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Aftermarkets of empire: South Korean popular music and global logics of race and gender in the U.S. media industries
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Aftermarkets of empire: South Korean popular music and global logics of race and gender in the U.S. media industries
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Content
AFTERMARKETS OF EMPIRE:
SOUTH KOREAN POPULAR MUSIC AND
GLOBAL LOGICS OF RACE AND GENDER IN THE U.S. MEDIA INDUSTRIES
by
Patty Ahn
A Dissertation Presented to the
FACULTY OF THE USC GRADUATE SCHOOL
UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA
In Partial Fulfillment of the
Requirements for the Degree
DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY
(CINEMATIC ARTS: CRITICAL STUDIES)
August 2015
DEDICATION
For woori umma.
!ii
TABLE OF CONTENTS
DEDICATION ii
LIST OF FIGURES iv
INTRODUCTION 1
INTRODUCTION ENDNOTES 26
CHAPTER 1: MANUFACTURED HARMONIES: THE KIM SISTERS,
K-POP AND KOREA’S “FORGOTTEN WAR” 32
CHAPTER 1 ENDNOTES 55
CHAPTER 2: MANUFACTURED MOVEMENTS: GIRL GROUPS,
HARMONIZED DANCE AND YOUTUBE 60
CHAPTER 2 ENDNOTES 82
CHAPTER 3: FAILED MASCULINITIES AND MANUFACTURED
AUTHENTICITY: FROM RAIN TO PSY 87
CHAPTER 3 ENDNOTES 119
CONCLUSION 125
CONCLUSION ENDNOTES 137
BIBLIOGRAPHY 138
!iii
LIST OF FIGURES
Figure 1. Infographic released by YouTube in 2011. 1
Figure 2. Promotional still featuring wardrobes from H.o.T.’s first
major single and music video, “Candy” (1996). 14
Figure 3. Kim Sisters performing on U.S. military base stationed in Seoul
in 1955. 40
Figure 4. The Kim Sisters perform Korean folk song “Arirang” on the Ed
Sullivan Show (CBS, November 20, 1960). 42
Figure 5. The Kim Sisters peel out of their traditional Korean garments to
reveal their short American-style dresses underneath. 42
Figure 6. The Kim Sisters perform a medley of jazz standards popularized
by Al Jolson’s blackface musicals of the pre-war period. 43
Figure 7. The Kim Sisters act concludes with a brassy rendition of “(Won’t
You Come Home) Bill Bailey.” 43
Figure 8. Featured image for article in Life magazine (February 1960)
titled “Three Korean Kims and Their Kayageums.” 48
Figure 9. The Kim Sisters are pictured in Life magazine seated around a
television set in a suburban American home. 49
Figure 10. The Kim Sisters ride a horse-drawn carriage through a snowy
pastoral midwestern field. 49
Figure 11. Still image from music video for Wonder Girls’ single,
“Nobody. 65
Figure 12. Still image from music video for Girls’ Generation single,
“Gee.” 71
Figure 13. 2NE1’s lead member, CL, stands defiantly in opening shots of
music video for “I Am the Best.” 78
Figure 14. Close-up shots in opening sequence of music video for “I Am the
Best” frame CL in a seductive manner. 78
Figure 15. 2NE1 performs group choreography against backdrop of white
stage lights in their music video for “I Am the Best.” 79
!iv
Figure 16. During the bridge of “I Am the Best,” backup dancers perform a
modernized adaptation of a traditional style of Korean drumming
called ogomu. 80
Figure 17. Psy performs Beyonce’s trademark dance routine for her single,
“Single Ladies,” at a live concert in Seoul in 2011. 95
Figure 18. Dressed in sunglasses and a tuxedo, in Psy’s music for
“Gangnam Style,” he walks with two slender and stylish women
while trash and debris fly into their faces. 96
Figure 19. Dressed in a tuxedo, Psy and his backup dancers perform the
signature “horsie dance” for “Gangnam Style” inside of a barn. 97
Figure 20. Psy and Scooter Braun toast to their new partnership in a video
announcement uploaded to Psy’s YouTube page on September 3,
2012. 100
Figure 21. Fuse TV’s chart of collaborations between American and Korean
producers, entertainers, songwriters. 126
Figure 22. Still from Psy and Snoop Dogg’s music video,
“Hangover” (2014). 127
Figure 23. Still from G-Dragon’s music video “Heartbreaker” (2009) which
launched his career as a solo artist. Image credit: soompi. 131
Figure 24. In G-Dragon’s music video “Crayon” (2012), the singer and two
friends leer at the television set. 132
Figure 25. We see a feminine figure seductively posing for the audience and
male viewers watching her within the diegesis of the video. 132
Figure 26. Eyeline matches build up erotic tension until the woman turns
around to reveal herself to be G-Dragon. 132
Figure 27 - G-Dragon’s video “Crayon”borrows the grotesque pastoral
Figure 28. scenes depicted in Missy Elliott’s “The Rain” (1997). 133
Figure 29 - G-Dragon’s wardrobe and performance style in “Crayon”
Figure 30. recall the ornate and theatrical fashions seen in “The Rain.” 133
Figure 31. Missy Elliott and G-Dragon share an embrace at KCON 2013. 135 !v
INTRODUCTION
In 2011, YouTube, the U.S.-based video-sharing website––and largest digital distribution
platform in the world––published a map that breaks down by country of origin the number of
times a Korean pop music (or K-Pop) video was viewed on its site between January and May of
that year. According to the map, K-Pop videos had aggregated close to 850 million views over
the course of this five-month period with the heaviest concentration of hits originating in the
Pacific Rim. Japan accounted for the most views out of any single nation, while the U.S. ranked
second with nearly 93 million. The site, which allows users to upload and watch videos for free,
measures views according to the number of “clicks” or “hits” a video receives and keeps this
running tally posted beneath each video for users to see. It also tracks a range of other metric
data, such as the geographic origins of these clicks and––when made available by users––other
demographic information like sex, gender, and age. While this information is provided only to
paying users, YouTube occasionally releases it to the public to prove a point or advertise the
site’s effectiveness. In this case, the map seemed to reveal a new or unexpected pattern of media
consumption within the global landscape.
!1
Figure 1. Infographic released by YouTube in 2011.
The global success of Korean pop music videos is not a new phenomenon. Music videos
have served as a crucial marketing tool for Korea’s popular music industry since the mid-1990s
when record labels began to use an “MTV model” for selling Korean pop idols to domestic
audiences. Young idol groups performing hyper-kinetic dance routines have been as much of a
trademark of the industry as its electronic dance beats, Korean rap lyrics and melodic hooks. By
the late-1990s, the Korean music industry began to distribute music videos on regional satellite
television networks and Internet platforms to reach existing and potentially new fan bases across
Asia, a post-millennial cultural flow that Chinese-language journalists referred to as K-Pop.
While journalists and scholars of Korean media have observed K-Pop’s popularity in Asia for
years, YouTube’s map surprised many when it revealed its growing fan base in western markets,
especially the U.S.
YouTube’s statistics led journalists and corporate representatives to express enthusiastic
prognostications about K-Pops future, often alternating between a language of nationalism and
transnationalism. For instance, Lee Won-jin, the managing director of Google Korea, argues “the
fact that K-pop videos had almost 800 million hits from viewers all over the world proves that K-
pop has the potential to succeed in any given market.” Others cite the viral sensation sparked by
1
nine-member girl group Girls’ Generation with their dance-driven music video “Gee” as an
exemplary case study. The video was uploaded to YouTube in 2009 and by early 2011 it
accumulated 50 million views with Japan and the U.S. accounting for the largest number of
views outside of Korea. Korean Joongang Daily wrote,
2
. . . Girls’ Generation, comprised of nine young pop singer/dancers, has become a YouTube
sensation, and their song Gee has been seen over 50 million times. Their popularity has led
to fans in Paris and Los Angeles, where crowds emulate their idols’ dances and demand
that they hold concerts there. K-Pop has the potential to become a new economic growth
engine, by fueling exports and improving the country’s overall image abroad.
3
!2
In many ways, the story about K-Pop’s growth in the U.S. is as much a story about
YouTube's success as an international platform. However, what historical contexts are obscured
by these technologically-driven arguments? For one, YouTube stands to gain a lot from K-Pop’s
global success. Launched in 2006 as a free video-sharing platform by three American
entrepreneurs, the site was purchased in 2007 by U.S. Internet giant Google who quickly
monetized it by selling ad space and paying content providers a small fraction for every thousand
clicks their videos generate in ad sales. This means that every success story about K-Pop is
ultimately a financial success story for YouTube as well. Moreover, as Google has ambitions of
making the site the largest online content provider in the world, K-Pop’s global success serves a
shining example of YouTube’s ability to break into historically impenetrable markets like the
U.S. As I demonstrate in the following chapters, marketing representatives for Google have been
particularly deft at shaping the story of K-Pop’s rise in the States. Thus, it is critical to identify
when media discourse serves in the interest of corporate boosterism. This is not to say that these
kinds of articulations are disposable. Rather, they offer particularly useful insights into the kinds
of cultural and financial value that K-Pop’s global brand holds for entities like YouTube.
Aftermarkets of Empire asks what historical and industrial imperatives drive the Korean
music industry to work so actively to re-imagine Korea, and Korean music, as “global.” I
historically situate discursive constructions of Korea and Korean popular music as “global”
within the broader development of Korea’s national media and culture industries in relation to
U.S. empire and militarism since the Korean War (1950-present). At the height of the Cold War,
the U.S. deployed troops in the peninsula under the guise of protecting the south from
Communist takeover by the north. A central piece of U.S. state strategy in Asia was to invest in
the economic development and globalization of South Korea, Taiwan, and Japan in order to
!3
make them into paragons of U.S.-led capitalist development. Pronouncements that K-Pop serves
as an index of Korea’s miraculous growth into a global power coheres with U.S. Cold War
imperialist project.
In each of the following chapters, I examine how K-Pop music videos and performance
work to build these imaginaries. Music videos have served as a crucial global marketing tool in
for Korean record labels’ global marketing strategies, particularly because the visuals allow them
to reach across linguistic difference and engage audiences through dance and performance. Thus,
it is key that music videos encourage an affective connection with artists, repeat viewings, and
sensorial thrill are key to reaching non-Korean audiences.
Moreover, music videos also work to build the national brand of Korea’s three largest
record labels–SM Entertainment, YG Entertainment, and JYP Entertainment. As Korean media
scholar Gyu Tag Lee argues, “K-Pop is the first Korean-born genre that is new, modern, and
global/international….it is a genre ‘Made in Korea’ but named and recognized by outside its
domestic market.” Korea’s big three often deploy metaphors of machinery and factories in their
4
marketing discourse to describe their systematized approach to exporting popular music around
the world. As historians of Korean political economy like Bruce Cumings, Martin Hart-
Landburg, and Gary Gereffi and Donald L. Wyman all note, South Korea’s postwar ascendance
from an agrarian society into a global technological and cultural powerhouse was primarily
driven by the U.S.-funded militarization of its manufactured export economy. In fact, they
5
identify that what makes K-Pop distinctly Korean is the industry’s rigorous idol training system
which produce highly disciplined and coherent brand identities. This approach is evident in K-
Pop idol group’s tightly synchronized dance routines, carefully crafted music, and meticulously
managed public image. While the Korean music industry’s approach has been particularly
!4
effective in Asia, as I argue, this idea of Korea conflicts and aligns with the business model that
drives the Big Three toward bigger markets, pushing their brand in ways that attract western
culture, particularly in the U.S. where “authenticity” has been historically celebrated.
6
This dissertation examines how the branding of K-Pop as both a global and national
industry has shaped U.S. discourse about South Korea and its relationship to the global economy.
Scholars of Korean media like Doobo Shim use postcolonial theories of hybridity to argue
against the cultural imperialism model which argues that globalization forcibly erases local
cultures and the adoption of U.S. cultural norms. Korean media industries and audiences have
not been passively colonized by American cultural imports, as scholars like Shim argue. Rather,
Korean musicians, producers, and entertainers have hybridized American forms to create new
local cultures, competing and often beating out American imports within the domestic and
regional Asian market. This dissertation continues with this line of inquiry, but asks what
happens when localized forms of American culture are re-packaged and sold back to its imperial
center.
Since 2005, Korea’s Big Three have launched two major campaigns to cross over into the
mainstream American market, localizing their audiovisual and discursive marketing strategies for
what they perceive to be the particularities of the U.S. media industries. K-Pop––within the U.S.
reception context––is often referred to as “manufactured,” in its mode of production, marketing,
and aesthetic. These articulations, on one hand, echo the marketing discourse deployed by
Korean record labels while cohering with enduring ideas about South Korea as a manufacturing
export powerhouse. However, they are also simultaneously anchored in U.S. racial imaginaries
about the failure of Asian gender and sexuality to cohere with “authentic” economies and
performance of desire defined by white heterosexuality.
!5
At its core, this dissertation asks how K-Pop has shifted popular imaginaries in the U.S.
about Korea and its relationship to the global economy. I situate my critical investigation at the
theoretical tensions between the global and local, and focus on two main narratives produced by
American journalists about K-Pop. Some read K-Pop’s relationship with YouTube as a sign of
shifting power relations, suggesting that globalization has fulfilled its promise of building
mutually open pathways between liberal democratic nations. Others assert that K-Pop will
remain relegated as a YouTube phenomenon. Idol and idol groups’ “manufactured” genders, they
submit, do not translate over to American audiences who crave authenticity and performances of
local culture rather than “imitations” of American music. Thus, they re-articulate imperial power
relations by presuming the west as progenitor of global culture.
In order to consider more fully the points made in my discussion, I track the development
of Korean popular music through a brief history of the country, and in three theoretical tensions:
global/local, audio/visual, and nationalism/imperialism.
Local Music / Global Sounds (1910-1961)
Korean popular music has been overwhelmingly shaped by two imperial epochs in the
20th century: Japan’s colonial occupation from 1910 to 1945, and the U.S. military occupation
from 1945 to the present. In 1910, Japan annexed Korea as a colony in their imperialist project of
modernizing Korean people and culture, which they historically constructed as “barbaric.”
7
During the colonial period, the Japanese government prohibited Koreans from participating in
any form of cultural expression perceived to be “national.” While the colonial government
banned musical expressions of Korean identity, they encouraged the consumption and
performance of popular Japanese musical forms––for example, Enka––as well as western forms
!6
such as jazz. During the colonial period a number of Korean entertainers earned a living wage
8
by performing covers of popular Japanese songs and jazz standards, giving rise to a localized
version of Enka called “trot.” In Yongwoo Lee’s study of Korean musical performance under
colonial occupation, she argues that this moment “engendered a cultural hybridity since the
colonial landscape forced Koreans to adopt Japanese language and modern values as a means of
participating in the new modernity.”
9
When the end of World War II formally ended Japanese colonial rule, it re-positioned
Korea between two new imperial powers: the U.S. and Soviet Union, who had fought as allies
against the Japanese imperial army in the name of securing Korea’s independence. In the
aftermath of the war they both maintained a military presence on the peninsula, each with a
different vision of what independence would mean for Korea. Washington held a vested interest
in seeing Korea’s transition into a liberal democracy and economic ally. Thus, in the face of the
Soviet Union’s growing influence in the north, the U.S. expanded its military presence. These
inter-imperial aggressions culminated in the outbreak of the Korean War in 1950, which
decimated Korea’s infrastructure. After three years of brutal civil conflict, an armistice agreement
was reached in 1953, which put in place a temporary cease-fire, but did not formally end the war.
The continued presence of U.S. military bases in the south facilitated an influx of
American pop imports. USO tours regularly brought entertainers from the U.S., while the Armed
Forces Network Korea radio and television stations broadcast the latest American popular songs.
As Roald Maliangkay, Benjamin Min Han, and Pil Ho Kim and Hyunjoon Shin note, the military
bases themselves served as sites for the professionalization of Korean musicians, who made a
living wage in the war-torn country by performing for troops. Throughout the 1950s and 1960s,
10
a number of local girl groups and rock bands appeared on Korea’s cultural landscape. Kim and
!7
Shin argue that these militarized spaces led to the development of a highly complex, professional
music scene, thus challenging simple readings of these performers as the imitative products of
cultural imperialism. Rather, these musicians articulated their own creative artistry by
hybridizing rock, jazz, and other American musical forms and performing them for local Korean
audiences.
11
Global Music / National Sounds (1961-1992)
While a number of localized genres and music scenes filled Seoul’s night clubs and cafes
in the years immediately following the war, two genres dominated Korea’s popular music
industry from 1961 until 1992: the trot (a Korean localization of Japanese Enka music) and
ballads (locally-made versions of American pop).
During this period, two consecutive U.S.-backed military dictatorships drove the
development of the country’s export-led manufacturing industries and the development of its
national media industries. From 1961 through 1987, Park Chung Hee (1961-1979) and Chun
Doo Hwan (1979-1987) steered Korea through an aggressive nation-building project, largely
financed by U.S. economic aid packages. Park first nationalized control of the country’s banks,
strategically investing state resources into the hands of Korea’s large-scale, family-owned
companies (called chaebol), and imposed stringent restrictions on the influx of foreign direct
investments (FDI). Chaebol drove the expansion of Korea’s manufacturing base and the
12
country’s transformation into an export-driven industrial manufacturer. Both Park and Chun
legitimized their leadership in the name of national development, which they reinforced through
aggressive anti-communist rhetoric and militarized suppression of political dissent. They also
13
!8
invested in the development of a national television system, which they used in the service of
state’s agendas.
Under military rule, these state-run television networks controlled music distribution in
South Korea. As both regimes barred the influx of American cultural imports, in the name of
protecting national culture, a vibrant local music industry developed. Because the regime
required record producers to adhere strictly to state-defined notions of “broadcasting as a public
service,” it also limited the range of content and styles that were allowed to be distributed. Trots
and ballads were most heavily promoted as the “national” popular music during this period.
14
Throughout the 1980s, two television studios––KBS and MBC––controlled almost all
music distribution and consumption, largely defining the standards of the music industry. The
decade ushered in a new “star system,” whereby singers who “had appropriate qualities for TV
presentation” were chosen via contests and by talent scouts. Competition songs were usually
written by a lyricist, composer, and an arranger, while KBS and MBC provided resident backing
bands, conductors, dance groups and choreographers. Keith Howard argues that singers, who
15
rarely wrote their own music, were expected to perform with in-house bands and their
performances were driven more by audience familiarity with a particular song, than by the
performer or performance. Howard remarks, “The star system itself resisted the development of
16
close affiliations between singers and songs, because this was anathema to TV shows.” The
17
most widely used music chart at the time came from the leading music variety show, Gayo Top
10, which aired on KBS from 1981 to 1998. As late as 1990, according to the chart, trot and
18
pop ballads still remained the dominant genres.
19
Thus, two crucial developments took place in Korea’s pop music industry took place
during this period. First, two global music forms were assimilated as part of Korea’s nation-
!9
building project. As Gyu Tag Lee observes, “During the era of the rapid economic development,
it was considered as a sign of the nation’s improvement to adopt the latest global popular culture,
not only in material terms but also in the more abstract sense of development itself . . . . Through
their direct and indirect control over the media and popular culture, these military regimes
actively promoted a discourse with promises of modernity, all aimed at constructing a middle-
class to prevent any direct opposition to their authoritarian dictatorship.” He concludes that “the
basic logic of national propaganda did not change. The new government has tried to emphasize
the evidence of development by showing how much Korea has been modernized and globalized,
or in other words, ‘Westernized.’”
20
Secondly, popular music was inextricably tethered to mass visual media, a relationship
that continues to impact both industries well into the 21st century, as I demonstrate in the
following section.
Korean Pop and Music Television: Localizing the Global (1992-1997)
Korean television and music historians point to the televisual debut of the three-member
rap group, Seo Taiji and Boys, in 1992 as the critical event which initiated Korean pop music’s
development as an independent local industry. Seo Taiji and Boys debuted their single, “Nan
21
Arayo” (“I Know”), on the MBC music competition show Teukkjong! TV Yeonye (English
translation: Scoop! TV Entertainment). The group rapped in Korean, over an electronic dance
track, while performing a group dance routine. While their performance and lyrical style
borrowed from American hip-hop, the track itself was undoubtedly indebted to the New Jack
Swing sound pioneered by American R&B producer, Teddy Riley (Riley now writes and
produces songs K-Pop songs designed for the explicit purpose of global distribution).
!10
Seo Taiji and Boys revolutionized Korea’s music industry in several ways. First, they broke
from industrial convention, by providing their own music and performing their own
choreographed dance routine. Secondly, they introduced a new locally-made genre that
hybridized American musical and performance styles with Korean-language rap lyrics. Finally,
22
they demonstrated the scale of the local music market. Following their first TV appearance, their
first album sold more than 1,500,000 copies and within four weeks made the top of MBC’s
chart. According to media scholar Doobo Shim, their first album became the fastest-selling
23
record in Korea since 1982. But perhaps most importantly, the group broke the affective divide
24
between audience and performer.
If Seo Taiji and Boys expanded the perceived scale of the local music market, then
Korea’s expanding middle-class youth, shinsaedae (literally, “new generation”), comprised the
majority of the consumers of this new pop music industry. Korean pop music scholar Gyu Tag
Lee argues that the digitization of the music industries had already radically redefined
shinsaedae’s relationship to music consumption in the late-1980s. Lee notes that digitally pirated
copies of music from the U.S., Japan, and western Europe flowed into the cafes and college
neighborhoods of Seoul. Even when the Chun regime imposed strict quotas on foreign imports
when it was still in power in the 1980s, it allowed the flow of pirated materials to continue. As
Eun-Young Jung remarks, “By the beginning of the 1990s, Korea’s rapidly globalizing market
led Korea’s middle-class youth, towards the enjoyment, adaptation and imitation of emerging
global trends in their own popular culture, filtered through foreign, and especially American,
media.”
25
It is no coincidence that in the same year that Seo Taiji and Boys transformed the local
market, giving rise to a new youth culture, Korea elected its first civilian president, Kim Young
!11
Sam (1993-1997) after nearly thirty years of military rule. Seo Taiji’s break from televisual
convention could not have taken place under the strict censorship policies of the previous
regimes. Moreover, the election of Kim Young Sam symbolized the arrival of a new Korea,
whose economic base would shift from heavy manufacturing exports to the telecommunications
and culture industries. In 1994, Kim Young Sam announced that he would make segyewha, or
“globalization,” a central part of his “New Korea” reformation plan. Hee-Eun Lee notes in her
study of the globalization of Korea’s popular music industry from 1992 to 2002 that the term
“segyewha” can translate as a “reaching out to the global” or “letting the global into the local.”
