aiding small companies, training qualified personnel, and providing the information needed for their growth. However, putting it bluntly, governments should neither filter the products and activities of the cultural industries, nor target popularizing “traditional” or “elitist” practices, nor attempt to generate any sort of “power” deriving from the acceptance and consumption of the cultural commodities. Market forces, free of centralized control, are much more powerful in determining consumers’ tastes and priorities.

Acknowledgments This chapter is an updated version of an article published in the Journal of Comparative Policy Analysis, Vol. 13, No. 3, 307–325, June 2011. The author wishes to thank the unnamed reviewers for their excellent comments.

Notes 1 Soft power is a term coined by Joseph Nye to describe the growing importance of non-traditional means a country can wield to influence another country’s wants: soft power lies in the ability of a nation to entice, attract, and fascinate other countries and societies, so that, according to Nye (2004a, p. 15) a country “may obtain the outcomes it wants in world politics because of other countries admiring its values, emulating its example, aspiring to its level of prosperity and openness—want to follow it”. Nye first used this concept to describe America’s capabilities, but would later cite examples from Europe, Japan, India, and China (Nye, 2004b). 2 Author’s interview, Tokyo, Aug. 22, 2013. 3 The definition in this chapter is very different from the original use of the term “cultural industries.” Originally, the term has been used rather narrowly, associated with a radical critique of mass entertainment by the members of the Frankfurt School of Critical Theory, Theodor W. Adorno and Max Horkheimer (1973). The use of this term signaled their disgust at the utilization of media as a mechanical reproduction for propaganda, and emphasized problems in the industrialization of culture. According to this view, when art is being devalued by repackaging it into a mass consumption commodity, it loses its tradition, spirituality, and other supposed moral high ground.

226  Nissim Otmazgin 4 For a comprehensive discussion on whether cultural creativity can be managed or not and on whether creativity and business strategy are at odds see (Bilton & Cummings, 2010). 5 In 2002, in the USA cultural manufacturing as a part of the GDP is approximately 5 per cent and the World’s average is 3 per cent, in Japan it is only 2 per cent. Meaning, there is still a potential for this sector to grow in the country’s economy (Digital Content Association of Japan, 2005). 6 Retrieved March  30, 2019, from https://martinroll.com/resources/articles/asia/ korean-wave-hallyu-the-rise-of-koreas-cultural-economy-pop-culture 7 Retrieved March  30, 2019, from, www.thejakartapost.com/life/2019/03/04/ korea-marks-bop-surplus-for-hallyu-linked-sectors-on-global-success-of-gamesk-pop.html

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Index

1980 economic bubble in Japan 178 1997 financial crisis 194 2008 Beijing Olympics 179 2009: Lost Memories 61 26 Years Diary 62

Asian pragmatism 172 A Silent Voice 184 assemblage 191, 200, 203 Autumn Fairy Tale 214 Ayumi, Hamasaki 213

Abe, Shinzo 38, 183, 217 About Love 182 adaptation 54 – 59, 115, 117 Addicted 108 A Distant Cry from Spring 181 affordance 34 A Good Rain Knows 60 Aiqiyi 127 AKB48 118 A Korean Film Emperor in Shanghai 18 All In 37 American Idol 59 American music 56, 79, 83, 84, 86 American pop culture 223 American television programs 55, 56 Americanization 15, 84 An Ch’angho 20 Andrew Lau 26 Android 154, 157, 160 Anglo-American popular music 78, 82, 83, 90 anime 1, 8, 52, 96, 128, 184, 215 anti-imperialist ideology 176 anti-Japan sentiment 179, 222 anti-Korean sentiment 33, 38 anti-Korean Wave 63, 65 Apparudai, Arjun 66, 84, 130 Apple 155 – 156, 157, 158, 161 – 162, 164 App Store 158, 161 Asahi Shimbun 220 Asako in Ruby Shoes 61 Asian history 6 Asian media studies 3

