The Korean Popular Culture Reader PDF
Preview The Korean Popular Culture Reader
The Korean PoPular CulTure reader The Korean PoPular CulTure reader Kyung hyun Kim and Youngmin Choe, ediTors Duke University Press Durham and London 2014 © 2014 Duke University Press All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America on acid- free paper ♾ Typeset in Scala by Tseng Information Systems, Inc. Library of Congress Cataloging- in- Publication Data The Korean popular culture reader / Kyung Hyun Kim and Youngmin Choe, editors. pages cm Includes bibliographical references and index. isbn 978- 0- 8223- 5488- 8 (cloth : alk. paper) isbn 978- 0- 8223- 5501- 4 (pbk. : alk. paper) 1. Popular culture—Korea (South)—History—20th century. 2. Korea (South)—Civilization—20th century. 3. Korea (South)— Social life and customs—20th century. I. Kim, Kyung Hyun, 1969– II. Choe, Youngmin. ds916.27.k68 2014 306.09519—dc23 2013029329 This work was supported by the Academy of Korean Studies Grant funded by the Korean Government (mest) (aks- 2009- la- 3001). To Sidd and izzi ConTenTS vii Preface │ Youngmin Choe 1 Introduction │ KYung hYun Kim Indexing Korean Popular Culture Part one 15 CliCK and SCroll 19 Chapter 1 │ Boduerae Kwon The World in a Love Letter 34 Chapter 2 │ KYu hYun Kim Fisticuffs, High Kicks, and Colonial Histories: The Ambivalence of Modern Korean Identity in Postwar Narrative Comics 55 Chapter 3 │ inKYu Kang It All Started with a Bang: The Role of PC Bangs in South Korea’s Cybercultures 76 Chapter 4 │ regina Yung lee As Seen on the Internet: The Recap as Translation in English- Language K- Drama Fandoms Part two 99 lighTS, Camera, aCTion! 103 Chapter 5 │ STeven Chung Regimes within Regimes: Film and Fashion Cultures in the Korean 1950s 126 Chapter 6 │ KellY Jeong The Quasi Patriarch: Kim Sŭng- ho and South Korean Postwar Movies 145 Chapter 7 │ TraviS worKman The Partisan, the Worker, and the Hidden Hero: Popular Icons in North Korean Film 168 Chapter 8 │ miChelle Cho Face Value: The Star as Genre in Bong Joon- ho’s Mother Part three 195 gold, Silver, and Bronze 199 Chapter 9 │ Jung hwan Cheon Bend It Like a Man of Chosun: Sports Nationalism and Colonial Modernity of 1936 228 Chapter 10 │ raChael miYung Joo “She Became Our Strength”: Female Athletes and (Trans)national Desires Part four 249 STruT, move, and ShaKe 255 Chapter 11 │ min- Jung Son Young Musical Love of the 1930s 275 Chapter 12 │ hYunJoon Shin and Pil ho Kim Birth, Death, and Resurrection of Group Sound Rock 296 Chapter 13 │ roald maliangKaY The Popularity of Individualism: The Seo Taiji Phenomenon in the 1990s 314 Chapter 14 │ STePhen ePSTein wiTh JameS TurnBull Girls’ Generation? Gender, (Dis)Empowerment, and K- pop Part five 337 Food and Travel 341 Chapter 15 │ olga FedorenKo South Korean Advertising as Popular Culture 363 Chapter 16 │ KaTarzYna J. CwierTKa The Global Hansik Campaign and the Commodification of Korean Cuisine 385 Chapter 17 │ Sohl lee Seung Woo Back’s Blow Up (2005–2007): Touristic Fantasy, Photographic Desire, and Catastrophic North Korea 407 Bibliography 431 Contributors 435 Index PreFaCe Youngmin Choe Under the moniker of hallyu (Korean Wave), South Korean popular culture has come to be regarded by some as a source of national pride and by others, particularly in Asia, as neo-i mperialist. Regardless of how one might char- acterize it, the rise of South Korean popular culture was difficult to fore- see in the late 1990s, when the nation was roiling from the devastation of the 1997 financial International Monetary Fund (imf) crisis. Because the imf encouraged increased global competition, cultural liberalization policies (which had been postponed nearly half a century by postcolonial anxieties) were implemented starting in 1998. The impending legislation of satellite cable television also seemed to threaten further an unsupported cultural industry insecure after decades of political and cultural oppression. The spontaneity with which the Korean Wave gathered force thus caught the South Korean cultural industry by surprise, leaving critics of Korean cultural studies to make sense of hallyu and its legacy after the fact. In the contemporary context, it is fair to say that it is transnational consumption, as opposed to any self- reflexive and conscious national production, that ini- tially defined and formed the parameters of Korean popular culture studies. As a result, the modes of understanding brought to bear thus far on the phe- nomenon have been necessarily situated in a broad regional, and perhaps even global, context. This formulation, however, establishes the field in such a way that Korean popular culture comes to be defined foremost as a pan- Asian phenomenon, a discrete entity morphing in transnational space that becomes increasingly detached from any specifically Korean past. Critics in the field of Korean Studies thus need to become concerned both with recon- textualizing hallyu within a national context without eliding the undeniable
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