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Cases and Subversions of Transnational K-pop Stars and the Tricky Demands of Capital

By Jessica Ho

In the article “Korean-Wave celebrities between global capital and regional nationalisms,” Olga Fedorenko argues that the export-oriented K-pop industry is constantly placing at odds domestic nationalism, foreign appeal, and capital demands.

Ji-Hyun Ahn and Tien-wen Lin’s “The politics of apology: The ‘Tzuyu Scandal’ and transnational dynamics of K-pop” draws upon the “Tzuyu Incident” to argue the point of unequal power dynamics among consumers, artists, and companies. Ahn and Lin detail a case wherein then-16 year old member Tzuyu of the girl group TWICE was placed in the midst of a geopolitical internet war between Chinese and Taiwanese netizens.

A more recent example of One China controversy resurfacing actually presents classic patterns as well as an interesting subversion to classic transnationalist controversy cases. Amidst protests in Hong Kong, many Chinese idols of South Korean idol groups have demonstrated support for mainland China.

JYP’s boy group GOT7 has a very popular member from Hong Kong, Jackson Wang, who actively promotes in China as well as Korea. Most recently, Wang has supported a One China policy stance, siding with Beijing. 

According to a Billboard article, fans are disappointed but not suprised by this stance. Erika Ng, a fan of Wang from Hong Kong in her mid-20s, noted, “[Wang] values the China market more than the Hong Kong market.” In his early career, Wang would proudly tout his hometown, carrying around a Hong Kong flag and wearing a hat with the Hong Kong’s symbolic Bauhinia Blakeana flower. However, more recently, Wang has held a Chinese flag during his past concert tour and also wore a hoodie with the China flag on it in his music video.

In this case, underneath what superficially looks like country allegiance as opposed to hometown allegiance, lies exactly the sentiment that Wang’s fan Ng echoed: idols must follow the money. Supporting Hong Kong would only potentially support personal desires, as theres very little potential market gain for such an action.

In contrast to Wang’s case, SM Entertainment idol group EXO’s Chinese member Lay actually threatened to draw out of his contract deal with American luxury fashion house Calvin Klein after the brand had recognized Hong Kong and Taiwan as independent entities.

Lay also cancelled a lucrative partnership with Samsung Electronics in South Korea, citing the corporation as damaging to China’s “sovereignty and territorial integrity.” This was in response to the claim that his One China stance violated Samsung’s model contract.

This recent case presents an interesting subversion of the artist-company-capital dynamic. As a transnational star with an immense “body price” in China, Lay is able to make demands of corporations, rather than the other way around.

As opposed to the Tzuyu case presented by Ahn and Lin, where an idol and company were required to respond to the negative capital effects of fan backlash, Lay’s case actually demonstrates artist action without explicit fan prompt, and even potentially at odds with company capital interest. In the case of an extremely stable Chinese idol promoting in his home country rather than with EXO in Korea, nationalism serves Lay much better than postcolonial transnationalism.

Of course one could read this is as either Lay at the apex of this power dynamic, or merely as a puppet of the true keyholders of capital power, which is the largest market of fans: Chinese fans. With the knowledge of what his national allegiance implies, perhaps Lay’s actions demonstrate indirect capital power of fans rather than true artist power.

This is the argument used by Lay’s defenders, who disagree with his politics, but try to reconcile their desire to remain as fans.

This falls in line with Federenko’s nod to the idea of how fans reconcile transnational dysphoria:

“Particularly relevant for my study is Tsai’s (2007, 2008) insightful analysis of how fans’ affective investments in transborder celebrities have compelled those fans to negotiate their fandom loyalties amidst competing political discourses, which they accomplished by framing their idols as innocent victims of malevolent political forces.” (Federenko 500)

In summary, K-pop’s current state of export-oriented capitalism in a geopolitically tense post-colonial Asia generates a complex and multilayered discourse. In my highlighted examples above, from Tzuyu, to Jackson Wang, to Lay, the pattern that I’ve concluded is all the same — at least in the case of Sino idols, the winner of these conflicts is always the same: the largest consumer market of mainland China. 

