The Korean Wave And Cultural Proximity In Southeast Asia

The Korean Wave in Southeast Asia offers fresh details and new perspectives on the globalization of Korean popular culture, better known as ‘Hallyu’. Focusing on the dissemination, localization, consumption and fandom of Korean TV dramas, films, pop music and other forms of youth culture within the cultural geography of Southeast Asia, the chapters in the book offer a compelling analysis of the globalization of Hallyu and detail the various social and cultural mechanisms involved. Deeply accomplished, this book will be a valuable resource for scholars interested in cultural and social change in Southeast Asia, as well as for graduate and undergraduate students learning about popular culture in Asia. Nissim Otmazgin Chair of the Department of Asian Studies, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem and author, Regionalizing Culture: The political economy of Japanese popular culture in Asia (University of Hawai'i Press, 2013). This book proves to be an important addition to the growing scholarship on the Korean Wave and the resulting new pop culture trends in Southeast Asia. In addition to introducing new concepts for further comparative research, the roster of case studies on Hallyu consumption and production in the region (informed by interdisciplinary expertise) offer readers fresh analyses and diverse experiences of the phenomenon. The publication of this collection is timely for our new course elective focusing on the ‘Korean Wave’, in which this book will certainly be a required reading. Sarah Domingo Lipura Associate Director, Ateneo Initiative for Korean Studies, Ateneo De Manila University (Philippines)

The first scholarly volume to investigate the impact of social media and other communication technologies on the global dissemination of the Korean Wave

This book is a systematic investigation of Korean cultural wave in South Asia, discovering and analysing the dynamics of fandom, mechanism of media industry and growing phenomena of Korean culture in this part of the world. This is one of the very first academic volumes in South Asia that examines cultural politics, language and literatures of Korea in a regional location when there might be some on examining the political and diplomatic relations divorced from socio-cultural interactions. It focuses on three major aspects: identity formation in the age of digital culture, fandom and aspiration in the wake of subculture, and transcultural flow in South Asia. Through these thematic indicators and empirical instances the volume explores the modes of transcultural flow vis a via the global cultural flow. The patterns and processes of identity construction transformed among the teenagers and youths in the realm of digital media and embodying the Korean cultural elements. The book will contribute in the area of media and cultural studies, global culture and politics, arts and humanities, social sciences and area studies. Chapter 1 is available open access under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License via link.springer.com.

A comprehensive and critical introduction to understanding the Korean Wave (Hallyu) as a transnational media phenomenon. This book provides an accessible introduction to the Korean Wave—the rapid growth of local cultural industries and the global popularity of Korean popular culture over the past 30 years—providing historical, political, economic, and socio-cultural context to its initial rise and enduring popularity. Jin explores the transnational cultural flows of Hallyu across a variety of products and digital technologies—from television dramas, film, and K-pop to online games, and webtoons—and explains the process of cross-media convergence and the socio-political contexts behind the Hallyu phenomenon. He also explores how overseas fans and audiences advance K-pop fandom as social agents in different geo-cultural contexts. The book concludes by discussing if Hallyu can become a sustainable global popular culture beyond a fan-based regional cultural phenomenon. Each chapter features detailed contemporary case studies and discussion questions to enhance student engagement. This is essential reading for students of Media and Communication, Cultural Studies, Korean Studies, and Asian Studies, particularly those taking classes on popular culture and media, media and globalization, Korean popular culture, and East Asian culture.

This wide-ranging volume is the first to examine the characteristics, dynamics and wider implications of recently emerging regional production, dissemination, marketing and consumption systems of popular culture in East and Southeast Asia. Using tools based in a variety of disciplines - organizational analysis and sociology, cultural and media studies, and political science and history - it elucidates the underlying cultural economics and the processes of region-wide appropriation of cultural formulas and styles. Through discussions of Japanese, Chinese, Korean, Philippine and Indonesian culture industries, the authors in the book describe a major shift in Asia's popular culture markets toward arrangements that transcend autonomous national economies by organizing and locating production, distribution, and consumption of cultural goods on a regional scale. Specifically, the authors deal with patterns of co-production and collaboration in the making and marketing of cultural commodities such as movies, music, comics, and animation. The book uses case studies to explore the production and exploitation of cultural imaginaries within the context of intensive regional circulation of cultural commodities and images. Drawing on empirically-based accounts of co-production and collaboration in East and Southeast Asia's popular culture, it adopts a regional framework to analyze the complex interrelationships among cultural industries. This focus on a regional economy of transcultural production provides an important corrective to the limitations of previous studies that consider cultural products as text and use them to investigate the "meaning" of popular culture.

Since the Korean Wave phenomenon started in 1997, Hallyu has undergone many changes. Geographically, while Asia has been the largest cultural market for the Korean cultural industries, other parts of society, including North America, Europe, the Middle East, and Latin America have gradually admitted Korean popular culture. The components of the Korean Wave have also greatly expanded. Hallyu originally implied the exports of a few cultural products, such as television dramas, popular music, and films; however, Korea has recently developed and exported K-pop, digital games and smartphone technologies as well as relevant youth culture. Meanwhile, industrial and technological contexts of the Korean Wave have changed significantly during the last 20 years. The role of social media in the Korean Wave’s transnationalization in recent years is especially intriguing because fans around the world can easily access social media to enjoy K-pop, digital games, and films. The changes in the nature and appearance of the Korean Wave, conceptual and theoretical shifts in the studies of the Korean Wave, and the influences of the development of media technologies on the Korean Wave are all very significant. This book aims to provide a better understanding of Hallyu's theoretical and institutional history on one hand, and new features of the Korean Wave on the other hand.