Some initial thoughts

Culture is a difficult word to define. Popular culture, as Storey notes in Cultural Theory, is an equally elusive concept. Inserting yet another word –Korean Popular Culture– adds another dimension of complexity. So how does one define Korean Popular culture? I submit two consideration that may be helpful in trying to discover an accurate definition.

The first is an idea alluded to by Carter Eckert. Silla, Koryǒ and Chosǒn all had extensive contact with mainland China, and thus participated actively in “Chinese” or “Sinitic” civilization. Eckert notes

<> “It is important to set off these words in quotation marks lest we fall into the modern fallacy of interpreting them in purely ethnic or national terms.”

When looking back on these old kingdoms, there is a tendency to project modern terms like nation or ethnicity. The “fallacy” is that the concepts of nation and ethnicity do not have modern definitions or widespread use until around the 18^th century. Korea, for instance, did not become an “official” nation until the events at Kanghwa in 1876. Adjectives like Sinitic, Chinese, and Korean are essentialist terms; the way we use these labels in modern times may be different from how these ancient people actually thought of themselves. This becomes highly relevant when asking the question “what is Korean culture?” A tantamount question would be to list the features that make something definitively and exclusively Korean. In the context of history, is it really fair to call both Silla and Chosǒn Korean kingdoms, even knowing how incredibly different they were? Further, the first inhabitants of the peninsula were a mix of Tungus and various Altaic tribes; would it be fair to call them Korean too? The point I wish to make is that an essentialist approach to defining culture may create more questions than it provides answers.

A second point and related point is that cultural diffusion is not, and never has been, strictly one-way. Korea provides a fantastic illustration of this point. Modern Korean culture has undoubtedly been influenced to a degree by American culture. So it may be a surprise to some Americans that the recent 2006 movie “The Lake House,” which had a domestic gross of $60m, is a retelling of the 2000 Korean movie 시월애 (Siworae). The Korean smash hit in all of East Asia 엽기적인 그녀 (My Sassy Girl) is currently being adapted and remade for Western audiences under the title My Sassy Girl, scheduled to be released in 2007. To generalize this point, culture is a mix of various sources and certainly does not travel in only one direction. If there is contact, there is sharing.

In class, the consensus was that Bi’s music video was derivative, a sentiment I am inclined to agree with. However, I think there is a clear, “Korean” feel to the Hwang Chini video, and even the Bi video. I admitedly know very little about Korean popular culture, but I think that the definition lies within that unique flavor of things the peninsula produces.