Bae Yong Jun 214 Baidu 45, 154 Bai Mao Nv 173 Baku Yumemakura 185 Band 159 Battle of Wits 63 Beatles 221 Beautiful Days 37 Beijing Film Studio 173 – 175 Bilibili 127, 139 Bing 154 BitTorrent 135, 136 BL community 102, 104, 107 BoA 37, 45 Book Discussion on TV 18 Boruto: Naruto the Movie 184 bottom-up 53, 54, 67, 68, 131, 209 Boys and Girls in Love 57 Boys Love 107 Boys Love (BL) 7, 96 – 109 broadcaster 18, 36, 37, 56 Bruce Lee 17, 25, 26 BTS 5, 27, 121 – 122 cable 15, 18, 35, 37, 43, 47, 59, 65, 85, 213, 214 Cafe Seoul 62 Captain Marvel 115 Castells, Manuel 56, 140 – 141, 143, 189, 190, 191, 192, 196, 197, 200, 202, 203 CCTV 15, 36, 108, 136 celebrity 6, 8, 16, 17, 27, 113 – 115, 117, 119, 120 – 123, 201

Index  231 censorship 127 – 128, 137 Chan, Fruit 62 Chan, Jackie 17, 25, 26 Chang Cheh 25 Changcheng 25 Chang Chirak 24 Chang Chun Film Studio 173 Cha Tae-hyun 214 Chiba Mika 213 China’s War of Resistance 186 Chinese cinema 16, 17, 18, 21, 22, 173 Chinese film industry 6, 21, 24, 27 Chinese films 52 Chinese media industry 202 Chinese media studies 3 Chinese popular culture 52 Chinese television industry 9 Ch’oe Sŭnghŭi 24 Chŏn Ch’angkŭn 24 Chŏng Ch’anghwa 26 Chŏng Kit’ak 24 Chow Yun Fat 26, 28, 120 Chua Beng-Huat 2, 5, 170, 171, 214 Chungking Express 26 cinematic dispositive 121 CJ Entertainment 27 class 117 Coffee Prince 58, 107 Cold War 15, 18, 25, 178 collaboration 7, 9, 52 – 53, 55, 57, 58, 59, 62, 63, 67 – 69, 170, 171, 173, 178, 186, 190, 195 collective intelligence 134 colonialism 56, 61 – 62, 65, 84 colonization 2, 17, 25, 61 commodity culture 142 commodity exchange 150, 161, 190 community 8, 96, 101 – 102, 104 – 105, 107, 128 – 130, 133 Confucianism 8, 98, 103, 171 – 172 consumerism 172, 207 consumption 4 content industries 210; see also cultural industries control society 136 convergence 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 9, 53, 55, 59, 61, 66, 67, 98, 106 – 108, 129, 131, 170 – 172, 186, 209 convergence culture 3, 5, 9, 114 – 117 Cool Japan 2, 209, 216, 220, 221 Cool Japan: The World Want[s] to Buy Japan 221 co-production 9, 16, 26, 52, 54 – 55, 59 – 65, 170 – 171, 174 – 177, 179 – 186

copyright 127 – 129 copyright industries 210; see also cultural industry copyright infringement 127 cosmopedia 134 – 135 cosmopolitanism 9, 16, 130, 133, 138, 171, 183 COVID-19 160 creative industries 210, 217; see also cultural industry creole 24 crossmedia 4, 42 cultural commodification 224 cultural commodity 16, 214, 218 cultural convergence 208, 209 cultural de-convergence 53, 68 cultural exchange 6, 7, 24, 28, 37, 177 cultural exports 220 – 221, 224 – 225 cultural flow 1, 2, 4, 8, 15, 25, 32, 54, 62, 192, 220 cultural formation 53 cultural hybridity 193 cultural imperialism 79, 131, 219 cultural identity 171, 172, 176 cultural industry 1, 8, 9, 52, 53, 62, 64, 66, 76, 115 – 116, 118, 173, 207 – 220, 222 – 225 Cultural Industry Bureau 218 cultural integration 52 – 56, 58, 59, 66, 67 culturalist 222, 223 cultural market 7 cultural nationalism 193, 222 cultural policy 52, 199, 209, 210, 216 – 220 cultural politics 53, 61, 62, 64, 65, 67 cultural production 209, 211, 212, 216, 220, 224 cultural proximity 32, 82, 102, 171, 184, 193 cultural regionalism 53 – 54 cultural regionalization 53 – 56, 67, 68 cultural renaissance 60, 207 Cultural Revolution 28 cultural superpower 209 cultural systems 4 cultural taste 79, 99 culture 210 – 211 culture industry 207 – 208 cyberspace 101, 128 Cyworld 152, 158 – 160, 163 – 164 Dad Where are You Going 58, 189 Dae Jang Geum 36, 37, 38; see also Jewel in the Palace

