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Desperately seeking East Asia amidst the popularity of South Korean pop
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Article in Cultural Studies · May 2011

DOI: 10.1080/09502386.2010.545424
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DESPERATELY SEEKING EAST ASIA AMIDST THE POPULARITY OF

SOUTH KOREAN POP CULTURE IN ASIA
Younghan Cho
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KOREAN POP CULTURE IN ASIA', Cultural Studies, 25: 3, 383 — 404, First published on: 21 March 2011 (iFirst)
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Younghan Cho
DESPERATELY SEEKING EAST ASIA

AMIDST THE POPULARITY OF SOUTH
KOREAN POP CULTURE IN ASIA
This study questions the term ‘East Asia’ by investigating its usage in South
Korean mass media and academic discourse about the Korean Wave and by
reframing the Korean Wave as a source of new definitions of the cultural
geography of East Asia and East Asian sensibilities instead of its current
designations as either an empty signifier or a profitable market. Reframing the
Downloaded By: [Cho, Younghan] At: 01:55 12 April 2011
Korean Wave as a set of seminal iterations of East Asian pop culture includes its
multiplicity and historicity, which enables the delineation of the cultural
geography of East Asia as neither a unilateral nor fixed topography but rather
something that is constantly re-imagined via pan-Asian pop cultures, materialized
through actual encounters, and re-invented through shared historic pasts and
modernizing desires. Examining East Asian pop culture also helps to illuminate
current structures of feeling in East Asia (‘East Asian sensibilities’). The study
concludes with suggestions for future collaborative works and theoretical
endeavors, which are imperative for the establishment of East Asian pop culture
as an object of analysis.
Keywords cultural geography; East Asia; East Asian pop culture; East
Asian sensibilities; Korean Wave; South Korea
Introduction: the Korean Wave in Asia

This study first investigates how the term ‘East Asia’ is used in discourse about
the Korean Wave, by both mass media and academies in South Korea
(hereafter Korea). Second, it articulates East Asian pop culture by framing the
Korean Wave as a source for imagining the cultural geography of East Asia as
well as East Asian sensibilities.
Currently, it is clear not only that Korean pop culture has spread
throughout Asia but also that it is a truly pan-Asian form of pop culture. This
trend, called the Korean Wave or the Hallyu, includes Korean drama, dance
music, films, animation, games, and fan clubs for Korean stars. It began in the
late 1990s when several Korean television dramas took off regionally, gained
Cultural Studies Vol. 25, No. 3 May 2011, pp. 383404
ISSN 0950-2386 print/ISSN 1466-4348 online – 2011 Taylor & Francis
http://www.tandf.co.uk/journals DOI: 10.1080/09502386.2010.545424
384 C U LT U R A L S T U D I E S
momentum in 2003 when Winter Sonata was broadcast by the NHK (Japan
Broadcasting Corporation), and has continued to grow with the success of
Korean films in domestic and regional markets and at international film
festivals. Throughout its development, the Korean media and academies have
generated enormous amounts of discourse, explanations, and analyses.
The wide exchanges of pan-Asian pop culture and increasing transactions
among Asian countries have enabled the idea of a supposedly discrete place,
East Asia, to be extensively, fashionably circulated both in Korea and
throughout the region. Similar popular variations of ‘Asia’ extend beyond
the cultural realm: economically, the Pacific Rim is regarded as key;
politically, ASEAN (Association of South East Asian Nations)3 (China,
Japan and Korea) is emerging as a noteworthy regional institution; and, at least
theoretically, the voices in favor of reconceptualizing the Third World are
garnering more attention.1 Because of the contrast between the region’s still-
nebulous cultural definitions and its rapidly growing global importance,
profound consideration of the term ‘East Asia’ is both historically and

theoretically necessary.
Rather than exploring the Korean Wave’s essences, reasons, effects, or
strategies, as previous studies have done, this study focuses on the term ‘East
Asia’ in relation to the Korean Wave and its discourses. Following Stuart Hall’s
inquiry (1993), it revisits questions such as ‘Which East Asia?’; ‘What is East
Asian culture?’; ‘Whose East Asian identity?’; and ‘Which version of East
Asian modernity?’. Based on the diverse perspectives of Korean journalists,
critics, and intellectuals, an attempt is made to understand the reconfiguration
of East Asia and to articulate East Asian pop culture through the Korean Wave
and its associated discourse. This theoretical linkage of the Korean Wave to
East Asia helps illuminate the emerging identities, consciousnesses, and
mentalities that are being constituted in the region through the consumption,
both structural and private, of pan-Asian pop cultures.
The Korean Wave and its discourses in Korea

Since the late 1990s, the Korean Wave has flooded a swath of Asian countries
that includes China, Taiwan, Vietnam, Singapore, and Japan. Korean television
dramas initiated this fandom. In China, What is Love All About?, which was
broadcast regionally by CCTV (China Central Television) in 1997, became the
first hit Korean drama;2 on Taiwanese television, Autumn Tale was the highest-
rated program in 2001 (Chun 2006); in Vietnam, 14 Korean dramas were
broadcast between 1997 and May 1999 alone, several of which were hugely
popular (Lee, H.-W. 2006); in Singapore, Korean talents Yong-Jun Bae and
Ryu Siwon were voted the top celebrities in 2004 and 2005, respectively;
in Japan, the popularity of Bae, a hero on Winter Sonata, has helped create a
P O P U L AR I T Y O F S O U T H KO R E A N P O P C U LT U R E I N AS I A 385
$2 billion effect in exports that includes tourism to Korea (Shim 2006).3 In

