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MCS0010.1177/0163443718799403Media, Culture & SocietyMin et al.

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Media, Culture & Society

Transcultural fandom of the

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DOI: 10.1177/0163443718799403
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intimacy and affinity space

Wonjung Min
Pontifical Catholic University of Chile, Chile

Dal Yong Jin

Simon Fraser University, Canada

Benjamin Han
Tulane University, USA

Abstract
This article has examined how the Hallyu phenomenon is integrated into a transnational
global cultural landscape, focusing on Chilean reception of K-pop. It analyzed how
Hallyu fans engage with a social media-saturated environment in Chile, mapping out
transnational pop cultural flows within the digital media environment through which the
participatory culture of media users is spread. What is interesting is that Chilean society,
in general, shows negative attitudes toward K-pop fans. More importantly, while many
Chileans consider K-pop fans weird and strange, often disparaging their family members
and friends for liking such music, the marginalization of K-pop fans in Chile promotes
a greater sense of bonding among them through the affinity spaces of social media.
Under this circumstance, most of our interviewees explained that digital media plays a
vital role in the dissemination of K-pop in Chile and Latin America. Unlike Hallyu fans
in other regions, K-pop fans in Chile have developed cultural intimacy specific to digital
site-media, primarily in the realm of social media, and K-pop generates the creation of
affinity spaces via different social media platforms.

Corresponding author:
Wonjung Min, Pontifical Catholic University of Chile, Av. Vicuna Mackenna 4860, Macul, Santiago 782-0436,
Santiago, Chile.
Email: wonjung_min@uc.cl
2 Media, Culture & Society 00(0)

Keywords
affinity space, cultural intimacy, K-pop, Korean Wave, Latin America, transcultural
fandom

Introduction
On a sunny Friday afternoon (March 31, 2017), more than 20 high school and/or college
students gathered at the GAM Cultural Center in central Santiago, Chile. Wearing T-shirts
printed with photos of their favorite idols and displaying pins and badges on their backpacks
just like the K-pop girl groups, they practiced K-pop cover dances. Those who could not find a
place at the GAM Cultural Center practiced their cover dances at San Borja Park, just across
the street. The GAM Cultural Center and San Borja Park have become pilgrimage sites and
dance studios for Chilean K-poppers since several years ago when the city government forbid
the kids from dancing in the public parks near the Mapocho River and told them to go to GAM
Cultural Center.

In the 2010s, the perception of South Korea (henceforth Korea) in several Latin
American countries has drastically changed as the Korean Wave (Hallyu in Korean) has
hit several countries in the region, where an increasing number of fans are becoming
more interested in Korean dramas, films, and popular music (K-pop). From an entire
floor dedicated to Korean music, cuisine, and clothes at a mall in Peru, to the first Korean
Cultural Center in Argentina, Korea’s presence and influence in Latin America is grow-
ing (Arguello, 2015), and Hallyu is especially explosive.
In Chile, Coca-Cola FM, which is a popular online radio platform with an estimated
daily listenership of 40,000, has run a K-pop program every Friday (Benjamin, 2017).
When BTS – one of the most famous Korean idol groups in recent years – visited Chile
in March 2017, fans waited outside the arena box office to purchase tickets for up to a
week in advance. ‘All 12,500 tickets for what was supposed to be just one show sold out
in a record-breaking two hours’ (Han, 2017). ‘Many [K-pop] acts are making South
America and Latin America a priority on their touring’ (Trivedi, 2013). There is no doubt
that Latin America is seeing the fastest growth in light of Hallyu’s spread (Kim, 2012).
In Latin America, the sound that’s making waves right now is Pop Coreano or K-pop,
and the Korean Wave is arguably sweeping through Central and South America, attract-
ing large audiences and inspiring cultish devotion. Korean popular culture, in particular,
K-pop ‘has reached a certain critical mass and it’s become a niche in and of itself, every-
where’ (Trivedi, 2013). The small Asian nation’s pop culture has quietly but successfully
flooded Latin America (Arguello, 2015).
This article explores the ways in which the Hallyu phenomenon is integrated into a
transnational global cultural landscape, focusing on the Chilean reception of K-pop. It
examines how Hallyu fans engage with a social media-saturated environment in Chile,
and overall in Latin America in which traditional media are not the major platforms for
Korean popular culture. In comparison to the existing cultural analyses of the Korean
Wave, which focus, at best, on the content of particular genres or texts and their con-
sumption, we map out transnational pop cultural flows with reference to the media envi-
ronment through which the participatory culture of media users is spread (Jenkins et al.,
Min et al. 3

2013). Thus, while being aware of the increasing importance of social media in fan cul-
ture across the globe, the present study empirically explores why the social mediascape
of Korean pop cultural flows uniquely contributes to an enhanced understanding of the
transnational new media culture.