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YouTube and Social Media as Critical Tools of Modern K-Pop

Like any complex cultural phenomenon, K-pop’s explosive popularity cannot be explained by just a single reason. The process of K-pop’s proliferation has been influenced by cultural hybridity, vertically integrated company practices, governmental support, and social media. However, out of all these potential explanations of K-pop’s boom, the role that social media plays is extremely important, as it is often credited, but not often delved into enough. 

People have become global sensations before the age of social media many times over, but it truly took social media platforms, particularly visual ones such as YouTube, to deliver K-pop to the West. 

In the article, “Re-worlding Culture? YouTube as a K-pop interlocutor,” Kent A. Ono and Jungmin Kwon frame K-pop as possibly redirecting cultural flows that have historically been imperialist. In doing so, they highlight social media platforms, namely YouTube, as the medium that makes this reverse-imperialist process possible. 

What is incredibly unique about the deep relationship between K-pop and new social media what Ono and Kwon cite as a “participatory culture” that allows BOTH companies and consumers to produce, circulate, and re-produce contents that promote K-pop.

In her article “New Wave Formations: K-pop Idols, Social Media, and the Remaking of the Korean Wave,” Eun-Young Jung, in attempt to differentiate K-pop since the late 2000s to have been defined by the presence of YouTube, mentions fan-produced YouTube media more so than company-produced. Just as Ono and Kwon did in their article, Jung discusses the K-pop dance cover video as a huge phenomenon within K-pop. 

While dance covers are still very much a thing, these articles are already a few years old, and I would say that the most recent fan-mediated contents that circulate are reaction videos, introduction videos coined as “(un)helpful guide” videos, theory videos,  and humorous compilations known as “crack videos.”

Above is an example of a “crack video” created by an Exo fan. It has over 1.6 million views, which outnumbers the views on many official Exo videos. Similar to “crack videos” this compilation of Vines about Exo has over 2.8 million views on YouTube.

It precisely these videos that allow fans to be indoctrinated into fan mania rather than stopping at casually listening to music. Here, K-pop transforms from a music genre into a niche cultural experience.

The other popular type of modern fan-produced content is the reaction video. Ono and Kwon name these types of users as “prosumers” — people who upload their own content in addition to consuming others’. In the video above, YouTuber DRAMATIC QUEEN reacts to a group that was originally recommended to her by her YouTube subscribers in the comments sections of her other videos. 

The feedback loops taking place are fans being able to recommend content to “prosumers,” the “prosumers” validating the fan mania in their positive reactions, and the “prosumers” then promoting this content to subscribers who were not previously fans. It benefits the “prosumer” as an influencer, the viewers as those enjoying the content, and ultimately the companies with free advertising.  

Particularly focusing on YouTube, social media has enabled a participatory fan culture that characterizes the K-pop craze as immersive and richly networked. While the companies behind K-pop have taken advantage of the medium by releasing music videos, dance practice videos, interviews, and so forth, it’s the unofficial fan-created media that envelope fans into these highly-networked community units that make the K-pop fandom what it is today.

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Academics Often Misinterpret Girls’ Generation’s Impact due to Totalizing Etic Views

Academic articles published surrounding Girls’ Generation and their position within the Korean Wave have often painted an incomplete portrait of the phenomenon they truly were. This post is meant to shed some light on the overlooked aspects of the group’s popularity in order to bring a fuller and richer understanding of their appeal.

In his article “Into the New World: Girls’ Generation from the local to the global,” Stephen Epstein argues that the group’s malleable brand identity allows them to serve many purposes, from company-promoted to fan-mediated, and from highly local to highly global. Epstein supports this claim by highlighting Girls’ Generation flexible image to serve a wide variety of interests including a nation-branding chic and contemporary image, a nation-serving cute and demure image, and fan-servicing sexy image. 

In “Establishing an Imagined SM Town: How Korea’s Leading Music Company Has Produced a Global Cultural Phenomenon,” Ju Oak Kim argues that rather than a digital phenomenon, K-pop’s success is due to its highly company-mediated nature. To support this point, Kim brings up how SM Entertainment utilizes cultural hybridity to globalize artist images, then uses cultural technology to localize content. 