addition, the Korean Wave has reached Southeast Asian countries dominated
by Islamic culture such as Malaysia and Indonesia, as well as Hindu-dominated
India (Chung 2006). In 2005 and 2006, the historic drama Dae Jang-guem [The
Jewel in the Palace] achieved extensive success both in East Asian and Southeast
Asian countries (Kim, S.-J. 2009, Leung 2009). In Korea itself, the gross
revenue from exported television programs skyrocketed from $13 million in
2000 to more than $100 million in 2005 (Shim 2006).4 Clearly, the Korean
Wave has become a major trend in pan-Asian pop culture.
Because the Korean Wave has inspired high domestic expectations for both
commercial profit and national prestige, the Korean government and domestic
corporations have been busy promoting its essence and developing strategies to
sustain it. Governmental promotion has included introducing the Basic Law
for Cultural Industry Promotion in 1999 (accompanied by a budget of
$148.5 million) and establishing the Culture and Content Agency under the
purview of the Ministry of Culture and Tourism in 2001 (Shim 2006).5 For
their part, the Korean mass media and academy have produced volumes of
diverse and even contradictory opinions about the Korean Wave. The
increased range of topics and the growing speed with which such information
is disseminated show that a vortex of national interest and expectations has
been created around the Korean Wave.
Because the Korean Wave has spread so far beyond Korea, into a regional
phenomenon, an intriguing and important question involves how the term
‘East Asia’ has been utilized and conceptualized in the discourse surrounding it.
Based on an examination of publications and research produced by the Korean
media and academy, this discourse has been categorized into three approaches:
cultural nationalist, neo-liberal capitalist, and translocal regionalist (Cho Han,
H. 2003, Cho, H. 2005, Lee, K.-H. 2006, Kim, S.-J. 2009).6
The cultural nationalist approach constitutes East Asia as a unilateral entity
in which so-called Asian values are commonly shared and situates the Korean
Wave as a symbol of Korean cultural excellence and competence. It
particularly credits Confucian values such as unbreakable family bonds,
patriarchal relations, and pure love for the Korean Wave’s appeal to Asian
audiences, who are tired of violent and bloody American pop culture (Kim,
S.-Y. 2006). Cultural nationalism, which often predicates on a hybrid thesis,
praises Korean pop culture for nicely representing traditional moral values in
modern, urban settings. While describing the popularity in Thailand of a
Korean film, My Sassy Girl, H.-K. Kim (2006) argues that the success of the
Korean Wave stems from the fact that Korean pop culture does a good job of
applying traditional and Confucian values to Western cultural forms. In other
words, by proving that ‘What is Korean is global’ (Jeong 2002, p. 11), Korean
pop culture promotes the nation’s cultural pride and extends the reach of the
Korean Wave. The introduction to an anthology of writing by Asian and
Southeast Asian scholars in Korea (Shin & Lee 2006) exemplifies this approach
in its argument that the Korean Wave should become a Global Wave by
embracing more of the world’s national cultures (Shin, Y.-H. 2006).
The neo-liberal capitalist approach champions the importance of profit and
of developing political strategies for continuing the Korean Wave, not only in
Asia but through expansion into other regions. An anthology edited by Korean
journalists who have reported the Korean Wave from various Asian countries
highlights the importance of Korean cultural contents in the global economy
with the motto ‘Soft power, Soft Korea’ (Yoo et al. 2005). The capitalist
approach, which began in the mid-1990s with governmental promotion of
media production as a national strategy for Korea, continues to harness the
Korean Wave to the economic logic of developmentalism by not only
requiring coherent commercial strategies such as co-production and localiza-
tion (Keane 2006),7 but also by praising the government’s efforts to maximize
the Korean Wave. One such effort, announced by former Kyonggi provincial
mayor Son Hakyu, is a cultural cluster called ‘Hallyu-Wood’ (Yoon 2006).
Neo-liberal capitalism situates East Asia as the most profitable market for the
Korean Wave but also as a place in which Korean pop culture can be tested
before advancing to other regional markets.
Translocal regionalism, which is deeply critical of all capitalist approaches,
emphasizes reciprocal Asian cultural flows and the establishment of a pan-Asian
cultural infrastructure, including the invention of translocal or transnational
identities. Pointing out the sub-imperial nature of capitalist discourse about the
Korean Wave, K.-H. Lee (2006) suggests that these approaches treat East
Asian countries simply as markets or consumers rather than as partners in an
ongoing conversation. D.-H. Lee (2004) similarly observes the hegemony of
sub-cultural imperialism among Korean Wave discourses. These criticisms of
capitalist approaches often result in calls for building Asian cultural blocs
against hegemonic Euro-American pop culture. For example, W.-D. Baik
(2005), who contends that commercial trends only reveal that Korean pop
culture is an imitation of or substitution for American pop culture, argues that
the Korean Wave should be used to increase mutual understanding among
Asian nations as well as to share East Asian culture in Asia. Along these lines,
Cho Han (2003) states that the Korean Wave can contribute to the emergence
of new agencies that continuously de-territorialize national boundaries and
share porous and nomadic identities. Thus East Asia would be positioned either
against Western or American culture or as an abstract space that is identified
with cosmopolitan or global spaces.
The variety found in Korean discourse illustrates the diverse configurations
of East Asia presented by the Korean Wave, a cross-identification which in
turn echoes the acknowledgments by Korean journalists, critics, and academics
of East Asia as a crucial element in the Korean Wave. However, the more
people talk about the necessity and importance of East Asia within the Korean
Wave, the more abstract what the term ‘East Asia’ refers to becomes in this
context.
‘East Asia’ in the Korean Wave: caught between the global and
the national
As regional flows of pop cultures intensify, Asian audiences can widely, almost
instantly, consume regional cultural products that were once unavailable.
Likewise, the Korean Wave has given regional momentum to the search for
pan-Asian spectatorship and a definable East Asian pop culture. However, the
current discourse of both the Korean media and academy indicate the
configuration of East Asia only as a profitable market or an empty signifier.
When East Asia is treated as a regional market in which Korean pop
culture can earn huge profits before advancing into the global market, East Asia
becomes both a touchstone that proves the superiority of Korean pop culture
and a venue through which Koreans can pursue their national interests. The
cultural nationalist approach feeds these interpretations by exaggerating
the roles of traditional values and cultural legacy in the Korean Wave and
by attributing its success to Korean capability and even Korean ‘cultural DNA’
(Yoo et al. 2005). For their part, capitalist approaches tend to characterize East
Asia as a venue in which Korea can realize national success as well as enormous
profits. Here, East Asia is often depicted as a stepping-stone across which
Korean pop culture can advance to other markets, even global ones. K. M.
Shin (2006) argues that the Japanese market can be regarded as the last space in
which the Korean Wave tests the possibility of going beyond the Asian market
before it enters the global or American market. For example, when Korean
media proclaim the singer Rain, a superstar in Korea, as a celebrity in East Asia
and a prospective worldwide star (Park 2006), its rhetoric stereotypes East
Asia as a middle ground. This identification conjures the hierarchy of national,
regional, and global that is rooted in the process of cultural globalization. So
the term ‘East Asia,’ originally invoked with nationalist intent, can function as
another national myth or even as a testimony to the presence of developmental
ideology in Korean nationalism (Cho, Y. 2008a).
East Asia is configured as an empty signifier in two ways. First, the region
is rendered as a unilateral entity that nonetheless possesses shared Asian values,
a depiction that credits the Confucian elements in Korean pop culture as the
main reason for its pan-Asian success. However, Son and Yang (2006)
comment that such an Asian-value hypothesis easily loses its validity when one
considers that different modes of Korean Wave fandom have developed in
different Asian countries (e.g. not all of the Korean dramas and films that have
attracted huge audiences in East Asia emphasize the Confucian values that are
assumed to be pan-Asian). Still, East Asia in Korean Wave discourse is typically
rendered as a one-dimensional space, positioned as the antithesis to Western or
American culture. East Asia thus becomes an abstract container of Asian
values; the diversity of Asian cultures overall, let alone their varying degrees of
affiliation with Western influences or even varying degrees of acceptance/
popularity of the Korean Wave, remains unrecognized.
Second, East Asia is romanticized without concrete references or specific

