K-pop - The International Rise of the Korean Music Industry (Media, Culture and Social Change in Asia)

K-pop, described by Time Magazine in 2012 as "South Korea’s greatest export", has rapidly achieved a large worldwide audience of devoted fans largely through distribution over the Internet. This book examines the phenomenon, and discusses the reasons for its success. It considers the national and transnational conditions that have played a role in K-pop’s ascendancy, and explores how they relate to post-colonial modernisation, post-Cold War politics in East Asia, connections with the Korean diaspora, and the state-initiated campaign to accumulate soft power. As it is particularly concerned with fandom and cultural agency, it analyses fan practices, discourses, and underlying psychologies within their local habitus as well as in expanding topographies of online networks. Overall, the book addresses the question of how far "Asian culture" can be global in a truly meaningful way, and how popular culture from a "marginal" nation has become a global phenomenon. Cover Half Title Title Page Copyright Page Table of Contents List of figures Notes on contributors Introduction: why fandom matters to the international rise of K-pop 1 Same look through different eyes: Korea’s history of uniform pop music acts 2 “Into the New World”: Girls’ Generation from the local to the global 3 The political economy of idols: South Korea’s neoliberal restructuring and its impact on the entertainment labour force 4 Despite not being Johnny’s: the cultural impact of TVXQ in the Japanese music industry 5 SBS PopAsia: non-stop K-pop in Australia 6 Loyalty transmission and cultural enlisting of K-pop in Latin America 7 Hallyu and the K-pop boom in Japan: patterns of consumption and reactionary responses 8 The dynamics of K-Pop spectatorship: the Tablo witch-hunt and its double-edged sword of enjoyment 9 “We keep it local” – Malaysianising “Gangnam Style”: a question of place and identity 10 A sound wave of effeminacy: K-pop and the male beauty ideal in China Index