Meanwhile, scholar Eun-Young Jung, in “K-pop female idols in the West: Racial imaginations and erotic fantasies,” claims that girl groups, namely Wonder Girls and Girls’ Generation failed in the U.S. due to their failed articulation of problematic Western views of Asian female sexuality over original artistry.

These are all very informative articles that provide reasonable observations and interesting case studies of Girls’ Generation’s previous campaigns and productions; however, due to their etic view, each scholar’s fan-response analysis is restricted to superficial impression as well as selective fan comment examination.

These all largely ignore fan-propagated culture’s role in Girls’ Generation’s international reception, as well is its impact upon their brand legacy.

I would hazard to argue that while scholar Eun-Young Jung may be correct in her analysis that SM failed to push Girls’ Generation as English-language artists in the states due to lack of focus upon artistry, that doesn’t speak for their success among self-initiated K-pop fans in the states, who were indoctrinated into the fandom through non-company-propagated means. What makes K-pop a global phenomenon rather than a Pan-Asian one, is primarily internet fan cultures.

In the case of Girls’ Generation, rather than a David Letterman performance or radio-play, many non-Korean people were introduced to Girls’ Generation not through glamorized, company-manufactured sexuality, but through viral videos. Subsequently, they would become fans after seeing Girls’ Generation on variety shows. While it may be argued that variety personas are also carefully crafted, this “dorky appeal” is still heavily overlooked by many academic scholars who use the group as a case study. 

For example, a notoriously popular variety/reality appearance of Girls’ Generation among online fans is Intimate Note which has been subbed by online fanbase “Soshified,” and has been reuploaded multiple times on YouTube, Daily Motion, Openload, and so forth. These bootlegged fan-subbed reuploads have generated over 2 million views in what I’ve found alone.

Intimate Note is a variety show formatted to reveal a more honest and candid side to idols through a series of controlled games and activities. 

On the Amino App, a social media platform for fan communities, fans have cited this show as part of the canon of content that must be seen by interested fans. One fan mentioned:

“This one appearance of SNSD on not soo famous variety show made me a hardcore fan of SNSD. All the members except Tiffany make appearance and arguably the best variety show appearance by any kpop idol. The Eng Sub version is present on youtube and I think I contributed 20 times to the total views of that video. Everyone need to watch it and it is completely worth your time”

Similarly, the fan site who subbed the video expressed similar sentiments:

“This is one of the best SNSD-centered variety broadcasts of all time. Who doesn’t love it when our girls dish out secrets on each other but still show their amazing bond. Everyone needs to watch this and if you haven’t fallen in love with our girls yet, you will after this and if you’re already in love, this will just cause you be a bigger glob of SNSD love! Enjoy!”

The Youtube comments are also filled with fans expressing joy over the member’s humorous interactions and echoing the sentiment that what made them hardcore fans is the member chemistry and their “dorky” image.

While Epstein mentions variety shows in his article, he uses it as a talking point to discuss the girls as representative of Korean national identity and how it becomes soft power when exported, but he fails to elaborate on the broader complex appeal. This fails to give the group dimension beyond plastic perfection and sexual pandering in the academic discourse of K-pop.

Ju Oak Kim focused on the SM Town Live World Tour and social media more so than actual fan impressions of Girls’ Generation, which served the article’s purpose of placing the K-wave’s exigence within the credit of corporations — but this also doesn’t account for the fan-cultivated phenomenon that demanded the world tour in the first place.

Another large component of Girls’ Generation’s appeal abroad is performance quality. 

All of these articles mention SM Entertainment’s precise packaging of idol images and systematic training as performers, but all fail to elaborate on fan-response on the group’s musical and performance appeal. These articles often relegate them to the status of second-rate singers and performers under the impression of the inferiority of bubblegum pop, which allows them a springboard to draw conclusions of the group being powered by sexual objectification and contrived personalities alone.