26
For Kim’s government, she argues, this not only referred to “political reform and market
liberalization, but also the revitalization of Korean culture and identity.” Jeeyoung Shin also
27
underscores the segyewha’s dual meaning. She notes that, on one hand, it “was committed to a
fulfillment of national advancement, in all aspects, to the level of the world’s most developed
nations.” However, despite its nationalist ambitions, “much of its energy was directed toward the
rapid internationalization and globalization of the Korean economy.”
28
Local media industries figured centrally in these shifts. In 1994, South Korea’s
Presidential Advisory Board on Science and Technology submitted a report to Kim Young Sam
which showed that the overall revenue earned by Universal Pictures’ 1993 international release
of its science fiction thriller Jurassic Park (inclusive of box office sales, television syndication,
licensing, etc.) equaled the foreign sales of 1.5 million Hyundai cars. The report came with a
strong recommendation that the president make Korea’s “youngsang san-eop” (“audiovisual
industry”) a “national strategic industry” of the 21st century.” Doobo Shim argues that this
29
“comparison between a film and Hyundai cars, which had symbolized Korea’s economic success,
!12
was so strategically effective that Koreans began to recognize the cultural sector as an industry
comparable to the automobile, shipbuilding, or construction industries.”
30
One of the major developments that emerged was a robust telecommunications
landscape, cable and satellite industry, and production infrastructure that could meet the demands
for high-quality programming. Entertainment programming like music competition and variety
shows would provide a crucial source of cheap content. In 1997, Korea saw the launch of its first
24-hour music television network, Mnet. Moreover, as I demonstrate in the following section,
31
the comparison between cultural production and industrial manufacturing discursively and
structurally inflected how the Korean music industry would develop within this new global
economy. Lee Soo Man, founder of SM Entertainment, Korea’s largest music company, groomed
and marketed his acts as manufactured exports.
K-Pop’s Architect: Lee Soo-Man and the birth of the Korean Idol Group (1997-present)
Kim’s establishment of segyehwa, or globalization, as a national framework in the
mid-1990s provided the discursive and industrial conditions in which K-Pop began to formalize
its production methods and aesthetic conventions. Between 1995 and 2001, a number of small- to
mid-sized record labels emerged, including the three music giants currently driving Korea’s pop
export industry. However, Lee Soo Man, who established SM Entertainment in 1995, is widely
credited as the “architect of K-Pop.”
32
Born in 1952, Lee was born at the height of the Korean War and grew up under the Park
Chung Hee dictatorship. As a teenager, he became actively involved in Korea’s then bourgeoning
music subculture, performing with his own folk group in the university music scene while also
working as a DJ for TBC’s radio station. In the late-1970s, he acquired a student visa and moved
!13
to the U.S. where he earned a Masters degree in computer engineering in southern California.
His time spent in the U.S. coincided with MTV’s ascendance as an icon for American youth
culture. Chris Lee, a supervisor of the A&R and Production Teams at SM, recounts that Lee Soo-
Man was particularly drawn to Michael Jackson, whose music videos showed off his versatility
and dexterity as both a singer and dancer. In 1988, he returned to Korea to localize this
33
visually-driven style of American pop music for the Korean youth market.
In 1995, Lee debuted his first major pop act under the label SM Entertainment, a five-
member boy band named H.o.T. who were known just as much for their colorful matching
wardrobes and acrobatic group choreography as their bouncy electronic tracks and infectious
melodic hooks. Visual promotion was central to SM’s approach to the music industry. Gyu Tag
Lee notes that “Young-Jin Yoo––the main composer, writer, and producer of SM Entertainment
who has composed many of the hit songs for H.O.T. and many other K-Pop idol groups…always
composed and produced songs only after forming the performance, taking into consideration the
group dancing, the shape of the stage, and even the position of each member on stage.” For
34
SM, performance comes first, then musical talent and quality.
!14
Figure 2. Promotional still featuring wardrobes from H.o.T.’s first
major single and music video, “Candy” (1996).
However, if television played a key role in the distribution and promotion of musical talent
since the 1960s, how more precisely did SM deviate from historical convention? If H.o.T.
showcased group dance routines, electronic dance beats with rap lyrics, and melodic hooks, how
did they differ from Seo Taiji? I submit that if Seo Taiji and Boys broke the affective distance
between performer and audience, H.o.T.’s success hinged on their desirability and direct appeals
to a young female fan base. It was well known and actively advertised by SM that none of
H.o.T.’s members had previous musical training before their debut. Rather, they were selected
based on their appearance and then groomed for promotion within the domestic market. Music
35
videos and a constant cycle of televised appearances thus played an especially key role in their
marketing strategy. They not only showcased their choreography but worked to construct them as
erotic figures, or “idols.”
SM followed the same blueprint when the label formed several other group acts in the
years immediately following H.o.T.’s debut, quickly systematizing what is now widely known as
Korea’s “idol system.” Potential talent is selected through an audition process and then undergo
years of rigorous training as singers and dancers, all while preparing for a grueling performance
schedule. A group’s debut is then followed by an aggressive media marketing campaign that
relies on the release of promotional music videos, almost daily media appearances on variety
programs and game shows, and promotional spots for various products. SM’s system was
institutionalized as a standard across the industry by the end of the decade providing the aesthetic
and industrial foundations for Korea’s pop music export of visual content in the early 2000s.
In the late-1990s that Chinese journalists began to use the term K-Pop to describe the
youth-driven style of Korean music that appeared to be amassing an international fan base in
Asia. Korean pop historians note that H.o.T.’s massive popularity in Chinese-language markets
!15
catalyzed SM’s and, more broadly, the Korean music industry’s shift in emphasis on the overseas
market. In 2000, H.o.T. performed to over 13,000 fans and sold over 400,00 albums in China.
36 37
The following year, SM began to groom a young female artist named BoA specifically for the
purposes of promoting her in Japan.
38
When Korean record labels realized the lucrative potential that K-Pop possessed in tapping
into Asia’s massive youth market, they formalized a marketing strategy for selling their artists
overseas. Korea’s second and third largest labels, YG Entertainment and JYP Entertainment, both
of whom produced several successful idols and idol groups in Korea in the late-1990s, followed
suit and similarly began to market acts in the regional Asian market. From 2001 to 2005, Korea’s
largest music firms–SM Entertainment, YG Entertainment, and JYP Entertainment–employed a
heuristic approach, by experimenting, adapting, and then systematizing various methods for
promoting Korean pop music to both Korea’s domestic consumer base and its overseas
audiences.
39
In 2005, SM Entertainment, YG Entertainment, and JYP Entertainment––Korea’s “Big
Three”–– began to expand their audience in the U.S., which houses the largest music market in
the world. YouTube has been a key player for K-Pop because it allows record companies to
bypass traditional media outlets and directly reach existing and potentially new fans. However,
popular press and industry trades in the U.S. tell a more conflicted tale about K-Pop’s “success.”
While the three labels have witnessed a considerable amount of success in Japan, where their
acts have repeatedly ranked at the top of its national main music chart, their marketing strategies
have faced significant challenges in the U.S. In order to break into the “mainstream market,”
Korea record labels must rely on traditional U.S. media outlets, like network television and radio.
!16
What kinds of methodological approaches account for the particular issues of cultural, racial, and
linguistic translation faced by K-Pop labels?
Searching for the “Local” in K-Pop
The first wave of scholarship about K-Pop often folded their analyses within a broader
examination of Korean television’s international popularity in the regional Asian market, a
phenomenon referred to as hallyu, or the Korean Wave. Two primary questions emerged: why
was Korean media gaining so much popularity across Asia and what larger significance did it
present? Dal Yong Jin traces Korean media’s ascendance in cultural and economic value to the
regionalization of East Asia’s media industries in the 1990s. Two major political economic shifts
facilitated this development. First, the repeal of a bi-lateral trade ban between South Korean and
Japan in 2000 allowed cultural goods to cross their borders for the first time in twenty-one
years. Secondly, China presented itself as a primary market for Korea because the liberalization
40
of its economy led to the rapid expansion of its media industries. Faced with an increased
demand for content, Chinese programmers looked to Korea because its industry produced high-
quality content at a lower rate than Japan or the U.S., which had been the dominant source of
media imports for decades.
41
In terms of the larger significance of these transformations, scholars of K-Pop and hallyu
have predominantly looked to postcolonial theories of hybridity as an analytical framework.
Hybridity has been used as a theoretical intervention into universalizing or homogenizing claims
about globalization, and to name cultural practices that resist imperial domination or do not
“follow the structure of the markets.” K-Pop’s or hallyu’s consumption patterns and cultural
42
practices in Asia, they argued, challenge presumptions made within studies of globalization
!17
about western cultural dominance. For instance, building upon Joseph Straubhaars’s notion of
cultural proximity, scholars like Woongjae Ryoo, Koichi Iwabuchi, Chua Beng Huat, and John
Lie argue that regional cultural affinities made Korean media more accessible than American
imports for Asian audiences. As Ryoo notes, “the success of the Korean wave is closely related
43
to the ability of South Korean culture and media industry to translate Western or American
culture to fit Asian tastes.” The commercial success of Korean media in Asia, Doobo Shim
44
concludes, is an outgrowth of Korea’s struggle for cultural continuity when confronted by the
threat of global cultural domination.”
45
The YouTube map, shown at the beginning of this introduction, ostensibly suggests a major
national achievement for Korea’s media industries in the face of globalization. If the U.S. has
been historically positioned as the economic and culture center of empire since the Cold War, the
map repositions the Pacific Rim, and more specifically, South Korea, as the new “media capital”
of the world. State and corporate representatives in Korea have also used the map to affirm K-
46
Pop and hallyu’s impact in the global economy. The Korea Creative Content Agency (KOCCA),
a government agency established in 2001 for the purpose of promoting hallyu, reported that
online social networks provide the biggest platform for Kpop fans, noting that K-Pop video clips
were viewed on YouTube nearly 2.3 billion times in 235 countries in 2011, a three-fold jump
since 2010. They conclude, “On the economic front, K-Pop’s growth abroad is proving to live
47
up to South Korea’s reputation as a top global exporter” and “becoming an iconic representation
of Korea, along with mobile phones and Internet technology.” Lee Won-jin, the managing
48
director of Google Korea, contends that “the fact that K-pop videos had almost 800 million hits
from viewers all over the world proves that K-pop has the potential to succeed in any given
market.”
49
!18
These nationalist pronouncements can be traced in large part to the Korean government’s
cooptation of hallyu as part of a national branding project. In the early-2000s, the Korean
government recognized the culture industry’s potential not only to generate revenue for the
domestic market but boost sales for other Korean exports. In 2001, the Korean government
incorporated media exports into a broader national campaign and declared popular culture as one
of the nation’s main exports. The state invested billions of U.S. dollars into the development of
50
its domestic media industries in the form of state subsidies, while actively promoting Korean pop
music and television exports as driving engines of Korea’s post-millennial economy.
51
However, an important distinction lies between K-Pop (a market-driven national media
industry) and hallyu (a state-sponsored national branding campaign). The state has always
preferred and promoted K-Pop because this helps boost the global image of Korea, thus the sale
of other key domestically-made products––especially mobile technologies, the country’s largest
manufactured export. Record labels, on the other hand, do not explicitly work from within a
52
nationalist framework. Labels hold a stake in the nation to the extent that it helps sell their
content abroad. More essential to them is their position as “global” entities, in order that their
music and their artists are perceived as universal, open, and accessible to as many cultural and
language markets as possible. Thus, marketing executives at these labels thus often make
pronouncements to the press like, “What is Korean is what is global.”
Gyu Tag Lee argues that “K-Pop can be seen as one of the clearest examples of ‘hybridity-
as-origin’, with specific effects, acceptances, and forms of consumption. The relative de-
nationality of K-Pop is constructed not only by its musical hybridity, but also by its demographic
transnationality. The genre has drawn on such a wide range of popular music and that is hardly
anything recognizably traditional ‘Korean’ about K-Pop…” John Lie makes a similar argument
53
!19
in his article, “What’s the K in K-Pop?.” And yet, Gyu Tag Lee argues, in spite of K-Pop’s
54
embedded transnationalism, audiences, critics and the media have sought to “re-nationalize” the
industry.
55
Indeed, in direct response to John Lie’s argument that there is nothing distinctly “Korean”
about K-Pop, Solie I. Shin and Lanu Kim attempt to identify what makes K-Pop distinctly
Korean. Solee I. Shin and Lanu Kim argue that the “Korean-ness” of K-pop emanates itself
nowhere more than in its production strategies, which stem from organizational recipes
institutionalized within Korea. The organizational structure and strategies of the entertainment
houses in smaller scale replicate those of the dominant industrial groupings called the chaebol,
whose competition revolves around large degree market control by vertically integrating related
activities rather than coordinating intergroup.” As I demonstrate in further detail in chapter 2,
56
K-Pop labels have globally promoted the idol system as a distinctly “Korean style” of music
production, or, in SM’s case, as a distinctly “SM style.”
Ingyu Oh and Gil Sung Park both attempt to extrapolate the formula for how Korean
record labels localize Korean pop music while making it globally appealing. They note that the
biggest record labels generally follow a globalization-localization-globalization, or G-L-G,
model. Park states, “The manufacturing of creativity in non-Western music involves three stages:
(1) globalization of creativity, (2) localization of musical contents and performers, and (3) global
dissemination of musical contents through SNS.” Oh offers a more specific formulation: “K-
57
Pop’s differentiation strategy to the make the “L” process attractive to a global audience is
roughly threefold: (1) numbers; (2) physique; (3) voice-dance coordination.” 58
In this dissertation, I do not seek to identify what makes K-Pop distinctly “Korean.” As
Marwan Kraidy argues, the “pervasiveness of hybridity,” he contends, merely “reflects the
!20
growing synchronization of world markets.” Kraidy aligns himself with Oliver Boyd-Barrett’s
59
claim that the liberalization of the global economy has only yielded more complex and
commodified hybridizations of cultures. In other words, “hybridity is fully compatible with
globalization.” Thus, binary models of hybridity organized around distinctions between the
60
global versus local, power versus resistance, imperialism versus hybridity perhaps no longer
offer a useful framework. Scholarly emphases on identifying what is “Korean” in K-Pop merely
cohere in a state objectives of claiming K-Pop as a national “success story,” and cultural and
economic “miracle,” which in many ways supports the U.S.-led capitalist development of South
Korea.
Nor do I ask what makes K-Pop successful. Digital distribution platforms, particularly
YouTube, have undoubtedly accelerated the speed and breadth with which media content now
traffics globally from the non-western world. In many ways, the story of K-Pop in the U.S.
reflects the story of YouTube and new flows of global media facilitated by online digital
distribution platforms. However, this offers an incomplete picture. Why are music videos driving
these shifting flows of media content from the non-western to western world, and what particular
kinds of images and sounds traffic through these emerging media circuits? Technologically
determinist claims that focus solely on industrial convergence tend to overlook the textual
contours of the media texts themselves and the discourses that couch which reception.
Hybridity as Methodology
I find Kraidy’s notion of a “contrapuntal” approach to hybridity the most useful in my
analyses. Building upon Edward Said’s notion of the counterpoint in Western classical music, a
contrapuntal approach allows us to think through the links between institutions, the profound
!21
impact of exchanges between participants, and “a more complete analysis of global media issues
that examines the connections between production, textuality, and reception in the constitution of
hybridity.” He proposes that we think about “hybridity as a discursive formation,” which
61
Michel Foucault defines as a “system of dispersion” where one can find a regularity or order
between objects, types of statements, concepts of thematic choices. That is, he proposes hybridity
as methodology rather than a set of aesthetic traits.
It is crucial to engage in close textual analyses of K-Pop music videos. Eun-Young Jung
argues that for international marketing of popular music, “image matters.” She notes: “Popular
music, whose appeal relies somewhat less on language than do films or television shows, should
traverse national boundaries somewhat more easily, it would seem. And indeed, listeners
worldwide often enjoy listening to music whose lyrics are in a language they do not know or
understand well . . . . Yet, it also clear that the transnational flows of popular music have limits,
and these limits have less to do with language or musical style than they do with, for lack of a
better term, ‘image.’”
62
I thus draw from the methodologies that were introduced in television and popular music
studies in the early 1980s, when MTV emerged as the iconic producer of youth culture. In
Dancing in the Distraction Factory: Music Television and Popular Culture, Andrew Goodwin
argues that “in the literature on music television, misunderstandings about visuality in pop
generate two related myopias: first, music scholars (and musicians and critics) have tended to
neglect the importance of visual discourses of pop, and consequently exaggerate the significance
of music video clips.” On the other hand, “the problem is that music video clips, and music
television services such as MTV , are studied in isolation from the music itself, and with too little
regard for their important foundations in the music industry.” Goodwin seems to propose a
63
!22
balance between televisual and musical contexts. He proceeds to critique in pointed ways both
Marsha Kinder’s “Music Video and the Spectator: Television, Ideology and Dream” and E. Ann
Kaplan’s Rocking Around the Clock for privileging the visual in their analyses. But, in his own
64
textual breakdown of the music video, he argues that audio and visual are intrinsically tethered to
the architecture of the pop song, not to the narrative structures of television. Thus, he ultimately
proposes a musicological analysis of the music video’s imagery.
65
In this dissertation, I turn to Michel Chion’s notion of the “Audio-Visual Contract” as a
framework for my textual analyses of K-Pop visuality. He notes that music videos are not bound
by a linear narrative or dramatic time as are films. Rather, “Music video editing returns
repeatedly to the same motifs, typically playing on four or five basic visual themes. Rather than
serving to advance action, the editing of music videos turns the prism to show its facets.”
66
Without dialogue to structure the narration, “the music video’s image is fully liberated from the
linearity normally imposed by sound . . . this relation is often limited to points of
synchronization, where the image matches the production of sound in some way. The rest of the
time each goes its separate way.” Thus, while he does not discuss the formal properties of
67
popular music at length, categorizing it instead under the larger umbrella of “sound,” he usefully
points out that music videos trade on tropes rather than narratives.
What tropes do K-Pop videos proffer? First, they are organized around group dance
routines because, in place of a hook, they create a recognizable connection between artist and
viewer and can forge connections between audiences in different linguistic and cultural markets.
However, as I demonstrate in the following chapters, the dance routines and accompanying vocal
harmonies showcased in K-Pop music videos routinely emphasize the technical precision of its
!23
performers often through tightly unified movements. Oftentimes, record labels actively market
bodily discipline exhibited in these performances as part of their brand identity.
However, a discourse analysis of K-Pop’s circulation in the U.S. demonstrates that
technical discipline exhibited by such performers fits uncomfortably with the kinds of racial and
sexual expressiveness apparently valued within the U.S. media landscape. As performers, more
than the media content itself, constitute the primary commodities of K-Pop’s global industry,
what are the implications of discursively constructing these gendered and radicalized bodies as
manufactured exports and markers of national success, particularly when they traffic within the
U.S. media landscape? Thus, I also rely on the frameworks offered by transnational feminist
studies to examine how ideas about race and sexuality are transnationally articulated. U.S.-based
notions of racial formations and notions of citizenship cannot fully account for the contradictions
between claims about the universalizing force of globalization and bodily difference.
68
Rather than examining K-Pop as either an example of imperial dominance or resistance
to it, I think of K-Pop as an “afterlife of empire.” That is, a contrapuntal analysis of K-Pop’s
transpacific flows between the U.S. and South Korea forces us to grapple with the complex
political-economic, military, and cultural relationship that has profoundly impacted South
Korea’s development as a globalized nation. Thus, I examine how the K-Pop industry must be
understood in relation to the the protracted military, political-economic and cultural relationship
between the U.S. and South Korea.
Chapter Breakdown
In Chapter 1, I examine the Kim Sisters, the South Korean sibling trio. They were trained
as entertainers by performing for American GIs in the wake of the Korean War before migrating
!24
to the U.S. to pursue an entertainment career. They performed on the Ed Sullivan Show more
than twenty times between the years of 1960 and 1971, and yet their story has remained
noticeably absent from cultural and media histories. As footage of their live televised
performances have recirculated on YouTube they have been reclaimed by Asian American
bloggers, K-Pop fan sites, and even promotional texts produced by the state about K-Pop’s
history. These narratives often frame them as a “success story.” However, I ask what traces of
69
empire and U.S. militarism does their story re-write into K-Pop’s historical framework?
In Chapter 2, I examine SM Entertainment’s global marketing campaign for their nine-
member girl group, Girls’ Generation, whose 2009 music video “Gee” aggregated millions of
views in the U.S. I track two competing discourses that emerged in American media discourse
about their online success. The first celebrates the video as examples of K-Pop’s global appeal in
the West. The second reads their gender performance as too “manufactured,” their factory sheen
too technologized for American audiences. I demonstrate how these arguments always obscure
gendered presumptions about the Asian body. In Chapter 3, I examines the pop artist Psy and his
performance of masculine failure in the viral video “Gangnam Style.” His repeated articulations
of himself as an unexpected success in the U.S. worked to present an aura of authenticity. The
mainstream media often read his authenticity in contradistinction to the manufactured sheen
(read “androgynous,” “effeminate”) of K-Pop boy groups, but have failed to acknowledge that
Psy’s masculine authenticity was a result of his self-reflexive performance and discursive
construction of his sexual undesirability. !25
INTRODUCTION ENDNOTES Kang-hyun Chung, “Top Korean Pop Stars Are Riding Hallyu’s Second Wave,” Korean
1
JoongAng Daily, January 21, 2011, sec. Culture, http://koreajoongangdaily.joins.com/news/
article/article.aspx?aid=2931261.
Kang-hyun Chung, “Top Korean Pop Stars Are Riding Hallyu’s Second Wave,” Korean
2
JoongAng Daily, January 21, 2011, sec. Culture, http://koreajoongangdaily.joins.com/news/
article/article.aspx?aid=2931261.
Kang-hyun Chung, “Top Korean Pop Stars Are Riding Hallyu’s Second Wave,” Korean
3
JoongAng Daily, January 21, 2011, sec. Culture, http://koreajoongangdaily.joins.com/news/
article/article.aspx?aid=2931261.
Gyu Tag Lee, “De-Nationalization and Re-Nationalization of Culture: The Globalization of K-
4
Pop,” PhD diss., George Mason University, 2013.
Bruce Cumings, Korea’ s Place in the Sun: A Modern History, Updated edition (New York: W.
5
W. Norton, 2005). Martin Hart-Landsberg, The Rush to Development: Economic Change and
Political Struggle in South Korea (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1993). Gary Gereffi and
Donald L. Wyman, Manufacturing Miracles: Paths of Industrialization in Latin America and
East Asia (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1990).