schemes for facilitating reciprocal cultural flows. Despite its deeply embedded
views of East Asia, the discourse of the Korean Wave does not recommend
ways to promulgate mutual transactions of cultural products, construct a pan-
Asian cultural infrastructure, or generate East Asian identities. Instead, this
view (which is rooted in the translocal regionalist approach) tends to erase the
national and regional specificity of the Korean Wave by emphasizing global
influences upon Korean pop culture specifically and upon cosmopolitan
consumption in Asia overall. As the national characteristics of both producers
and consumers are rejected or ignored, historical differences and socio-
structural hierarchies in the region are also wiped out. As a result, ‘East Asia’
as used in current Korean Wave discourse is a glamorous but elusive term that
does not represent a concrete and indigenized sensibility.
Because Korean Wave discourse in Korea continues to trap ‘East Asia’
between the national and the global while conceptualizing it as either an empty
signifier or a profitable market, the term is still subsumed within the rubric of
globalism which is predicated on the idea of national interest (Cho & Lee
2009).8 Despite it seeming to focus on East Asia, Korea’s new Asianism has
become ‘regionalization without regionalism,’ an economic integration with-
out regional consciousness (Shin, G.-W. 2006).
Articulating East Asian pop culture amidst the Korean Wave

in Asia
The endemic popularity of Korean pop culture in Asia and the numerous
discourses associated with it in Korea indicate the possibility as well as the
urgency of fully articulating the term ‘East Asia.’ To this end, I attempt to
reframe the Korean Wave in relation to East Asia. By taking the Korean Wave
as the iteration of East Asian pop culture, this study figures out its cultural
geography, which is imagined through pan-Asian pop flows, as well as its
sensibilities, which are characterized by diverse spatialities and temporalities.
It is suggested that the first step toward articulating East Asian pop culture
is to interpret the Korean Wave as an iteration of it, rather than an invariant
repetition of Korean culture, a unique phenomenon, or a derivative substitute
for Western pop culture. Within the Korean Wave, ‘the same [East Asian pop
culture] is present, but not as an essence generating the merely accidental’
(Gilroy 1996, p. 23). To construe the Korean Wave as iteration necessitates
illustrating the relationship between sameness and differentiation that the
Korean Wave poses in East Asian pop culture (Gilroy 1993). When the Korean
Wave is recognized as something more than simple repetitions or a new
combination of cultural phenomena, it can contribute to the historicity as well
as the multiplicity of East Asian pop culture.
Consequently, any call to construe must attempt to historicize the Korean

Wave in relation to previous pan-Asian regional pop-culture phenomena. By
recognizing the Korean Wave as iteration, it becomes possible to constitute
any East Asian pop culture as an historic as well as substantial object (Chua
2004). Indeed, many Korean pop products have referred to previous regional
cultural products (particularly Hong Kong noir films in the 1980s and Japanese
dramas in the 1990s). Korean scholars are also commenting more frequently
on the influences of Hong Kong films and Japanese dramas on the Korean
Wave. By comparing Korean dramas and their counterparts in trendy Japanese
dramas, D.-H. Lee (2004) shows many similarities in their major elements
such as characters, settings, and core conflicts. Such recognition of the
influence of previous pan-Asian pop cultures upon the Korean Wave not only
acknowledges the historicity of East Asia pop culture overall, it also signals a
shift in how its internal references are being perceived.
In addition, joint production of films and remaking of regional dramas have
become fashionable trends in East Asian pop culture. Recent co-produced films
including The Promise (2005), Seven Swords (2005), and A Battle of Wits (2007)
combine narratives based on Chinese stories, the films of famous Asian
directors such as Chen Kaige and Tsui Hark, and Asian actors including Korean
celebrities such as Ahn Sung-ki, Jang Dong-gun, and Kim So-yeon. One recent
remake of a regional television drama, Boys over Flowers, originated from a
Japanese manga in the 1990s that has since been reworked into three ‘new’
dramas (in Taiwan, Japan, and Korea) and a couple of films. The Korean
version of Boys over Flowers (2009), which became a huge hit throughout Asia,
was aired in the Philippines, Singapore, Taiwan, Indonesia, and so on. Such
cross-references indicate that Asian producers are utilizing regional cultural
elements to attract regional audiences.9
The growth of pan-Asian pop flows, including the Korean Wave,
demonstrates that people in Asia are rejecting American pop culture as a
single or even primary reference point in favor of other Asian pop cultures. As
Chen (2001) contends, American mass cultural productions are only some
among a range of choices available to young people in Asia. Of course, it is not
intended to suggest that the hegemony of American pop culture in East Asia
has been disrupted. Rather, to highlight the growth of contact zones and
common subjects for conversation among people in East Asia. With the
recognition of these simple cultural shifts it becomes possible to see Korean
pop culture as a hybrid outcome of Asian as well as American pop cultural
influences. When one also considers the increasing number of internal
references within East Asian pop culture, the need for collaborative
examinations of the diverse ways that Asian cultural products are produced,
appropriated, and consumed becomes clear (Chua 2004, Shim 2005, Lee,
K.-H. 2006).
In order to comprehend the ‘changing same’ of the iteration, the term
‘national culture’ should be clarified in the context of East Asian pop culture.
Rather than focusing on the displacement of the national by the local, which
often becomes a deterritorial or amorphous space that easily loses its
concreteness (Calhoun 2002),10 it is contended that the Korean Wave as a
form of national culture is better suited to the configuration of East Asian
popular culture.
In the perspective of critical studies, the term ‘the national,’ once
habitually dismissed as negative, was associated with suppressive or even fascist
enforcement that erases the diversity and multiplicity of different locales.
Although this interpretation does contain some validity, negative views of the
national are so easily assumed within critical studies that close examination of
the term has become taboo. Thus, I prefer to use the term cautiously but
seriously as a way of constituting East Asian pop culture. By doing so, it is
possible to endorse the Korean Wave as an iteration of East Asian pop culture
for both its specificity and its temporality, as Hong Kong films and Japanese
trendy dramas have been.
Rather than identifying the Korean Wave as a (unique) source for the
facilitation of mutual exchanges of Asian pop cultures, it should be regarded as
a descendant of previous Asian pop cultures that will inevitably give way to yet
more new ones. Then, as Hae-Joang Cho predicts, in ‘a postcolonial Asia
constructed through the flows of popular culture . . . the term ‘‘Korean Wave’’
will be used together with the ‘‘Taiwanese Wave,’’ ‘‘Chinese Wave,’’
‘‘Vietnamese Wave,’’ [and] ‘‘Malaysian Wave’’’ (2005, p. 179). One example
of such a post-colonial manifestation is a Singaporean drama, The Little Nyonya,
which achieved extremely high ratings in Singapore in 20082009 and was also
aired in several other Southeast Asian countries. The Little Nyonya is often
compared to a Korean drama, Dae Jang-guem, in terms of its similar narratives
about the ordeals and successes of the heroines and its focus on culinary
activities, including extravagant cooking scenes. Because East Asian pop
culture can be recognized as an historic accumulation as well as a sign of the
simultaneous presences of different national cultures (Lee, M.-J. 2006),11 the
Korean Wave as a product of national culture contributes to both the overall
diversity and the specificities of East Asian popular culture. When more such
‘waves’ are recognized, people in Asia will have more contact zones and items
in and by which they can recognize the similarities and differences of their
diverse national cultures.
Although the Korean Wave retains ‘the same’ from other Asian pop
cultures it does not reify them; instead the Korean Wave is ‘recombinant,
ceaselessly reprocessed in the glow of its own dying embers’ (Gilroy 1996,
p. 23). Given the decreasing momentum and intensity of the Korean Wave in
several Asian countries in 2009, this turnaround might be received with
anticipation rather than dread or sadness. In any case, it is possible to
conceptualize East Asian pop culture as an historic and substantial entity that
consists of a series of independent but nonetheless linked regional pop
cultures.
Any interpretation of the Korean Wave as an iteration of East Asian pop

