London Korean Links

Covering things Korean in London and beyond since 2006

Transnational Hallyu: The Globalization of Korean Digital and Popular Culture

From the publisher’s website: While the influence of Western, Anglophone popular culture has continued in the global cultural market, the Korean cultural industry has substantially developed and globally exported its various cultural products, such as television programs, pop music, video games and films. The global circulation of Korean popular culture is known as the Korean … [Read More]

Understanding Hallyu: The Korean Wave Through Literature, Webtoon, and Mukbang

From the publisher’s website: This book sheds light on aspects of the Korean Wave and Korean media products that are less discussed—Korean literature, webtoon, and mukbang. It explores the making of these Korean popular cultural products and how they work and engage media recipients regardless of their different national, cultural, and geographical backgrounds. Drawing on … [Read More]

Branded Entertainment in Korea

From the publisher’s website: Branded Entertainment in Korea examines the varied texts and wider context of branded entertainment and related advertising and marketing communications practices in Korea. The book discusses the origins, development, current state, ethics, and regulations of branded entertainment in Korea, considering the impact and implications for communication users and regulators as well … [Read More]

Korean Culture Dictionary: From Kimchi To K-Pop And K-Drama Clichés

From the publisher’s catalogue: Before reading this book, you probably had some moments of curiosity in your life where you questioned certain things about Korean culture. Why is there a Pepsi logo on the Korean flag? Why do Korean kids in my class only have like… three last names (Kim, Lee, Park)? If you are … [Read More]

South Korean Popular Culture and North Korea

From the publisher’s website: Over recent decades South Korea’s vibrant and distinctive populist culture has spread extensively throughout the world. This book explores how this “Korean wave” has also made an impact in North Korea. The book reveals that although South Korean media have to be consumed underground and unofficially in North Korea, they are widely watched … [Read More]

Popular Culture and the Transformation of Japan–Korea Relations

From the publisher’s website: This book presents essays exploring the ways in which popular culture reflects and engenders ongoing changes in Japan–Korea relations. Through a broad temporal coverage from the colonial period to the contemporary, the book’s chapters analyse the often contradictory roles that popular culture has played in either promoting or impeding nationalisms, regional … [Read More]

Koreatowns: Exploring the Economics, Politics, and Identities of Korean Spatial Formation

This collection defines Koreatowns as spatial configurations that concentrate elements of “Korea” demographically, economically, politically, and culturally. The contributors provide exploratory accounts and critical evaluations of Koreatowns in different countries throughout the world. Ranging from familiar settings such as Los Angeles and New York City, to more unfamiliar locales such as Singapore, Beijing, Mexico, U.S.-Mexico … [Read More]

Transnational Korean Cinema: Cultural Politics, Film Genres, and Digital Technologies

From the publisher’s website: In Transnational Korean Cinema author Dal Yong Jin explores the interactions of local and global politics, economics, and culture to contextualize the development of Korean cinema and its current place in an era of neoliberal globalization and convergent digital technologies. The book emphasizes the economic and industrial aspects of the story, looking at … [Read More]

Transnational Korean Television: Cultural Storytelling and Digital Audiences

From the publisher’s website: Transnational Korean Television: Cultural Storytelling and Digital Audiences provides previously absent analyses of Korean TV dramas’ transnational influences, peculiar production features, distribution, and consumption to enrich the contextual understanding of Korean TV’s transcultural mobility. Even as academic discussions about the Korean Wave have heated up, Korean television studies from transnational viewpoints … [Read More]

Digital Mediascapes of Transnational Korean Youth Culture

From the publisher’s website: Drawing on vivid ethnographic field studies of youth on the transnational move, across Seoul, Toronto, and Vancouver, this book examines transnational flows of Korean youth and their digital media practices. This book explores how digital media are integrated into various forms of transnational life and imagination, focusing on young Koreans and … [Read More]

BTS and ARMY Culture

ARMY is a community of taste, and BTS is their common denominator. This book started from the wish to apply the perspective of a cultural studies scholar in order to investigate the fandom ARMY as a most ardent outcome to arise from a “community of taste.” On a personal level, the most pressing question was … [Read More]

K-Pop Idols: Popular Culture and the Emergence of the Korean Music Industry

From the publisher’s website: Converging theory and practice, this book provides a unique analysis of Korean youth’s attempts to become global celebrities within the growing K-pop phenomenon, which is rapidly becoming part of global media systems and culture. K-pop has become one of the most popular cultural forms in the global music markets, despite having … [Read More]

The Rise of K-Dramas: Essays on Korean Television and Its Global Consumption

From the publisher’s website: Korean dramas gained popularity across Asia in the late 1990s, and their global fandom continues to grow. Despite cultural differences, non-Asian audiences find “K-dramas” appealing. Diverse in both content and form, they range from historical melodrama and romantic comedy to action, horror, sci-fi and thriller. Devotees pursue an immersive fandom, consuming … [Read More]

BTS, Art Revolution

Publisher description: Recently, a seven-member boy band from Korea called BTS has captivated the globe, forming the most massive and powerful fandom in history. The BTS phenomenon reaches far beyond the typical achievements of pop stars: as Jiyoung Lee illustrates, the changes that have been shown by BTS and their fandom ARMY are not confined … [Read More]

Straight Korean Female Fans and Their Gay Fantasies

This book is about ardent Korean female fans of gay representation in the media, their status in contemporary Korean society, their relationship with other groups such as the gay population, and, above all, their contribution to reshaping the Korean media’s portrayal of gay people. Jungmin Kwon names the Korean female fandom for gay portrayals as … [Read More]

From Factory Girls to K-Pop Idol Girls: Cultural Politics of Developmentalism, Patriarchy, and Neoliberalism in South Korea’s Popular Music Industry

Focusing on female idols’ proliferation in the South Korean popular music (K-pop) industry since the late 1990s, Gooyong Kim critically analyzes structural conditions of possibilities in contemporary popular music from production to consumption. Kim contextualizes the success of K-pop within Korea’s development trajectories, scrutinizing how a formula of developments from the country’ rapid industrial modernization … [Read More]