For more on debates about how authenticity within music cultures, as well as music criticism
6
has been gendered and racialized, see Angela McRobbie’s “Settling Accounts With Subcultures:
A Feminist Critique,” in On Record: Rock, Pop, & and the Written Word, ed. Simon Frith and
Andrew Goowin (London and New York: Routledge, 1990) where she comments on the ways in
which academic conceptualizations of subcultures -- though her grievance is with both male-
centered theories and praxis “in the streets” -- are mapped spatially onto feminine domestic and
masculine public spheres. See also Susan McClary, Feminine Endings: Music, Gender, and
Sexuality (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1991). Allan Moore, “Authenticity as
Authentication,” Popular Music 21, No. 2 (2002): 209–223. Jason Toynbee, “Music, Culture,
Creativity,” in The Cultural Study of Music: A Critical Introduction, ed. Martin Clayton, Trevor
Herbert and Richard Middleton (New York and London: Routledge, 2003): pp. 102-112; Hugh
Barker and Taylor, “Faking It: The Quest for Authenticity in Popular Music” (London: Faber and
Faber, 2007).
Lee, Yongwoo. “Embedded V oices In Between Empires The Cultural Formation of Korean
7
Popular Music in Modern Times,” PhD diss., McGill University (Canada), 2010.
Roald Maliangkay details the history of Korean singing troupes who covered popular Japanese
8
songs, often traveling to Japan to perform them. However, any signs or hint of Korean national
expression were immediately suppressed. See “Koreans Performing for Foreign Troops: The
Occidentalism of the C.M.C. and K.P.K.,” East Asian History, no. 37 (December 2011): 66.
!26
Lee, “Embedded V oices,” 49.
9
Roald Maliangkay, “Supporting Our Boys : American Military Entertainment and Korean Pop
10
Music in the 1950s and Early 1960s,” in Korean Pop Music: Riding the Wave, ed. by Keith
Howard (Dorset, UK: Global Oriental, 2006); Roald Maliangkay, “Koreans Performing for
Foreign Troops: The Occidentalism of the C.M.C. and K.P.K.,” East Asian History no. 37
(December 2011): 59–72; Lee, “Embedded V oices In Between Empires The Cultural Formation
of Korean Popular Music in Modern Times.”
Phil Ho Kim and Hyunjoon Shin, “The Birth of ‘Rok’: Cultural Imperialism, Nationalism, and
11
the Glocalization of Rock Music in South Korea, 1964-1975,” positions: east asia cultures
critique 18, no. 1 (Spring 2010): 199–230.
Martin Hart-Landsberg, The Rush to Development: Economic Change and Political Struggle
12
in South Korea (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1993): 47.
Dal Yong Jin, Hands on Hands Off: The Korean State and the Market Liberalization of the
13
Communication Industry (New York: Hampton Press, 2011): 163.
At the time, a number of musical styles and subcultural scenes proliferated as a generation of
14
young self-taught musicians began to localize American pop genres that were entering Korea
through the U.S. military bases by way of USO shows, night clubs, and Armed Forces Network
Korea. The “group sound” that had become popular in the States led to a number of Korean all-
male rock bands and girl groups. Roald Maliangkay, “Supporting Our Boys,” 25.
Seoul Studio, established in 1946, was the dominant company and defined Korea's soundscape
15
in the 1980s. In 1984, the studio installed a Solid State Logic compressor, the only one available
in Korea at the time. Mark Russell, Pop Goes Korea: Behind the Revolution in Movies, Music,
and Internet Culture (Berkeley: Stone Bridge Press, 2008: 141.
Gyu Tag Lee, “De-Nationalization and Re-Nationalization of Culture,” 48.
16
Keith Howard, Korean Pop Music: Riding the Wave (Folkestone, Kent: Global Oriental,
17
2006): 84.
Gyu Tag Lee notes that the program’s strict and concrete rules made it a reliable ranking
18
system. Lee, “De-Nationalization and Re-Nationalization of Culture,” 48.
Gyu Tag Lee, “De-Nationalization and Re-Nationalization of Culture,” 48.
19
Gyu Tag Lee, “De-Nationalization and Re-Nationalization of Culture,” 67-68.
20
!27
Doobo Shim, “Hybridity and the Rise of Korean Popular Culture in Asia,” Media, Culture &
21
Society 28, no. 1 (2006): 25–44; Keith Howard, Korean Pop Music: Riding the Wave
(Folkestone, Kent: Global Oriental, 2006); Janet Flora Hilts, “Seo Taiji, 1992--2004: South
Korean Popular Music and Masculinity,” (master’s thesis, York University, 2006); Min-Jung
Son, “Coming of Age : Korean Pop in the 1990s” and Eun-Young Jung, “Articulating Korean
Youth Culture through Global Popular Music Styles : Seo Taiji's Use of Rap and Metal,” in
Korean Pop Music: Riding the Wave, ed. by Keith Howard (Dorset, UK: Global Oriental, 2006);
Hee-Eun Lee, “Othering Ourselves: Identity and Globalization in Korean Popular Music, 1992–
2002,” PhD diss, University of Iowa, 2005; Gil-sung Park, “Manufacturing Creativity,” 16.
Doobo Shim, “Hybridity and the Rise of Korean Popular Culture in Asia,” Media, Culture &
22
Society 28, no. 1 (2006): 39. Jung notes that while a few had attempted Korean rap, they used
English lyrics which were incomprehensible. Seo Taiji’s lyrics were all in Korean, which Jung
cites as a major reason for their success.” Jung, “Seo Taiji’s Use of Rap and Metal,” 112.
Eun-Young Jung, “Seo Taiji’s Use of Rap and Metal,” 112.
23
Following their first TV appearance, the album sold more than 1,500,000 copies. Within a few
24
weeks of its release, it challenged mainstream pop, and within four weeks the song was top of
the MBC charts. Ibid.
Ibid., 111.
25
Jin, Hands On Hands Off, 35.
26
Lee, “Othering Ourselves”, 14.
27
Jeeuyoung Shin, “Globalisation and New Korean Cinema,” in New Korean Cinema, ed.
28
ChiYun Shin and Julian Stringer (New York: New York University Press, 2005): 53.
Doobo Shim, “South Korean Media Industry in the 1990s and the Economic Crisis,”
29
Prometheus 20, no. 4 (2002), 340-341. Jeeuyoung Shin offers a slightly different interpretation
of the term “youngsang san-eop,” which she takes to to mean “high-tech industry.” See Shin,
“Globalisation and New Korean Cinema,”53.
Doobo Shim, “South Korean Media Industry in the 1990s and the Economic Crisis,” 340-341.
30
Dal Yong Jin, Hands on Hands Off, 104.
31
Lee, Gyu Tag, “De-Nationalization and Re-Nationalization of Culture”; Solee I. Shin and Lanu
32
Kim, “Organizing K-Pop: Emergence and Market Making of Large Korean Entertainment
Houses, 1980–2010,” East Asia 30, no. 4 (January 12, 2013): 255–72; Ingyu Oh, “The
Globalization of K-Pop: Korea’s Place in the Global Music Industry,” Korea Observer 44, no. 3
(Autumn 2013): 389–409; Gil-sung Park. “Manufacturing Creativity: Production, Performance,
and Dissemination of K-Pop*,” Korea Journal 53, no. 4 (Winter 2013): 14–33; Mark Russell,
Pop Goes Korea: Behind the Revolution in Movies, Music, and Internet Culture (Berkeley: Stone
Bridge Press, 2008).
!28
Solee I. Shin and Lanu Kim, “Organizing K-Pop.”
33
Gyu Tag Lee, “De-Nationalization and Re-Nationalization of Culture,” 92-93.
34
Mark Russell, Pop Goes Korea, 154.
35
Doobo Shim, “Hybridity and the Rise of Korean Popular Culture in Asia,” Media, Culture &
36
Society 28, no. 1 (2006): 25–44; Rowan Pease, “Internet, Fandom, and K-Wave in China,” in
Korean Pop Music: Riding the Wave, ed. Keith Howard (Folkestone, Kent: Global Oriental,
2006); Mark Russell, Pop Goes Korea: Behind the Revolution in Movies, Music, and Internet
Culture (Berkeley: Stone Bridge Press, 2008); John Lie, “What Is the K in K-Pop? South Korean
Popular Music, the Culture Industry, and National Identity,” Korea Observer 43, no. 3 (Autumn
2012): 354.
Pease, “K-Wave in China,” 176.
37
Woongjae Ryoo, “Globalization, or the Logic of Cultural Hybridization: The Case of the
38
Korean Wave,” Asian Journal of Communication 19, no. 2 (June 2009): 140.
Gil-sung Park, “Manufacturing Creativity: Production, Performance, and Dissemination of 39
K-Pop*,” Korea Journal 53, no. 4 (Winter 2013): 14–33; Min-Soo Seo, “Lessons from K-Pop’s
Global Success,” SERI Quarterly 5, no. 3 (July 2012): 60–66,9; Solee I. Shin and Lanu Kim,
“Organizing K-Pop: Emergence and Market Making of Large Korean Entertainment Houses,
1980–2010,” East Asia 30, no. 4 (January 2013): 255–72.
Marc Castellano, “South Korea Eases Ban on Japanese Culture,” Japan Economic Institute
40
Weekly Report, 2000; John Lie, “What Is the K in K-Pop? South Korean Popular Music, the
Culture Industry, and National Identity,” Korea Observer 43, no. 3 (Autumn 2012): 353.
Dal Yong Jin, “Reinterpretation of Cultural Imperialism: Emerging Domestic Market vs
41
Continuing US Dominance,” Media, Culture & Society 29, no. 5 (September 1, 2007): 760.
Vincent Mosco and Dan Schiller, Continental Order?: Integrating North America for
42
Cybercapitalism (Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield, 2001), 9. (Hybridity: Appadurai, 1996;
Bhabha, 1994; Shim, 2006; Shome & Hegde, 2002, Kraidy, 2002)
John Lie, “What Is the K in K-Pop?”; Joseph Straubhaar, “Beyond Media Imperialism:
43
Asymmetrical Interdependence and Cultural Proximity,” Critical Studies in Mass
Communication 8 no. 1 (1991): 39–59;
Woongjae Ryoo, “Globalization, or the Logic of Cultural Hybridization: The Case of the Korean
Wave,” Asian Journal of Communication 19, no. 2 (June 2009): 137–51; Chua Beng Huat, “East
Asian Pop Culture: Consumer Communities and Politics of the National,” Cultural Space and
Public Sphere in Asia (2006): 27-43. Chua Beng Huat, “Conceptualizing an East Asian Popular
Culture,” Inter-Asia Cultural Studies 5, no. 2 (August 2004): 200–221; Koichi Iwabuchi, “De-
Westernisation, Inter-Asian Referencing and beyond,” European Journal of Cultural Studies 17
no. 1 (2014): 44–57.
!29
Woongjae Ryoo, “Globalization, or the Logic of Cultural Hybridization: The Case of the
44
Korean Wave,” Asian Journal of Communication 19, no. 2 (June 2009): 145.
Shim, “Hybridity,” 31.
45
Michael Curtin, “Media Capitals,” 273.
46
Naidu-Ghelani, Rajeshni. “Move Over Bieber — Korean Pop Music Goes Global.”
47
CNBC.com, July 16, 2012, http://www.cnbc.com/id/48157880.
Ibid.
48
Kang-hyun Chung, “Top Korean Pop Stars Are Riding Hallyu’s Second Wave,” Korean
49
JoongAng Daily, January 21, 2011, sec. Culture, http://koreajoongangdaily.joins.com/news/
article/article.aspx?aid=2931261.
Hallyu was first coined by Chinese-language journalists to describe the growing popularity of
50
Korean television dramas and pop music in east and southeast Asia in the late-1990s.
Doobo Shim, “The Growth of Korean Cultural Industries and the Korean Wave,” 24.
51
Dal Yong Jin as written extensively about Korea’s shift toward an Information Technologies-
52
driven economy and its impact on cultural production and consumption and media policy. See
Hands on/Hands Off: The Korean State and the Market Liberalization of the Communication
Industry (New York: Hampton Press, 2011); “Hallyu 2.0: The New Korean Wave in the Creative
Industry,” International Institute Journal 2, no. 1 (Fall 2012); Dwayne Roy Winseck and Dal
Yong Jin, The Political Economies of Media: The Transformation of the Global Media
Industries. (London and New York: Bloomsbury Academic, 2012).
Gyu Tag Lee, “De-Nationalization and Re-Nationalization of Culture,” 86-87.
53
John Lie, “What Is the K in K-Pop?”
54
Gyu Tag Lee, “De-Nationalization and Re-Nationalization of Culture,” 88.
55
Shin and Kim, “Organizing K-Pop,” 258-259.
56
Gil-sung Park, “Manufacturing Creativity,” 15.
57
Ingyu Oh, “The Globalization of K-Pop,” 400.
58
Ibid.
59
Marwan M. Kraidy, Hybridity: The Cultural Logic of Globalization (Philadelphia: Temple
60
University Press, 2005), 9.
Ibid., 13.
61
!30
Eun-Young Jung, “Playing the Race and Sexuality Cards in the Transnational Pop Game:
62
Korean Music Videos for the US Market,” Journal of Popular Music Studies 22, no. 2 (2010):
220.
Andrew Goodwin, Dancing in the Distraction Factory: Music Television and Popular Culture
63
(Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1992), 3.
E. Ann Kaplan, Rocking Around the Clock: Music Television, Postmodernism, and Consumer
64
Culture (New York: Routledge, 1987). Marsha Kinder, “Music Video and the Spectator:
Television, Ideology and Dream,” Film Quarterly 38, no. 1 (Autumn 1984): 2–15.
Goodwin, Dancing in the Distraction Factory,” 50.
65
Michel Chion, Audio-Vision: Sound on Screen (New York: Columbia University Press, 1994),
66
166.
Ibid., 167.
67
Inderpal Grewal, Transnational America: Feminisms, Diasporas, Neoliberalisms (Durham:
68
Duke University Press, 2005); Laura Hyun Yi Kang, Compositional Subjects: Enfiguring Asian/
American Women (Durham: Duke University Press Books, 20020; Celine Parreñas Shimizu, The
Hypersexuality of Race: Performing Asian/American Women on Screen and Scene (Duke
University Press, 2007).
Mark Russell, “Korea Pop Wars: From Mokpo Tears to Vegas Cheers,” last modified October
69
19, 2007, http://www.koreapopwars.com/2007/10/from-mokpo-tears-to-vegas-cheers.html;
Davod Teszar, “From Seoul to Las Vegas: Story of the Kim Sisters,” Korea Times, September 21,
2011; “The 1960ʹ′s American K-Pop Tale of ‘The Kim Sisters’: From Post War Korean Poverty to
USA Prime Time,” Soompi, February 4, 2014, http://www.soompi.com/2014/02/04/the-1960s-
american-k-pop-tale-of-the-kim-sisters-from-post-war-korean-poverty-to-usa-prime-time/
#.U4bMNpRdWCt; “The Kim Sisters,” You Offend Me You Offend My Family,” accessed May
29, 2014, http://youoffendmeyouoffendmyfamily.com/the-kim-sisters/; Benjamin Min Han,
“Before K-Pop Hit U.S. Shores, The Kim Sisters Were An American Musical Sensation,”
KoreAm Journal,, http://iamkoream.com/before-k-pop-hit-u-s-shores-the-kim-sisters-were-an-
american-musical-sensation/; K-Pop: A New Force in Pop Music, vol. 2, Korean Culture (Korean
Culture and Information Service, 2011).
!31
CHAPTER 1
MANUFACTURED HARMONIES: THE KIM SISTERS, K-POP AND KOREA’S
“FORGOTTEN WAR”
In February of 2014, Soompi, the most widely read K-Pop fan website in the world, posted
a blog entry entitled, “The 1960ʹ′s American K-Pop Tale of ‘The Kim Sisters’: From Post War
Korean Poverty to USA Prime Time.” It featured the story of a sibling trio from South Korea, the
Kim Sisters, who survived the devastating aftermath of the Korean War (1950-1953) by
performing for American troops stationed throughout Korea. In 1958, the group was scouted by
Tom Ball, an American talent agent looking to book an Asian act for an Orient-themed revue at
the Thunderbird Hotel in Las Vegas, Nevada; Ball had caught wind of the Kim Sisters from a GI
returning from duty in Korea. After seeing them perform at one of the many night clubs housed
on the military bases in Seoul, he offered them a contract. The group’s three members––Sook-Ja
(whom I will refer heretofore by her married American name Sue Kim-Bonifacio), Ai-Ja, and
Min-Ja––relocated to the States and made their debut in Las Vegas the following year.
While filming an episode in Las Vegas, Ed Sullivan, host of CBS network’s hit variety
series, caught the Kim Sisters’ act and invited them to perform on his program. While Sullivan is
perhaps best remembered for introducing Elvis Presley and the Beatles to American audiences,
he was also one of the Kim Sisters’ biggest supporters. Sullivan invited them to perform on the
show more than twenty times between 1959 and the end of the series’ run in 1971, making the
group among the most frequent guests to appear in the show’s history. Even so, the Kims have
1
since remained eclipsed in American cultural memory.
2
Soompi offers just one among several examples of Asian American and Korean pop-music
blogs that seek to resurrect the Kim Sisters from historical oblivion and to locate them as K-
!32
Pop’s predecessors. The article concludes, “Though no longer performing, the Kim Sisters have
3
made their mark on history as the first Korean group to make it big in America and paved the
way for current Korean musicians pursuing their career abroad.” The post is followed by links
4
to the few clips (uploaded to YouTube) of the Kim Sisters’ performances on Sullivan and other
television variety programs from the 1960s, exemplifying what Lucas Hilderbrand describes as
“amateur historiographies” generated by YouTube’s clip economy. Hilderbrand argues that the
site hosts countless clips from now-“classic” moments from television, as well as those that
remain unavailable or obscure, offering “some evidence of what from television’s past now
constitutes our cultural memory—a concept that suggests the idiosyncratic ways that personal
experience, popular culture, and historical narratives intersect.” Whether used for scholarly or
5
nostalgic purposes, YouTube allows us “to seek out the media texts that have shaped them and
that would otherwise be forgotten in “objective” histories.”
6
In this chapter, I ask how might these YouTube clips of the Kim Sisters serve as digital
traces of an occluded history? What forgotten histories about K-Pop do amateur histories like
those offered by Soompi resurrect? In Benjamin Min Han’s groundbreaking study of the
appearance of international and ethnic entertainers on American variety shows during the Cold
War era, Han argues that media studies has generally overlooked the historical and cultural
significance of these performers because “they do not conform to traditional understandings of
television stardom.” I would add that their forgetting belongs to a larger structural erasure of an
7
episode in U.S. military history: the Korean War (1950-1953).
In this chapter, I historically situate the Kim Sisters’ arrival in the American media
landscape at a historical moment when domestic support for U.S. military and expansionism in
Asia was flagging. The Korean War polarized public opinion in the U.S. about whether the
!33
government should maintain its military and economic involvement in Asia. The U.S.
government had spent roughly $67 billion on a military action that led to the loss of roughly
40,000 U.S. soldiers and over 1.5 million Korean civilians in the north and south, only to leave
Korea a country divided between a community north and capitalist south. Jodi Kim states that
while World War II unified the country under a single purpose, the Korean War was imbued with
a feeling of hopelessness as it seemed to continue without an end in sight. The peninsula’s
division remains a haunting reminder of the violence of American imperialism, a scar that
America continues to willfully forget. Yet, as Kim reminds, “every willful forgetting leaves its
symptoms and traces…”
8
Given this historical context, why is it significant that the Kim Sisters are being resurrected
as K-Pop’s predecessors? What cultural and market value do their harmonies and synchronized
dances carry at this particular moment? As I demonstrate in this chapter, the Kim Sisters, who
first became famous among GIs in Korea by localizing American musical conventions, were
marketed in the U.S. press as a Korean act whose hybridity had cultural and market value. The
harmonic and technical precision of their vocal ensemble and tightly synchronized dance
routines earned them the respect of figures like Sullivan. However, in the context of the Korean
War, I argue, the Kim Sisters’ crossover success hinged on the cultural and political currency that
“Korea” carried as U.S. State officials and cultural producers looked to shore up domestic and
international support for Washington’s military and economic intervention in Asia. The Kim
Sisters’s performances carried value because they elicited a feeling of hope around Korea. They
literally performed a harmonic integration of U.S.-Korea relations, and reimagined Korea’s
militarized history as one of global futurity rather than haunted by division and traumas of the
!34
past. The following section provides a brief history of the Korean War in the context of the U.S.
government’s imperialist project in Asia during the Cold War years.
Manufactured Division and Korea’s Forgotten War
The end of the Second World War brought an end to Japan and Europe’s race-based
empires, portending Korea’s long-awaited independence from more than thirty years of Japanese
colonial rule (1910-1945). However, Korea found itself triangulated between another imperial
struggle between the United States and the Soviet Union. Both sides had fought as allies against
the Japanese imperial army in Korea, each charged with the protection of the southern and
northern halves of the peninsula, respectively. As two global military and economic superpowers,
looking to secure their leadership within newly decolonized territories, the U.S. and the Soviet
Union held competing visions of a postwar international economic order and system of self-
governance that ensured the continued autonomy of the newly liberated states.
The Soviet Union declared that sovereignty could only be achieved by breaking from
economic dependency on the west, a principle that drove an international Marxist movement in
the Third World throughout the 1960s and 1970s. The U.S., on the other hand, proclaimed that
only an international system of open trade and free market development would protect these
newly liberated colonies from the “tyranny” of communism. As a number of Marxist historians
9
have argued, Washington’s purported investment worked to obscure trade policies designed to
ensure uneven power relations between the U.S. and its political-economic and military allies.
David Harvey argues that when America’s military and political-economic might became
undeniable at the end of the Second World War, the U.S. ushered in a new model of imperialism
in which it “masked the explicitness of territorial gains and occupations under the mask of a
!35
spaceless universalization of its own values.” Washington sought to secure global power
10
through “consent,” rather than coercion, and by declaring private property and individualism as a
human right.
Washington looked to Asia as a model for the benefits of free market development in the
decolonizing world. Thus they poured a tremendous amount of economic and military resources
into rebuilding Japan and South Korea into “engines of growth for the broader world economy,”
as part of “a Cold War project to remake both of them into paragons of noncommunist
development.” Although the U.S. and Soviet Union had promised to oversee Korea’s transition
11
into an independent state, both sides, therefore, maintained their military presence on the
peninsula in the name of protecting the country's sovereignty. For state strategists in the U.S.,
Korea served an important role in their vision of unifying the Asian region within a single global
economy under American leadership. In 1948, the U.S. oversaw the election of Syngman Rhee, a
Korean nationalist who had lived in exile in the U.S. since the early 1900s as the new democratic
president of the Republic of Korea. State strategists believed that Rhee, who was educated in the
States and worked closely with intelligence officials in Washington during World War II, might
protect U.S. interests. In the north, the Soviet Union oversaw the appointment of Kim Il-Sung
12
as leader.