I’m not denying Eun-Young Jung’s thoughtful analysis of the group’s hypersexualized US-debut or Stephen Epstein’s nod to their brand’s probable contribution to the rise in body dysmorphia. However, I would hazard to argue that those issues are not specific to Girls’ Generation, and broadly apply across celebrities of many cultures. 

Girls’ Generation is best known for their dancing and synchronicity, but are also beloved by fans for their singing abilities, particularly member Taeyeon. In fact, as of 2019, on the Gaon Digital Index Chart, Taeyeon is the highest ranking SM artist, topping boy group EXO with ~1.1billion points. The girls have all released solo songs, proving their abilities to stand on their own, in addition to standing as a unit. While most have released pop songs, most surprisingly, member Choi Sooyoung’s solo release was a winter ballad.

Considered a group sub-vocalist and visual and trained to be an actress, Sooyoung would sometimes only get a single line in Girls’ Generation’s songs. However, her live vocals demonstrate that this was likely a brutal A&R decision rather than a necessity to compensate for lack of talent.

Academic case studies of Girls’ Generation almost unanimously focus on their heterosexual male appeal, with the single exception of their appeal to young Japanese women (Epstein). However, the latter phenomenon doesn’t receive a deeper examination as the former does, and this occurrence completely eclipses experiences of fans who are women, homosexual males, or any queer-identifying folks, for that matter. Yes, lots of company-promoted appeal is directed at heterosexual males, but Girls Generation wouldn’t be able to stand as it has without their broad appeal beyond male desire.

In conclusion, this post isn’t meant to just blindly gas up Girls’ Generation — it’s meant to illuminate a dimension of their impact that is largely ignored by the academic community. Only with a rich and complex understanding of the networked phenomenon of the K-pop boom may we further analyze its causes and implications.

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K-pop Strongly Reinforces a Dominant Gender Ideology, but There May be Hope in the 4th Generation

by Jessica Ho

In their article, “Girls’ Generation? Gender, (Dis)Empowerment, and K-pop,” Stephen Epstein and James Turnbull argue that the explosion of the popularity of girl groups doesn’t necessarily signify a departure from patriarchy. While the writers admit there are exceptions, they demonstrate that the lyrical and visual content of girl group songs and music videos serve to reinforce a strong gender binary that underscores the power of male desire.

Meanwhile, in her article, “Queering spectatorship in K-pop: The androgynous male dancing body and western female fandom,” Chuyun Oh argues that K-pop males’ embodied “feminine masculinity” and androgyny queers their image in a way that empowers heterosexual female consumption in a manner that is absent in western media.  

Both of these texts discuss a sort of reinforcement of consumption based in heterosexual desires, the former as traditional, and the latter as subversive.

I would agree with Epstein and Turnbull’s analysis of a majority girl group songs as reinforcing a “dichotomization of male and female.” In this case, I will draw upon massively popular 2nd generation girl group Girl’s Day and an early hit record of theirs.

Perhaps emblematically released at the height of South Korea’s “girl group craze,” Girl’s Day’s 2013 hit “Female President (여자대통령)” delivers a very heteronormative message under the guise of an ostensibly female-forward title. The lyrics have the members demanding a female in love to make the first move on a boy she likes. 

“Go to him first And tell him you love him You can do it now, You start first Our country’s president is now a female So what’s the big deal? Why can’t girls do it first? Will we get arrested if we go first the guy first? Go to him first And you kiss him first You can do it now, You start first You can do it now”

I will credit this song as empowering women to make the first move; rather than reinforcing the image of women as submissive, this song frames them as owners of their own agency. However, this case’s lyrical analysis also further’s Epstein and Turnbull’s point of ascribing to gender dichotomy and placing power into romantic heterosexual desire.

In the music video, there is a heavy emphasis placed on the desirability of their bodies, made clear by their undulating silhouettes behind changing boards and closed blinds. There’s also an interaction between members Hyeri and Minah, wherein Hyeri cross-dresses as a man who courts Minah. While this may be read in a queer context, this primarily reinforces a gender binary, with suit-and-tie clad Hyeri (the man of the relationship) pursuing the coy and demure Minah (the woman of the relationship).