232 Index Daisy 63 Damo 37 Dangerous Liaisons 60 danmaku 138 – 140, 142 danmei 100 Date: What’s It Like to Be in Love? 185 Daum 152 – 154, 156 – 157, 161, 164 Daum Kakao 156 – 157 Da Zhonghua 25 de-convergence 53 Dedicated Daddy Challenge 56 Deleuze, Gilles 136 Descendants of the Sun 66 Desperate Housewives 136 Detective Conan 213 developmental policy 209 Diaoyu Islands 178, 179 diaspora 24 digital audio tapes (DAT) 76 digital culture 1 – 4, 8, 115, 119, 129, 149 digital economy 149 digitalization 47, 75 – 78, 92 digital media 6, 42, 52, 121 digital platforms 8, 149 – 154, 155 – 156, 158, 160 – 164 digital scopophilia 113 – 114, 121 – 122 digital sequencers 76 digital technologies 5, 6, 52, 149, 202 diplomacy 207, 216, 217 discourse analysis 219 Disney 15, 113 – 114, 116 dōjinshi 98 Dokdo Island 33, 38, 65, 97, 190, 199 donginji 99 Dong-Kun Jang 63 Doraemon 213, 217 Doraemon: Nobita and the Birth of Japan 184 Dream High 58 Du Bois, W. E. B. 24 Dun Huang 176 Eagles Brave the Storm 23 East Asian cultural studies 5 East Asian identity 171, 193 East Asian pop culture 4, 6, 15, 16, 28, 52, 60, 114, 123, 208, 209 economic development 76, 79, 87, 192 education system in Korea 78 – 79 electronic dance music 75, 77, 80 – 81 Emergency Hospital 24 56 enka 78, 89 Enlightenment 130, 133

ER 56 Eve’s Castle 57 export-driven economic development 192 export enterprises 207 export of culture 208 export of Korean popular culture 38, 57 Facebook 43, 149, 154, 156, 158 – 160, 161, 163 – 164 fan culture 96, 97, 131 fandom 4, 6, 7, 8, 27, 96 – 99, 101, 105 – 107, 109, 114 – 119, 121 – 123, 132, 138 fandom culture 115, 119, 121 fan fiction (fanfic) 96, 100 fansub 8, 128 – 129, 131 – 140, 142 – 144 fansubbing community 128, 136, 144 fanzine 99 female gaze 121 Fight for My Way 198, 199 First Opium War 20 First World War 20 Fiske, John 16 Five Minutes to Tomorrow 182 flow 129, 140 – 142 flower boy 120, 123 fluid assemblage 191, 200, 203 formats 52, 54 – 59, 67, 115, 190, 194, 196, 214 Fox Story 173, 184 Frankfurt School 16 Friends 189, 214 fujoshi 99 Full House 58 Gag Concert 57 Gangtie Zhanshi 173 G-Dragon 27 Geek Culture 115 Ge Kang 174 gender 8, 98 – 99, 102 – 106, 109, 113 – 116, 118 – 119, 122 – 124, 131 gender imagination 114, 116, 118, 119, 123 geopolitical situations 33, 40, 46, 47 geopolitics 63, 66 – 67, 197 Gintama 184 Girl’s Generation 46 global convergence 131 globalism 171, 174, 176, 180, 182 – 183 globality 79 globalization 6, 9, 46, 53, 76, 121, 129, 170, 172, 182, 184, 189, 192, 193, 222

Index  233 Go 174 – 175, 180 – 181 Goblin 45 Golden Harvest 25, 26, 27 Golden Slumber 62 Goodbye, Shanghai 24 Goofy 87 Google 149, 151 – 155, 157 – 158, 160, 162 – 164 Google Play 155, 158, 161 Gong Li 17 Go Seigen 175; see also Wu Qingyuan ground 34, 36, 42 Hallyu 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 17, 18 – 19, 27, 28, 32, 68, 113, 115, 119 – 122, 212, 213; see also Korean Wave Hallyu 1920: Joseon Kinema on the Chinese Mainland 18 Hallyu studies 3 Hanayori Dango 117 Hanryu 222; see also Korean Wave Happy Family Plan 57 Hark, Tsui 26 hegemonic masculinity 114, 121 heinen manga 116 Heisei Era 178 He’s the Woman, She’s the Man 107 heteronormative 97 – 98, 101, 105 heteronormativity 118 Higanjima 62 Higashino, Keigo 185 hip-hop 75, 77, 81, 88, 89, 123, 200 Hollywood 16, 21, 27, 32, 113 – 114, 121, 173, 179 Honda, Takayoshi 185 Hong Kong cinema 16 – 17, 24, 25 – 27, 119 Hong Kong pop 115 Hong Kong Wave 32 H.O.T 37 Hotelier 58 humor 200 Hunger Games 116 Hwang Chi-yeol 65 hybrid 36, 53, 77, 88, 201 hybridity 24, 88 hybridization 55, 90 Hyori’s Bed and Breakfast 57 I am a Singer 189 identity 8 idols 96, 116 – 123, 213 idol system 6, 92, 114, 118, 123

