Emerging Sub-cultural Imperialism?! The Glocalized Production and Circulation of Korean Pop Music

IIAS Lunch Lecture by Dr. Ming-Tsung LEE 李 明璁

This presentation is firstly going to trace the historical roots of the recent Korean Pop Music (K-Pop) and depict how K-Pop and Korean TV dramas collaborated together and then push the “Korean Wave” worldwide. Meanwhile, through the interviews (in Seoul) to the K-Pop circle and the training institutes for those stars-to-be, I will reveal the K-Pop industries’ globalized strategies. I will also discuss about the local circulation and consumption of K-Pop. By means of the analysis of the bestselling songs/music videos, as well as the fieldwork to cross-cultural fans’ communities of the most popular groups “Super Junior” and “Girls’ Generation”, I will show how the fandom practices negotiate with the marketing control. Finally, I will try to apply this transnational/empirical study to benefit an important theoretical debate: is the so-called “Korean Wave” a counterexample of the classic concept of cultural imperialism to prove the malfunction of “core-periphery” model? Or actually, this just means a successful copy of (American) cultural imperialism for modern Korea, an emerging sub-cultural imperialism under the vertical integration of transnational capital?

Dr. Ming-Tsung LEE 李 明璁

Assistant Professor in the Department of Sociology, National Taiwan University, obtained his Ph.D. in Social Anthropology at King’s College, University of Cambridge, and once served as a visiting researcher in the International Christian University in Tokyo. In the NTU, he teaches Social Psychology, Sociology of Consumption, Sociology of Music and Visual Sociology. Dr. Lee’s research interests include: Material/Popular Culture, Media and Senses, Urban Ethnography, Global-local identities, East-Asian Modernities, etc. His publication includes a book (Thing-ology, 2009, in Chinese) about material culture and daily life and several articles in English/Chinese/Japanese in various journals and volumes. Besides, Dr. Lee served as the Deputy President of Amnesty International (AI) Taiwan Headquarter during 2008-2010, and the Standing Director of Cultural Studies Association (CSA) from 2011 till now, as well as joined to launch a film magazine entitled “Cue” and served as its Chief Editor in 2010.

Every third Wednesday of the month one of the IIAS researchers will present his/her work-in-progress in an informal setting to their colleagues and other interested attendees, followed by a lunch provided by IIAS. These lunch lectures are organized to give the research community the opportunity to freely discuss ongoing research and to exchange thoughts.

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Lunch is provided. Please register at iias@iias.nl