Literature review/theoretical framework

Despite the lack of a shared cultural affinity and geographical proximity between Korea
and Latin America, there is a growing scholarship on the transnational circulation of
Korean popular culture, especially K-pop, in Latin America. The huge continent of Latin
America contains more than 30 countries. Ethnic, cultural, and linguistic diversity char-
acterizes the region. The size of the Korean community in the region is relatively small;
therefore, Latin American countries have different receptions of the Korean Wave in
terms of fandom and diffusion.
The exportation of Korean popular culture to Latin America started in the early 1990s
with several television programs, including documentaries, animations, and dramas. For
example, Seoul Broadcasting System (SBS) exported its documentary program titled
The Its Know in 1993 to Argentina, and MBC, another network channel, exported
Twinkle, The Dream Being – an animation program – to Mexican TV NI in 1994. Korea
has also begun to export its films to Latin America since Lies was exported to Mexico in
1999 (Lee et al., 2010). However, the export of Korean popular culture to Latin America
was not significant until the 2010s, when the Korean Wave boom began.
Accordingly, the Korean Wave in Latin America has drawn academic attention for
few years now. A number of important studies have employed different methodological
approaches to the study of K-pop fandom in Latin America. Each study has demonstrated
the complexity of analyzing the popularity of K-pop in Latin America as it varies among
countries. Although there are 33 countries in Latin America, the few investigations that
have been conducted have focused on only five of those countries – Argentina (Del Pilar
Alvarez, 2013; Molnar, 2014), Brazil and Peru (Carranza Ko et al., 2014a, 2014b), Chile
(Min, 2015), Mexico (Choi, 2015; Choi et al., 2014; Han, 2017), and Latin America in
general (Han, 2017; Min, 2017; Vargas Meza, 2015; Yoon, 2009). A review of the current
literature shows that the Korean Wave has not engendered massive popularity in any of
these five countries. As Min (2017) cogently points out, the major media outlets in Latin
America have not given much attention to K-pop, as Korean culture remains on the
fringes of Latin American society. Even when K-pop does receive national media cover-
age in Latin America, as in the case of Chile, K-pop fans are portrayed as erratic and
crazy, often becoming social outcasts for what Chileans describe as weird and strange
fan behaviors.
Current scholarship on K-pop in Latin America has been primarily concerned with
the different transcultural variables that make K-pop transnationally appealing to
Latin Americans despite their lack of a shared cultural affinity and language. For
example, Madrid-Morales and Lovric (2015) analyze the different attributes of K-pop
such as lyrics and choreography that appeal to Latin American youth. In contrast,
Flores and Yapuchura (2013) argues that virtues such as resilience and hard work
embodied in K-pop idols, further perpetuated in the mainstream media, resonate with
4 Media, Culture & Society 00(0)

Latin Americans because they are no longer an essential fabric of Peruvian society.
Del Pilar Alvarez (2013) claims that the inability of many Latin Americans to physi-
cally travel to Korea to see their favorite bands or idols propels them to participate in
an imaginary virtual space where they can construct their own meanings around
Korea. Other Latin American scholars such as Del Pilar Alvarez (2013) and Molnar
(2014) argue that K-pop is a form of soft power that enables Korea to expand its eco-
nomic growth as well as to strengthen its transnational ‘imagined community’ in
order to foster the Korean Dream. These studies indicate the complexity in the theo-
rization of K-pop in Latin America as both a transcultural and transnational fandom
compared to the Spanish language that has facilitated the circulation of Latin American
media in the region.
Interestingly enough, most existing studies of K-pop reify the significant role that
social media plays in the transnational circulation of K-pop in Latin America as a form
of spreadable media facilitated via technological advancements. Further, these studies
have claimed that Latin Americans’ first encounter with K-pop generally came through
the consumption of Korean TV dramas (hereafter K-dramas). However, Chileans were
introduced to K-pop through interpersonal interactions with friends or by chance while
browsing for content on YouTube. This present study will shed light on the current
debates on social media in the penetration of Korean popular culture in Latin America,
and the relationship between fandom on television dramas/films and K-pop in this par-
ticular regional context.

Research methods
To explore how Latin American youth engages with the circulation of Korean pop cul-
ture content, qualitative interviews were conducted with 36 young people (15 males and
21 females) who self-identified as Korean pop culture fans between March and April of
2017. The participants were between 17 and 26 years of age and 29 were undergraduate
or graduate students (N = 29), followed by six recent graduates (three are working as full-
time employees, and other three are jobless after graduation) and one high school stu-
dent. They are all Chilean people living in different Santiago neighborhoods. All the
participants were enthusiastic about Korean pop culture, and some had been involved in
off-line fan activities and had to learn the language. The participants were recruited via
snowballing methods as well as advertisements on Korean pop culture-related online
communities.
We used a semi-structured interview to allow interviewees to express their experi-
ences and opinions beyond our questions. Interviews were conducted in three main areas,
including Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile, GAM cultural center, and Sejong
Institue in Santiago. Each interview lasted for 1–2 hours, and the participants were asked
about how and why they enjoy Korean pop culture. In addition, the interviewees were
asked about how they use social media and other technologies to engage with Korean
pop culture. Furthermore, they expressed their thoughts on the Hallyu phenomenon in
Latin America and the role of social media in the surge of the wave. The interviews were
transcribed by one of the authors of this article and analyzed so that repeated themes
could be identified.
Min et al. 5

