This new textbook is a timely and interdisciplinary resource for students looking for an introduction to Korean popular culture, exploring the multifaceted meaning of Korean popular culture at micro and macro levels and the process of cultural production, representation, circulation and consumption in a global context.
Drawing on perspectives from the humanities and social sciences, including media and communications, film studies, musicology, cultural studies, sociology, anthropology, history and literature, this book provides a comprehensive and up-to-date overview of Korean popular culture and its historical underpinnings, changing roles and dynamic meanings in the present moment of the digital social media age. The book’s sections include:
- K-pop Music
- Popular Cinema
- Television
- Web Drama, Webtoon and Animation
- Digital Games and Esports
- Lifestyle Media, Fashion and Food
- Nation Branding
An accessible, comprehensive and thought-provoking work, providing historical and contemporary contexts, key issues and debates, this textbook will appeal to students of and providers of courses on popular culture, media studies and Korean culture and society more broadly.
Introduction: Situating Korean Popular Culture in the Global Culture Landscape
Youna Kim
Part 1: K-pop Music
1. K-pop in the History of the Korean Wave: A Long Revolution
Younghan Cho
2. Digital K-pop Fan Platforms in a Cosmopolitan World
Sarah Keith
3. Chart Manipulation and Fan Labor in the Online Moral Economy of K-pop
Stephanie Jiyun Choi
4. Celebrity Fashion and Fan Consumption: BTS "Jungkook Hanbok"
Myoung-Sun Song
Part 2: Popular Cinema
5. The Rise of New Korean Cinema and Hallyu
Chi-Yun Shin
6. Parasite and Snowpiercer as Derivations to Hallyu: Korean Cinema, Neoliberalism and Semi-Global Exclusivity
Keith B. Wagner
7. Her Revenge: Low Birthrate Cinema from Lady Vengeance to The Villainess
Joseph Jonghyun Jeon
8. The Climate of Cinema: Gender, Debt and the Future of Labor in Squid Game and Parasite
Soyoung Kim
Part 3: Television
9. The Korean Wave Television: From Winter Sonata to Squid Game
Youna Kim
10. Netflix and Korean Drama: Cultural Resonance, Affect and Consumption in Asia
Anthony Fung and Jindong Leo-Liu
11. Gender and the Paradox of Body Politics in Korean Makeover Television
Ji-yoon An
12. Democratization, Social Media and Korean Television in Transition
Ki-Sung Kwak
Part 4: Web Drama, Webtoon and Animation
13. Korean Web Drama on the Rise: The Difference Independent Productions Make
Jennifer M. Kang
14. Korean Webtoon and Identity Politics in the Digital Age
Hyung-Gu Lynn
15. Transmediating Tradition: Convergence of Premodern Prose, Webtoons and Audio Comics
Jina E. Kim
16. Cultural Identity in Transnational Korean Animation: The Stateless Fantasy of Ragnarök
Daniel Martin
Part 5: Digital Games and Esports
17. The Political Economy of the Digital Game Industry: An Analysis of Transnational Capital
Dal Yong Jin
18. Techno-Orientalism in Global/Korean Esports: "They Play Games Really Well, But It Is Us to Have Them Play"
Tae-Jin Yoon and Kyunghyuk Lee
19. Visualizing the Invisible: Korean Esports and the Representation of Gameplay Skill
Keung Yoon Bae
20. Between Super Players and Mega Fans: The Emergence of Data-Led Gaming Environments in Korean Esports
Peichi Chung
Part 6: Lifestyle Media, Fashion and Food
21. South Korean Celebrities and Lifestyle Media
Olga Fedorenko
22. K-fashion E-tailers and Consumption in the Global Market
Eunsuk Hur
23. Precarious Eating: Young Koreans’ Digital Practice of Mukbang
Kyong Yoon
Part 7: Popular Culture and Nation Branding
24. Branding the Sense of Place: Gangnam as the Epicenter of the Korean Wave
Pil Ho Kim
25. First Time in Korea?: The Mediation of Strangeness through Food Practices
Jaehyeon Jeong
26. The Korean Wave and Mega-Asia: Imagining a Pan-Asian Community
Doobo Shim
Biography
Youna Kim is Professor of Global Communications at the American University of Paris, France, joined from the London School of Economics and Political Science, where she had taught since 2004, after completing her Ph.D. at the University of London, Goldsmiths College. Her books are Women, Television and Everyday Life in Korea: Journeys of Hope (Routledge, 2005), Media Consumption and Everyday Life in Asia (Routledge, 2008), Transnational Migration, Media and Identity of Asian Women: Diasporic Daughters (Routledge, 2011), Women and the Media in Asia: The Precarious Self (Palgrave Macmillan, 2012), The Korean Wave: Korean Media Go Global (Routledge, 2013), Routledge Handbook of Korean Culture and Society (Routledge, 2016), Childcare Workers, Global Migration and Digital Media (Routledge, 2017), South Korean Popular Culture and North Korea (Routledge, 2019), The Soft Power of the Korean Wave: Parasite, BTS and Drama (Routledge, 2021) and Media in Asia: Global, Digital, Gendered and Mobile (Routledge, 2022).
