Korean Pop Culture beyond Asia: Race and Reception

Showcases the dynamism of cross-cultural engagement with Korean media

Korean media has exploded in popularity across the globe in the past decade: BTS and other K-pop groups have packed stadiums, Parasite garnered record-breaking critical success, The Masked Singer and Single’s Inferno became viral TV hits, and multiday KCON fan events have highlighted not only media but Korean food, cosmetics, and fashion. Exploring how fans from different cultural and racial backgrounds engage with Korean media in local and individual contexts, this edited collection reveals complex transcultural affinities, conflicts, and negotiations. The essays delve into the ways people create meaning from, and shape affinity to, Korean television and music. The book also explores Korean popular culture’s influence on audiences’ imaginative play, desires, and fantasies, critically examining topics such as TikTok as a space of Asian fetishization, Black YouTubers’ K-pop reaction videos, the perception of Korean men in opposition to European hegemonic masculinity, and Middle Eastern fans’ responses to appropriation in K-pop. Throughout, the contributors provide perceptive analyses that reveal what the interplay of race and Korean entertainment tells us about the complex nature of transnational fandom.

David C. Oh is associate professor at Syracuse University in the Newhouse School of Public Communications. His books include Whitewashing the Movies: White Subjectivity and Asian Erasure in U.S. Film Culture. Benjamin M. Han is associate professor in the Department of Entertainment and Media Studies at the University of Georgia. He is author of Beyond the Black and White TV: Asian and Latin American Spectacle in Cold War America. Contributors: Crystal S. Anderson, Woori Han, Laura-Zoë Humphreys, Young Jung, Rebecca Chiyoko King-O’Riain, Donna Lee Kwon, Min Joo Lee, Irina Lyan, Moisés Park, and Julia Trzcińska

Source: publisher’s website

Contents

Introduction, by David C. Oh & Benjamin M. Han

Part I. Transcultural Affinity, Excess, and Contradiction

1. The Road to Fandom: Joy and Black “Fans” in K-pop, by Crystal S. Anderson
2. Between Appreciation and Appropriation: Race-Transitioning among Hallyu Fans, by Min Joo Lee
3. Korean Romance for Wholesomeness and Racism? The Transcultural Reception of the Reality Dating Show Single’s Inferno, by Woori Han
4. K-pop and the Racialization of Asian American Popular Musicians, by Donna Lee Kwon
5. “Soft” Koreans and “Sensual” Cubans: Race, Gender, and the Reception of South Korean Popular Culture in Cuba, by Laura-Zoë Humphreys

Part II. Intersectional Connection and Imaginaries

6. Latin Orientalism and Anglo Hegemony in Korean Rock: Seo Taiji’s “Moai” (2009), by Moisés Park
7. “I Was Probably Korean in a Previous Life”: Transracial Jokes and Fantasies of Hallyu Fans, by Irina Lyan
8. Hallyu Dreaming: Making Sense of Race and Gender in K-dramas in the US Midwest and Ireland, by Rebecca Chiyoko King-O’Riain
9. When K-pop Meets Islam: Cultural Appropriation and Fan Engagement, by Young Jung
10. “I Can Do Both”: Queering K-pop Idols through the White Discursive Standpoint of TikTok Users, by Julia Trzcińska & David C. Oh