culture must include the geography of East Asia that the Korean Wave helps to
demarcate. How East Asia is delineated, where East is Asia located, and what
makes East Asia an imaginary community vis-à-vis East Asian pop culture must
all be determined. Attempts to articulate East Asian pop culture contributes to
mapping an alternative geography of East Asia, which is referred to as its
cultural geography. This cultural geography which is limited by topography
but not determined by it is imagined through pan-Asian pop flows,
materialized through actual encounters, and re-invented through shared
historic pasts and modernizing desires.
One element that enables such connectivity within this topography is a
modern form of contemporaneity based on the economic growth of Asian
countries and a related emphasis on middle-class Asians in urban settings.
The enthusiastic reception of Korean pop culture in Asia is encouraged by a
sense of coevality between Asian, non-Korean audiences and the Koreanness
represented in the Korean Wave (Iwabuchi 2002). Coevality indicates cultural

proximity between non-Korean Asian audiences and the drama-mediated
representation of Korea that they consume: for example, the modern, urban
elegance depicted in Korean dramas made Taiwanese audiences aware of
covalence between Korean and Taiwan (Kim, H. M. 2005a).
Both Korean and other Asian women were drawn to a Korean drama
series, My Lovely Sam Soon (2005), whose central character is a single,
overweight pastry chef in her late twenties without much of a social life.
Accordingly, H. M. Kim (2005b) contends that the regional popularity of
Korean drama has been made possible through the contemporaneity of desires
among Asian women, who have emerged as a new middle class. In turn, this
modern contemporaneity among consumers of Korean dramas, Japanese
television dramas, and the Korean Wave often enables Singapore to be
included under the banner of East Asia despite its official placement in
Southeast Asia. Because of the popularity of Korean pop culture and the
modern contemporaneity it represents in terms of modern, middle-class, or
even luxurious lifestyles, ‘Korea has become one of the ‘‘hottest’’ new travel
destinations for hallyu consumers’ from Singapore (Fu & Liew 2005, p. 217).
Shared pasts (including particular historic experiences) are another
element that constitutes the cultural geography of East Asia. In this geography,
‘shared pasts’ refers not only to colonial experiences but also to post-colonial
situations such as relationships with the West or Western modernity, and
economic conditions. An exemplary case is the exclusion of Australia, which
lacks such a shared past, from the cultural geography of East Asia. Australia,
which is ‘geographically a continent unto itself and the immediate neighbor of
Southeast Asia’ (Chua 2000, p. 20), has recently begun to pursue stronger
connections with Asia and become more Asian-oriented (Ang & Stratton
1996). However, despite seeming similarities in urban daily life and economic
growth, different modalities exist within the modern contemporaneities of
Australia and East Asia. In addition, Australia’s colonial and post-colonial

experiences have been so different and so unconnected with the colonial and
post-colonial experiences of East Asian countries that, as Chua (2000) points
out, it has been culturally and economically oriented toward Europe and
America. Australia therefore stands outside of a cultural geography based on
East Asian cultural affinity, and it is ‘clear that the distance between
‘‘Australia’’ and ‘‘Asia’’ is still very wide’ (Ang 2004, p. 305). Thus it is
not surprising that Australia has not participated in pan-Asian cultural flows, or
that scholarship on pan-Asian pop culture and consumption either ignores
Australia or treats it differently (Iwabuchi 2004, Chua 2000).
Proposed boundaries for the cultural geography of East Asia also help us to
overcome another bias in the Western-oriented perspective on East Asia, in
which the region has been regarded as both a unilateral and a well-fixed place.
While the Korean Wave fosters connectivity within East Asian cultural
geography, the diversity of its fandoms demonstrates that cultural geography is
neither a monolithic nor a reified entity. For example, the ways that Korean
pop culture is consumed differ widely from country to country. In Japan the
television melodrama (e.g. Winter Sonata) has been the most popular genre
whereas in China, K-pops and dance groups have been the most popular. In
Taiwan and Hong Kong, historic television dramas such as Dae Jang-guem have
been the hottest genre: Dae Jang-guem is based ‘on the real historical figure
Jang-guem . . . who became the first female head physician to the Kin in the
patriarchal Confusion society of the Chosun Dynasty of Korea in the mid-
sixteenth century’ (Kim, S.-J. 2009, p. 739). By examining newspaper
discourses on Dae Jang-guem in several Asian countries, S.-J. Kim (2009) has
revealed significant diversity among local receptions of the Korean Wave and
the social and cultural meanings associated with it. According to Kim, China
and Hong Kong define Dae Jang-guem ‘as a woman’s success story highlighting
her perseverance and humanity’ which ‘connects her with Confucian values
and culture,’ while Korean news articles regard the heroine as a challenge to
‘the traditional image attitude as rooted in Confucian culture,’ and Japanese
newspapers ‘treat Dae Jang-guem as a kind of resource with which Japanese fans
can expand their tastes and activities in everyday life’ (Kim, S.-J. 2009,
pp. 746747). The striking differences among these interpretations further
indicate the unevenness of the cultural geography of the region and its constant
reformulation via pop culture that may have originated in one country (in this
case, Korea) but are embraced as regional (i.e. East Asian).
Interestingly, Korea’s historically uncertain role in East Asia furthers the
multiplicity of its cultural geography. Its entry onto the global stage has been
quite recent, for example in comparison to Japan, which since the 1940s has
played a mediating cultural role in which it ‘unambiguously exists outside of
the cultural imaginary of ‘‘Asia’’’ (Iwabuchi 2002, p. 7) in the triangular
configuration of ‘East-AsiaJapanthe West’ (Otake & Hosokawa 2005).12
The ambiguity of Korea’s position, by contrast, can be summarized as
an ‘AsiaKoreaJapan’ triad. W.-J. Ryoo suggests that ‘South Korea’s