While I will credit Girl’s Day for their subversive elements of the absence of male music video actors, ownership of sexuality, and images of women in power, it still stands that this doesn’t challenge or overthrow many traditional conceptions of sexual desirability of women and male-motivated desire.

In the case of Oh’s analysis of western female attraction to the sexualized and androgenized bodies of male K-pop idols as “queering female desire against white heteronormative masculinity,” I am a bit skeptical of this claim. While I do believe that the more gender-fluid performances of male idols adds another dimension of heterosexual attraction, I doubt that it sends a subversive message of dominant power structures, as many of Oh’s analyzed YouTube comments still demonstrate a desire for male strength and sexual domination. 

In response to the long-established capitalist reinforcement of heteronormative gender binaries, I would hazard the claim that K-pop does not become subversive merely through a female gaze; it may only become something that challenges dominant power structures through genuine queer spectatorship or platonic solidarity.

And the case I present for this argument is the new girl group, Loona (LOOΠΔ) (이달의 소녀). Dubbed a 4th-generation girl group, Loona has been promoted since 2016, but officially debuted as a 12-member ensemble in 2018. Although they’re still a rookie act domestically, Loona has achieved a huge international following, as the most demanded act at KCON LA 2019. Through mostly the influence they’ve attained abroad, Loona has snagged Best Korean Act at the MTV EMAs, Best Performance and Best Commerical Rookie at the Soribada Best K-Music Awards, and Most Anticipated Female Rookie Idol at the Korea First Brand Awards. They’ve been covered by Forbes and Billboard. My point is, they are potentially the face of the nebulous 4th generation.

What is very intriguing about Loona is their huge LGBT fanbase. Around the time of the release of member Kim Lip’s song “Eclipse,” the music video made its rounds among drag queens and Twitter’s gay community. Then, LBGT solidarity exploded with member Chuu’s song “Heart Attack,” which features a non-sexualized romance line between two women.

The lyrics declare a genderless declaration of love, and the music video queers the message as an unrequited love for another girl. While this merely fits into the larger “Loonaverse,” a cinematic storyline that connects all of their videos together, it is also explicitly and unabashedly non-heterosexual and non-sexualized. 

Loona’s most recent song, “Butterfly,” is another female-driven song, sending a message of female empowerment without the context of romance or sexual power.

The song’s lyrics speak of the listener giving them courage to fly like a butterfly, and the music video depict the members dancing with strong, almost masculine dance moves, intercut with images of women from different locations and cultures running and dancing with them.

In my view, while previous generations of boy groups may have introduced a queer aspect to K-pop, and while previous generations of girl groups paved the way for the commercial success of potentially diverse messages, the stage is now set up for a 4th generation girl group like Loona to take the stage and send a truly subversive message through direct queer appeal and non-sexualized female solidarity.

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K-pop Politicized: A Double-Edged Blade of Soft and Hard Powers

by Jessica Ho

K-pop, a primarily musical and visual pop culture product, has become politicized through both direct government investment and indirect power plays. It has often been described as a tool and even a weapon of soft power — the question is: who truly wields it?

Of course, nothing in this world is ever completely free from the shadows of politics, but the Korean pop culture industry seems to be more fine-tuned to political atmospheres due to the less neoliberal nature of their primary markets in the Asian region.

From Tae Young Kim and Dal Yong Jin’s analysis of presidential speech sentiments paired with administrative actions, it can be concluded that South Korea’s 21st-century leaders have met Hallyu with an enthusiastic outlook of promotion. Kim and Jin cited “economic imperatives” and “cultural diplomacy” as the greatest motivations behind developing Hallyu as a culture industry.

But diplomacy isn’t the only part of the political equation. Recently, Hannah Jun has written about the clash between soft and hard powers between South Korea and China amidst THAAD (missile defense system) developments. Here, rather than diplomacy, there is political pressure. Moving forward with THAAD has caused Chinese pushback, resulting in stock drops, profit loss, and censorship of Korean media. As a result, lots of export tactics have rechanneled into Southeast Asia.