While their preferred genres varied, from dramas to films to K-pop, the majority of
respondents enjoy K-pop most while watching dramas, sitcoms, and films. The respond-
ents had been enjoying Korean pop culture for 2–13 years. More specifically, 12 inter-
viewees enjoyed Korean pop culture for 4–6 years, followed by 8 respondents (2–3 years),
8 (7–9 years), and others. This suggests that most respondents encountered the new ver-
sion of Hallyu, which started about in 2008, while having little knowledge of the earlier
Korean Wave phenomenon. One particular feature of the respondents is that about one-
third of them started to enjoy Japanese popular culture first and later turned their atten-
tion to Korean popular culture. In Chile, however, many people consider Korean popular
culture fans as chinitos ( ‘little Chinese’), referring to Chinese-like people in a disparag-
ing sense.
According to Stefoni (2004), the Chilean self-image has always been associated more
closely with European communities rather with the native indigenous communities.
Ethnically, the Chilean population is estimated at nearly 95% white and mestizo, 3%
Amerindian, and 2% others. The Asian population in Chile is rather small and, as many
interviewees have commented that their appreciation of Asian culture is somewhat of a
‘weird’ or ‘strange’. All Asians in Chile, regardless of their nationality, are often referred
to with the name of chinitos. The term chinitos as used in Latin America generally refers
to a derivation of ‘servant’.1

Transnational local popular culture in Latin America

While there are several explanations for the contemporary popularity of Korean popular
culture in Latin America as elsewhere, many people commonly identify the rapid growth
of Korean economy, globalization, and social media as some of the key factors for the
growth of Korea’s popular culture throughout the world. Social media has played an
especially important role. In other words, the increasing role of the Internet and social
media has become a key element. According to research conducted by FTI Consulting,
there are approximately 259 million Facebook users and 405 million monthly unique
YouTube users in Latin America (Punt, 2018). YouTube has been a favorite entertain-
ment content platform among millennials in Latin America, and a Chilean YouTube
channel known as HolaSoyGerman has 33 million subscribers. As our interviews reveal,
many Chilean fans came to know K-pop through their Chilean friends or on YouTube by
accident. In the case of K-pop, BTS, one of the most famous boy bands in the mid-2010s,
has more than five million Twitter followers. ‘A dedicated BTS Chile Twitter account
regularly posts Spanish translations of news articles about the band and of the band’s
own posts on social media. Some Chilean fans tune in directly to Korea’s popular V app,
where artists hold live-streaming broadcasts that fans anywhere in the world can join and
ask questions’ (Benjamin, 2017; Han, 2017).
That niche – “an amalgamation of spectacular entertainment and relentless optimism
– resonates with teenagers in South American nations” (Trivedi, 2013). The timing of
K-pop’s Latin push is, of course, no accident. The Korean Wave took most of the world
by storm in the 2010s. Over the past 10 years, the export of Korean cultural products
around the world more than doubled, but there is anecdotal evidence that the markets of
its traditional East and Southeast Asian heartland are becoming saturated (Trivedi, 2013).
6 Media, Culture & Society 00(0)

Several regions like North America, Western Europe, Latin America, Africa, and the
Middle East have gradually increased their exposure to Korean popular culture. Since
Latin America has been the largest segment among others, it certainly indicates the
increasing role of Latin American countries for the new Korean Wave phenomenon (see
Jin, 2016). Several domestic entertainment corporations and broadcasters, including two
major TV networks – KBS and MBC – have indeed increased their efforts to expand the
market penetration in Latin America.

Unrealistic K-pop boom I: cultural proximity discourse

Many Latin Americans have been enjoying Korean popular culture since the mid-2000s
with the rapid growth of social media. Television dramas came first, as they played a key
in the early stage of the Korean Wave phenomenon in the 2000s. Stairs to Heaven
(2003~2004) was first aired on TVN in Chile in March 2006 (Min, 2017). Boys Over
Flowers was aired in 2012; however, Korean dramas have rarely seen on Chilean TV
since then, partially due to cultural differences.
For example, many of our interviewees have expressed their dislike of Korean TV
dramas for their unrealistic portrayal of love and relationships. A 20-year-old male stu-
dent from Cerro Navia, Santiago, Chile explained, ‘I tried to watch [Korean] dramas, but
I couldn’t follow more than two or three episodes. Each episode was too long for me.
K-dramas seem exaggerated – happiness, sadness, etc. – all the expressions are exagger-
ated. It is funny’. Similarly, a 21-year-old female student in Colina, Santiago, Chile
stated, ‘I have watched a few dramas, but I don’t like them very much. Korean dramas
are different in terms of conflict resolution. They are much slower than Chilean dramas
and less explicit’. A 22-year-old female residing in Quilicura, Santiago, Chile explained,
‘Korean dramas have fewer episodes than American TV dramas. Love theme-based
Korean dramas are not my favorite. So boring. I think it’s because of cultural differ-
ences’. These statements illustrate that K-drama fandom did not bleed into K-pop fan-
dom. Many interviewees mentioned the slow progression and exaggeration of emotions
prevalent in Korean TV dramas as reasons that they were not attracted to them.
Against this backdrop, several K-pop idol groups began to appear and subsequently
formed their own fan clubs. They have garnered the attention of Chileans via the Internet
since 2008 (Min, 2017: 147). As one of our interviewees surmised succinctly, ‘we have
access to an excessive amount of information. You can come across K-pop accidentally
– whether you want it or not. Adults always say no first to any unfamiliar things, but the
younger generations don’t’.
Therefore, K-pop fandom, which stems from social media practices, especially in
Chile, must be treated independently from K-drama fandom. While our respondents fur-
ther underscore the difficulty in theorizing K-pop fandom in Latin America due to regional
differences, our research prompts us to question how and why Latin Americans develop
an affinity toward K-pop even though they do not understand Korean lyrics, further
prompting us to raise a question similar to that asked by that sociologist Lie (2012) in his
analysis of K-pop, ‘What is the “K” in K-pop?’ Lie (2012) claims that despite the South
Korean government’s pride in the Koreanness of K-pop, it is trivially Korean. He argues,
‘Yet as a matter of traditional culture, there is almost nothing “Korean” about K-pop.
Min et al. 7

