Short description:

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.

Long description:

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 effort 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.

Table of Contents:

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