While K-pop has often been publicly discussed as a vehicle of boosting the nation’s image and economy, I find it important to also recognize that this nationalist view of Hallyu industries only encompasses one dimension of the actual situation. While a potentially destabilizing notion, recent events (particularly surrounding China’s various Hallyu bans) send a reminder that K-pop is still a sort of floating cultural signifier, and may not truly be owned by a nation-state – even with the moniker of “K” that always comes attached to it.

With this idea of K-pop as detached from the nation-state, the image of Hallyu as a soft power tool quickly transforms into a double-edged sword, not weld by South Korea, but by the nations whose markets are imperative to Hallyu’s survival as an export industry.

So yes, Hallyu is a very important tool in the socio-political discourse, but the greater question begs: who wields it?

When the ball is in South Korea’s Court

Let’s start off with a more obvious case of using pop culture as a domestic political tool. Hallyu, as a nationalist construct, is often utilized to showcase South Korea’s modernity. 

In the specific case of the Spring is Coming concert in Pyongyang, North Korea in April 2018, South Korea sent a group of artists and performers for the first South Korean music performance there in over a decade. The publicized objective was promoting peace and cultural exchange (alternative objectives may be up for speculation and debate). 

Particularly, South Korea chose to send only one idol group to its conservative northern counterpart. SM Entertainment’s Red Velvet performed their hits “Red Flavor” and “Bad Boy” for an audience including North Korean leader Kim Jong Un. 

While the superficial agenda is peace and exchange, I would argue that mere peace and exchange would have been accomplished already by sending in a popular singer like Cho Yong Pil (who was also a part of the troupe with Red Velvet). The decision to specifically export idol music, rife with foreign influence as it is, is specifically a political gesture of showing South Korea’s modernity and its globally-successful export.

In fact, South Korean newspaper Hankook Ilbo actually released an article reporting  “Red Flavor”’s popularity among the North Korean students. While the verifiability of this article’s sources may be questioned, the intention of the article is clear: there has been some sort of victory for South Korean cultural hegemony. What was left unfinished politically in the armistice is being made up for in a small way through Hallyu. 

When the ball is in China’s Court

Now, as for the more complicated depiction of K-pop as detached from a nation-state, I will primarily make the point of the industry as vulnerable to foreign interests, and therefore a weapon that is able it crush its own user.

Forbes journalist Tamar Herman details the specific case of Fantagio’s downfall very well in her article on Korean-Chinese tensions in the entertainment industry: essentially, Chinese investment fund JC Group became the largest shareholder of Fantagio Corp. (home to acts such as Hello Venus, Weki Meki, and Astro) in late 2017, then went on to remove Fantagio’s CEO Na Byung Jun, proceeding to replace him with one of their own Chinese employees, CEO Wei Jie. While Korean employees went on a brief strike out of dissatisfaction with this outcome, former CEO Na took responsibility for partnering with JC Group in the first place, as Chinese companies and investors are no strangers to the K-pop scene.

While the above example is more economically concerned, a more politically-charged example of K-pop’s political entanglements with China would be the case of TWICE’s Tzuyu’s Taiwan flag-waving incident.

As detailed in the video, Tzuyu faced immense backlash and her company (JYP) made haste to publish an apology video. While the news report above touches upon the ire of Chinese netizens, what it doesn’t mention is that the degree of power a potential ban or boycott on TWICE’s music holds over the company’s market needs. 

The Fantagio and Tzuyu cases only further the entanglement of Chinese economic leverage in the political arena that has been brought up by Hannah Jun in her paper “Hallyu at a Crossroads.” While Hallyu has brought South Korea economic gains and cultural clout both in Asia and beyond, one must consider what Hallyu cultural products may mean when they no longer empower their home nation-state. 

Whether it be company takeovers, group boycotts, or THAAD retaliation in the form of potential losses of upwards $20 billion, does K-pop’s inextricable relationship with the South Korean government prove to be a political sword or a glaring vulnerability for opportunistic foreign interests?