K-pop, however, identified as part of Brand (South) Korea, is a globally competitive prod-
uct without the encumbrance of traditional Korea’ (p. 360).
What is unique about the popularity of K-pop in Latin America is the fact that K-pop
is both transnational and transcultural, meaning that despite the geographical distance as
well as cultural and language differences, Latin Americans have developed intimacy
with one form of Korean culture. Straubhaar (2007), whose work on cultural proximity
has been helpful in our understanding of the popularity of Brazilian telenovelas in Latin
America, argues that ‘cultural affinities create forms of cultural capital that inform cul-
tural proximity’ (p. 206). He writes,

‘[S]uch affinities may be specific factors such as linguistic commonalities, shared religious
histories, gender roles, moral values, and common aspirations, common histories with
colonialism, shared art forms, shared music forms, similar forms of dress, character types and
stereotypes, and ideas about genre, storytelling, and pacing’ (p. 206).

While the concept of ‘cultural proximity’ is rooted in shared cultural attributes in the
form of language, beliefs, or sensibilities that further enable the audience to experience
intimacy toward a culture other than their own, the appeal of Korean popular culture to
Latin Americans is manifested in its differences, which are not grounded in its exoticism.
For instance, most of our interviewees have highlighted differences rather than similari-
ties that set K-pop apart from Latin American popular music such as make-up, choreog-
raphy, and masculinity associated with stars, thus making it difficult to trace any
similarities that lend to cultural proximity.
For instance, a 21-year-old fan who resides in Macul, Santiago, Chile, explained that
she is attracted to the embodiment of a different kind of masculinity found in Korean
male idol groups. She added, ‘K-pop idols have an absolutely different style and differ-
ent type of masculinity. It’s so cool when male singers apply makeup’. Another 21-year-
old female fan residing in Macul, Santiago, Chile, described K-pop fans as tribu urbana
(urban tribe). She added, ‘K-pop fans are unsociable and closed after all’. More signifi-
cantly, many of our interviewees have responded that what makes K-pop unique and
attractive is that it is different from popular American and Latin American music. More
interestingly, most of our interviewees were fine with the fact that they do not understand
the lyrics in Korean, as they just enjoy the tunes and rhythms of K-pop songs.
While existing theoretical frameworks such as Sinclair’s (1998) ‘geo-linguistic’
region and ‘cultural proximity’ are useful in probing the transnational flow of cultural
texts from one geographic area to another, these concepts pose challenges and limitations
to the study of K-pop in Latin America. Nevertheless, the need to revisit these ideas
offers us an opportunity to think of a new theoretical framework to critically analyze
K-pop fandom that traverses both national, linguistic, and cultural boundaries without
essentializing the concepts of proximity and affinity.

Unrealistic K-pop boom II: cultural intimacy discourse

Regardless of the usefulness of cultural proximity in understanding the penetration of K-pop
in Latin America, again, it is critical to acknowledge that there are different perspectives,
8 Media, Culture & Society 00(0)

