Korean Culture in the Global Age

Since the late 1990s, South Korean cultural products such as pop music, TV drama, and film have shaped the country's image around the world. This book explores these three internationally best-known media of the Korean Wave global phenomenon, along with a less commonly featured aspect, K-literature. Iconic images of South Korea today include stylish music groups like BTS and Blackpink, appealing dramas, and a range of films and digital comics (manhwa). Alongside associations with glitz and glamor are darker impressions: continuing political division, malaise over a war that never really ended. Korean Culture in the Global Age focuses on these and other facets of South Korea's constantly changing international image to show how it has come to command worldwide attention. In recent years, readers in a growing number of languages have discovered the talent of South Korean authors through the efforts of countless translators. Showing developments in and occasional connections between themes in K-pop, K-drama, K-film, and K-literature, the book provides a more comprehensive view of contemporary South Korean culture. This volume will interest researchers and students of Korean Studies, Asian Studies, Asian American Studies, popular music, film studies, migration and diaspora studies, and world literature.

Joanne Miyang Cho is a professor of history at William Paterson University. She has edited/coedited Transnationalism and Migration in Global Korea, Germany and China, Germany and Japan, Germany and Korea, Germany and East Asia, Gendered Encounters, Musical Entanglements, and East Asian-German Cinema. Lee M. Roberts is a professor of German at Purdue University Fort Wayne. His recent publications include the coedited volume Transnationalism and Migration in Global Korea (2024) and chapters in The History of the Shanghai Jews: New Pathways in Research (2022) and German East Asian Encounters and Entanglements (2021).

Introduction: K-Culture in the Global Age and Organization Part 1: K-POP in the Global Age 1. Shaping K-pop in the Asian Market: From Seo Taiji and Boys to BoA 2. The Transcultural Fairy Tale in K-Pop: BTS's Mastery of Storytelling and ARMY's Magical Assistance 3. "K-pop Trash, But Not Koreaboo": Discursive Construction of K-Pop Fans on YouTube 4. The Meaning-Making of the Korean Wave for Asian American College Students Part 2: K-Drama in the Global Age 5. Empathy and Community in Misaeng and My Mister 6. Varieties of Virtuous Vengeance: Revenge and Correction in K-Drama 7. The Diverse Experiences of Second-generation Korean Americans: A Sociological Reading of the Netflix Show Beef Part 3: K-Film in the Global Age 8. Korean Glocalization of the Zombie Apocalypse: The Yeon Sang-Ho Trilogy and Netflix Dramas 9. Non-Human Judgment: Lee Soo-yeon's Surveillant Cinema 10. Seoul in India: The Bollywoodization of Youn Je-kyun's Ode to My Father Part 4: Korean Literature in the Global Age 11. Trauma in Korean Literature 12. Themes of National Division and Reunification: A Common Thread in the Lives and Literature of Hwang Sok-yong and Günter Grass 13. Global Subjectivities and Languages in Contemporary South Korean: Transnational Migrant Labor Literature