After Mao Zedong and the Communist party assumed political leadership in mainland
China in 1949, Korea and Asia’s political economic future became a priority for both China and
the U.S. As both the north and south declared themselves the official government of Korea,
military skirmishes took place over the 38th parallel for several years, until the U.S. formally
declared war on June 25, 1950. A violent, three-year conflict between the North––now supported
by the Chinese Red Army who provided a bulk of military support––and a U.S.-backed South
!36
destroyed much of Korea’s infrastructure in both halves of the peninsula. On the brink of another
international war, the U.S. and Soviet Union signed an armistice agreement in 1953, which
placed a temporary hold on direct military combat but left the country divided by a de-
militarized zone (DMZ) at the 38th parallel. As the agreement did not officially end the war,
another outbreak between the north and south remained imminent.
The Korean War, Bruce Cumings argues, pushed Washington to adopt an alternative
economic plan of maintaining a divided Asia that relied on two key strategies: 1) direct
investment in the national economic development of independent nations and 2) militarized
support of anti-Communist political leadership. U.S. economic aid-packages served as Korea’s
primary source of financial support in its postwar recovery, totaling approximately 75 percent of
South Korea’s capital investment during its postwar recovery period. Moreover, the U.S.
13
dramatically expanded its military presence in the name of protecting South Korea from a
northern attack, and legitimizing the leadership of pro-capitalist Rhee.
In other words, whereas U.S. state officials once imagined a unified Asia economically
integrated within a U.S.-led capitalist system, following the “fall of China” in 1947 and the
official division of the Korean peninsula in 1953, they turned to a strategy of containment which
sought to constrain the growing power of communism in Asia by strengthening the military and
economic power of its allies. This enmity had to be manufactured both by characterizing a
communist Asia as a threat to national independence while upholding its capitalist allies as
exemplars of free-market development.
!37
Manufactured Girl Groups
While Korea served as the first major military and ideological battleground for the U.S.
imperialist project in Asia, numerous Korean media historians have argued that the expansion of
U.S. military in the wake of the Korean War facilitated the emergence of a complex cultural
landscape in postwar Korea. In Phil Ho Kim and Hyunjoon Shin’s history of Korea’s postwar
14
rock sceme, they call for resistance to situating early formations of South Korean popular music
and performance as examples of cultural imperialism and colonial mimicry. Not only because the
genres primarily imported to Korea––namely, jazz and rock––themselves were hybridized
musical forms, but because the U.S. military bases facilitated the emergence of a complex
professional music scene in Korea. The U.S. military bases served as a conduit for the influx of
popular American media forms, whether through the movement of radio and television
broadcasts, entertainers who stopped in Korea to perform for troops, or military personnel
themselves, who brought not only phonographs with them into the country but their own musical
tastes. Military bases served as spaces of cultural contact and hybrid expressions, but they also
served as important training grounds for the many local professional musicians that provided the
foundation for Korea’s postwar popular music industry.
The American United Services Organization––a U.S. civilian volunteer organization
established by the government during World War II to support U.S. morale in military personnel
stationed abroad––had regularly dispatched American entertainers to perform for American GIs
stationed throughout South Korea. During the early- to mid-1950s, Bob Hope, Marilyn Monroe,
and Al Jolson regularly stopped in Korea to perform for U.S. troops. These shows, which became
known in Korea as “American Eighth Army Shows,” introduced local audiences to a number of
American musical genres and performance styles.
15
!38
The Armed Forces Korean Network (AFKN) facilitated the influx of a variety of popular
American media forms into Korea. AFKN, an affiliate of the U.S. Forces Radio and Television
16
Service, established a radio network in 1951 and television network AFKN-TV in 1957, for the
purposes of providing a “target audience of 60,000 American military personnel, civilian
employees, and their dependents” with American programs. However, because the war had
17
destroyed most of the country’s telecommunications infrastructure, AFKN served as Korea’s
primary broadcasting network until the early 1960s, reaching a “shadow audience of 30,000”
Korean listeners and viewers. Moreover, Roald Maliangkay and Yongwoo Lee argue, AFKN
18
and USO Army shows did more than produce a Korean audience for popular American media
forms; they provided the source material for the development of a local music scene. Lacking
access to sheet music and formal training, aspiring musicians in Korea during that time trained
themselves vocally and on western instruments by imitating the sounds imported by radio and
USO tours.
19
While AFKN and USO tours provided the influx of American pop, the U.S. military
basecamps themselves created the conditions for the professionalization of Korean musical
performers. Shin and Kim note that when the U.S. military expanded its presence in Korea in the
wake of the war, the USO could not meet the increased demand for entertainers. Thus, a number
of female and male musicians were recruited onto the bases to perform adaptations of American
songs, eventually providing the bulk of local entertainment for GIs. With a regular flow of talent
competitions and live variety shows, these camps created a highly-competitive environment
where imitation and “versatility” were crucial to the survival of bands playing U.S. military
clubs.”
20
!39
The U.S. Eight Army Shows and AFKN broadcasts introduced Korea to “group sound,”
then popular in the States and among American GIs, which led to the formation of a number of
all-female and male ensemble acts. However, the type of performances in which they engaged
were gendered. Male musicians tended to be instrumentalists, some of whom would eventually
form Korea’s psychedelic rock scene in Korea in the 1960s. Female musicians, on the other
hand, tended to be vocalists, many of whom left Korea during the postwar years to pursue
careers as international entertainers. However, the Kim Sisters, as Maliangkay notes, were the
first girl group to acquire national fame, and served as a model for many subsequent Korean
female vocal groups.
21
The Kims’ parents were established musicians during Japan’s colonial occupation. Their
22
mother, Nan-Young Lee, was one of the most well-known singers of the prewar period, and their
father, Haesong Kim, a famous composer. However, their family’s home was destroyed in the
war and their father was kidnapped by North
Korean forces, leaving their mother to care for
eight children on her own. U.S. military bases
offered one of the few spaces where Koreans
could find work in a country ravaged by war. It
was there that the Kims earned a wage performing
for troops before deciding to form her daughters
into a trio to help support the rest of the family. In
an interview recorded by the UNLV oral history
project in 1996, the Kim Sisters’ eldest member,
Sue Kim, recounted that her family survived
!40
Figure 3. Kim Sisters performing on military base
in 1955.
during the postwar years by performing for American GIs. As she noted, “We sang for the troops
all the time. That’s how we got to eat. Plain language, that’s how we survived.”
23
Like the many entertainers performing on the military camps during the postwar period, the
Kim Sisters’ success on the military bases depended on their technical proficiency at learning a
range of genres and performance styles. Their mother taught the Kim sisters how to phonetically
sound out and sing the lyrics to American pop standards; she also trained them to harmonize in
the style of the MacGuire Sisters and Andrews Sisters, two well-known sibling girl groups in the
U.S. at the time. The Kim Sisters were equally popular among American GIs, who referred to
them as the “Korean Maguire Sisters,” or “Korean Andrews Sisters,” the latter epithet following
them to the States and appearing in press coverage of their act. The Kim Sisters’ imitated
American musical forms not because of a lack of innovation. Rather, they followed a conscious
marketing strategy that catered to the audience upon whom they relied for their survival. Thus
their performances for GIs should be considered early examples of Korean entertainers actively
marketing their localization of American genres to American audiences.
In an interview with KNPR, a public radio station based in Nevada, Sue Kim recalls that
the Kim Sisters’ imitative mastery also earned them a contract in the States. When they first met
Tom Ball, he was in the process of negotiating a contract with the Tokyo Happy Cats, a five-
member, all-female group from Japan. Ultimately, it was the Kim Sisters’ vocal mastery of
ensemble and harmonic precision that had been popularized by the MacGuire Sisters won them
the deal.
24
!41
Manufactured Hybridity
On November 20, 1960, the Kim Sisters
made their third televised appearance on the Ed
Sullivan Show (CBS, 1948-1971) since arriving
in the States. The performance begins with a
brief glimpse of the avuncular host as he
welcomes “The Kim Sisters of Korea” to the
stage. A gentle swell of strings played by the
house orchestra carries them into the
melancholic opening notes of “Arirang,” a Korean folk song that has served as the country’s
unofficial anthem for centuries. The live camera pans across a backdrop, constructed of florally-
painted parchment screens and bamboo posts, before zooming out to an establishing shot of the
three sisters, dressed in identical hanbok, a type of ceremonial Korean gown usually worn by
women. Rigidly poised with traditional Korean folk instruments, they deliver the song’s first
lyric, “Arirang,” with a guttural and mournful depth. When they repeat the word their voices
break into a bright harmonic arrangement, transposing the song’s anguished tune about lost love
into a more hopeful evocation with the cheerier
rhythms and harmonies typified by American
Broadway musicals. They continue to pluck and
drum along with their vocals until the sound of a
gong prompts them to abruptly drop their
instruments, and peel off their hanboks to reveal
the short formfitting dresses underneath. In an
!42
Figure 4. The Kim Sisters play traditional Korean
instruments on the November 20, 1960 episode of the
Ed Sullivan Show.
Figure 5. The Kim Sisters peel out of their
traditional Korean garments to reveal their short
American-style dresses underneath.
imitative gesture, the bamboo backdrop behind them slides open to display a wall of stage lights
as the Kims erupt into a frenetic medley of jazz standards popularized by Al Jolson’s blackface
musicals of the pre-war period. Another set and costume change swiftly transitions them into
25
their final number. While waving black tophats and matching canes, they show off their tightly
synchronized choreography, belting out a swinging, brassy rendition of another American classic,
“(Won’t You Come Home) Bill Bailey.”
26
During their first several years in the States, the Kim Sisters regularly incorporated Korean
language songs and traditional instruments. In her oral history, Sue Kim notes that their mother
had consciously shifted the group’s marketing strategy in the States. Kim recounts her mother’s
explanation: “They have the Maguire Sisters, which we copied in Korea, all their songs. They
called us Korean Maguire Sisters. Andrew Sisters, we copied them . . . those girls do not play
instruments. Just to sing you will not become successful in America . . . and you got to learn all
Korean instruments.” If the Kim Sisters were the first Korean entertainers to crossover into the
27
U.S., their mother was the first manager to hybridize Korean and American musical performance
as a global marketing strategy tailored for American audiences. The Kim Sisters’ mother, herself
!43
Figure 6. The Kim Sisters perform a medley of
jazz standards popularized by Al Jolson’s
blackface musicals of the pre-war period.
Figure 7. The Kim Sisters act concludes with a
brassy rendition of “(Won’t You Come Home) Bill
Bailey.”
a trained professional of Korea's music industry, keenly understood that in order for the Kim
Sister's to be respected as musicians in the States, they needed to perform their racial and cultural
difference in their performance. Otherwise, they would always be read as an imitation of popular
American acts. Thus, the Kim Sisters’s incorporation of the kayageum (wooden string
instrument), changgu (a drum played while seated), and seung-mu-buk (a tall standing drum
traditionally played by several women at a time) must be read as a self-reflexive Orientalization
to market themselves in the States.
Marketing their national difference as cultural difference also worked to distinguish them
from a number of other Asian acts that began to populate the Las Vegas lounge circuit and music
variety shows. The Kim Sisters debuted in the States at the Thunderbird Hotel as part of an
Asian-themed show, the “China Doll Revue,” which featured Japanese and Chinese performers
as well as a Philippine girl group called Sunspot. The following year, the Thunderbird produced
28
a show called “Holiday in Japan,” while the hotel next door featured the Tokyo Happy Cats.
29
The Kims’ incorporation of Korean instruments, however, earned them an eight-month
engagement at the Stardust Hotel, a considerably more reputable venue where Sullivan first
caught their act. However, what cultural currency did their sonic, linguistic, and visual
30
hybridity carry?
The Kim Sisters’ debut on The Ed Sullivan Show in 1959 coincided with Korea’s first mass
wave of postwar Korean immigrants. As Laura Kang notes, in “one of many important historical
ironies, the U.S. involvement in various imperialist wars in Asia impelled the slow removal of
legislative bans on immigration from Asia.” In 1945, the U.S. Congress passed the War Brides
31
Act, which granted citizenship to Asian women who married members of the U.S. armed forces.
In 1952, Congress passed the Walter-McCarran Act of 1952, which revised the Immigration Act
!44
of 1924 by allowing 100 immigrants per year from nations in the Asian-Pacific Triangle,
excepting the wives and children of U.S. citizens.
Christina Klein argues that these revisions were part of a larger state project to shift the
structure of feeling in America toward one of integration at precisely the moment when racial
discord at home threatened the stability of U.S. hegemony in the Third World. Black
32
intellectuals and activists in the U.S. simultaneously linked anti-racist struggles at home with the
anti-imperialist movements rippling across Asia, Africa, Latin America and the Middle East.
Meanwhile, Soviet propaganda repeatedly pointed to the hypocrisy of America’s claim that it is a
beacon of democratic freedoms when its segregation laws and exclusionist immigration policies
placed blacks and Asians at the legal, economic and geographic margins of society. Thus, the
U.S. State Department believed that the abolition of formal vestiges of racism was crucial to
securing America’s global economic hegemony.
While Washington’s revision of U.S. immigration and segregation policies worked to re-
imagine America’s own geographies and social relations within a pluralist paradigm, Klein
argues, popular films, Broadway musicals, and literary texts depicted stories of Americans
working and traveling in Asia––forming bonds of reciprocity, sympathy, and exchange––and
Asians living in America as fully integrated citizens in cultural harmony. In her analysis of the
Broadway production of Flower Drum Song (Rodgers and Hammerstein, 1958), she contends
that “the integration of Asian Americans was enacted, performed, promoted and publicized” in
tandem with their growing presence in the U.S. The musical’s story centers around a wealthy
33
family of refugees from Communist China living in San Francisco’s Chinatown, and takes the
audience on a tour of the cultural practices of these communities. Defining their difference in
!45
cultural rather than racial terms, Klein argues, creates “a cultural space in which Asian
Americans could be publicly embraced as ‘real’ Americans.”
34
As the first major Broadway production to feature an all Asian/American cast, the show's
program also carefully distinguished each actor by ethnic background and immigrant origins,
rather than professional histories. The actors were listed as “native Japanese, Californian, part
Chinese and part Hawaiian.” Klein argues that the idea of “dual identity,” rather than total
35
assimilation, was crucial to negotiating and representing American pluralism. According to
Klein, “It was precisely the dual identity––the foreignness––of Chinese Americans that gave
them value as Americans.”
36
While Klein’s formulation proves useful for an analysis of the Kim Sisters’ hybridization
of American and Korean sonic and visual forms, she overlooks the gendered contours that
shaped imaginaries of U.S.-Asian integration. For instance, Klein’s analysis notes how Flower
Drum Song catapulted its lead actresses, Pat Suzuki and Miyoshi Umeki, to the cover of Time
magazine in 1958 and U.S. popular consciousness. Yet, she does not attend to how this might
have coincided with the fact that during the Cold War period Asian women outnumbered Asian
men in the annual immigration figures for the first time in U.S. history. Laura Kang notes that
legal revisions of immigration policy shaped the migration of Koreans to the U.S. in particularly
gendered ways. She notes that most postwar immigrants from Korea were primarily young
women: from 1959 to 1965, 70 percent were women, 40 percent of whom were between ages 20
and 39, while the other 40 percent––comprised primarily of adopted war orphans––were girls
under age four. By far, military brides made up the majority of postwar Korean immigrants
37
between the years of 1945 and 1960.
38
!46
The Kim Sisters’ performance on Sullivan described above offers a useful example of the
feminized nature of their cultural labor. Or, it critically indexed what Jodi Kim describes as “the
link between America’s imperial presence over ‘there’ in Korea and the gendered racial ‘return’
of the Korean subject over “here” to the imperial center.” They performed a sonic
39
narrativization of this “gendered racial return” as one of migration and feminine reinvention.
When the bamboo screen parts, revealing a scaffolding of bright stage lights behind them, the
group literally moves to center-stage of the Ed Sullivan theater and American homes, performing
a sonic and visual narrativization of their rise to stardom from local act to crossover success.
They perform a narrative of migration as feminine reinvention. When the Kims shift from a
melancholic musical tradition of their home country, bursting into the free-wheeling movements
conventionalized by Broadway musicals, they aurally and visually shed the weight of a
premodern Korea; in one swift move they transition into American conventions of femininity.
Manufactured Harmonies
At the same time that the Kim Sisters’ opening song, “Arirang,” sonically marks their
national origins, it undoubtedly recalled the traumas of war. Arirang’s origins in Korea date back
to the 16th century. Its lyrics and melody traditionally express the deep anguish of the song’s
subject after her lover has left her. At different historical moments, however, these words have
also been used to express political resistance. It became particularly significant during the
Japan’s colonial occupation, as a vehicle whose coded meanings could evade detection.
“Arirang” has signified Korean national identity far more than the national anthem that was
introduced to South Korea in 1948. In fact, its prominence in Korean culture was so pervasive
that its melody, subsequently, had an indelible sonic presence for many American GIs returning
!47
home from the war. In 1956, the South Korean government designated “Arirang” as the official
40
march song of the U.S. Army 7th Infantry Division.
When the Kim Sisters break into their own harmonic adaptation, they not only showcase
the vocal precision that had made them famous among American GIs but sonically transform the
song’s haunted tune into one rich with possibility. If Arirang was haunted by division and
discord, the Kim Sisters melodically re-signified it with the sounds of harmony and melodic
integration. They offered a feminized re-imagining of a new Korea in contradistinction to a
41
country imbued with the militarized containment policies of the Truman era.
Press materials consistently underscored the Kim Sisters’ national origins and integration
into a U.S. popular imaginary within a gendered language. In February of 1960, Life magazine
featured a short spread titled, “Three Korean
Kims and Their Kayageums.” That week’s
issue was saturated with alarmist imagery
and stories about the spread ofcommunism in
the Third World and the waning power of the
U.S. Photos depicting the discovery of
potential satellite spies, Russia’s new trade
pact with Cuba, and Khrushchev’s three-
week campaign in Asia littered the
magazines pages. However, the opening page
of the Kim Sisters’ feature offers readers a
visual and narrative oasis with a lush color
!48
Figure 8. “Three Korean Kims and Their Kayageums,” Life,
February 1960.
image of them dressed in hanbok, holding their wooden string instruments. The descriptive text
laid onto the opening image describes their act during a limited engagement in Chicago:
When Min Ja, Ai Ja and Sook Ja Kim enter wearing their colorful hanbogs and start
strumming on their gayageum, the song they go into is Tom Dooley…Americans find the
Oriental touch on U.S. tunes a highly refreshing one, and just one year after leaving Seoul
the Kim Sisters are an all-out nightclub hit over here.
The act began 10 years ago when the girls were taught Ole Buttermilk Sky and Candy and
Coke by U.S. troops in Korea. Min Ja sang off key and Ai Ja chewed gum while she sang,
but to the GIs they were the Orient’s answer to the Andrews Sisters….
The following page then shows the three sisters gathered around a television set, recreating an
idealized image of American domesticity, depicted by the suburban sitcoms and advertisements
that iconize the postwar visual landscape. The caption below this image notes that the girls are
watching Queen for a Day (NBC), a daytime network gameshow in which a female contestant is
showered with household gifts. While another image depicts them enjoying the pastoral quiet of
a Midwestern farm:
!49
Figure 9. The Kim Sisters are pictured in Life
magazine seated around a television set in a
suburban American home.
Figure 10. The Kim Sisters ride in a horse-drawn
carriage through a snowy midwestern field.
Publicity materials consistently feminized the Kim Sisters and worked to recast
imaginaries of Korea within a language of goodwill and mutual exchange. In February of 1959,
Variety announced the Kim Sisters as the newest act in the U.S. night club circuit:
The Kim Sisters (Sook ja, 19, Ai ja, 20, and Min ja, 21) make their American debut in
“China Doll Revue of 1959” and it is indeed an auspicious one. Girls are beautiful,
showing professional ease in a colorful refreshing act that is a credit to their native South
Korea, where it has long been a hit with our GIs. Efforts of Syngman Rhee got the sisters a
special goodwill passport to enter this country.
1
The piece spotlights the Kim Sisters’ “native South Korean” origins, describing their talent as a
“credit” to their homeland and positioning them as national representatives. It then feminizes the
image of Korea with their “beauty” and sentimentalizes the relationship between Korea and
American GI. It then attributes their migration as the response of a “goodwill” gesture from
Syngman Rhee.
Ed Sullivan: Manufacturing the Global
In 1959, when the Kim Sisters made their American debut, a number of international
singers had begun to populate the American audiovisual landscape. As scholars have argued, the
two major international wars had mobilized a number of musical performers from regions
affected by economic depression and militarism. Benjamin Min Han notes that at the height of
42
the Cold War U.S. military expansions into Latin America and the Pacific Rim mobilized a
"vibrant flow of foreign talent” for the U.S. film and television industry. Murray Forman notes
43
that the music industry was actively cultivating a taste for international entertainers, many of
whom made their way onto musical variety programs during the 1950s and 1960s.
44
Sullivan's weekly program became synonymous with postwar mass culture and liberal
American values and was known in particular for its weekly mélange of international and ethnic
!50
entertainers. For most of the 1950s, he scouted performers abroad and brought them to the
show’s New York City-based studio. By the end of the decade, he began to film episodes on-
location in other locales. He first experimented with this idea, in 1958, by filming an episode in
Brussels. In 1959, CBS aired episodes shot on-location in Italy, Ireland, Lisbon, India, and
Moscow. Local newspapers commended Sullivan for his endeavors to internationalize American
television. The Los Angeles Times praised Sullivan episodes shot in Ireland for their exposure of
“performers great in their own countries but virtually unknown here,” while the Chicago Tribune
heralded the episodes shot in Italy as “a foretaste of what international, transoceanic TV may be
like.”
45
Benjamin Min Han astutely notes how the segmented structure of the variety show
positioned Sullivan as a “contact zone” between viewers and the many international and ethnic
performers who appeared on his program. Each act was presented as a program within a
program, as the camera ritually cut between medium shots of Sullivan––who always made sure
to mark the national origins of his international entertainers––and the live studio stage. These
shifts between intimate, medium close-ups of Sullivan to long shots of his performers from
around the world, gave viewers the feeling that he was taking them directly from their living
rooms on a tour of foreign locales. Sullivan, in a sense, more fully realized what the industry and
policymakers envisioned as television’s potential to provide the American public’s “window to
the world.”