and another way to think of cultural affinity or proximity is through the lens of intimacy. The
concept of intimacy has been examined from interdisciplinary perspectives ranging from
interpersonal communication studies to mobile communication. As Raiti (2007) points out
in his examination of mobile technology and intimacy, ‘mobile intimacy’ – the ability to be
intimate across distances of time and space – is nothing novel but a global phenomenon
resulting from the compression of time-space distanciation. Despite the instrumental role
that technology plays in fostering intimacy between individuals and stars or cultural texts,
intimacy can also vary among cultures. Yano (2004), in her work on the relationship between
stars and fans of Japanese popular music, writes, ‘In both religion and fandom, a drive to
intimacy impels individuals to act in ways that go beyond the bounds of self to seek greater
communion with the object of their adoration’ (p. 44). She further argues that this desire for
intimacy propels fans to seek knowledge about their favorite stars, further enabling them to
develop close intimacy with the stars and other fans.
Gray et al. (2007) point out that the notion of intimacy in connection to fan cultures has
been examined primarily in relation to stars as objects of desire rather than cultural texts. Also,
the notion of intimacy is grounded in romanticism, often ignoring how fan’s engagement with
intimacy is shaped by their personal experiences, and how it fluctuates over a period. In other
words, romanticized intimacy is often understood as a holistic experience where fissures and
ruptures are often ignored and dismissed. Another way to think of intimacy is through the
notion of sensibilities or what Williams (1977) would characterize as ‘structures of feeling’.
Cho (2011), in his examination of the Korean Wave as an iteration of East Asian pop
culture, brings up the discourse of East Asian sensibilities to argue that the popularity of
Korean media and popular culture allows East Asians to participate in East Asian sensi-
bilities as a result of their consumption of different kinds of pan-Asian popular culture
that are increasingly exposed to each other. This participation in East Asian sensibilities,
inscribed in ‘asymmetric but synchronous spatialities and its uneven but simultaneous
temporalities’, further enables audiences to reimagine East Asia (p. 394). He writes,
‘This idea of East Asia sensibilities is predicated on the fact that the personal intimacy
and socio-economic/geographic mobility implied and enabled by the consumption of
pan-Asian pop cultures are experienced publicly and culturally as well as privately’ (p.
393). Without falling into essentialist approaches to the study of fandom and intimacy,
our paper seeks to analyze and understand how Latin Americans create and negotiate
cultural intimacy toward K-pop. Our aim is to examine intimacy as a display of passion
and fervor toward a cultural product but how fans understand intimacy as more than just
emotion or relationship with a particular form of popular culture, in this case, K-pop.
In the case of K-pop fans in Chile, their first contact with K-pop was not the result of
their affinity for idols or stars appearing in K-dramas but with the music itself, which in
turn led them to discover more about K-pop. As a 22-year-old female fan from La Reina,
Santiago, Chile explained,

My dad gave me a tourism magazine for my 12th or 13th birthday gift. The magazine included a
Special Asian Edition. One day, one of my friends came over to my house and found the magazine,
and we started talking about Asia. My friend told me about K-Pop and we started watching music
videos of Super Junior. I liked them. So then I began to search for other K-Pop idol groups.

A 20-year-old male fan from Cerro Navia, Santiago, Chile, similarly explained,
Min et al. 9

I discovered K-Pop about four years ago when I was under some difficult circumstances. I was
16 years old then. One of my friends was listening to K-Pop. I didn’t know what it was, but it
was totally different music from anything else that I had ever listened to. I liked the music. I
found the kids who practice dancing, so I joined them.

Latin Americans’ affinity toward K-pop does not mean that they have developed some
level of intimacy with Korea as passion or interest does not automatically translate into
intimacy, and it is also difficult to measure the level of intimacy each fan experiences.
But what is important is that the new Korean Wave as a spreadable media facilitated by
social media practices is closely intertwined with intimate sensibilities (Jin and Yoon,
2016a, 2016b). As John Tomlinson (1999) writes, ‘[T]he capacity of media technologies
to deliver their own unique forms of intimacy, which in the process may be redefining the
cultural significance of intimacy for us’ (p. 162). Thus, one way to think of the marriage
of intimacy and technology within globalization is Choi’s concept of ‘digintimacy’.
Choi (2014) has proposed the term ‘digintimacy’ as a better conceptual framework to
understand Latin Americans’ ‘cultural enlisting’ toward K-pop. Choi defines digintimacy as
‘the concurrence of technologically rendered immediacy and cultural/psychological inti-
macy’ (p. 106). He adds, ‘This [digintimacy] is a superstructure emergent from site-media
equipped with a wealth of hyperlinks, user-created threads, targeted advertising, and forums’
(p. 106). However, our focus is not concerned with how mediated-communication produce
new forms of intimacy, as we are more interested in how Latin Americans negotiate mean-
ings around mediated-intimacy as fans. Indeed, it is a truism that the advent of technology
enables individuals to expand their social relations in other capacities, enabling them to dis-
cover new ways to create and maintain intimacy with others. John Thompson (1995) explains
that a unique form of intimacy produced through mediated communication is ‘non-reciprocal
intimacy’ which does not entail the demands that face-to-face interaction requires (p. 222).
Latin Americans’ consumption and engagement with K-pop as a distant form of popular
culture is an example of ‘non-reciprocal’ intimacy, further extended into technologies of con-
sumption, which makes K-pop unique as a transnational and transcultural fandom.
Choi (2015) further asserts that the convergence of the digital with intimacy is the
outcome of ‘cultural orientations and configurations specific to digital site-media’ (p.
106). Choi explicates that digintimacy is a unique form of mediated-intimacy driven by
digitally specific media practices, which prompts Latin Americans to develop intimacy
with Korean culture. However, Choi overestimates the role that digital media plays in
producing cultural affinity without providing a more contextualized understanding of fan
experiences and activities in sustaining different levels of digintimacy.