‘‘in-between’’ stance eases its connection with many Asian neighbors’ (2009,
p. 146), a role that is confirmed by the nostalgia evoked by Korean pop culture
among Japanese audiences, particularly middle-aged women (Hirata 2005).
Hallyu’s depictions of family roles, heroic characters, and urban landscapes
supply Japanese audiences with a connection to a slightly different but
nonetheless meaningful past that is no longer salient in fashionable Japanese
dramas.
At the same time, however, Korean pop culture heralds the latest trends in
China, Vietnam, and Thailand by adding modern, luxurious images of Korean
brands in both its shows and commercials, which routinely feature the wave’s
biggest stars. According to Chua (2004), countries anticipating the wave or
newly experiencing it, such as Singapore, Taiwan, and Hong Kong, regard it as
a tangible, conceivable phenomenon (possibly because the latter two may be
said to occupy, in terms of production and export capacity, the same in-
between position as the Korean cultural industry). Positioned in a mediating

role within the region’s cultural geography, the Korean Wave functions as a
modern, popular cultural form that simultaneously evokes both sameness and
difference among contemporaneous ‘Asian’ modernities (Iwabuchi 2004).
The recurrent, burgeoning flows of East Asian pop culture have given new
substance to the ambiguous imaginary space of Asia. As an iteration of East
Asian pop culture, the Korean Wave helps people across the continent
generate a sense of connectivity and openness within a specific cultural
geography. The wave provides ‘new contact zones within which to find an
interest in neighboring Asian countries and to reappraise those who have been
‘‘othered’’ for such a long time in modern Asian history’ (Cho, U. 2005,
p. 145). Remarkably, although this cultural geography is still under
construction, it is multifaceted, asymmetric, and diverse. Therefore, it is
believed that the cultural geography of East Asia, envisaged through these
growing pan-Asian cultural flows, is constituted not as a reified, fixed site, but
as a variable space of both integration and contestation.
The next step in constituting East Asian pop culture is to clarify the
emerging identities, consciousnesses, and mentalities within its cultural
geography. The notion of structures of feeling (Williams 1977) proves useful
in elucidating these elements, which are referred to as East Asian sensibilities,
amidst the Korean Wave. Following Williams’s insight, East Asian sensibilities
can be interpreted as emerging structures of feeling within the cultural
geography of the region that encompass ‘meanings and values as they are
actively lived and felt’ as well as ‘a social experience which is still in process,
often indeed not yet recognized as social but taken to be private, idiosyncratic,
and even isolating’ (p. 132).13 This idea of East Asian 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.
The emergence of East Asian sensibilities is not solely the result of the
Korean Wave but rather a set of converging historic consequences comprised
of different kinds of pan-Asian pop cultures that are increasingly exposed to
each other, both directly and indirectly, within the cultural geography.
Citizens of different nations who were once not only widely separated but also
indifferent to each other now enjoy the same pop cultures; in turn, both the
cultural content and the experience of consuming it enable them to know each
other better and even to imagine each other’s communities (Anderson 1983).
East Asian pop culture promotes mutual knowledge across distance, extends
this knowledge across the countries in the cultural geography (During 2000),
and supplies the people of those countries with common characteristics such as
fanhood and consumerism (by virtue of consuming of the same circulated
cultural products).
Undoubtedly, these increasing cultural flows within the cultural geography
of East Asia have become sources for articulating new notions of Asian cultural
commonality, difference, and asymmetry. To grasp these emerging structures

of feeling, which are being constituted through East Asian pop culture within
the cultural geography of East Asia, it is important to note two salient features
of East Asian sensibilities: its asymmetric but synchronous spatialities and its
uneven but simultaneous temporalities.
First, East Asian sensibilities reflect spatialities among the national, the
regional, and the global that are asymmetric but synchronous in that they
reveal a temporal consciousness that reflects an ongoing, uneven competition
among national cultures, regional desires for the modern, and the influence of
global modernity.
The authenticity of Korean pop culture, as a form of national culture that
has emerged under global influence, is a heavily discussed topic in the
discourse of the Korean Wave. While some critics claim that the unique
Koreanness in Korean pop culture is the primary reason for its regional
popularity, others are skeptical of the notion of Koreanness and its alleged
appeal to regional audiences. The first viewpoint, which has been ubiquitous in
Korean mass media, credits the wave’s representation of regional specificity
(Confucian values) within global (Western) formats, whereas the latter
evaluates Korean pop culture as merely an imitation of Western culture or at
the very least as a hybrid of global and local products (Choi 2008, Ryoo 2009).
This hybrid rationale does acknowledge the multiple spatialities of cultural
products. However, because it is still filtered through a dichotomist lens that
differentiates between the national and the global or the regional and the
global, it homogenizes diverse and even contradictory materializations of East
Asian sensibilities into a consequence of American pop culture or Euro-
American modernity without illustrating their multiplicity or evolution.14
Under this rationale, it is impossible to conceptualize East Asian sensibilities
without imposing Eurocentrism or the universality of Euro-American
modernity (Dirlik 2000).15
More useful than the hybrid rationale is a description of East Asian

sensibilities that identifies them as embodying a ‘double inscription’ in which
the global cultural, always and already present in national and regional cultures
(Hall 1996), dissolves their previously demarcated borders (Stoler & Cooper
1997).16 Double inscription refers to the current saturation of Asian pop
culture and everyday life in general with American pop culture; in turn,
American pop culture is integrated into the pop culture of economically
developed Asian countries (Cho & Chua 2009). In films, the ‘Korean
blockbuster’ exemplifies this doubly inscribed condition: the first such film,
Shiri (1999), was made in the style of Hollywood action films (i.e. including
big-budget, melodramatic elements), but presents a nationally sensitive plot
(Korean unification) and also evokes the visual style of Hong Kong action
cinema.17
Driven by the Korean Wave, Broadway-style musicals are also finding
commercial success in Korea and recognition in Asia: The Last Empress
(a Korean musical that premiered in 1995) was the first in this genre.18 In her
examination of the production’s development and the musical itself, H. Lee
contends that ‘Broadway simultaneously represent[s] the desire to imitate
a chief competitor and a foreign rival to be conquered by an authentic Korean
product’ (2010, p. 58). The logic underlying the concept of the ‘Korean
blockbuster’ or ‘Broadway-style (Korean) musical’ illuminates the complex
combination of national elements and Western formats in Korean pop culture.
However, this combination must be understood as a set of spatialities that are
asymmetric but nonetheless synchronous: America (symbolized by Hollywood
and Broadway) still functions as the object to be imitated and Korean-ness
(both in terms of fictionalized national history and traditional dramatic
elements) is an efficient tool with which to achieve both regional and global
success.
As a pan-Asian cultural trend, the Korean Wave shows that global culture
is already embedded in regional tastes; its regional appeal has emerged not
because it presents traditional or Confucian elements as uniquely Korean, but
rather because it reflects the intricate connections among different and uneven
Asian sensibilities. As Ching (1998) observed, by construing this asymmetric
but synchronous relationship among national, regional, and global cultures,
East Asian sensibities are defined through the substantiality of East Asian pop
culture and the cultural geography of East Asia not through negation (i.e. by
what the West is not). Thus, the asymmetric but synchronous spatialities
expressed in the Korean Wave indicate that East Asian sensibilities are neither
identifiable nor incommensurate with Euro-American modernity. Instead, East
Asian sensibilities, already and always inscribed by global modernity, have been
historically cultivated and generated by the national and by regional specifics.
Like the West, East Asia has no simple origins, nor can its histories be gathered
into a singular narrative (Mitchell 2000).
Second, East Asia’s sensibilities reflect uneven but simultaneous tempor-