46
Norma Coates argues that Sullivan used his weekly (syndicated) gossip column in the New
York Daily News and other press outlets to position himself not only as a curator of mass taste
but a champion of liberal democratic values. Sullivan widely publicized his anti-communist
!51
position and his belief that the depiction of racial integration on television would project the
exceptionalism of American liberal democracy abroad.
47
We might think of Sullivan’s worldview, exemplified by the performers who stepped onto
his stage, as an example of what Christina Klein calls a global imaginary of integration. Klein
defines a “global imaginary” as:
. . . an ideological creation that maps the world conceptually and defines the primary
relations among peoples, nations, and regions. As an imaginative, discursive construct, it
represents the abstract entity of the “world” as coherent, comprehensible whole and
situates individual nations within that larger framework. This is not to say that it works
through deception or that it mystifies the real, material conditions of global relations.
Rather, a global imaginary articulates the ways in which people imagine and live those
relations. It creates an imaginary coherence out of the contradictions and disjunctures of
real relations.
48
A “global imaginary of integration” mapped the “world in terms of open doors that superseded
barriers and created pathways between nations.” She argues that during the 1950s, liberal
49
intellectuals, policymakers, and cultural producers worked to shift the structure of feeling in
America toward one of integration at a moment when racial discord at home threatened the
stability of U.S. hegemony in the Third World.
50
Sullivan’s ideas of racial integration were constrained by the bigger threat that communism
posed to television’s commercial framework. For instance, he never booked black entertainers
suspected to have affiliations with the Left, many whom aligned with Third World
internationalist movements. As Nikhil Singh argues, “the imperatives of fighting the Cold War
51
severely constrained domestic political dissent in conformity with the new doctrines of national
and global security. . . . A rigid test of anticommunist patriotism undermined the forms and
expressions of radical antiracism.”
52
Thus, I argue, Sullivan’s window to the world reads as a manufactured invention of the
global. In 1959, when Sullivan began to air a series of his episodes abroad, including in Moscow,
!52
U.S. media praised him for his diplomacy. In March, the Hollywood Foreign Press Association
had honored Ed Sullivan for his “efforts to promote international goodwill through television.”
53
Several months later, the New York Times described the episodes filmed in Moscow as a
“barometer of the value of such international exchanges of talent” and “an encouraging
diplomatic stride toward mutual understanding through the pleasant medium of entertainment.”
54
Conclusion
Popular press and trade press reports circulating at the time of the Kim Sisters’ debut
framed their story as one of migration from a war-torn Korea, and of ascension into American
stardom. This linear story of their “rise to success” tidily reifies the myth of the American Dream
and the aspirational trajectory of postwar Asian immigration to the U.S. But even as the Kim
Sisters performances presented musical narrativizations of their migration from a war-torn Korea
to a multicultural landscape––of racial inclusion, sexual freedom, and cosmopolitan femininity––
they also instantiated U.S. involvement in Korea as a necessary intervention in the Cold War
conflict against the global spread of Communism. What does it mean, then, to locate the Kim
Sisters as the origin point for K-Pop?
In 2011, the South Korean government released a promotional book about Korean popular
music growing cultural power around the world entitled, K-Pop: A New Force in Pop Music. It
lists the Kim Sisters as one of many girl groups and male rock bands belonging to the “first
renaissance” (1960-1969) of postwar Korean popular music. While they fail to recognize them
55
as “K-Pop” or hallyu, per se, they are located as an origin point. Benjamin Min Han also notes,
“It took more than fifty years for the South Korean nation to recognize and register the Kim
Sisters as hallyu (Korean Wave) stars, finally acknowledging their cultural contributions to the
!53
nation. In this context, I argue Soompi’s blog entry “The 1960ʹ′s American K-Pop Tale of ‘The
56
Kim Sisters’ preemptively frames the Kim Sisters story as one of ascension from the ashes of
war to stardom. But it also describes their story as an “American K-Pop tale,” in a way that
conflates these narrative progressions. That is, it maps the story of K-Pop as one of ascension
from the ashes of war to global media empire, locating the Kim Sisters and K-Pop at Korea’s
birth as a nation, coinciding with the birth of South Korea as a nation-state. The blog post also
neatly maps their ascension onto developmental narratives about that birth, placing them as both
a starting point and an embodiment of the country’s modernization into an Asian media empire.
!54
CHAPTER 1 ENDNOTES The Kims were in fact signed exclusively with Ed Sullivan until 1965. Harold Stern, “Can’t Top
1
Sullivan Say Kim Sisters,” Hartford Courant, August 29, 1965.
“The 1960ʹ′s American K-Pop Tale of ‘The Kim Sisters’: From Post War Korean Poverty to
2
USA Prime Time.” Soompi, February 4, 2014. http://www.soompi.com/2014/02/04/the-1960s-
american-k-pop-tale-of-the-kim-sisters-from-post-war-korean-poverty-to-usa-prime-time/
#.U4bMNpRdWCt.
Mark Russell, “Korea Pop Wars: From Mokpo Tears to Vegas Cheers,” last modified October
3
19, 2007, http://www.koreapopwars.com/2007/10/from-mokpo-tears-to-vegas-cheers.html;
Davod Teszar, “From Seoul to Las Vegas: Story of the Kim Sisters,” Korea Times, September 21,
2011; “The 1960ʹ′s American K-Pop Tale of ‘The Kim Sisters’: From Post War Korean Poverty to
USA Prime Time,” Soompi, February 4, 2014, http://www.soompi.com/2014/02/04/the-1960s-
american-k-pop-tale-of-the-kim-sisters-from-post-war-korean-poverty-to-usa-prime-time/
#.U4bMNpRdWCt; “The Kim Sisters,” You Offend Me You Offend My Family,” accessed May
29, 2014, http://youoffendmeyouoffendmyfamily.com/the-kim-sisters/; Benjamin Min Han,
“Before K-Pop Hit U.S. Shores, The Kim Sisters Were An American Musical Sensation,”
KoreAm Journal, June 16, 2015, http://iamkoream.com/before-k-pop-hit-u-s-shores-the-kim-
sisters-were-an-american-musical-sensation/; K-Pop: A New Force in Pop Music, vol. 2, Korean
Culture (Korean Culture and Information Service, 2011).
“The 1960ʹ′s American K-Pop Tale of ‘The Kim Sisters’: From Post War Korean Poverty to
4
USA Prime Time,” Soompi, February 4, 2014, http://www.soompi.com/2014/02/04/the-1960s-
american-k-pop-tale-of-the-kim-sisters-from-post-war-korean-poverty-to-usa-prime-time/
#.U4bMNpRdWCt.
Lucas Hilderbrand, “Youtube: Where Cultural Memory and Copyright Converge.” Film
5
Quarterly 61, no. 1 (September 1, 2007): 50.
Ibid.
6
Benjamin Min Han, “Small Screen Talent: Ethnic Performers, Music, and Variety Shows in
7
Cold War America.” PhD diss., New York University, 2012, 9.
Jodi Kim, Ends of Empire: Asian American Critique and the Cold War (Minneapolis:
8
University Of Minnesota Press, 2010), 145.
This rhetorical framework was first established in two texts written by George Kennan, an
9
American diplomat to the Soviet Union in the late-1940s who is widely regarded as the chief
architect of this containment strategy. In 1946, Kennan sent a confidential document known as
“The Long Telegram” to the State Department outlining his analysis of the Soviet Union’s
strategies for the spread of Communism, and in 1947, Foreign Affairs published an essay written
by Kennan titled “Sources of Soviet Conduct” under the Moniker “X.”
!55
David Harvey, The New Imperialism (Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press, 2003), 47.
10
Bruce Cumings, “The Asian Crisis, Democracy, and the End of ‘Late’ Development,” in The
11
Politics of the Asian Economic Crisis, ed. T.J. Pempel (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1999),
19.
Bruce Cumings, Korea’ s Place in the Sun: A Modern History, Updated edition (New York: W.
12
W. Norton, 2005), 195-196.
Martin Hart-Landsberg, The Rush to Development: Economic Change and Political Struggle
13
in South Korea (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1993), 44.
See: Yongwoo Lee, “Embedded V oices In Between Empires The Cultural Formation of Korean
14
Popular Music in Modern Times,” PhD diss., McGill University, 2010; Roald Maliangkay,
“Supporting Our Boys: American Military Entertainment and Korean Pop Music in the 1950s
and Early-1960s,” in Korean Pop Music: Riding the Wave, ed. in Keith Howard (Folkestone,
Kent: Global Oriental, 2006); Phil Ho Kim and Hyunjoon Shin, “The Birth of ‘Rok’: Cultural
Imperialism, Nationalism, and the Glocalization of Rock Music in South Korea, 1964-1975,”
positions: east asia cultures critique 18, no. 1 (Spring 2010): 199–230; Shin Hyunjoon and Ho
Tung-hung, “Translation of ‘America’ during the Early Cold War Period: A Comparative Study
on the History of Popular Music in South Korea and Taiwan,” Inter-Asia Cultural Studies 10, no.
1 (2009): 83–102.
Maliangkay, “Supporting Our Boys,” 25; Lee, “Embedded V oices,” 196; Kim and Shin, “The
15
Birth of ‘Rok’,” 199–230.
Dal Yong Jin, Hands on Hands Off: The Korean State and the Market Liberalization of the
16
Communication Industry (New York: Hampton Press, 2011).
Doobo Shim and Dal Yong Jin, “Transformations and Development of the Korean
17
Broadcasting Media,” in Negotiating Democracy: Media Transformations in Emerging
Democracies, ed. Isaac A. Blankson and Patrick D. Murphy (Albany: State University of New
York Press, 2008), 162.
Ibid.
18
Phil Ho Kim and Hyunjoon Shin, “The Birth of ‘Rok’: Cultural Imperialism, Nationalism, and
19
the Glocalization of Rock Music in South Korea, 1964-1975,” in positions: east asia cultures
critique 18, no. 1 (Spring 2010): 199–230.
Kim and Shin, “The Birth of ‘Rok,’” 205.
20
Maliangkay, “Supporting our Boys,” 27.
21
!56
Roald Maliangkay details the history of Korean singing troupes who, during the colonial,
22
covered popular Japanese songs, often traveling to Japan to perform them. Roald Maliangkay,
“Koreans Performing for Foreign Troops: The Occidentalism of the C.M.C. and K.P.K.,” East
Asian History no. 37 (December 2011): 66.
Oral History with Sue Sook-ja Kim-Bonifacio, UNLV Oral History Project, 3.
23
“KNPR’s State of Nevada -- PresentingThe Kim Sisters,” Nevada Public Radio News 88.9
24
KNPR, transcript and video recordings, http://www.knpr.org/son/archive/detail2.cfm?
SegmentID=902090209020.
The Kim Sisters performed a medley of “Swanee,” “Mammie,” and “Tootsie,” which were all
25
songs popularized by Al Jolson’s renditions of them in blackface musicals, Rhapsody in Blue
(Irving Rapper, 1945) and The Jazz Singer (Alan Crossland, 1927).
“The Kim Sisters,” YouTube video, 5:22, from an episode of The Ed Sullivan Show aired by
26
CBS on November 11, 1960, posted by LimeVid on August 8, 2011, https://www.youtube.com/
watch?v=aeU5FwDAqKk.
Kim, Oral History, 9.
27
Kim, Oral history, 38.
28
Kim, Oral history, 36, 38.
29
Kim, Oral history, 9.
30
Laura Hyun Yi Kang, Compositional Subjects: Enfiguring Asian/American Women (Durham:
31
Duke University Press Books, 2002), 132.
Ibid.
32
Christina Klein, Cold War Orientalism: Asia in the Middlebrow Imagination, 1945-1961
33
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003), 230.
Ibid.
34
Ibid., 235.
35
Ibid., 240.
36
Ibid.
37
Ji-Yeon Yuh, “Moved by War: Migration, Diaspora, and the Korean War,” Journal of Asian
38
American Studies 8, no. 3 (2005): 278-279.
!57
Kim, Ends of Empire, 145. See also: Grace M. Cho, Haunting the Korean Diaspora: Shame,
39
Secrecy, and the Forgotten War (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2008); Ann Laura
Stoler, Haunted by Empire: Geographies of Intimacy in North American History (Durham: Duke
University Press, 2006); Katharine H.S. Moon, “The Ghosts of War,” The Women’ s Review of
Books 27, no. 1 (January 1, 2010): 10–11; Ji-Yeon Yuh, Beyond the Shadow of Camptown:
Korean Military Brides in America (New York: New York University Press, 2002).
Jooyeon Rhee, “Arirang, and the Making of a National Narrative in South and North Korea,”
40
Journal of Japanese and Korean Cinema 1, no. 1 (2009): 27–43; Katharine H. S. Moon, Sex
Among Allies: Military Prostitution in U.S.-Korea Relations (Columbia University Press, 1997).
The Chicago Tribune described a moment of “contrived history” in one of their local live
41
shows in “which they sing a native Korean song, a plaintive melody that sounds something like
Arirang, then tell us that American GIs taught them the “Battle Hymn of the Republic.” Will
Leonard, Chicago Tribune, June 26, 1966.
Penny V on Eschen, Satchmo Blows Up the World: Jazz Ambassadors Play the Cold War
42
(Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2004); Lisa E. Davenport, Jazz Diplomacy: Promoting
America in the Cold War Era (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2009).
Benjamin Min Han, “Small Screen Talent: Ethnic Performers, Music, and Variety Shows in
43
Cold War America.” Ph.D., New York University, 2012, 9.
Murray Forman, One Night on TV Is Worth Weeks at the Paramount: Popular Music on Early
44
Television (Duke University Press, 2012), 289.
Los Angeles Times, March 10, 1959; July 21, 1959, Chicago Daily Tribune
45
Lynn Spigel, Welcome to the Dreamhouse: Popular Media and Postwar Suburbs (Durham,
46
NC: Duke University Press Books, 2001).
As many television historians argue, the fictional worlds depicted in television programming
47
during the postwar period remained, by and large, racially homogenous. Racial minorities, when
they appeared on-screen, were cast in stereotyped roles. See Darrell Hamamoto, Monitored
Peril: Asian Americans and the Politics of TV Representation (Minneapolis: University of
Minnesota Press, 1994); L.S. Kim, “Be The One That You Want: Asian Americans in Television
Culture, Onscreen and Beyond,” Amerasia Journal 30, no. 1 (2004): 125–46; Herman Gray,
Watching Race: Television And The Struggle For Blackness, (Minneapolis: Univ Of Minnesota
Press, 2004).
Christina Klein, Cold War Orientalism, 23.
48
Ibid., 41, 34.
49
Ibid.
50
!58
Norma J. Coates, “It’s a Man’s, Man’s World: Television and the Masculinization of Rock
51
Discourse and Culture,” PhD diss., University of Wisconsin - Madison, 2002, 71.
Nikhil Pal Singh, Black Is a Country: Race and the Unfinished Struggle for Democracy
52
(Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2005), 8.
Los Angeles Times, March 10, 1959.
53
New York Times, Sep 28, 1959.
54
K-Pop: A New Force in Pop Music, K-Culture 2, (Korean Culture and Information Service
55
(KOCIS), 2011), http://www.korea.net/Resources/Publications/About-Korea/view?
articleId=2217, 53.
Han, “Ethnic Performers,” 102.
56
!59
CHAPTER 2
MANUFACTURED MOVEMENTS: GIRL GROUPS, HARMONIZED DANCE AND
YOUTUBE
“But after the Girls left the stage the concert flagged a bit, and I found
myself wondering why overproduced, derivative pop music, performed by
second-tier singers, would appeal to a mass American audience, who can hear
better performers doing more original material right here at home?
The Girls’ strenuous efforts notwithstanding, the mythical mélange of East
and West remained elusive.
1
-John Seabrook, The New Yorker
From 2009 to 2014, SM Entertainment, YG Entertainment and JYP Entertainment’s top-
grossing girl groups––Girls’ Generation, 2NE1, and Wonder Girls, respectively––became a topic
within mainstream American and industry press outlets. These groups made their way onto
network variety shows to promote themselves, and released records exclusively distributed for
the U.S. Like the Kim Sisters, contemporary girl groups are also known for their harmonized
choreographies, which are increasingly organized around a recognizable gesture, whether it is a
recurring hip-swerve, shuffling of the toe, or angular arm movement. Dance videos allow Korean
record labels to reach audiences outside of Korea by providing audiences with a point of
connection independent of the song’s lyrics. As K-Pop labels now utilize YouTube as their
primary global distribution platform, dance videos have become an especially important
marketing strategy. Videos with a mesmerizing but simple routine not only invite repeat
viewings, but, by generating numerous parodies, have a greater chance of going viral. As
YouTube pays its content providers a small fee-per-click, aggregating a massive number of views
is the only way one can earn significant revenue on its site.
YouTube likewise has something to gain from K-Pop’s success on its website. Since
2008, it has launched localized versions of the site in over sixty countries and languages, in an
!60
attempt to make itself the preferred distribution platform for content providers outside the U.S.
Google has thus used K-Pop to produce a global imaginary about YouTube as a democratizing
platform. Thus Korea, again, has value for American entities like YouTube who wish to construct
themselves as a “window to the world.” And, like Ed Sullivan, YouTube’s window is framed by
its commitment to make money for its sponsors. The site earns its revenue by selling ad space on
its site, but makes far more money from aggregate ad sales than from independent producers.
While K-Pop’s industrial convergence with YouTube is an important relationship to
examine, my analysis in this chapter aims to challenge technologically determinist arguments
about digital media. Rather, I examine the relationship from the standpoint of how ideas about
YouTube and K-Pop mutually reinforce each other’s global brand. Moreover, I focus on how
digital distribution patterns have impacted how Korean record labels promote their brand, the
audiovisual conventions of K-Pop music videos, and their media reception in the States.
Girl groups serve as a crucial commodity and flexible product for SM, YG, and JYP’s
global marketing plan. Or, as feminist scholar Yeran Kim remarks, they approach the gendered
body as a neoliberal technology. She argues, “It is well known that to become a girl idol group,
girls prepare by training in dancing, singing, stage manners, drama and foreign languages a
couple of years before the official debut . . . . The girl idol groups are, in other words, themselves
cultural content that is designed and cultivated in a corporate management system . . . . Thus, for
girl idols, the concept of neoliberal governance of girl bodies does not simply mean
representation at the level of image, but also social operation through governance of the girls as a
social subject.” Kim refers here to the intensive disciplinary regimes that K-Pop idols must
2
undergo, as detailed in the introduction to this dissertation, in order to prepare for intense
competition in the global market. While this training system was systemized by Korean record
!61
labels in the mid-1990s, it recalls the historical conditions within which the Kim Sisters groomed
themselves for the U.S. Which is to say, while female idol groups are produced within the
context of a now industrialized Korea–they do not perform because their livelihood literally
depend on it as it did for the Kim Sisters–their performances still articulate a global imaginary of
harmonic integration between postwar Korea and the U.S.
While Kim focuses on how female idol groups, or girl groups, are consumed by young
women in Korea, the analyses I offer below focuses on the image, illustrating how group dance
serves as a flexible commodity within the digitally-driven global media landscape. They do so
3
literally by demonstrating their bodily dexterity and metaphorically by branding K-Pop labels as
globally and technologically flexible entities. In this chapter, I compare the marketing strategies
employed by SM, YG, and JYP, but focus primarily on SM Entertainment, Korea’s largest music
firm, and the global promotional strategies behind its nine-member girl group, Girls’ Generation.
Why America?
While YG, JYP and SM spent the latter half of the 1990s polishing its idol training
system, in the early-2000s, they globalized their approach. Korean media scholars have variously
referred to this approach as the “cultural diamond” or “Globalization-Localization-Globalization
(G-L-G)” model and generally identify three primary strategies that Korean music firms
adopted. First, they pursued more international collaborations with producers, songwriters,
4
choreographers and entertainers, especially from the United States and western Europe.
Secondly, they tailored their acts for specific markets. This might entail re-recording a hit album
or producing an album for exclusive distribution for a specific target market. Trainees are now
chosen for their ability to learn multiple languages as well. Or, they might release an alternate
!62
version of a music video tailored to the tastes and mores of a local culture. Most recently, they
have turned to social networking sites (SNS), particularly YouTube, to distribute and promote
content. While the first two work to transcend cultural and language barriers, the third strategy
aims to circumnavigate industrial hurdles.
The localization strategy of SM, specifically designed to market Korean pop acts in Asia,
proved to be highly effective. Why, then, would they and other big producers turn to the U.S. if
they already had so much success in Asia? Moreover, what motivated them to invest in grooming
crossover stars for an industry that had not exhibited interest in Asian or Asian American
entertainers?
American R&B producer Teddy Riley, who now produces tracks for SM entertainment,
sums up the strategy well. In June 2011, at a press conference to promote the SM brand, he
appeared alongside Lee Sooman and told the crowd, “I'm absolutely sure that Korea will go
global…Composers in not only Europe but all over the world need to pay attention to the Asian
market. The world is connected through the internet, and it's one of the reasons why SM artists
are so popular. The day where Asian music becomes worldwide isn't far off from now.”
5
Founders of SM, JYP, YG have explained to the press the importance of breaking into the
U.S. in order to conquer the Asian market with its huge population.” JYP's founder Park Jin-
6
Young offered a pragmatic explanation: Korean labels, generally speaking, have no choice but to
go overseas because the home country has a population of only 50 million--–making Korea a
crowded domestic market. In 2005, JYP attempted to make his most successful idol in Asia at
7
the time, Rain, a crossover hit in the U.S. He set his sights on the U.S., because “although it
sounds paradoxical…we want to maintain the Asian market,” adding that “only after achieving
success in the best [biggest] stage, that is, the American market, can Rain consolidate his position
!63
as Asia’s number one.” SM offered a similar response when he told the Korea Herald that
success in the States also brings with it a cachet within the global sphere. While China has
8
always been, and continues to be, SM’s long-term target market, success in mainstream America
would only boost its marketability there. A spokesperson for YG notes that recording an album in
English is the most effective way to connect with fans overseas who know no Korean.
9
JYP and the Wonder Girls: Performing the Manufacture “Korean Style”
In 2009, JYP Entertainment launched a North American campaign to promote its four-
member girl group, Wonder Girls. The label, known for producing some of Korea’s biggest R&B
stars, had established a U.S. office in 2007. In 2006, JYP had attempted to make Rain, its biggest
idol in Asia at the time, into K-Pop’s first crossover entertainer in the U.S. The marketing plan
failed after Rain’s live concert at Madison Square Garden (2006) was panned by pop music
critics. (The details of Rain’s failed attempt will be examined in Chapter 4.)
In 2007, Chosun Ilbo asked JYP’s founder, Jin-Young Park, about how the U.S. market
might pose as a challenge for Korean artists. JYP responded,
The problem of the U.S. music industry is that music companies, management companies
and performance planning companies work individually. It's hard to create added value
with music only, so companies are likely to make a loss. We are going to do these three
sectors at the same time, centering on stars. This is the Korean style.