I Kyŏngson 24 illegal streaming 45 Il Mare 214 imagined community 15 IMF (International Monetary Fund) 35, 119 imperialism 8, 20, 152, 164, 172, 203 indigenization 90 individualism 171 – 172, 217 industrial policy 211 – 212 Infinite Challenge 57, 195 Information Age 9, 190 information and communication technology (ICT) 149, 158 information flow 8, 15 Instagram 43, 46, 159 instant messaging (IM) app 156 – 158 instant mobile messengers 149 integration 7, 82, 192, 193 inter-Asian referencing 53 internet portals 149, 153 In the Mood 26 – 27 iPhone 155 – 156 iQiyi 43, 44, 66 Ishihara Shintaro 221 Itaewon Class 5 I’ve Got a Secret 56 Iwabuchi, Koichi 1, 2, 52, 53, 170, 172, 208, 214 Jang Dong-gun 214 Japanese animation 213, 216 Japanese colonial rule 82 Japanese cool 64; see also Cool Japan Japanese films 54, 84, 184 Japanese games 215 Japanese idols 118, 119 Japanese IPs 183 – 184 Japanese manga 1, 8, 184, 215 Japanese movies 179 Japanese music 45, 52, 84, 88, 90, 215, 216 Japanese Occupation 97 Japanese pop culture 4, 56, 84, 88, 113, 189, 221, 223 Japanese pop culture studies 3 Japanese television programs 52, 54, 56, 57, 213 Japanese variety shows 213 Japanese Wave 32 Japan Foundation 216 Japanization 84 Japan’s cultural industries 220

234 Index Jenkins, Henry 106, 114, 121, 129, 131 Jet Li 25 Jewel in the Palace 199; see also Dae Jang Geum J-horror 62 Jiang Yang 174 Jiang Zemin 178 Ji-Hyun, Jeon 200 Jin Yan 6, 15 – 19, 22 – 24, 26, 28, 115, 119; see also Kim Yŏm Joey Wong 26 Johns, Adrian 132 – 133 John Woo 26 Joint Industry-University Education Program for Content Creation Science 216 Jonny’s Entertainment 116 J-pop 1, 7, 32, 52, 75, 89, 91, 92, 115 jubango 175 Junichi Koizumi 179, 216 – 217 Kaige, Chen 63, 185 Kakao 149, 154, 156 – 157 Kakao Story 159 KakaoTalk 149, 152, 157, 161, 163 – 164 Kant, Immanuel 132 – 133 KBS 15, 18, 37, 57, 66, 80, 81, 85, 213 Ken Takamura 173 Kill Bill 26 Kim Dae-jung 61, 178, 217 Kimi yo Fundo no Kawa o Watare 173 Kim Ku 20 Kim San 24 Kim Yŏm 15 – 19, 22 – 24, 26, 28; see also Jin Yan King Boxer 26 Kingdom 5 Kitty-chan 217 knowledge community 134, 136, 138 knowledge culture 142 Knowledge Search 153 Korea Creative Content Agency (KOCCA) 218 Korea Foundation for Asian Cultural Exchange (KOFICE) Korea-Japan World Cup 37 Korean beauty 27, 33 Korean drama 33, 34, 35, 36, 37, 44, 45, 46, 52, 59, 115, 119, 189, 199, 222 Korean film 27, 28 Korean games 52

