Transnational Convergence of East Asian Pop Culture

This book observes and analyzes transnational interactions of East Asian pop culture and current cultural practices, comparing them to the production and consumption of Western popular culture and providing a theoretical discussion regarding the specific paradigm of East Asian pop culture. Drawing on innovative theoretical perspectives and grounded empirical research, an international team of authors consider the history of transnational flows within pop culture and then systematically address pop culture,digital technologies, and the media industry. Chapters cover the Hallyu-or Korean Wave-phenomenon, as well as Japanese and Chinese cultural industries. Throughout the book, the authors address the convergence of the once-separated practical, industrial, and business aspects of popular culture under the influence of digital culture. They further coherently synthesize a vast collection of research to examine the specific realities and practices of consumers that exist beyond regional boundaries, shared cultural identities, and historical constructs. This book will be of interest to academic researchers, undergraduates, and graduate students of Asian media, media studies, communication studies, cultural studies, transcultural communication, or sociology.

Seok-Kyeong Hong is professor in the Department of Communication at Seoul National University, Korea. She finished her PhD at University of Grenoble and was associate professor at the University of Bordeaux, France, between 2000 and 2013. Dal Yong Jin is Distinguished Professor at Simon Fraser University, Canada. Following a career in journalism, Jin completed his PhD in the Institute of Communications Research at the University of Illinois in 2005.

1 Introduction: the making of East Asian cultural space 1 SEOK-KYEONG HONG AND DAL YONG JIN PART I History and content of the transnational: flows of East Asian popular culture 13 2 East Asian popular culture in the early 20th century: Jin Yan/Kim Yom (--), the emperor of film in Shanghai 15 DOOBO SHIM 3 Media ecologies and transnational media flow in East Asia 32 DONG-HOO LEE 4 Converging East Asia: cultural politics toward cultural regionalization 52 DAL YONG JIN PART II Transnational convergence of culture 73 5 New Generation Dance Music: the beginning of K-pop and J-pop's influence 75 GYU TAG LEE 6 The past, present, and future of Boys Love (BL) cultures in East Asia 96 JUNGMIN KWON vi Contents 7 Sharing gender imagination in East Asia: an essay on soft masculinity and female digital scopophilia in East Asian mediaculture 113 SEOK-KYEONG HONG 8 Pirate cosmopolitanism and the undercurrents of flow: fansubbing television on China's P2P networks 127 JINYING LI PART III Digital platforms, cultural industries, and East Asia 147 9 The rise of digital platforms in the networked Korean society 149 DAL YONG JIN 10 War memory, globalization, and cultural convergence: the trajectory of PRC-Japan coproduction from the 1980s to the present 170 WENDY SU 11 Korea's creative migration to media cities in China: the space of flows and fluid assemblages 189 JU OAK KIM 12 Cultural industries and the state in East Asia 207 NISSIM OTMAZGIN