10
Jin then elaborated that “consistent image can create stars with high added value. Physical
appearance, hairstyle, costume, dance, music, marketing, music video and even interviews
should be closely related under a single image.”
11
Park’s description of JYP’s star-making strategies refers to Korea’s broader “idol
system,” which recruits aspiring entertainers through a highly selective audition process and then
!64
sends them through a rigorous singing and dancing regimen. The key to this system, Park notes,
is the “consistent image” conveyed through dance routines, music videos, and wardrobes.
According to Park, the coherence of the marketing image reflects a distinctly “Korean style” of
complete management, production and promotion over its idols. In other words, this
12
“consistent image” differentiates K-Pop from American pop music–– it makes it local.
In late 2008, JYP uploaded the music video for the Wonder Girls’ single, “Nobody.” The
video is narratively-driven, but features a recurring group dance routine. The diegesis opens
inside a concert hall with the camera positioned at fifth-row center––invoking postwar variety
programs like the Ed Sullivan Show––while the bronze lighting scheme imbues the scenes with a
sense of nostalgia. Dressed in identical gold, form-fitting dresses and long white gloves, the
Wonder Girls initially appear as back-up singers for Park Jin-Young, who is presented as the
main attraction. When Park accidentally gets locked backstage and cannot return to the stage, the
Wonder Girls quickly rush to the front to save the show. As the opening notes to “Nobody” play,
the five women instantly break into a tight choreography, striking theatrical poses. The chorus
begins––a pattern that appears in many K-Pop girl-group music videos which works to front load
!65
Figure 11. Still image from music video for Wonder Girls’ single, “Nobody.”
the visual hook (the synchronized dance routine)––before the Wonder Girls move into the
Korean-language verses. As they sing the lyrics, “I want nobody, nobody, but you…,” they rotate
their hips in restrained but evocative motions. The camera meanwhile cuts to several roaming,
low-angle shots that work to accentuate their legs.
13
The video self-reflexively invokes the visual aesthetics made familiar by Motown,
America’s Detroit-based R&B music factory from the 1960s, whose founder, Berry Gordy,
modeled itself after the auto manufacturing assembly-line. The Wonder Girls’ Motown
14
references demonstrate a preoccupation with the American tradition. In his interview with
Chosun Ilbo, Jin-Young Park explicitly states that K-Pop borrows from American music
conventions and, in fact, attributes hallyu or the Korean Wave’s success to its ability to
repackaging U.S. culture: "I believe three factors have contributed to the success of the Korean
culture wave. First, Korea has a great capacity for absorbing U.S. culture. In Korea, AFN (the
American Forces Network) has been one of the major channels for a long time.” However, as
15
JYP notes, what makes JYP and K-Pop music distinctly “Korean” is its “consistent image.”
“Nobody” demonstrates that the “consistent image” for JYP refers to a coherent visual concept––
the Wonder Girls marketing strategy is built around its nostalgia factor, not just for American
girls groups from the 1960s, but also, implicitly, the girl groups that populated Korea’s musical
landscape during its postwar years. (As noted in Chapter 2, the “group sound” introduced by
AFKN and USO Army shows gave rise to a number of male and female ensemble acts.)
“Consistent” also refers the uniformity performed within the image as a reflection of the “Korean
Style.”
Thus, the video self-reflexively stages JYP’s personal narrative. When he is locked
backstage, it references his shift in role from entertainer to producer. The gender switch––to the
!66
girls––is significant in reflecting the producer’s change of priorities. Whereas Rain’s success in
Asia made JYP a global label, girl groups would be most actively promoted in the States.
“Nobody” in the U.S.
In early 2009, JYP relocated the Wonder Girls to its New York offices and launched its
U.S. campaign with a three-city tour. They signed with Creative Artists Agency, released an
English-language version of “Nobody” as a digital single, and then announced that they would
be appearing in the U.S.-leg of the Jonas Brothers’ summer World Tour. The Jonas Brothers,
16
who began as a fictional band on the Disney Channel’s original movie, Camp Rock (2008), were
a major draw for the “tween” market. The announcement that the Wonder Girls would join their
tour undoubtedly drove up sales for the English-language release of “Nobody,” which by
September had sold over 32,000 copies, 30,000 digital downloads, and entered Billboard’s Hot
100 chart––marking a first for a South Korean musical artist.
17
JYP’s strategies might seem somewhat at odds with its aims. The label sought to establish
Asia’s first crossover entertainer in the U.S. by pursuing a niche audience that targeted the young
female demographic. However, JYP decided to pursue the tween market, a representative from
the label told the Korea Herald, because they decided to target female youth, who avidly
consumed pop culture and because they saw it as “a demographic that is the least likely to have
formed many biases.” Park explained to Billboard magazine,
18
I was trying to really analyze why these amazing artists couldn't crack the Billboard charts.
I came to the conclusion that they changed their color when they moved into the U.S. They
became too similar to American artists. They hired major American producers like
Timbaland, and they ended up losing their true color . . . . I basically wrote and composed
the song “Nobody,” and we didn't change our image or our color coming into the U.S. We
remained true to ourselves.
19
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Thus the Wonder Girls re-recorded “Nobody” as an English-language single, but did not re-shoot
the video, exemplifying that for JYP, the Korean style is quite literally wedded to imagery more
than to the lyrics. However, JYP’s decision to appeal to the tween market, whom the label
describes as “less likely to have formed biases” suggests the company’s clear understanding of
how racial authenticity is marketed and consumed within the U.S.
Patrick St. Michael, of the Atlantic, surmised that JYP’s focused approach to the tween
market gave them the best shot of making it in the U.S. St. Michael enumerated a long list of
Asian artists who failed to crossover into the U.S. market, including one of JYP’s own acts, Rain.
He concludes, “Given the music industry's hyper-segmentation, it's a smart move to focus on the
same audience that turned artists like Miley Cyrus and Demi Lovato into household names.”
20
The Wonder Girls’ representative at CAA offered a optimistic appraisal when he told the Los
Angeles Times that “their tour with Jonas Brothers taught K-pop managers that American
audiences are open to something that seems foreign. These are Americans coming to their shows,
the same fans going to see Gaga and Bieber.”
21
In November 2011, JYP established JYP Creative out of its New York office, as its official
U.S. subsidiary, and invested approximately $1.2 million to expand the label’s promotional
activities in the U.S. In early-2012, JYP announced that the group would appear in a television
22
movie on Teen Nick, one that follows the members on a semi-fictional story about their stay in
the U.S. However, there was no marketing campaign around it. JYP’s next major promotional
23
strategy for the Wonder Girls seemed to contradict the label’s initial approach of not changing
their “image or color” in the States. In June 2912, the group released an English-language single
featuring American rapper Akon several months later. The music video aggregated over 10
million views on YouTube, but performed abysmally in record sales. On March 22, 2013, Park
24
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Jin-young announced that he was shuttering his New York City office and JYP Creative, after
reporting a net loss of roughly $1.5 million.
25
SM Entertainment: Branding the Manufacture
Group dance has been a driving force behind SM’s marketing strategy since the inception
of the label in the mid-1990s. Choreography not only gives each song produced by SM a distinct
identity, but impresses upon audiences the larger brand identity of the group and label. Solee I.
Shin and Lanu Kim define the “SM Style” sonically by its “electronic-based, fast-beat, and
strong memorable lyrics with repeating hooks.” Although this description could characterize K-
26
Pop’s sound more generally. However, they identify SM’s visual trademark to be its
“harmonizing” choreographies known as “military style dance” (gun-mu) in which all members
dance perfectly in sync. The gun-mu style is really what distinguishes SM acts from other
27
labels, and coheres with SM and its founder Lee Soo-Man’s brand identity as K-Pop’s architects
and originators of the industry’s regimented system of training.
Lee Soo Man regularly speaks to the press, appears at press conferences, and gives
keynote speeches in the U.S. to promote SM’s rigorous idol training system, which he officially
patented as SM’s unique Culture Technology (CT) model. In 2011, giving a keynote address at
Stanford’s Business School, Lee remarked, “I coined this term about fourteen years ago, when
S.M. decided to launch its artists and cultural content throughout Asia . . . S.M. Entertainment
and I see culture as a type of technology. But cultural technology is much more exquisite and
complex than information technology.” And, at a press conference in Paris, he stated, “SM
28
makes music through theoretical and systematic CT. The whole process of making the trainees
into a ‘jewel’ is CT.” For Lee, CT applies not only applies to the methods SM uses to select,
29
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nurture and train aspiring entertainers, but also to the “techniques it uses to make music,
choreography, music videos, live performances and even the stars’ makeup.”
30
SM’s CT system and trademark gun-mu, or highly militarized form of synchronized dance,
must be understood in relation to the label’s production of male and female mega-idol groups,
which can have as many as thirteen members. Girls’ Generation, SM’s female mega idol group,
will be discussed in the following section.
Girls’ Generation, Flexible Bodies
In 2007, Lee Soo Man’s CT system produced nine-member girl group Girls’ Generation
(known in Korea as “Seo Nyeo Shi Dae,” or SNSD), comprised of a mix of Korean and Korean
American members, all recruited through SM’s global audition process. Girls’ Generation is
SM’s only all-female “mega idol group,” a concept the label introduced in 2005 with the debut of
its twelve-member boy band, Super Junior. Super Junior was comprised of six Chinese and six
Korean members, whom SM would then break down into smaller, sub-unit groups tailored for
specific Asian markets. When these mega-groups perform as a whole unit, they produce an
impressive display of coordination and training.
Girls’ Generation music video for their single “Gee,” released in June 2009, exemplifies
SM’s trademark melodic, fast-paced dance tracks and gun-mu or military style of group dance.
Gee opens with a tracking shot that scans past a storefront window as the group’s members pose
like mannequins behind the glass. After a young male clerk tidies the display and closes up shop
for the evening, the girls begin to come to life. The song’s effervescent and rapid soundtrack cues
up while the camera rapidly cuts between shots of the girls causing havoc in the store and
medium close-ups of each member flirtatiously winking or striking a coy pose directly into the
!70
camera. The chorus consists of a simple, repetitive chant of the song’s title–“Gee, Gee, Gee,
Baby.” The camera intercuts to shots of their main dance number in which they perform a tightly
synchronized choreography of dynamic, angular movements. The hard contrast between their
wardrobes–consisting of identical grey tops and colorful melange of fluorescent hot pants–and
bright, all-white background accentuate the outline of their legs. The routine works to highlight
the multiplicity of bodies in a spectacular demonstration of technical precision and discipline,
which produces a fractal or kaleidoscopic image.
31
Feminist scholar Julie Choi sees historical overlaps between Girls’ Generation performance
and the militarized feminine spectacles orchestrated by John Tiller in the late-19th century which
formed the blueprint for chorus-line numbers and can-can dances that eventually filled American
movie screens at the turn of the century. Choi turns to Siegfried Kracauer’s 1927 seminal text,
32
The Mass Ornament, in which he reads the precise choreography displayed by the Tiller Girls as
a “metonymic extension of factory hands on the assembly line.” The particular draw of Girls’
33
!71
Figure 12. Still image from music video for Girls’ Generation single, “Gee.”
Generation, Choi submits, is not that of erotic display, but rather “the sublime thrill of a well-
oiled machine.” She concludes, “K-Pop fans love to compare their idols with their Japanese
34
counterparts who always come up hopelessly short on the mechanics of coordinated presentation,
the perfection of synchronization.”
35
I would underscore the particular visual marketing strategy employed by SM. While the
label cultivates different personalities for the individual members of its girl groups, its
international promotional strategy cannot simply rely on building direct connections with its
audience. Tremendous resources are required to build a star persona, a demand exponentially
amplified by the global scope of SM’s marketing plan. Thus it must successfully penetrate
multiple markets at once in order to remain competitive with western-owned media
conglomerates. And, while some read Girls’ Generation as a distinctly Korean-style of
performance, SM has worked to balance marketing itself as a Korean company that makes global
music.
When David Bevan, of Spin magazine, asked an SM Entertainment marketing
representative how much of Girls’ Generation’s work could be considered distinctly “Korean,”
the representative replied, “Girls’ Generation is more SM than ‘Korean.’” At a press conference
36
in Paris, Lee Sooman explained CT’s export strategy: “Artists that grow under the CT system are
globalized through SM's threestep Hallyu process: exportation of cultural products, international
collaborations, and globalization.” With respect to the last stage, Lee continued, "There's the tag
'made by,’ such as 'made in Korea.' There is also 'made by SM.’ We want to cooperate with
people all over the world in order to share and produce good music. Through this process, the
Asian market can also produce a star capable of succeeding worldwide.”
37
!72
Lee’s philosophy seemed to fulfill its promise. By January of 2011, “Gee” accumulated
over 50 million views on YouTube, the majority of them originating in the U.S. and western
Europe––two markets where Korean media firms had notoriously struggled to gain a foothold.
38
Gee’s global popularity online made SM and Girls’ Generation a cause for celebration among
Korean journalists, and an object of fascination in U.S. press outlets. The Korean media declared
that the Girls’ Generation video’s popularity and contagious dance routines testified to K-Pop’s
global appeal, and Korea’s ascension within the global marketplace. In January 2011, Korean
Joongang Daily wrote,
. . . Girls’ Generation, comprised of nine young pop singer/dancers, has become a YouTube
sensation, and their song Gee has been seen over 50 million times. Their popularity has led
to fans in Paris and Los Angeles, where crowds emulate their idols’ dances and demand
that they hold concerts there. K-Pop has the potential to become a new economic growth
engine, by fueling exports and improving the country’s overall image abroad.
39
Several months later, the same newspaper read “Gee” as a symbol of the Korean music
industry’s resistance to western dominance:
Until the 1970s, Koreans would quench their deep thirst for the latest music by listening to
American pop songs that the U.S. military’s radio station broadcast in Korea. Now our
young generation, armed with charming songs, dances, fashion and solid training, enthralls
audiences around the world. The music video for “Gee,” by Girls’ Generation, has
electrified people across the globe in what amounts to a huge boost for Korea’s cultural
status.
40
Thus, Girls’ Generation’s synchronized dance routine, in part, resulted in its global popularity,
but its mass-scale spectacle became a performance of global domination. A marketing executive
in Korea told the New York Times that the effect of mega groups like Girls’ Generation “should
remind fans around the world of the goose-stepping soldiers in North Korea, but with an
infectious sense of joy.”
41
!73
YouTube as “Global”
Since 2009, SM, YG, and JYP have systematically used YouTube as a promotional tool.
Each label has maintained a home channel as well as individual channels for each of their acts,
methodically uploading an endless stream of high-definition videos, including multiple versions
of music videos, teasers, behind-the-scenes footage, lives shows, and dance practices. YouTube
42
in many ways has provided a way for them to engage with fans and promote their acts to
audiences in the U.S., where historically they have had little or no access to traditional media
platforms.
Moreover, YouTube has increasingly looked to market itself as the world’s largest
distributor of video content and as an alternative for smaller corporate entities who do not have
access to traditional media platforms, like television and radio, in places like the U.S. K-Pop has
been championed as evidence that the site is democratizing historically uneven power relations
in the global media landscape. But it also gives local content providers in emerging markets a
“cheap way to reach overseas audiences and create demand for its artists without having to open
offices or partner with labels in other countries.”
43
“Gee”’s broader conversation within mainstream American and diasporic Korean press
used YouTube to demonstrate that K-Pop had a global appeal, and that there was an untapped fan
base among western audiences. Attempts by K-pop stars to break into Western markets,
including the United States, had largely failed. However, as Sang-hun Choe and Mark Russell
told the New York Times in 2012, “YouTube, Facebook and Twitter make it easier for K-pop
bands to reach a wider audience in the West, and those fans are turning to the same social
networking tools to proclaim their devotion . . . videos by bands like Girls’ Generation have
!74
topped 60 million views.” James Brooks wrote for Pitchfork magazine that not only was K-Pop
44
breaking the U.S. market, but beating established American entertainers:
Released in 2009, "Gee" was a landmark event in the world of Hallyu….”Gee” has
accumulated more than 56 million views. (In comparison, Lady Gaga's recent "The Edge
of Glory" video has attracted 43 million.) Since I first saw "Gee," K-Pop has developed a
massive presence on YouTube, which overflows with high-budget, attention-grabbing
videos and countless reality shows documenting the day-to-day exploits of the country's
most popular groups. This presence does not account for the fan-generated content,
including hundreds of videos subtitled in multiple languages, "dance covers," and English
cover versions by multilingual superfans, who want to give Western K-Pop aficionados
something to sing along with.
45
As Brooks notes, YouTube does not just provide K-Pop with a platform but seemed to
demonstrate that the genre’s foray into the U.S. was anything but “manufactured.” Rather, it was
a fan-driven phenomenon. Thus, analyses proffered by music critics and journalists that focus on
the mutually beneficial relationship between K-Pop labels and YouTube read this as a sign of a
shift in power relations within the global media landscape.
However, others argued that these celebratory discourses obscured material realities
about assumptions that most Americans make about Asian female sexuality. For instance, Amy
He of the Korea Herald remarked,
Looking at the stream of news in the past year from Korean media, the impression one gets
is that hallyu has ‘made it.’ . . . While there is no doubt that Korea has much to boast about
regarding its cultural exports, K-pop making it in America doesn’t seem to be the next
thing hallyu can cross off on its ‘to dominate’ checklist.
46
He notes that Korean record labels have focused on promoting their male and female idols
groups because the high profits they have generated in Korea and the Asian market. However,
she argues, “American listeners crave the authentic. The journeys artists go through in order to
debut in the Korean music scene would qualify as manufactured and inorganic to American
audiences.” She then uses the example of the “cute and innocent” sexual image of girl groups,
47
!75
which might work within Korea’s strictly censored media outlets, but reads as “factory sheen”
here.
48
The following section demonstrates how SM (perhaps aware of historically-rooted
assumptions about Asian femininity as either hyper-sexual or docile) tailored Girls’ Generations
gender performance for the American market.
49
Girls’ Generation in America
In October 2011, Girls’ Generation released the first single from their third album, “The
Boys.” The song was produced by Teddy Riley, known for engineering several hits off of
Michael Jackson’s 1991 album Dangerous, and pioneering the “New Jack Swing” sound of the
early-1990s. Korean- and English-language versions of the track, and a music video, were
simultaneously released on iTunes. The English-language single served as a teaser to promote
Girls’ Generation’s forthcoming full-length English-language album, both versions distributed by
Interscope Records through a deal brokered by Lee Sooman. This marked the first time that
Girls’ Generation distributed a record exclusively for the U.S.
While the album featured several remixes of the American release of “The Boys,”
including one featuring Snoop Dogg, the eponymous single was the only English-language song
included on the album. The rest of the tracks were pulled from the Korean language version. The
music video collected over seven million views during the first month of its release.
50
During their appearance on the The Late Show with David Letterman, on January 31,
2012, Letterman announced (to his live studio audience and the estimated three million American
viewers) that the group had just released their first full-length album in the U.S., “The Boys.”
51
The camera then dissolves into a medium shot positioned behind a group of women, teasing us
!76
with a momentary glimpse of the back of their long shiny hair and lacy black sleeves. The fuzzed
out note of a synthesizer crescendoes before the emphatic crash of a cymbal; a hard video edit
quickly transitions to a frontal, low-angle view of nine women; dressed in black knee-high
leather boots and mini-skirts, they hold their bodies in different angular poses. As they slowly
slide out of this sculptural group formation and into a coordinated set of slinky movements, their
synthesized voices sing the opening verse: “I can tell you’re looking at me / I know what you see
/ Any closer and you’ll feel the heat.” The camera then holds its gaze on Tiffany, the group’s
leader, and one of the song’s co-writers, as she delivers the remainder of the verse’s sultry lyrics.
The sound of a synthesized tea-kettle whistle dramatically builds up before all nine women break
into a unison of the song’s chorus: “Bring the boys out!” They erupt into a tightly coordinated
dance routine, driven by a simple but forceful beat, striking a different architectural pose with
each punch of the electronic snare or kick drum, while the stark contrast between their light skin
tones and black wardrobes accentuates the geometric precision of their individual movements
and group formations. The camera’s shift between close-ups of individual members and wide
shots displaying ornate group choreography embodies the aesthetic and marketing trademark of
Girls’ Generation––a switch between the intimacy with a specific member of the group and the
uniformity of their bodily movements.
52
According to SM, “Girls’ Generation’s appearance on a show like Letterman can confirm
the influential power of Girls’ Generation and of our strategy through the group’s appearances on
major American television network talk shows.” Jean Oh of the Los Angeles Times noted that
53
SM’s “Girls’ Generation’s U.S. debut single and talk show appearances are, in fact, part of a
larger, carefully-planned promotional strategy focused on differentiating themselves from the
crowd.” The style definitely veered from the more bubbly style characterized by “Gee’s” sound
54
!77
and music video. This was the group’s first foray into rap. But the group’s members also drew
attention to other stylistic changes in an interview with Yoon-mi Kim of the Korea Herald. Soo-
young said their new song does not use a repeated chorus to hook listeners, while lead member,
Tiffany, stated that they made a minor stylistic change by not wearing the same outfits on stage.
She said, “We will wear different clothes that can express our individual personalities well.” Kim
herself noted that “the choreography has a more masculine feeling than the group’s previous
girly moves.”
55
YG Entertainment: Marketing Korea
In 2011, four-member Korean girl group 2NE1 (pronounced “To Anyone” or “Twenty
One”) released a music video for their single “I Am the Best.” The song begins with the crunchy
tones of an electronic organ that rhythmically swings between a high and low note. The video
quickly cuts between long and medium shots of a slender woman, standing on a black stage as a
wall of white spotlights flash behind her. Cloaked in a shiny black boxers’ robe (with a
heavyweight title belt slung over her shoulder), her hood pulled far down over her eyes, she
exudes an aura of formidable power. As the steady beat of a kick-drum enters the track, the
!78
Figure 13. 2NE1’s lead member, CL, stands defiantly
in opening shots of music video for “I Am the Best.”
Figure 14. Close-up shots in opening sequence of
music video for “I Am the Best” frame CL in a
seductive manner.
synthesized sounds of a woman’s voice forcefully and repeatedly chant in Korean the song’s title
and main lyric, “I am the best.” The visuals meanwhile cut abruptly between close-ups of her
shoulders thrusting, her spiked leather boots tapping to the beat, while her fingers seductively toy
with the seam of her hood. After hooking the listener visually and sonically with anticipation, the
wall of stage lights behind her ignite with a flash, transitioning into a wide shot of all four
members of 2NE1 performing a sultry synchronized dance routine, driven by the rhythms of the
densely layered electronic soundtrack. As each member sing different segments of the song’s
verse, the visuals work to establish their individual identities, while cutting to group shots.