K-pop fandom in Latin America: cultural affinity space

The issue of Internet accessibility, especially digital site-media, is a plaguing problem in
Latin America today compared to more wired continents such as Asia, North America,
and Europe. In addition, there is a romanticization of digintimacy, which anticipates that
it will naturally permeate into psychological and cognitive affinities thereby what he
argues as ‘narrowing the alleged anthropological gulf between Latin America and Korea’
(Choi, 2015: 108). As we know, fans’ understanding of intimacy with stars or texts also
varies based on their level of engagement in the form of fan activities and interests.
10 Media, Culture & Society 00(0)

Thus, we draw upon Gee’s (2005) literary concept of ‘affinity space’ to examine
K-pop fandom in Latin America. Gee’s concept enables us to understand K-pop not only
as a mediated fandom via social media practices but also as a form of ‘non-reciprocal’
intimacy in which Latin Americans participate in Korean sensibilities based on their
personal engagement level with K-pop. In the words of Ien Ang (2004), ‘… the glo-
balized world today is not uniformly homogenized but displays multiple, sometimes
overlapping, but often relatively separate transnational zones of cultural affinity and
similarity’ (p. 305).
‘Affinity spaces’ allows us to examine how Latin Americans experience different yet
overlapping levels of intimacy with Korean popular culture. Gee defines ‘affinity space’
as a particular kind of social semiotic space (SSS) shaped by generators (sign system/
content), internal grammar (content design), external grammar (patterns in thoughts,
deeds, and interactions), and portals (spaces of interaction). Therefore, K-pop as unique
cultural content generates the creation of affinity spaces via different social media plat-
forms in which fans actively produce meanings around it. Then these fan-created mean-
ings not only circulate to various affinity spaces but also function to create and expand
social-affiliation networks. Besides, as Gee claims, the dispersion of knowledge is a
defining quality of affinity spaces, as K-pop fans are less engaged in the appropriation of
texts but more invested in the dissemination of K-pop across multiple communication
channels. In the end, the vibrant interactions within the affinity spaces of K-pop enable
Latin American fans to undergo new personal experiences and identity formations. In
other words, affinity spaces within digitally mediated networks function as ‘contact
zones’ where K-pop is introduced to other cultures.
Many of our interviewees have indeed commented on how K-pop has broadened their
worldviews and provided them with an opportunity to connect with other K-pop lovers,
further helping to expand their interpersonal networks, which is a significant character-
istic of K-pop fandom in Latin America. In addition, each individual ‘can get different
things out of the space – based on their own choices, purposes, and identities – and still
mingle with others as they wish, learning from them when and where they choose’ (Gee,
2005: 225). Based on our interviews, we have discovered that every fan has had a differ-
ent affinity level of interaction with K-pop resulting in the unique experience of personal
sensibilities. In other words, there is not a sense of collective fandom experience or sen-
sibilities shared across K-pop fans in Latin America as is the case in Chile. For example,
a 21-year-old female fan stated, ‘I had a mental and emotional crisis in 2012 and 2013.
There were tons of family problems. I wanted to dance like crazy and K-pop perfectly
met this need. K-pop has changed my life’.
Another 26-year-old female fan said, ‘K-pop has changed my personality. I was quite
aggressive before. I have a calmer personality since I started listening to K-pop. Shinee
released a new song entitled Fire when my father passed away. It was a coincidence, but
the song consoled me’. Similarly, a 20-year-old male fan explained, ‘K-pop saves my life
when I want to escape from any problems’. A 20-year-old female fan responded, ‘K-pop
is cheerful and helps me to loosen up. I like to listen to music when I am at home. K-pop
has helped me with my interpersonal relationships’. All these responses underline the
therapeutic element of K-pop and how individuals have benefited differently from their
interactions within the affinity spaces of K-pop.
Min et al. 11

Moreover, what makes affinity spaces of K-pop unique sites of fandom is the fact that
the question of membership becomes obsolete, meaning that the level of participation
among fans within the affinity spaces is very flexible rather than static. As a result, inter-
actions among K-pop lovers in the affinity spaces are valued more than asserting one’s
fan loyalty and identity through membership in fan clubs or organizations. When our
study asked interviewees if they were active members of fan clubs, a 21-year-old female
fan responded,

I joined a couple of fan clubs but I don’t participate in them. The fans are too young. Most of
the fans are teenagers. Furthermore, I’m not so sociable. Fans imitate Korean idols, which is so
weird and I don’t like to mingle with them. Sometimes I post replies on the fan clubs’ web
pages.

Another 22-year-old female fan responded, ‘No. I’ve never liked any fan clubs. I look at
the Facebook pages of the fan clubs to see the news. Fan club members are close-minded.
The organizers of the fan clubs are authoritarian and too bossy’.
Another 21-year-old female fan expressed her criticism of fan clubs,

No. I don’t like those crazy fans and fan club activities. I don’t need to identify myself through
any fan club. It’s enough just enjoying it myself. I think most of the fan club members join fan
clubs to make friends and to have an identity. I’m not a person who gets along with a group.