alities among past, present, and future within its cultural geography. Because
many of its countries have accomplished rapid industrialization, the region is
emerging as an important part of the global economy wherein state-driven
economic policies (based on, for example, a [post-]developmental state model)
not only orchestrate markets and promote the export of domestic companies
(Cho, H.-Y. 2000), but wherein pro-developmental regimes also impose
sudden shifts upon culture and everyday life as well as economics (Cho,
Y. 2008a). During rapid modernization, in the name of preserving tradition,
the past is often re-invented and re-embedded in the present in the form of
pop culture.
In their academic discourse, Korean scholars tend to advocate a kind of
Asian-value thesis that credits the success of Korean pop culture in Asia to
shrewd representations of traditional values (Confucianism, family bonds,
patriarchy, pure love, filial piety, etc.) via Western plots set in modern, urban
surroundings that involve youthful characters. They suggest that this refined
setting of Asian values within Western frames appeals to a wide variety of
regional audiences. This thesis, which attempts to define the Korean Wave as a
stronghold of traditional values against corrosive Western culture, states that
the traditional elements in Korean pop culture enable regional audiences to
relate to the wave more easily. Its lack of concrete examples limits the Asian-
value thesis to more of an assumption than theory; however, researchers have
noted a few exceptions. Among Korean dramas, Son and Yang (2006) observe
that trendy shows with few Confucian elements are more popular with
regional audiences than more traditional shows. It is considered that the Asian-
value thesis is, at least, wrong about the Korean Wave, and at most is
predicated on a dichotomist lens between the national/regional and the global.
As a way of explicating the uneven temporalities, it is suggested that
regional audiences recognize a ‘defamiliarized intimacy’ in the Confucian
values embedded in Korean pop culture.19 For example, regional audiences
viscerally recognize the Confucian themes in Korean television dramas.
Nonetheless, such recognition does not mean that the Confucian ethos is an
integral part of their daily lives, that they feel strongly connected to it, or that
it appeals to them. In addition, it seems that regional audiences are often
surprised and intrigued to find such strong Confucian characteristics in Korean
pop culture. Along with Chua (2004), it is possible that despite their natural,
instant sense of familiarity with these products, regional audiences also
experience some alienation when they see the wave’s Confucian elements
embedded in Western formats, demonstrating Western values.20 At the same
time, however, this co-existence of uneven modalities within Korean pop
culture elicits feelings of unexpected pleasure and empathy from regional
audiences.
The combination of uneven temporalities is neither unprecedented nor
unique in the history of East Asian pop culture. In his analysis of pan-Asian
fandom of Japanese drama, Iwabuchi (2002) introduces the idea of familiar

difference, which embraces the condensed co-existence of many temporalities
as well as cultures in a shared space. As such, in East Asian pop culture,
invented pasts are positioned as the quintessential element of regional
commonality. This co-existence of uneven temporalities within the Korean
Wave also indicates the swift, almost compressed arrival of modernity that
most East Asian countries have recently undergone and to which they are still
struggling to adjust (Song 2006, p. 51).21 Moreover, these uneven
temporalities indicate that the experiences of East Asian countries have been
relatively coeval in terms of capitalist economic development. Enthusiastic
popular reception of regional pop products in Asia signals that ‘Asians from
different locations may share a similar orientation towards capitalist-
consumerist modernity’ (Chua 2008, p. 81), one that emphasizes urban,
middle-class, consumerist lifestyles. Here, past and present are not necessarily
successive but rather are simultaneously produced or co-exist as uneven
temporalities (Harootunian 2004). Within East Asian pop culture, thus, East
Asian sensibilities show the same pattern of juxtaposed sameness and
difference.
Conclusion
By examining the Korean Wave and its discourses in Korea, it has been
attempted to theoretically refine the idea of East Asian pop culture, offer a
nuanced understanding of East Asia, and unveil some of the contradictions and
ambivalence articulated in the discursive construction of the region. Instead of
designating the term ‘East Asia’ either as an empty signifier or a profitable
market, the Korean Wave or East Asian pop culture in general has been
utilized as a venue for imagining an alternative version of a place, East Asia. To
this end, a cultural geography of East Asia is proposed that is neither a
unilateral nor fixed topography but rather is constantly re-imagined and
experienced through pan-Asian cultural flows. In addition, it is emphasized
that East Asian pop culture helps to illuminate current structures of feeling in
East Asia, which are referred to as East Asian sensibilities; these reflect the
contested co-existence of diverse spatialites and temporalities. When
the Korean Wave is framed as the iteration of East Asian pop culture, the
phenomenon not only implies the complex, dynamic potency of living memory
among regional audiences, it also demonstrates the multiplicity and mutability
of their sensibilities, which are always unfinished, always being made within
the cultural geography of East Asia (Gilroy 1993, 1996).
Collaborative research efforts are essential for the discursive construction
of East Asian pop culture as an object of analysis (Chua 2004). Within the
increasing regional cultural flows, some results of collaborative work in
pan-Asian pop cultures are already apparent. For example, collaborative as

well as comparative approaches to the Korean Wave have been published or
being prepared (Chua & Iwabuch 2008, Kim, S.-J. 2009, Kim, D.-K & Kim,
M.-S. forthcoming).22 In the hope that this work will inspire further research
into East Asian pop culture, it is suggested that historicizing the study of East
Asian pop culture and theorizing Asian sensibilities in East Asian pop culture
will be of prime importance.
East Asian pop culture needs more collaborative work, both historically
and horizontally. Because the Korean Wave is not an utterly new or unique
phenomenon, research that connects the histories of various pan-Asian pop
cultures is needed, beginning with the early twentieth century when the idea of
modern culture first began to be circulated in East Asia. Because the definitions
of pop cultures have always evolved, current literature, theater, magazines,
and even radio would be relevant to the discussion. An historic approach,
however, should be accompanied by empirical research that illustrates how

East Asian pop culture is materialized in various regional spaces and timelines.
Collaborations such as these would enable multigenerational experts across
Asia to produce substantial, cumulative investigations.
In addition, collaborative projects could substantially further the process of
theorizing Asian sensibilities in East Asian pop culture. It is imperative to place
the emerging identities, consciousnesses, and mentalities that are always under
construction as regional pop cultures are shared and consumed within
specifically East Asian contexts. Theoretical endeavors that focus on gathering
information and producing narratives can also illuminate the changing
sensibilities in Asia. For example, ‘not-yet-now’ thinking, still deeply
embedded in East Asian pop culture, reflects a desire for ‘the future’ that
blends nostalgia for the past (which is invested with the characteristic of stasis)
with present desires for modernity. Theorizing the emerging sensibilities
within East Asian pop culture will be useful both in reconfiguring the cultural
geography of the region and in explicating East Asian modernities.
Although it is essential to further our understanding of the complex
entanglement of uneven modernities in East Asian pop culture, precise
definitions of East Asian identities and sensibilities remain empirical questions
for each country within the region’s cultural geography. Not only will
more theoretical and empirical articulation of East Asian pop culture generate
further discussion and knowledge about East Asian modernities (and vice
versa), the idea of East Asian pop culture in and of itself has much to
contribute to current discussions of alternative and multiple modernities in the
global era. The effort required to analyze and theorize the complexity of East
Asian pop culture ultimately helps us imagine East Asian modernities as
idiosyncratic phenomena, neither identifiable nor incommensurate with
American and European modernities.
Acknowledgements
This work was supported by Hankuk University of Foreign Studies Research