56
During the bridge of “I Am the Best,” the audiovisuals reimagine pre-modern traditions of
Korean musical performance, literally, as sleek and luxurious. We see an extreme wide-angle
shot of the group, while the lead member breaks into a hard-hitting dance solo. The perimeter of
the frame is lined with a procession of women standing next to tall angular instruments. As the
camera closes in, they perform a modernized version of the traditional Korean drumming that
has been exclusively practiced by women, called “ogomu.”
!79
Figure 15. 2NE1 perform group choreography against backdrop of white
stage lights in music video for “I Am the Best.”
Ogomu is a visually vibrant form of folk performance in which the female drummers stand
between the drums, bending their bodies in a dramatic display of coordination and dexterity.
While this drumming performance is usually defined by bright wardrobes, dyed in Korea’s
national colors, the video represents a monochromatic scene, comprised only of saturated whites
and deep black. The sound of ogomu drums is layered onto the dance track. As group
performance has always been a major part of Korean musical tradition, this moment also
suggests that K-Pop’s trademark group choreography borrows from other than American
pop visual conventions. This video formulates K-Pop, not as a localization of American culture,
but as a globalization of local culture. While these kinds of distinctly national representations are
rare in K-Pop music videos, this moment represents, in a more literal way, precisely the kinds of
imaginaries that record labels work to prop up.
!80
Figure 16. During the bridge in 2NE1’s music video for “I Am the Best,” backup dancers
perform a modernized adaptation of a traditional style of Korean drumming called
ogomu.
Conclusion
This chapter examines how SM, YG, and JYP utilize group dance and gender performance
to brand their labels as both rigidly systematized and flexible global technologies. The
distribution of music videos via YouTube also worked to generate an imaginary within the U.S.
about K-Pop as image-driven and organized around feminine spectacle. These conversations
essentially established the discursive framework for South Korean rapper Psy’s crossover into
the U.S. In the following chapter, I demonstrate his Stateside marketing campaign focused on his
masculine authenticity and its deviation away from K-Pop’s manufacture of gender. However, as
I argue, his marketing campaign was undoubtedly orchestrated, but hinged on hiding rather than
foregrounding the manufacture of his performance. !81
CHAPTER 2 ENDNOTES John Seabrook, “Factory Girls: Cultural Technology and the Making of K-Pop,” The New
1
Yorker, October 8, 2012, 15-16.
Yeran Kim, “Idol Republic: The Global Emergence of Girl Industries and the
2
Commercialization of Girl Bodies,” Journal of Gender Studies 20, no. 4 (December 2011): 333–
45; Numerous feminist scholars examine gender as flexible neoliberal subjects and technologies.
See Aihwa Ong, Flexible Citizenship: The Cultural Logics of Transnationality (Durham, N.C.:
Duke University Press, 1999); Inderpal Grewal, Transnational America: Feminisms, Diasporas,
Neoliberalisms (Durham: Duke University Press, 2005). Sharon Heijin Lee, “The (Geo)politics
of Beauty: Race, Transnationalism, and Neoliberalism in South Korean Beauty Culture,” PhD
diss., University of Michigan, 2012.
For a more detailed historical narrativization of the shift from Fordist to Taylorist modes of
3
production as sign of late capitalism, see David Harvey, The Condition of Postmodernity: An
Enquiry into the Origins of Cultural Change (Oxford, Cambridge: Blackwell, 1989). For a more
detailed discussion of neoliberal global consumer culture see Scott Lash and Celia Lury, Global
Culture Industry: The Mediation of Things, (Cambridge: Polity, 2007); Toby Miller, Cultural
Citizenship: Cosmopolitanism, Consumerism, and Television in a Neoliberal Age (Philadelphia:
Temple University Press, 2007); Inderpal Grewal, Transnational America: Feminisms, Diasporas,
Neoliberalisms (Durham: Duke University Press, 2005); Nick Couldry, “The Productive
‘Consumer’ and the Dispersed ‘Citizen,’” International Journal of Cultural Studies 7, no. 1
(March 2004): 21–32.
Gil-sung Park, “Manufacturing Creativity: Production, Performance, and Dissemination of K-
4
Pop*,” Korea Journal 53, no. 4 (Winter 2013): 14–33; Ingyu Oh, “The Globalization of K-Pop:
Korea’s Place in the Global Music Industry,” Korea Observer 44, no. 3 (Autumn 2013): 389–
409; Min-Soo Seo, “Lessons from K-Pop’s Global Success,” SERI Quarterly 5, no. 3 (July
2012): 60–66.
“Lee Soo Man Outlines SM Entertainment’s Three Stages of Globalization,” allkpop, June 13,
5
2011, http://www.allkpop.com/article/2011/06/lee-soo-man-outlines-sm-entertainments-three-
stages-of-globalization.
Shin, Hyunjoon. “Have You Ever Seen the Rain? And Who’ll Stop the Rain?: The Globalizing
6
Project of Korean Pop (K-pop),” Inter-Asia Cultural Studies 10, no. 4 (December 2009): 516.
“Park Jin-Young Has Ambitions to Conquer the World,” Chosun Ilbo, July 3, 2007, sec. Arts &
7
Entertainment, http://english.chosun.com/site/data/html_dir/2007/07/03/2007070361017.html.
See also Mahr, Krista. “South Korea’s Greatest Export: How K-Pop’s Rocking the World,” Time,
March 7, 2012. http://world.time.com/2012/03/07/south-koreas-greatest-export-how-k-pops-
rocking-the-world/.
!82
Jean Oh, “Why Is K-Pop Going to America?” The Korea Herald, February 10, 2012, sec.
8
Entertainment. http://www.koreaherald.com/view.php?ud=20120210000695.
Ibid.
9
“Park Jin-Young Has Ambitions to Conquer the World,” Chosun Ilbo, July 3, 2007, sec. Arts &
10
Entertainment, http://english.chosun.com/site/data/html_dir/2007/07/03/2007070361017.html.
Ibid.
11
Ibid.
12
“Wonder Girls - Nobody (Kor. Ver),” music video, 6:12, uploaded to YouTube by wondergirls
13
on December 14, 2008, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QZBn1e9pr2Q.
Jon Fitzgerald, “Motown Crossover Hits 1963-1966 and the Creative Process,” Popular Music
14
14, no. 1 (January 1, 1995): 1–11; Timothy Laurie, “Crossover Fatigue: The Persistence of
Gender at Motown Records,” Feminist Media Studies 14, no. 1 (January 2, 2014): 90–105.
“Park Jin-Young Has Ambitions to Conquer the World,” Chosun Ilbo, July 3, 2007, sec. Arts &
15
Entertainment, http://english.chosun.com/site/data/html_dir/2007/07/03/2007070361017.html.
“Wondergirls to Make US Debut.” Korea Times, June 6, 2009, sec. Culture. http://
16
www.koreatimes.co.kr/www/news/art/2014/05/201_46359.html.
Crystal Bell, “Breaking & Entering: The Wonder Girls.” Billboard, November 20, 2009. http://
17
www.billboard.com/articles/news/266640/breaking-entering-the-wonder-girls.
Jean Oh, “Why Is K-Pop Going to America?” The Korea Herald, February 10, 2012, sec.
18
Entertainment. http://www.koreaherald.com/view.php?ud=20120210000695.
Crystal Bell, “Breaking & Entering: The Wonder Girls.” Billboard, November 20, 2009, http://
19
www.billboard.com/articles/news/266640/breaking-entering-the-wonder-girls.
Sang-Hun Choe and Mark Russell, “Does Korean Pop Actually Have a Shot at Success in the
20
U.S.?,” The Atlantic, January 30, 2012, http://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/
2012/01/does-korean-pop-actually-have-a-shot-at-success-in-the-us/252057/.
August Brown, “K-Pop Moves beyond Korean Culture with Eyes on U.S.,” Los Angeles
21
Times, April 29, 2012, http://articles.latimes.com/2012/apr/29/entertainment/la-ca-
kpop-20120429.
Julie Jackson. “Park Jin-Young Reveals Closure of US Operations,” Asia News Week, March
22
25, 2013. http://asianewsnet.net/Park-Jin-young-reveals-closure-of-US-operations-44483.html.
!83
Hae-in Shin, “Wonder Girls to Release TV Movie in U.S.,” Korea Herald, January 3, 2012,
23
sec. Entertainment, http://www.koreaherald.com/view.php?ud=20120103000578.
“Wonder Girls - Like Money ft. Akon,” music video, 4:38, uploaded to YouTube by
24
WonderGirlsVevo on July 9, 2012, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=quE6Cq4Q2bs.
Julie Jackson, “Park Jin-Young Reveals Closure of US Operations,” Asia News Week, March
25
25, 2013, http://asianewsnet.net/Park-Jin-young-reveals-closure-of-US-operations-44483.html.
Solee I. Shin and Lanu Kim, “Organizing K-Pop: Emergence and Market Making of Large
26
Korean Entertainment Houses, 1980–2010,” East Asia 30, no. 4 (January 12, 2013), 266.
Ibid.
27
“Korean Entertainment Agency Taking Its Acts Globally,” Lee Soo Man lecture, Stanford
28
Graduate School of Business, April 19, 2011, YouTube video, 1:01:08, posted by Stanford
Graduate School of Business on May 12, 2011, https://www.youtube.com/watch?
v=bGP5mNh9zo8.
Min-uck Chung, “Lee Reveals Know-How of Hallyu,” Korea Times, June 12, 2011, sec.
29
Culture, http://www.koreatimes.co.kr/www/news/art/2014/05/201_88764.html.
Ka-young Lee and Kang-hyun Chung, “K-Pop Stars Rise on Rigorous Training,” Korean
30
JoongAng Daily, June 13, 2011, http://koreajoongangdaily.joins.com/news/article/article.aspx?
aid=2937457.
“Gee,” music video, 3:54, uploaded to YouTube by sment on June 8, 2009, https://
31
www.youtube.com/watch?v=quE6Cq4Q2bs.
Julie Choi, “K-Pop Style: Fashion and the Aesthetics of the Mass Ornament,” in “The
32
Globalization of Korean Cultural Studies” International Conference (presented at the
Crosscurrents of the Korean Wave, Ewha Womans University, 2013), 96.
Siegfried Kracauer, The Mass Ornament: Weimar Essays, trans. Thomas Y . Levin (Cambridge,
33
Mass: Harvard University Press, 1995).
Julie Choi, “K-Pop Style,” 96.
34
Ibid.
35
David Bevan, “Seoul Trained: Inside Korea’s Pop Factory,” SPIN, March 26, 2012, http://
36
www.spin.com/articles/seoul-trained-inside-koreas-pop-factory/?page=0.
“Lee Soo Man Outlines SM Entertainment’s Three Stages of Globalization,” allkpop, June 13,
37
2011, http://www.allkpop.com/article/2011/06/lee-soo-man-outlines-sm-entertainments-three-
stages-of-globalization.
!84
Kang-hyun Chung, “Top Korean Pop Stars Are Riding Hallyu’s Second Wave,” Korean
38
JoongAng Daily, January 21, 2011, sec. Culture, http://koreajoongangdaily.joins.com/news/
article/article.aspx?aid=2931261.
Kang-hyun Chung, “Top Korean Pop Stars Are Riding Hallyu’s Second Wave,” Korean
39
JoongAng Daily, January 21, 2011, sec. Culture, http://koreajoongangdaily.joins.com/news/
article/article.aspx?aid=2931261.
“K-Pop’s New Global Reach,” Korea JoongAng Daily, June 11, 2011, sec. Opinion, http://
40
koreajoongangdaily.joins.com/news/article/article.aspx?aid=2937416.
Sang-hun Choe and Mark Russell, “Using Social Media to Bring Korean Pop Music to the
41
West,” The New York Times, March 4, 2012, sec. Business Day / Global Business, http://
www.nytimes.com/2012/03/05/business/global/using-social-media-to-bring-korean-pop-music-
to-the-west.html.
YouTube has also become the preferred platform for music video distribution for the U.S.-
42
based global music giants.
Evan Ramstad, “YouTube Helps South Korean Band Branch Out,” Wall Street Journal,
43
January 14, 2011, sec. Tech., http://blogs.wsj.com/speakeasy/2011/01/13/youtube-helps-south-
korean-band-branch-out/.
Sang-hun Choe and Mark Russell, “Using Social Media to Bring Korean Pop Music to the
44
West,” The New York Times, March 4, 2012, sec. Business Day / Global Business, http://
www.nytimes.com/2012/03/05/business/global/using-social-media-to-bring-korean-pop-music-
to-the-west.html.
James Brooks, “To Anyone: The Rise of Korean Wave,” Pitchfork, November 2, 2011, http://
45
pitchfork.com/features/articles/8700-to-anyone-the-rise-of-korean-wave/.
Crystal S. Anderson and Amy He, “Can K-Pop Break the U.S.?,” The Korea Herald, October
46
3, 2011, English edition, sec. Opinion, http://www.koreaherald.com/view.php?
ud=20111003000316.
Ibid.
47
Ibid.
48
Celine Parreñas Shimizu, The Hypersexuality of Race: Performing Asian/American Women on
49
Screen and Scene (Duke University Press, 2007); Darrell Hamamoto, Monitored Peril: Asian
Americans and the Politics of TV Representation (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press,
1994); Gina Marchetti, Romance and the “Yellow Peril”: Race, Sex, and Discursive Strategies in
Hollywood Fiction (University of California Press, 1993).
!85
“Girls’ Generation Making Its American Dream Come True,” Billboard, November 13, 2011,
50
http://www.billboard.com/articles/news/465158/girls-generation-making-its-american-dream-
come-true.
Robert Seldman, “Late Night TV Ratings For The Week Of January 30-February 3, 2012,”
51
TVbytheNumbers, February 9, 2012, http://tvbythenumbers.zap2it.com/2012/02/09/late-night-tv-
ratings-for-the-week-of-january-30-february-3-2012/119320/.
“Girls’ Generation on David Letterman,” YouTube video, 4:14, from an episode of the Late
52
Show with David Letterman aired by CBS on January 31, 2012, posted by kfashions on February
1, 2012, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=exa5-P0_uKo.
Jean Oh, “Why Is K-Pop Going to America?,” The Korea Herald, February 10, 2012, sec.
53
Entertainment, http://www.koreaherald.com/view.php?ud=20120210000695.
Ibid.
54
Kim, Yoon-mi. “Girls’ Generation Turn to Rap for ‘The Boys,’” The Korea Herald, October
55
18, 2011. http://www.koreaherald.com/view.php?ud=20111018000671.
“2NE1 - I AM THE BEST ( 내가 제일 잘 나가) M/V ,” music video, 3:35, uploaded to
56
YouTube by 2NE1 on June 27, 2011, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j7_lSP8Vc3o.
!86
CHAPTER 3
FAILED MASCULINITIES AND MANUFACTURED AUTHENTICITY: FROM RAIN
TO PSY
On September 14th, 2012, South Korean rapper Psy (short for “Psycho”) sat across from
NBC’s Today Show host, Savannah Guthrie, on the network’s outdoor stage at Rockefeller
Center. He had been invited to talk about the music video for his latest single, “Gangnam Style,”
and to give a live performance of the song. Since uploaded on YouTube (on July 15th that year),
the video had amassed over one hundred millions views, becoming a major news story. It gained
the attention of T-Pain, Britney Spears, and several other major American entertainers, spawned
countless parodies across the country, and––as YouTube revealed––attracted the majority of
viewings from the U.S. Despite its lyrics being entirely in Korean as many media outlets
highlighted, Psy’s video had overtaken America.
The NBC interview begins with a brief, pre-edited segment explaining the content of the
video and a little about the artist who produced it. A voice-over remarks that the song and video
are meant to satirize the opulent style cultures that typify the Gangnam district in Seoul, one of
the city’s wealthiest neighborhoods. The segment’s narrator then notes that the lyrics portray
myriad ways in which the singer/subject defines his persona as a classy gentleman, in the style of
someone from Gangnam; layered onto this, the singer and his backup dancers vigorously gallop,
his signature “horsie dance,” in unglamorous scenarios. The video’s comedic register relies on
the contradiction between the lyrics and visuals.
1
The voice-over narration continues, explaining that Psy has been performing in Korea for
over ten years, but never intended to crossover to the States. The segment then cuts to a talking
head shot of Esther Song, the CEO of an international branding firm, who explains that Psy is
“not a pretty boy and actually has character . . . and so from a stereotypical and materialist
!87
perspective, it’s very different from what everyone envisioned to be the breakout artist of
Korea.”
The segment then transitions back to NBC’s live camera feed from Rockefeller Center, as
Guthrie asks Psy whether he could ever have imagined becoming such a hit in America. He
responds, “I didn’t expect this at all. I uploaded this video only for Korean viewers and suddenly
within sixty days, I’m here.” Despite his veteran status in his home country, he notes he is a
“rookie” in the U.S. Before transitioning to Psy’s live performance, Guthrie asks a final question:
what might it mean to people in South Korea that he has become such a phenomenon here? Psy
begins, “I’m on the Today Show, on NBC, on this stage, excuse me, but let me say . . .” He turns
to the camera and proudly declares into the mic, “‘Dae han min gook manse!’” A tracking shot
quickly pulls out to an aerial view of an audience, filled with Asian and Asian American fans
wildly cheering, as Psy translates the phrase for Guthrie: “It means, Korea rules!”
Psy’s appearance on the Today Show was one of five major televised appearances made
that September and marked a turning point in the media’s coverage of his Gangam Style video.
U.S. media narratives centered on the public’s bewildering fascination with this Korean-language
pop video rather than the meaning behind the lyrics, or the story behind the singer. Over and
over, news stories covered the viral phenomenon itself, the numerous parodies it had generated,
and the contagious appeal of the video’s dance moves. Thus, by September, Psy essentially had
spent the previous month and a half as an untranslated, bodily spectacle, and, literally, the object
of parody. Finally, when he sat on NBC’s stage in his first major televised feature, he was able to
position himself as the narrator of his own story––as an artist and entertainer.
While Psy’s performance in the Gangnam Style video compels its own close analysis, the
narratives produced by the press about the video and the artist are equally complex and
!88
compelling. Psy’s interview on the Today Show exemplifies three key components of a carefully-
managed narrative that developed in the months after the release of the video on YouTube.
Discourse analysis reveals the details of the script on his backstory, which he followed as he
continued to give interviews with major newspapers, magazines, and radio shows.
To begin, Psy repeatedly emphasized that his fame in the States was “unexpected” and
“sudden.” These notions produced an aura around Psy for viewers, constructing the video’s
virality as an uncontrolled, self-reproducing, and organic phenomenon driven by the Internet’s
dense interconnection of social networks. For Psy, they also worked to underscore fame as
coming to him despite his average looks and heavy-set build, and without the support of a major
marketing campaign. These dynamics of sudden and unexpected popularity also imbued him
with an air of humility, as well as an aura of authenticity––eliciting statements such as “he has
substance,” “he’s an artist,” “he’s an outsider.” This status served especially to differentiate Psy
from male and female idol/idol groups whom American audiences perceive as highly
manufactured or “fake.” For instance, in Abigail Covington’s article for pop culture blog A.V .
Club titled “Navigating the Excessive World of K-Pop, she argues,
The biggest problem with K-pop’s boy bands is that they are as equally
manufactured as the girl groups but much less convincing. Manufacturing charm
is feasible. Manufacturing sex appeal is a no-brainer. But manufacturing grit (a
relatively necessary quality for men if you are working within the
heteronormative boundaries of a conservative culture like South Korea’s) is nearly
impossible.
2
Covington perhaps misses how “heteronormative boundaries” work within South Korea, where
masculine “grit” is not upheld in the way it is in the U.S. However, her remarks reflect a common
argument made by American media critics: K-Pop boy bands lack a masculine authenticity that
translates over to audiences like herself. However, as I demonstrate in this chapter, Psy was able
!89
to market his parody of Korean masculinity in the U.S. precisely because it worked in
contradistinction to mainstream American perceptions of K-Pop’s gender regimes.
Secondly, in these interviews, Psy often spoke of himself as a representative of other
Korean talent and, thus, implicitly of hallyu, or the Korean Wave. However, in interviews like
the one on the Today Show, when he declared, “Dae han min gook man se,” Psy also gave a
nudge and wink to Koreans, those at home and in the States, acknowledging his achievement as
far more than becoming an international crossover star; his embodiment as an Asian male
musical entertainer makes his extraordinary popularity a transgression of both national and racial
barriers.
In this chapter, I track these two discursive threads, laying out how Psy artfully crafted an
image of himself as unmanufactured and, at times, unruly. This script had the dual effect of
constructing his virality as organically produced, and his success as unexpected. As such, the
image of his unattractiveness and lack of international marketing resources became his most
valuable and marketable assets in the U.S. Indeed, media analyses read this authenticity as
responsible for Psy’s translation over to American audiences, juxtaposing his success with the
failure of more “manufactured,” self-serious K-Pop idols. Psy’s chunky body is palatable to
American audiences, in part, because he can anticipate and diffuse dislike of his weight by
ridiculing it himself. He also transcends body prejudice with infectious dancing in “Gangnam
Style”—the weight never prevents him from moving like a sex symbol. This comparison draws
attention to broader structural dynamics, particularly historical codifications in the U.S. of Asian
sexuality as androgynous or of Asian masculinity as always already failed. As numerous scholars
from a range of disciplinary perspectives have argued, dominant representations of Asian
American sexuality have been historically constructed through a colonial gaze which positions
!90
western men as “masculine” and Asian men as “feminine.” Hence, Psy’s self-awareness of his
3
sexual undesirability drove his U.S.-based success. At the same time, Psy’s racialized
embodiment of Korean nationality was commercially and culturally valued as long as it was
safely contained outside any political commentary, particularly that on unequal power relations
and imperial histories between the U.S. and South Korea. To begin the discussion we might
consider further Psy’s biography, and development as artist, before moving into an analysis of
“Gangnam Style” and its media reception.
Psy: Manufacturing Failure for Local Audiences
Psy was born as Park Jae-Sang in the Gangnam district of Seoul, one of the most
exclusive neighborhoods in South Korea’s capital city. The area is replete with expensive real
estate, luxury-brand retailers, and residences of some of the country’s wealthiest families and
politicians. Many of the Korea's most powerful conglomerates (including two of Korea’s Big
Three, SM Entertainment and JYP Entertainment) have also located their corporate headquarters
there.