These responses underscore the different levels of affinity that exist among K-pop fans
based on their level of participation in affinity spaces. Moreover, these reactions indicate
that K-pop fans in Latin America have a strong affinity toward K-pop as a cultural text
as opposed to stars or other fans because they are far more invested in listening to K-pop
for pleasure and appreciation purposes.
Furthermore, affinity spaces function as informal learning environments where
differences of age, class, race, gender, and education level are relatively unimpor-
tant. As Gee (2005) points out, participation in affinity spaces is based on one’s own
skills and interests in which the peer-to-peer sharing of information and knowledge
is essential. Many individuals who are active within the affinity spaces of K-pop
have acquired new knowledge and a better understanding of Korea. For instance, a
19-year-old female from Macul, Santiago, Chile, explained, “K-pop fans can distin-
guish Korea, Japan, and China.” A 17-year-old female fan from Santiago Centro,
Chile, stated, “K-pop has changed me. I used to be so uneducated and ignorant, but
now I know that Korea is divided, and South Korea is a democratic country.”
Another 20-year-old female from Quinta Normal, Santiago, Chile, said, “I’m inter-
ested in learning new things. I tried Korean food after I discovered K-pop.” As a
learning environment, K-pop leads some fans to seek more information about
Korean culture with regard to language, food, and politics. However, this desire to
seek greater knowledge does not produce intimacy. And as affinity spaces are
always evolving with the introduction of new contents, K-pop lovers’ intimacy with
Korea becomes tenuous, thus keeping Korean culture on the fringes of Latin
American society.
12 Media, Culture & Society 00(0)

While our discussion of affinity spaces has centered on the sociological dimensions of
K-pop, the textual properties of K-pop cannot be dismissed, for affinity operates on mul-
tiple levels, including genre and text. Most of the interviewees in our study explained
that choreography and dance were the main reasons that they were attracted to K-pop.
While the transnational popularity of K-pop is often understood as an example of contra-
flow against the hegemonic dominance of US media, we must ask what pleasures K-pop
offer to Latin Americans that Latin American music does not. In order to address this
question, the concept of affinity must consider K-pop on a textual level. As hybrid music,
K-pop not only draws its global influences from American pop music but becomes a
highly commodified product that features multilingual switching, multinational mem-
bers, songs, and choreography produced by famous African American artists in order to
tap into the global market. Despite its hybridity, K-pop’s visuality, which is grounded in
highly orchestrated choreography, catchy tunes, and stylized fashion, offers an alterna-
tive space of global cultural imagination that is not rooted in between the West and the
East. In his examination of the popularity of Hindi-language films in Nigeria, Brian
Larkin (2003) invokes the concept of ‘third space’ and defines it as ‘a way of engaging
with forms of tradition different from their own while at the same time conceiving of a
modernity that comes without the political and ideological significance of that of the
West’ (p. 339). Accordingly, K-pop induces Latin Americans to participate in a fantasy
of modernity that does not equate with Western modernity. In fact, many of our inter-
viewees have illustrated how each one of them not only derives diverse pleasures from
consuming K-pop, but the dialectical tension between sameness and difference charac-
terizes the meanings that Latin American fans generate from consuming K-pop.
For instance, a 21-year-old female student stated,

I think Koreans have a keen sense of color. The concepts are totally different from those of
Chilean pop stars. I’m addicted to listening to it. You can’t see such a variety of dance in
American pop. K-pop is great for dance. I enjoy the variety.

Another 21-year-old female student majoring in biochemistry stated, ‘K-pop harmonizes

the rhythm and melody with vocals. Latin American songs only talk about love’. A
25-year-old female student said, ‘I have noticed that K-Pop invests a lot to make a strong
visual image. Even the small agencies make great music videos. American Pop doesn’t
invest as much in making a visual production’. Similarly, a 26-year-old male student
explained, ‘I would say “synthesis.” K-pop is a combination of American and Asian
culture. K-pop is much more organized and disciplined [than American music]’. These
responses illustrate how K-pop can function as a mediating ‘third space’ that helps Latin
Americans to negotiate their version of modernity that is not rooted in the American
tradition. In a way, Latin Americans re-envision an alternative and subversive cultural
imagining through the consumption of K-pop as highly modernized music.
Our analysis of K-pop through the lens of affinity spaces explains its over-blown
success and popularity in Latin America. Affinity space is a more productive concept
to examine the complexities of K-pop fandom in Latin America, which stem from lin-
guistic, cultural, and regional differences, without over-valorizing the notion of cul-
tural intimacy. As our study has illustrated, the transnational appeal of K-pop to Latin
Min et al. 13