Korean idol group 46 Korean media industry 191, 194 – 195 Korean media professionals 190 – 191, 196 Korean Military Regime 87 Korean movies 52 Korean music industry 7, 75, 79 – 80, 91, 92 Korean pop culture 1, 2, 4, 5, 27, 32 – 35, 37, 38, 43, 44, 45, 46, 52, 65, 113, 194, 213, 217, 218, 222 – 223 Korean reality television 194 – 195 Korean television programs 5, 27, 38, 57 – 59, Korean War 82 Korean Wave 1, 2, 5, 6, 7, 8, 17, 32 – 35, 36 – 37, 38, 40, 43, 46, 47, 57 – 58, 60, 63 – 66, 113, 194, 213, 222; see also Hallyu K-pop 5, 7, 27, 28, 32, 33, 34, 36, 37, 45, 46, 52, 75, 91, 92, 100, 113, 118 – 122, 124, 212 K-pop female idols 119 Kurosawa, Akira 19 Kyon Sang-woo 214 Last Love First Love 182 Lee Hae-chan 222 Lee Jung-jae 214 Lee Min-Ho 200 Lee Myung-Bak 190, 219 legacy media 33 Legend of the Demon Cat 185 Lei Ming 120 Leslie Cheung (Lesley Chung) 17, 26, 115, 120 Lévy, Pierre 134 – 135, 142 LG Electronic 155 Lianhua Film Company 21 – 22, 24 Li Hongzhou 174 Li Lili 22 LINE 152, 154, 156 – 157, 161, 164 localization 45, 195 Long Vacation 213 Love Generation 56 Lu Chuan 179 – 180 Luo Mingyou 22 Lu Yixin 176 – 177 Maggie Cheung Man-yuk 17 male gaze 121 male-male romance 96, 97, 99, 102 Manchukuo Film Asosciation, 173

Index  235 manga 96, 98, 100, 107, 115, 117, 120, 184 Manga and Animation Diplomacy 217 Manhunt and Dangerous Chase 184 manhwa 100 March 1st Independence Movement 17 market 8 Marvel 116 masculinity 8, 99, 104 – 105, 113 – 114, 118 – 123, mass media 16, 35 – 36, 130 materialism 217 Matsutani Takayuki 221 McLuhan, Marshall 7, 34 media consumption 35, 42, 43, 44, 46, 47, 145 media ecology 6, 33 media entertainment 16 media environment 5, 7, 34, 35, 36, 41, 44, 121 media liberalization 212 media mix 129 media policy 47 mediation 201 Meet Miss Anxiety 64 Mei Dai 28 meme 137 Mermaid 64 Mickey Mouse 221 Microsoft 211 Midnight Dinner 2 184 migration 9 Mikuni, Rentaro 175 milieu of innovation 196 militarism 209 Mingxing Film Company 22 Ministry of Commerce and Industry 209 Ministry of Culture and Tourism 218 Ministry of Economy, Trade, and Industry (METI) 209, 216 Ministry of Education, Science, and Culture 216 Ministry of Information and Communication 218 Minzhu Dongbei 173 Mi-Palgoon Show 82 – 83 Misako Konno 175 Miss Granny 62, 63 Mixi 160 mobile device 42 – 43 mobile media 42, 44, 46 – 47 mobility 47

modernity 16, 32, 66, 79, 87, 171, 172, 173, 182, 186 Movie-Eye Entertainment 182 multi-track recorders 76 Mulvey, Laura 121, 122 musical instrument digital interfaces (MIDI) 76 music producing 75 – 78 My Love from the Star 44 My Sassy Girl 214 My Secret 56 My Tutor Friend 214 Nakaizumi, Hideo 180, 181 Nakamura, Noboru 175 Namie Amuro 213 Nanjing Massacre 178 Nanjing! Nanjing! (The City of Life and Death) 179 National Copyright Administration 128 national image 216, 220 nationalism 9, 23, 84, 171, 174, 176, 178, 180 Nationalist-Communist civil war 25 nation-building 207, 214 Naver 149, 152 – 156, 161, 163 – 164 neo-Hallyu 33; see also New Korean Wave neoliberal capitalism 193 neoliberalism 35 neo-liberal thinking 222 Netflix 5, 149 network connectivity 47 networked individualism 42 networked society 8, 56, 140, 150 new generation dance music 7, 75, 80 – 81, 89 – 91, 92 New Korean Wave 33; see also neoHallyu new media 7, 33, 34, 44, 151 NHK 15, 37, 38, 43, 56, 85, 176 Niconico 139 Nikkei Shinbun 220 Nintendo Wii 150 Nirvana in Fire 98 Nobuko Otowa 175 Noise 87 Nokia 155 North Korea 65, 68, 84, 197 Nye, Joseph 207, 220 old media 7, 34, 47 open-door policy 173 – 174, 177