Fund of 2010. I appreciate Dr. Yvonne Sung-Sheng Chang and Dr. Hyunjung
Lee for their comments for this study.
Notes
1 See the special edition about Bandung/Third Worldism of Inter-Asia Cultural

Studies, vol. 6, no. 3 (2005).
2 In 1997 What is Love All About? became the first foreign highest-rated
program, with a 16.6% audience share (Lee, H.-W. 2006, p. 77).
3 This syndrome endows Yong-Jun Bae with a new title, Yonsama, loosely
translated in Japanese as Beloved and Respected Yong.
4 According to Y.-H. Shin (2006, p. 15), the grosses for exporting Korean
television programs were $13 million in 2000, $19 million in 2001,
$28 million in 2002, $42 million in 2003, $71 million in 2004, and more
than $100 million (projected) in 2005.
5 In 1995, before the beginning of the Korean Wave, the Korean government
established the Cultural Industry Bureau within the Ministry of Culture and
Sport and also offered tax breaks for film production in order to entice big
local conglomerates (Shim 2006)
6 Several Korean scholars attempt to differentiate media and academic
discourse on the Korean Wave. Han Cho (2005) names three perspectives:
cultural nationalist, neo-liberal, and post-commercial/post-colonial. In a
similar way, K.-H. Lee (2006) groups the discourses into three positions:
neo-liberal, cultural nationalist, and culturalist. S.-J. Kim (2009) char-
acterizes research on the Korean Wave into two approaches: capitalist and
cultural. My categories are similar to those suggested by Han Cho and K.-H.
Lee; however, I also attempt to refine the third approach in relation to the
idea of East Asia.
7 Keane (2006) points out that (South) Korea best illustrates a rapid growth
development path: the Korean government invested in high bandwidth
infrastructure and in some East Asian markets strives to exploit the lure of
Korean culture as an alternative to exported Japanese culture.
8 In their examination of the 2002 Korea Japan World Cup match, Cho et al.
(2009) reveal that the social spectacle of the World Cup exemplifies the
combination of Korea’s global desires and national intent.
9 A similar trend has begun in academia. For example, Inter-Asia Cultural
Studies is devoted to the idea that Asian cultural studies scholars might
actually speak to each other rather than primarily to the West (Cho, Y.
2008b).
10 Calhoun (2002) warns that the fear of bad nationalism leads to the hope that
relatively thin identities will predominate.
11 In the discussion of the struggle to establish unique identities in East Asia,
R. M. Lee (2006) also proposes that multiple modernities are potentially
nationalistic.
12 Otake and Hosokawa (2005) investigate the triangulated relationship of
Japan, the West, and ‘East Asia’ (excluding Japan) with respect to the
phenomenon of ‘global karaoke.’
13 The term ‘structures of feeling’ acknowledges ‘the tension between the
received interpretation and practical experience,’ and a kind of feeling and
thinking that are ‘social and material, but each in an embryonic phase before
it can become fully articulate and defined exchange’ (Williams 1977,
pp. 130 131).
14 For a discussion of the universality of Western modernity, see Kuan-hsing
Chen (1996), Chua (1999), and Dirlik (2000).
15 As Dirlik (2000) has observed, Eurocentrism is compelling because of its

future as a constituent of most people’s hybridities.
16 Stoler and Cooper (1997) suggest that the boundary of included/excluded is
no longer coterminous with the distinction between metropole and colony.
17 Shiri was a critical and financial success not only in Korea but also in other
Asian markets (particularly Hong Kong).
18 Non-verbal performances entitled Nanta (1997) and Jump (2002) have been
economically successful both domestically and internationally (Lee, H.-J.
2010).
19 In a similar way, Choi suggests that ‘such ‘‘foreign-yet-alike’’ traits have
enhanced Korean media’s aesthetic appeal to close cultural, social and
political proximity’ (2008, p. 151).
20 Chua (2004) suggests that the similarities of young, urban, middle-class
consumer lifestyles and a projection of ‘Asian-ness’ facilitate audience
identification across East Asia.
21 In her analysis of social issues during the International Monetary Fund (IMF)
crisis, Song mentions that the fragility of South Korean society ‘was rooted
in long-standing latent issues connected with compressed modernity and
rapid industrialization’ (2006, p. 51).
22 As of this writing, an anthology titled Hallyu: Korean Pop Culture Waves in Asia
and Beyond is being prepared for the publication by D-Kyun Kim and
Min-Sun Kim.
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Notes on Contributors
Online publication date: 11 April 2011
To cite this Article (2011) 'Notes on Contributors', Cultural Studies, 25: 3, 465 — 467
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Notes on Contributors
Juan Ricardo Aparicio, Assistant Professor, Department of Languages and

Sociocultural Studies, Universidad de los Andes, Bogotá, Colombia. He
received his PhD in anthropology from the University of North Carolina at
Chapel Hill in 2010. His dissertation explored the circulation and actualization
of the human rights and humanitarian regimes along a network that linked
international organizations with grass-root communities in Colombia. His
Downloaded By: [2007-2008 Nanyang Technological University] At: 16:52 25 April 2011
current research areas are violence, transitional or pos-conflict scenarios,

displacement, geopolitics of knowledge and the state.
Justin Armstrong is a doctoral candidate in cultural anthropology at

McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada. He is about to defend his
dissertation, entitled ‘Lives once lived: ethnography and sense of place in the
abandoned and isolated spaces of North America’ which he is in the process of
turning into a book. His areas of interest include visual anthropology,
experimental ethnography, Situationism, cultural geography, and the anthro-
pology of memory. Born in Saskatchewan, he now lives in Boston,
Massachusetts.
Christine Buzinde is an Assistant Professor in the Department of

Recreation, Park and Tourism Management at Penn State University. Her
research interests focus on representational politics and endogenous tourism
development within marginalized communities.
Younghan Cho is an Assistant Professor at Hankuk University of Foreign

Studies (Seoul, South Korea), where he teaches Korean society and culture. He
was born in Seoul, South Korea. After earning his MA degree at Seoul National
University, he moved to the USA to pursue his doctoral degree in
Communications Studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
In 2007, he completed his dissertation under the advice of Dr. Lawrence
Grossberg. He was a postdoctoral fellow in the Asia Research Institute at
National University of Singapore in 20082010. Cho’s major research is on
nationalism, sports, media, and popular culture, and current projects include
East Asian pop culture, Colonial Modernity in East Asia, and theorization on
‘blog-media.’ Recent publications have appeared in numerous journals,
including Inter-Asian Cultural Studies (2008) and Media, Culture & Society (2009).
Alejandro Grimson has a PhD in Anthropology (Universidad de Brasilia), is

researcher of CONICET and Full Professor at the Universidad Nacional de San
Cultural Studies Vol. 25, No. 3 May 2011, pp. 465467
ISSN 0950-2386 print/ISSN 1466-4348 online – 2011 Taylor & Francis
http://www.tandf.co.uk/journals DOI: 10.1080/09502386.2011.574420
Martı́n (Argentina). He works on migration, border areas, social movements,

identity and cultural politics. His main books are: On Argentina and the Southern
Cone (Routledge), La nación en sus lı´mites (Gedisa), Relatos de la diferencia y la
igualdad (Eudeba). He was coordinator of the CLACSO Working Group on
Culture and Power.
Charles R. Hale is Professor in the Departments of Anthropology and

