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

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1138775967 ISBN 13: 9781138775961

Publisher: Routledge, 2014

Synopsis

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.

About this title

About the Author:

JungBong Choi is Assistant Professor in the Department of Cinema Studies at New York University, USA

Roald Maliangkay is Senior Lecturer in Korean Studies at the Australian National University, Australia

About this edition

• Publisher: Routledge
• Publication date: 2014
• ISBN 10: 1138775967
• ISBN 13: 9781138775961
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 182
• Editor: Choi JungBong, Maliangkay Roald