236 Index Operation Love185 operating systems 149, 155, 157, 158, 161 Once Upon a Time in High School 26 One Piece Film: Gold 184 OST (Original Soundtrack) 117, 120 otaku 99 Paek Sŏlhŭi 28 pan-East Asia 5, 6 Parasite 5, 27, 28 Park Chan-work 62 Park Geun-Hye 197, 217 participatory culture 114, 131 Passion Heaven 60, 64 patriarchy 120, 124 patriotism 84 peer-to-peer (p2p) networks 127 – 129, 131, 133, 140, 142, 144 People’s Republic of China 9, 18, 25, 170 – 173 personalized media 35, 36, 42, 43, 47 phase theory 33 P’i Ch’ŏntŭk 21 piracy 55 – 58, 63, 127 – 128, 132, 133, 143 pirate cosmopolitanism 8, 127, 129 – 131, 133, 140, pirated CDs 85, 87 pirated content 45, 102 piratical enlightenment 132 pitch correction 77 plagiarism 75, 82, 89 – 91 platform imperialism 150, 152, 160, 163 – 164 policy 9, 47, 207 – 212, 211 political conflicts 33, 38, 47, 63, 93, 190 political economy 7, 149, 151, 193 pop ballad 79, 80, 83 pop cosmopolitanism 131 pop culture policy 214 popular culture 1, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 15 – 16, 25, 32, 35 – 36, 52 – 53, 55 – 57, 60 – 61, 63, 65, 67 – 68, 87, 124, 207, 208, 217, 221, 225 popular music 75 – 79, 81 postcolonial 130, 131 PRC-Japan coproduction 170, 171, 173, 174, 180, 182, 184 Provisional Government of the Republic of Korea (PGRK) 17, 20, 23 Psy 27, 65 public video screenings 86 – 87 Qin Hao 181 Qinmin, Jiang 181 QQ 160

quantization 77 quasi BL content 107 Rabinow, Paul 130 race 8, 117 Real Men 189 reality show 9, 58, 59, 191, 194 – 196, 202 regional convergence 53, 58 regional integration 2 regionalization 53, 189, 191, 192 remake 9, 27, 52, 58, 64, 115, 193 Riding along for One Thousand Miles 173 RoboMasters: The Animated Series 61 rock 79, 83, 93, 119, 200 Roo’ra 90, 91 Ruan Lingyu 22, 24 Running Man 58, 195 Run Run Shaw 25 Russian Revolution 20 Ryutaro Hashimoto 178 Said, Edward 24, 131 Saimdang, Memoir of Colors 199 sampling synthesizers (sampler) 76 Samsung Electronics 155 Samsung Galaxy 149, 155, 157, 158, 163 Sanada, Hiroyuki 63 Sandakan No. 8 173, 184 SARFT 128 satellite 15, 35, 36, 37, 44, 85, 86, 87, 88, 95, 189, 214 Sato, Junya 175 Saying Good-bye Oneday 62 scaled convergence 66 Schindler’s List 179 search engines 149, 160, 163 Second Sino-Japanese War 23 Second World War 25, 62 Seoul Music Studio 36 sexuality 103 – 104, 109, 116, 122 – 123, 131, 217 Seven Swords 62 Shanghai 6, 9, 15, 16, 19 – 24, 120, 171, 182 Shanghai Film Studio 173, 182 Shanghai Old Days 18 Shaw Brothers Studios 22, 25, 26 shojo manga 115 – 117 shonen manga 115 – 116 Shower, After the Rain Drops 189 Show Me the Money 57 Sin Ch’aeho 20 Sino-Japanese relationship 171, 175, 181

