Thinking about Korean popular culture

Before taking this course, I had a much more ambivalent attitude towards Korean popular culture due to my limited exposure to it. While there had been some Korean shows and films that I had enjoyed, I thought mostly of maudlin dramas that produced unrealistic expectations of love, media images that sent women to the nearest plastic surgeon, and gimmicky pop music. At the same time, I conceptualized Korean popular culture as assimilating to Western models. So, I was thinking about Williams' second definition of "popular"--"inferior kinds of work"--when thinking about Korean popular culture (Storey 4). However, this class has also made me think of Korean popular culture in terms of "culture actually made by the people for themselves" (4).

What I found most interesting about the direction of this course was thinking about the intersection of the past and present. More so than in my experience with American pop culture, history has a great influence on what is presented in Korean popular culture and is more prominently displayed. We talked about how historical dramas translate past events in ways that are related to current events (i.e., The Immortal Admiral Yi Sunsin and present-day territorial disputes). It was also interesting to think about how thinking about the past allows contemporary Koreans to think about their own identities (What does it mean to be a good woman? How do traditional values and customs fit into a modern lifestyle?). By using the past, Koreans are also able to translate Korean experiences for non-Korean consumers and possibly allow other East Asians to identify with Koreans through their shared Confucian heritage. Going back to the first chapter of John Storey's text, popular culture is definitely a "site where 'collective social understandings are created'" (Hall qtd. on 3).

When thinking about Korean popular culture, discussing mass production, mass consumption, commercial culture, and hegemonic imposition of ideas and values definitely makes sense. But, what I wanted to highlight in my final blog posting was how I have come to see Korean popular culture in a more positive light. Korean popular culture is not just about escapism or creating fantasies that take away from productive action. There is room in Korean popular culture for alternative viewpoints (presenting women's issues in dramas such as Jewel in the Palace and providing youth an outlet for their frustrations in punk music), which is necessary in a postmodern world. I also think that through popular culture, Korea is able to show how modern, globalized, and worthy of attention it is to different kinds of people. So, that's cool.