Americans does not have to do with any particular Korean traits but more so as a
phenomenon resulting from vibrant social interactions within affinity spaces. The con-
cept of affinity enables us to understand how K-pop, a foreign popular music, has
evolved to be a source of entertainment in Latin America despite linguistic and cultural
differences. K-pop as a hybrid music grows into cultural content for Latin Americans
to not only construct meanings around it but space where intimate, affective nuances
are experienced.
More significantly, affinity spaces do not operate within institutional hierarchies as
power is distributed to participants who create and share content, further empowering
them as neoliberal citizens who possesses a greater sense of control. Further, affinity
spaces enable participants to compare and contrast their cultural experiences with peers,
cementing their personal, cultural, and social identities.
In sum, K-pop fandom is a transnational vector of the global social mediascape resulting
from the creative interplay of digital practices and affinity spaces. That is why K-pop has
lost some of its transcultural valence in Latin America more recently as new content, such
as Turkish TV dramas, is generated and introduced into new transnational spaces of affin-
ity, further presenting challenges to Latin Americans to continuously sustain intimacy with
K-pop as well as Korean popular culture in general. For instance, the Turkish TV drama
1001 Nights (Binbir Gece) premiered on Mega channel in Chile in March of 2014 with a
rating of 11.2 and the final episode generated a rating of 30.1, capturing millions of Chilean
audiences and becoming the most watched TV program that year (de la Maza, 2015;
Maldonado, 2014). The unexpected mega-success of 1001 Nights in Chile triggered the
distribution of Turkish TV dramas across Latin America with such titles as Muhteşem
Yüzyıl (Magnificent Century), Fatmagül’ün Suçu Ne? (What is Fatmagül’s Fault?), and
Aşk-ı Memnu (Forbidden Love). Similar to K-dramas, trade presses in Latin America have
attributed the transnational success of Turkish dramas to their high production values and
traditional love stories that deviate from the violent and highly sexualized contemporary
Latin American telenovelas. Thus, the growing global success and popularity of Turkish
TV dramas have relegated K-dramas to the fringes of Latin American affinity spaces.

Conclusion
This article has examined the ways in which the Hallyu phenomenon is integrated into a
transnational global cultural landscape, focusing on the Chilean reception of K-pop. It
analyzed how Hallyu fans engage with a social media-saturated environment in Chile,
mapping out transnational pop cultural flows within the digital media environment
through which the participatory culture of media users is spread. Thus, while being aware
of the increasing importance of social media in fan culture across the globe (Jenkins
et al., 2013), it explored the reasons why the social mediascape of Korean pop cultural
flows uniquely contributes to an enhanced understanding of the transnational new media
culture in the era of social media.
What is interesting is that Chilean society, in general, shows negative attitudes toward
K-pop fans. The number of the Asian population in Chile is not only small, but K-pop is
little known to most Chileans. Many Chileans are unable to distinguish between different
Asian ethnicities and use the derogatory term chinitos to describe them. More importantly,
14 Media, Culture & Society 00(0)

while many Chileans consider K-pop fans weird and strange, often disparaging their own
family members and friends for liking such music, the marginalization of K-pop fans in
Chile promotes a greater sense of bonding among them through the affinity spaces of
social media.
Under this circumstance, most of our interviewees explained that digital media plays
an important role in the dissemination of K-pop in Chile and Latin America. One of our
interviewees noted, ‘I watched Korean TV dramas by accident on Chilean TV channels,
and then I began to search for more dramas on YouTube until I came across to K-pop’. A
21-year-old female office worker explained, ‘Several years ago, one of my classmates
showed me a music video of the group Girls Day. Then one day I listened to K-pop music
on [Chilean] radio and I noticed that it was K-pop. I started searching for other K-pop
music on YouTube’. Likewise, a 25-year-old female interview similarly explained, ‘I
happened to see a K-pop music video on Facebook. After that, I began to look for more
music videos and dramas’. These interviews illustrate that most of the Chileans came to
learn about K-pop through different SNS channels and participated in the negotiation of
meanings around mediated intimacy as fans.
Chileans were introduced to K-pop through interpersonal interactions with friends or
by chance while browsing for content on YouTube. In this regard, Chilean fans’ display
of intimacy toward K-pop stems from their understanding of intimacy as more than just
an expression of passion and fervor toward a particular form of cultural product or East
Asian popular culture.
K-pop fans in Chile have developed cultural intimacy specific to digital site-media, pri-
marily in the realm of social media, and K-pop generates the creation of affinity spaces via
different social media platforms. However, it is premature to generalize the Chilean case as
exemplary of the K-pop phenomenon in general because many Latin American countries
have different experiences with the Korean Wave. Therefore, instead of merely understand-
ing the Korean Wave in Latin America as homogeneous, we need to develop more detailed
and nuanced approaches to study the complexities of the Korean Wave in Latin America.

Funding
The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this
article.

Note
1. Diego Lin Chou found the first documented reference to chinitos in Latin America during
the Colonial Period in the 16th century, arriving in Peru via Mexico. During the Pacific War
between Chile and Peru (1879–1883), an estimated 1200–1500 Chinese slaves were liberated
by Chilean forces. The former government led by Bachelet opened the door to Chile’s neigh-
boring countries as well as to the Haitian refugees. The increasing number of ‘colored’ people
has generated the antipathy of the Chilean population.

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