African Diaspora Studies. He is author of Resistance and Contradiction: Miskitu
Indians and the Nicaraguan State, 18941987 (Stanford, 1994); and of ‘‘Más que
un indio . . .’’ Racial Ambivalence and Neoliberal Multiculturalism in Guatemala
(SAR, 2006); editor of the volume, Engaging Contradictions: Theory, Politics and
Methods of Activist Scholarship (UC Press); and author of numerous articles on

identity politics, racism, neoliberalism and resistance among indigenous and
afro-descendant peoples of Latin America. He is President of the Latin
American Studies Association, April 2006 through October 2007, and began a
five year term as Director of the Teresa Lozano Long Institute of Latin
American Studies in September 2009.
Emma Kowal is a cultural anthropologist of white anti-racism and Indigenous

governance in Australia. She is the co-editor of Moving Anthropology: Critical
Indigenous Studies (2006) and her work has been published in American
Anthropologist, Social Science and Medicine, The Asia Pacific Journal of Anthropology
and in national and international medical journals. She is currently a National
Health and Medical Research Council Research Fellow in Anthropology at the
University of Melbourne (Grant no. 454813).
Iyunolu Osagie is an Associate Professor in the Department of English at

Penn State University. Her research interests include transnational and black
diaspora literature, Third World women’s literatures, contemporary slavery
and collective memory scholarship.
Michele Rapoport is a PhD student at the Cohn Institute for the History
and Philosophy of Science and Ideas and the School of Philosophy at the Tel
Aviv University, Israel. She is writing her thesis on the dialectical relationship
between man and technology within the domestic setting, and holds a Masters
Degree in Architecture (M.Arch) and a Bachelors Degree in English Literature.
Eduardo Restrepo is Associate Professor at the Institute for Social and

Cultural Studies, Pensar, Universidad Javeriana in Bogota, Colombia. His
research interests are social and cultural contemporary theory, Afro-
descendants in Latin America, and geo-politics of knowledge production. He
co-edited the translated Spanish volume of Stuart Hall’s works and is a member
of CLACSO’s Latin American Network of Cultural and Political Graduate
Studies Programs.
NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS 467
Cristina Rojas, Professor, Norman Paterson School of International Affairs,

Carleton University. Research focuses on citizenship, indigenous peoples’
knowledges and decolonizing development. Her most recent books are Elusive
Peace. International, National and Local Dimensions of Conflict in Colombia (2005)
co-editor; and Civilization and Violence. Regimes of Representation in Nineteenth
Century Colombia (2002). Her articles have been published in Globalizations,
Third World Quarterly, Canadian Journal of Development Studies, Review of
International Political Economy and Alternatives.
David Slater is a Professor in the Department of Geography at Loughborough

University, UK. His most recent book is Geopolitics and the Post-Colonial (2004)
and recent articles include ‘Rethinking the imperial difference’ (Third World
Quarterly 2010) and ‘Exporting imperial democracy’ (Human Geography 2009).
He has taught in universities in Brazil, Canada, Mexico, the Netherlands, Peru,
Spain, Sri Lanka, Tanzania, the UK and the USA. His current research focuses
on imperiality and the geopolitical asymmetries of power.
Piotr M. Szpunar, Annenberg School for Communication at the University

of Pennsylvania, 3620 Walnut Street, Philadelphia, PA 19104, USA. Email:
pszpunar@asc.upenn.edu.
Benzi Zhang is Professor in English and Comparative Literature at the

Chinese University of Hong Kong. He has published extensively on cultural
studies, gender studies, and comparative literature.
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DESPERATELY SEEKING EAST ASIA

Introduction: the Korean Wave in Asia

profound consideration of the term ‘East Asia’ is both historically and

The Korean Wave and its discourses in Korea

$2 billion effect in exports that includes tourism to Korea (Shim 2006).3 In

Second, East Asia is romanticized without concrete references or specific

Articulating East Asian pop culture amidst the Korean Wave

Consequently, any call to construe must attempt to historicize the Korean

Any interpretation of the Korean Wave as an iteration of East Asian pop

represented in the Korean Wave (Iwabuchi 2002). Coevality indicates cultural

Australia and East Asia. In addition, Australia’s colonial and post-colonial

an ‘AsiaKoreaJapan’ triad. W.-J. Ryoo suggests that ‘South Korea’s

between position as the Korean cultural industry). Positioned in a mediating

commonality, difference, and asymmetry. To grasp these emerging structures

More useful than the hybrid rationale is a description of East Asian

Second, East Asia’s sensibilities reflect uneven but simultaneous tempor-

fandom of Japanese drama, Iwabuchi (2002) introduces the idea of familiar

pan-Asian pop cultures are already apparent. For example, collaborative as

however, should be accompanied by empirical research that illustrates how

This work was supported by Hankuk University of Foreign Studies Research

1 See the special edition about Bandung/Third Worldism of Inter-Asia Cultural

15 As Dirlik (2000) has observed, Eurocentrism is compelling because of its

Ang, I. (2004) ‘The cultural intimacy of TV drama’, in Feeling Asian Modernities:

K.-H. Chen, New York, Routledge, pp. 65 86.

Chua, B. H. (2000) ‘Consuming Asians: ideas and issues’, in Consumption in Asia,

Mitchell, T. (2000) ‘The stage of modernity’, in Questions of Modernity, ed.

Shin, G.-W. (2006) ‘Asianism in Korea’s politics of identity’, Inter-Asia Cultural

Online publication date: 11 April 2011

PLEASE SCROLL DOWN FOR ARTICLE

Full terms and conditions of use: http://www.informaworld.com/terms-and-conditions-of-access.pdf

Juan Ricardo Aparicio, Assistant Professor, Department of Languages and

current research areas are violence, transitional or pos-conflict scenarios,

Justin Armstrong is a doctoral candidate in cultural anthropology at

Christine Buzinde is an Assistant Professor in the Department of

Younghan Cho is an Assistant Professor at Hankuk University of Foreign

Alejandro Grimson has a PhD in Anthropology (Universidad de Brasilia), is

Martı́n (Argentina). He works on migration, border areas, social movements,

Charles R. Hale is Professor in the Departments of Anthropology and

Methods of Activist Scholarship (UC Press); and author of numerous articles on

Emma Kowal is a cultural anthropologist of white anti-racism and Indigenous

Iyunolu Osagie is an Associate Professor in the Department of English at

Eduardo Restrepo is Associate Professor at the Institute for Social and

Cristina Rojas, Professor, Norman Paterson School of International Affairs,

David Slater is a Professor in the Department of Geography at Loughborough

Piotr M. Szpunar, Annenberg School for Communication at the University

Benzi Zhang is Professor in English and Comparative Literature at the

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