Index  237 Sino-Japanese Treaty for Peace and Friendship 183 Sino-Korean collaboration 201 – 202 Sino-Korean media interaction 190, 192, 197 Sky Castle 45 smartphone 42, 149, 155 – 159, 163 social media 33, 43, 45, 46, 99, 106, 123, 159, 162 social media activism 106 social network site (SNS) 116, 149, 159, 160, 163 soft masculinity 105, 113, 114, 119, 122 soft power 2, 52, 58, 60, 61, 63, 64, 67, 207, 209, 216, 219, 220, 222, 225 Solaso Bistro 185 Song Seung-hun 213 Son of the Earth 176 – 177 Southeast Asian media markets 198 – 199 space of flow 140, 191 spatial proximity 191 – 192 Stand by Me Doraemon 184 Star in My Heart 36 Star TV, 15 Star Wars 116 Storey, John 16 Stranger 198, 199 Strategic Council on Intellectual Property 215 streaming 141 subculture 7, 98, 99, 100 Successful Story of a Bright Girl 58 Superstar K 59 Sunday Special 18 Sun Daolin 175 Sun Yu 21 – 22 superhero 115 – 116 Sword Art Online the Movie: Ordinal Scale 184 Takashi Miike 62 Tarantino, Quentin 26 technomodernity 172 television programming 15 televisual flow 8 Tencent 45 Teresa Teng 28 terrestrial broadcasting 45 Tiger Cop 26 THAAD 33, 38, 45, 57, 63, 65 – 66, 68, 97, 197 – 198, 200 The 100th Love with You 184 The Best Divorce 185 The Big Boss 26

The Big Road 22 The Devolution of Suspect X 185 The Flowers of War 180 – 182 The Go Masters 174 – 175 The Heirs 44 The Longest Night in Shanghai 182 The Mysterious Family 60, 64 The New Member 107 The Promise 63 The Rap of China 57 The Sound of Cinema 22 The Thieves 26 The Yellow Handkerchief 181 Third Open-Door Act toward Japanese Popular Culture 84 – 85 Three 62 Thee Kingdoms 109 Three . . . Extremes 62 Thrill Me 107 Tian Zhuangzhuang 180 Tianyi Film Company 22, 25 Tiger Mask 213 Tokyo Love Story 213 Tokyo Newcomer 181 – 182 Tokuma Shoten Publishing Co. Ltd. 175 top-down 53, 54, 59, 63, 68, 108, 131, 211, 219 tongrenzhi 100 traditional media 42, 46, 47 transmedia storytelling 5, 67, 108 transnational cultural convergence 1, 6, 7, 8, 208 transnational flow 1, 6, 7, 8, 32 – 35, 38, 45, 130 transnationalism 6, 16, 171 transnationality 4 transnationalization 6 transnational media consumption 43 – 44, 46 – 47 transnational media flows 32, 33, 34, 41, 45, 47 transnational pop culture 114 transnational television channels 15 Treaty of Nanking 20 trot 78, 79, 80, 83 – 84, 89 TuDou 127 TV Champion 213 Twilight 116 Twitter 43, 46, 149, 159 Uncontrollably Fond 66 Utada Hikaru 213 van Dijck, José 149, 151, 156, 161 Village Roadshow 27

238 Index visual pleasure 114, 122, 123 VK.COM 160 V Live 46 waesaek culture 84 Wang Yi 23 war memory 9 War of Resistance 172 Web 2.0 160 webtoon 5, 52, 96, 107, 108 WeChat 156, 157 Wen Jiabao 179 Western pop culture 4, 113 Western popular music 7 What is Love All About 36, 38 WhatsApp 156 – 158, 161 White, Mimi 141 Wild Rose 22 Williams, Raymond 140 – 143 Winter Sonata 37, 38, 120, 189, 214 Won Bin 213 Wonder Woman 115 Wong Kar-wai 27 World Trade Organization (WTO) 15, 63, 198 World War II 176, 178, 215, 217 Wu Qingyuan 175, 180; see also Go Seigen Xi Xia 176 X Japan 115

Yahoo 154 Yamazaki Toyoko 177 Yamatonadeshiko 213 yaoi 96, 98; see also Boys Love (BL) Yaoi Dispute 99 Ye Cao Xian Hua 22 Yi O-ryong 222 Yisahn, Kuang 175 Yonghua 25 Yoon’s Kitchen 57 Yoshiko Mita 175 YouKu 43, 45, 128 Youngae Lee 199 Yŏ Unhyŏng 20 You’re Beautiful 58, 108 Your Name 184 Youth 56 youth culture 79, 88 YouTube 43, 45, 46, 149, 155 Yu Chiyŏn 28 Yu Ha 26 Yun Ch’iho 20 Zhang Yimou 19, 173, 182 Zhang Zhen 180 Zhao Dan 174 – 175 Zhong Can 57 Zhao Yi-man 173 Zimuzu 128 – 129, 133 Zum 153