Psy’s father is the chairman and controlling shareholder of Dong Il Corp, a Korean
company that manufactures and trades semi-conductor chips. Despite Psy’s poor performance in
school, he was poised to take over his father’s company, following the normative trajectory of
Korean men of his class. Reluctant to follow this predefined script, Psy made a deal with his
parents to pursue an education in the U.S., instead of taking over the family business. (Pursuing
4
an education overseas in an English-speaking country, particularly in the U.S., has become
crucial for young men looking to get a leg-up in a cutthroat economy. Such an opportunity is
only afforded to the wealthiest families in Korea.)
!91
In 1996, Park enrolled at Boston University, but dropped out during his first semester
after failing his classes. In a speech delivered to Harvard University in March 2013, he recounts
how he earned the nickname “WWF,” which stands for “withdrawal, withdrawal, failure.” In an
5
interview with Newsweek, he recalls that upon arriving to the U.S., he encountered the vibrant
rap and hip-hop scene and was particularly drawn to music produced by Dr. Dre and Eminem.
He also observed that the digitization of music production had made songwriting an accessible
practice for aspiring musicians who might not be formally trained (Psy majored in music
business), and thus used his leftover tuition money to purchase a computer, electric keyboard,
and MIDI player. He enrolled at Berkelee College of Music––where a number of producers
6
currently populating Korea’s music industry had also trained––and majored in music business.
7
He failed to complete his education again, this time because, as he recounts, “classes were too
early.” Despite these defeats in formal education, during the five years that he spent in the U.S.,
8
he managed to learn to speak English.
In 2001, Park returned to Seoul to begin a career as a performer. He released his debut
album, entitled Psy From the Psycho World (2001), introducing himself to audiences under his
new stage name, and to his brash and lyrically-driven style. “Bird,” the first single off the album,
undeniably draws on hip-hop conventions Psy heard in the U.S. The song’s plucky bass line and
bouncy beat, layered underneath Psy’s staccato-like raps, are vaguely reminiscent of the sounds
defining Aftermath Records and Eminem during the late-1990s. But Psy’s music and imagery
always have a playful quality. ”Bird” begins with a sample of the quick guitar strums opening
Banarama’s chart-topping cover of “Venus” (1986). With brassy horns filling the soundtrack, Psy
raps about his desire for beautiful women.
!92
Younger Korean audiences embraced Psy From the Psycho World, the single “Bird,” and
its music video. However, their parents and civic groups raised a ruckus about the potentially
negative influence of Psy’s lyrics, causing government censors to issue him a fine. His persona as
an iconoclast was firmly sealed later in 2001, when he was charged with possession of marijuana
(an issue Park has refused to address with the American media). His second album, released the
9
following year, was irreverently titled, For Adults, but again censored by government officials,
who banned its sale to minors.
Psy had entered the business as part of Korea’s pop music industry, but almost
immediately took advantage of his reputation as an outsider and crafted his image in
contradistinction to K-Pop’s conventions. The Korean press, which often assigns epithets to
entertainers, nicknamed Park “the Bizarre Singer.” He is credited as the sole composer on all of
his songs, and associated more closely with independent local hip-hop and rock scenes than with
K-Pop. On Ssajib, his third album, Psy teamed up with LeeSsang, Drunken Tiger, and Tasha, all
vanguards, and among the biggest names in Korean hip-hop.
While Park’s music is well-known in Korea for its controversy, over the years he has also
earned a reputation for his consummate showmanship. The influence of the arena rock bands he
listened to in his youth is readily apparent in his music. His stage persona have particularly been
modeled after the gender-bending pyrotechnics of bands like Aerosmith, Def Leppard, and,
especially, Queen. Park has repeatedly stated in interviews, as well as on social media forums,
that Freddie Mercury stands apart as a lifetime role model. Park claims that, because he never
10
completed his education at Berklee (he missed important elements in his formal training), a
decision he regrets because of the limited range of his songwriting skills. While Psy
11
deferentially acknowledges that he will never approach Mercury’s craftsmanship as a composer,
!93
he attributes his sense of showmanship to Queen (the band) and Mercury’s frontman style, which
he carefully studied by repeatedly watching recordings of their live shows. Park always
12
delivers his performances backed by a live band amid a spectacular choreography of fireworks,
impressive visual displays, and lighting schemes.
Psy is perhaps most famously known for his dance routines, which balance body parody
with a self-serious commitment to his routine. Even with a heavy-set build, his often acrobatic
onstage routines defy expectations of his physical dexterity. His costumes always include a
version of a garishly decorated tux or suit. He defies classified models of Korean masculinity
associated with the wealthy, those exemplified by the luxury culture that pervades the
neighborhood where he was raised. By cultivating a working-class-oriented rock and rap
aesthetic, Park has developed his Psy persona in active retaliation to standards and aesthetics of
his wealthy upbringing.
Moreover, Psy frequently appears in drag. He replicates with meticulous precision the
signature dance routines and wardrobes made famous by music videos of such American divas as
Beyonce and Lady Gaga, known for their queer fan base and carnal theatricality. When asked to
describe his style, Park remarks that his “spirit and agenda is play.” However, his persona and
13
performance of “play” is carefully orchestrated, rehearsed, or “manufactured.” Self-reflexivity is
both part of his brand, and its strategy presents a visage of uninhibited and undisciplined
relationship to the body.
!94
Gangnam Style Video & U.S. Reception
In 2010 YG signed Psy; the pairing made sense, given YG’s reputation as an edgier
company giving artists more creative freedom and supporting hip-hop-influenced acts. (YG
founder Yang Hyung Suk got his start as a member of rap group Seo Taiji and Boys.) But YG
also wanted to bring more singer/songwriters onto the label. Thus, under YG, Psy released his
fifth album, PSYFIVE (2010) before going on another two-year hiatus.
The release of “Gangnam Style” in 2012 brought him out from the hiatus; his flair for
social commentary, combined with music and dance elements of the song, all came together. In
the chorus of the song, Psy proclaims that he is “oppa,” a term generally used by women to refer
to an older brother, or older male, but more recently used as a term of endearment for a
boyfriend. The term can coquettishly hail a lover by suggesting his superior power position
within a gender or age hierarchy (something akin to calling a lover “Daddy”). Thus, when Psy
!95
Figure 17. Psy performs Beyonce’s trademark dance routine for her single, “Single Ladies,” at a
live concert in Seoul in 2011.
calls himself “oppa,” he playfully asserts his masculine authority over the classy women
described by the lyrics. Moreover, by declaring that he is “Gangnam Style,” he plays on the
classed power dynamic, entangling the district’s economic symbolism with masculine power.
The visuals of the video work as a counterpoint to the lyrics. Psy positions himself as the
object of desire within the mise-en-scene of dilapidated settings. Thus the visuals of the video
work to undermine the lyrics, and do so in two ways. First, this ironic inversion signals to
audiences Psy’s self-reflexive acknowledgement that he fails to cohere with norms of bourgeois
Korean masculinity and heterosexual desire. Secondly, it works to point out the absurdity of
14
this mode of masculinity itself. As I demonstrate in the next section, masculine parody was
precisely the reason why American journalists and critics embraced Psy. However, they did so by
re-inscribing another mode of masculine convention.
!96
Figure 18. Dressed in sunglasses and a tuxedo, in Psy’s music for “Gangnam Style,” he
walks with two slender and stylish women while trash and debris fly into their faces.
Press Reception
Korean pop music blogs and fan sites in the U.S. announced that Psy had released his
long-awaited comeback album along with music video, which adhered to his established
reputation as a comedic performer and accomplished dancer. The video rapidly made its way
15
through online forums (like Reddit) and mainstream blogs (Buzzfeed and Gawker) where
users––most of whom self-identified as non-Korean or non-Korean-language speakers––
commented on their obsession with the video’s spectacular aesthetics, catchy beat, and infectious
“horsie dance” routine. In late July, celebrities such as T-Pain and Josh Grobin, posted the
16
video to their Twitter accounts, each accompanied by a short quip on its brilliance. T-Pain
exclaimed, “Words cannot even describe how amazing this video is,” while Josh Grobin
declared, “It’s a Gangnam Style world and we’re all living in it.” The video began to spawn
17
!97
Figure 19. Dressed in a tuxedo, Psy and his backup dancers perform the signature “horsie
dance” for “Gangnam Style” inside of a barn.
parodies that offered individual takes on “Gangnam Style;” parodies that regularly appeared on
late-night talk shows and news programs.
By early-August, “Gangnam Style” had accumulated over twelve million views on
YouTube, earning the attention of CNN and other mainstream news outlets. The first strand of
discourse to emerge focused on the virality of the music video, constructing it as an “unstoppable
phenomenon,” an “uncontrollable contagion,” driven by social media rather than the industry.
Buried within these constructions was a fascination with the exotic. Evan Ramstead, of the Wall
Street Journal, posted a blog entry on the newspaper site titled, “What’s up with the ‘Gangnam
Style’ video?” He noted that the video had already racked up twelve million views, but failed to
pinpoint why it took off with “America’s online hipster.” He concluded with, “Perhaps, there’s
no other reason to explore the American curiosity about—or popularity of—the video…
Everyone needs a little Korean hip-hop now and again.”
18
On August 2, 2012, CNN aired a live segment on its program CNN International (Asia)
about “Gangnam Style’s” popularity in which correspondent Shannon Cook remarked on the
viral phenomenon erupting around the video. She followed up with the statement, ”Of course, no
one here in the U.S. has any idea what Psy is rapping about,” then recapped an analysis of the
lyric provided to her by her Korean colleagues. They explained the song’s reference to the
affluent area of Seoul, and its praise of Gangnam women, who act prim and proper during the
day but turn wild at night.
19
The language of “curiosity” and bewilderment thus became a self-perpetuating narrative
fueling the video’s virality, obscuring Psy’s successful career in Korea, and his work with the
second largest record label in Korea.
20
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Social Media Reception
Psy’s success was also YouTube’s success. The site’s blog, which builds buzz around
videos by posting statistics and analyses, thus posted a number of articles measuring the warp
speed at which “Gangnam Style” aggregated hits around the world, especially in the U.S. By
21
January 2013, Psy’s YouTube royalties had reached $870,000, only accounting for half of total
profits earned. (YouTube’s owner, Google, collects 55% of the revenue earned by all YouTube
22
channels officially registered with its Partner program.) More importantly, the video served the
purposes of YouTube’s escalating claims of having created an open, global platform that could
create wealth and fame overnight. They portrayed the “sudden” popularity of the “Gangnam
Style” video as a perfect example of the dizzying rise to global fame, achievable on YouTube
channels, and a testament to the centrality of YouTube for music sales. According to Billboard,
“Google CEO Larry Page said that the 500 million-plus views of PSY’s ‘Gangnam Style’ video
represent YouTube’s future. ‘To get worldwide distribution––almost without doing any work––is
an amazing thing.’” Of course, record labels worldwide used YouTube as a promotional tool
23
and revenue stream well before “Gangnam Style” brought K-Pop to the masses. But according to
David Marx, Google’s head of product communications in the Asia/Pacific region, “Everything
moves in the same direction at varying speeds. The difference is in the velocity.”
24
Thus, one can hardly characterize the “Gangnam Style” video’s popularity as “organic.”
Those who stood to gain commercially from its virality held a vested interest, especially Psy and
his label. As I discuss in the next section, Scooter Braun––who signed on as Psy’s manager in the
U.S. early on in the process––also stood to gain.
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Breaking Records
In early-September, popular and industry discourse about “Gangnam Style”’s Internet
success quickly shifted after Psy uploaded a video-recorded announcement to his YouTube
channel, in which he and the American
talent manager, Scooter Braun,
announced plans to collaborate on the
release of a new record in the U.S. The
grainy, handheld footage shows the two
men sitting on a lavishly decorated
terrace, holding clear plastic cups filled
with soju, a popular rice liquor
consumed in South Korea and its many
diasporic enclaves. Braun does most of
the talking, explaining that he and Psy
have spent the last four days “forging a friendship,” and have “come to an agreement to make
some history and break a big record in the United States.” He concludes, somewhat facetiously––
and perhaps somewhat drunkenly––that he wants “to mark this moment in history between our
great nations.” Psy chuckles lightly at the histrionic gravity Braun has just assigned to their new
partnership. The video concludes with the two of them toasting, as Braun declares to the camera,
“To Psy, to Korea, to breaking down barriers––to the future.”
25
But what barriers, exactly, did Psy and Braun vow to dismantle together? Ostensibly, they
merely pledged to release the first “big record” by a South Korean artist in the U.S. Braun’s quip
that they represented a joining of forces between two “great nations” suggested that they would
!100
Figure 20. Psy and Scooter Braun toast to their new
partnership in a video announcement uploaded to Psy’s
YouTube page on September 3, 2012.
break geo-political and cultural barriers. Implicitly, they sought to shatter the media industry’s
notoriously racialized and gendered bias, exemplified in its historical record of denying access to
Asian talent. The hidden question remained, more precisely, how they intended to break barriers.
But Braun’s experience in the industry had resulted in his accumulating savvy marketing skills.
Braun had begun his career in the music industry, at age 20, when he was named
marketing director for So So Def Recordings. In 2007, he left to launch his own label, Schoolboy
Records, and then started a joint venture in 2008, with Usher Raymond, called Raymond-Braun
Media Group. Braun had established himself as a savvy business manager and talent scout, but
his exceptional knack for using social media to bring unknown acts into visibility and cultural
relevance distinguished him as an industry vanguard. He is perhaps most famous for discovering
Justin Bieber on YouTube, using social media platforms to build a loyal fan base, and grooming
the once unassuming teenager from Canada into one of the highest-grossing entertainers of the
decade. Braun also masterminded the highly-effective viral marketing campaign that brought
Canadian pop singer and industry newcomer, Carly Rae Jepsen, into the media spotlight,
transforming her into an unavoidable part of the 2012 summer’s pop music soundscape––and a
topic of the cultural conversation.
Jepsen’s debut single and music video, “Call Me Maybe,” began as a social media
phenomenon after Justin Bieber promoted the song to his fifteen million Twitter followers in
December, 2011, then posted a video of him and his friends lip-syncing to the single in February
2012. This video spawned countless parodies before the official music video was released in
March. Bieber’s video amassed hundreds of millions of views on YouTube, over the course of
several months, before finally reaching the top of the iTunes downloads chart for nine weeks, and
then the Billboard chart a month later. Jepsen’s cultural value as a social media phenomenon
26
!101
allowed Braun to leverage airtime on radio and television; the key to reaching the million-record
sale mark. The Jepsen “Call Me Maybe” phenomenon led Ben Sisario of the New York Times to
consider whether the traditional marketing models of the music industry were indeed shifting.
27
Such shifts were apparent when, by late in August 2012, Psy’s music video had received
over fifty million YouTube hits. The media had already made him a social media sensation, but
the song had yet to make a significant dent on Billboard and iTunes downloads chart, where it
ranked 44th as of August 28th. While no other Korean pop artist had made it that far up the
iTunes singles, it was not necessarily a promising start for mainstream U.S. success. More
significantly, the song had yet to receive radio plays, nor had Psy promoted himself on talk or
variety shows critical to successful musical promotion since the 1950s.
For two weeks, following the announcement of the Psy and Braun partnership, the
performer appeared on four major television programs. On September 6th, Psy shared the MTV
Video Music Award’ s pre-show stage with The Wanted, an English-Irish boy band, also managed
by Braun’s label, and then performed “Gangnam Style” at the VMA’ s live telecast. On September
10th, Psy made a surprise guest appearance in the final minutes of The Ellen Degeneres Show,
and invited Britney Spears onto the stage to learn how to do the horsie dance; several days later
he gave the blow-out performance on The Today Show (described at the beginning of this
chapter). On September 15th, Psy appeared in a sketch on Saturday Night Live; that same day,
“Gangnam Style” became the Number-One downloaded song on iTunes, making him the first
South Korean artist to ever break into the Top Ten.
Donnie Kwak of Billboard magazine described Psy’s breakthrough onto network
television as Braun’s managerial team’s “succession of masterfully orchestrated appearances on
the VMAs, Ellen, Today, and SNL.” The use of Psy’s social media clout to leverage his way into
28
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some of the most prized spots on television, across all times of the day, followed the strategy
Braun had employed just months earlier to promote Carly Rae Jepsen.
These media appearances, more importantly, created a space for Psy to re-position
himself as an agent in his own narrative, as an artist rather than the object of parody. His guest
appearance on the Ellen Degeneres Show offers perhaps the most illuminating example. The spot
begins with Ellen’s announcement that she has brought Psy to the studio to teach Britney Spears
the “Gangnam Style” horsie dance. The camera immediately swings to the stage as Psy bursts
out from behind the curtain and gallops over to them. Ellen and Britney––who do not formally
greet Psy when he approaches––eagerly ask him to teach them the dance. However, before
moving into the lesson, Psy makes a humble but pointed intervention when he asks the host, “By
the way, can I introduce myself and not just dance?” He then turns to the audience and
announces, “I’m Psy from Korea. How are you?,” then bows to the crowd who enthusiastically
cheers for him. Psy asserts his authorial voice against the prevailing image of him as a voiceless
bodily spectacle.
Several days later, Psy essentially confirms this was a conscious strategy orchestrated by
him and Braun in an interview on NPR’s nationally-syndicated program, All Things Considered.
When the host asks what steps he and Braun plan to take next, Psy remarks, “Actually a week
ago, we were saying, hey, I'm going to promote myself because the music video is much more
popular than I am. So I don't like the situation. But in a week, especially after ‘Ellen Show’ and
‘Today Show,’ when I'm walking down the street, some of them recognize me finally today.”
29
This calculated marketing move to construct Psy as a star, instead of a conversation topic, and
make him, not the video, the story’s focus, uproots historically entrenched ideas about Asian
otherness.
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“Unexpected” Success / “Authentic” Masculinity
Psy’s breakout story points to what he enumerated in the opening description of his
appearance on the Today Show: that he was a veteran entertainer but his fame was “sudden” and
“unexpected,” a scripted message that would appear repeatedly in interviews in different
iterations. For instance, in a red-carpet interview with CNN at the VMAs, Psy told the
correspondent, “I made this song, video, music video, and the dance moves, just for Korea, not
worldwide. I didn’t expect anything like this,” the line he repeated on The Today Show and in
almost every interview he gave with the mainstream press. Earlier in his interview with NPR,
Psy had stated that he never expected worldwide fame. “I just made my album. I did my best,
and I uploaded the video to YouTube. That was all. And within 60 days, I'm here and making
interview with you.” He told the New York Times, “I’ve only done this for 12 years, only for
30
Korea, not for overseas at all . . . I didn’t expect anything like this. So what can I say? Everything
moves way too fast.”
31
On September 10, 2012 Psy was invited onto Ryan Seacrest’s radio show. He again
asserted his veteran status, his unexpected appeal to U.S. audiences, and his outsider status
within the Korean pop industry. He told Seacrest, “The K-Pop artists in this country, most of
them are boy bands or girl bands, and most of them are junior to me in Korea. So, I was the guy
when they go overseas and then come back to Korea, ‘So PSY , we did this, we did that.’ And I
said, ‘Congratulations, I will buy you a drink.’ That was my role in Korea, I never expected I’d
become a K-Pop star. That was my job, buy a drink [for] the juniors who goes overseas.”
32
As an established performer and producer, Psy had a spent more than a decade
constructing and managing his image as an industry iconoclast and outsider, making his sudden
status as the most successful Korean cross-over star in the U.S. appear all the more unusual.
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Throughout his U.S. media appearances, Psy rarely strayed from this message, deliberately
managing his image, undoubtedly coached by Braun, who now had a vested interest in Psy’s
viability as a marketable act in the U.S.
The “unexpected success” narrative generated a number of articles by music journalists
who asked why Psy was proving to be more than an Internet sensation. More specifically, they
speculated on the reason Psy succeeded where K-Pop had failed. For many American journalists,
“Gangnam Style”’s satirical bent made it readily translatable for American audiences. In late
August 2012, Max Fisher published an article in the Atlantic, one of the earliest mainstream
pieces on “Gangnam Style.” In a series of attempts to make sense of Psy’s Internet fame, Fisher
begins by describing him as the “unlikely poster boy for South Korea's youth-obsessed, highly
lucrative, and famously vacuous pop music.” He notes that Psy “a relatively ancient 34, has
33
been busted for marijuana and for avoiding the country's mandatory military service . . . .” He
remarks, “Now, Park has succeeded where the K-Pop entertainment-industrial-complex and its
superstars have failed so many times before: he's made it in America.”
34
Fisher then contextualizes how, more precisely, the video is lampooning the ostentatious
displays of wealth that make up Gangnam’s style culture. He concludes that “even if the specific
nods to the quirks of this Seoul neighborhood couldn't possibly cross over, and even if the lyrics
are nonsense to non-Korean speakers, there's something obviously skewering the ostentatiously
rich that just might resonate in today's America.”
35
Pop music critic Hua Hsu would make a similar argument one month later in New York
Magazine’ s online entertainment blog, vulture.com, in a piece titled, “Why Psy’s ‘Gangnam
Style’ Is a Hit With Listeners Who’ve Never Heard of K-pop.” Sidestepping what he believes to
be an irrelevant question of whether “Gangnam Style” is worthy of intense media attention, Hsu
!105
asks why it captivates American audiences. Hsu frames his analysis in Psy’s intended commercial
success in the States, or motivation to be “engineered for world domination.” He notes, “To
underscore the accident of “Gangnam Style”: Prior to all this, Psy—who grew up in South Korea
but attended Boston University and Berklee College of Music—was a bit player in the world of
K-pop.” However, “what makes ‘Gangnam Style’ unique,” Hsu continues, “is its acerbic, self-
aware edge, which is something of a novelty in earnest, unsarcastic K-pop. And just as someone
who is garishly dressed can still communicate a sense of style, one doesn’t need to understand a
word of Psy’s raps to recognize that he’s sneering for a reason.”
36
The two journalists agree on Psy’s passive rise to stardom. Fisher designates him as an
“unlikely poster boy,” because he ill-adheres to the bodily scripts demanded by what Fisher
uniformly describes as a “vacuous” and “youth-obsessed” industry. Hsu describes Psy’s success
as “accidental,” not “engineered” or strategically marketed as a crossover song for the U.S.
market. Both also agree that the video’s self-reflexive commentary differentiates it from the
“vacuous” or “earnest” world of K-Pop.
Indeed, Psy’s video is strikingly different from most K-Pop videos, but neither journalist
mentions that Psy’s class satire is rooted in gender parody, exemplified in the song’s chorus,
“Oppa is Gangnam Style,” and the single English-language riff in the song, “Hey, sexy lady.” Its
critique hinges on Psy’s mockery of his own failure to register as a sexually desirable subject in
the K-Pop universe, one that structures promotion around the sexuality of its artists. K-Pop artists
must seriously inhabit their sexuality in order for the marketing to work, a standard of the pop
music industry. In an interview with the Guardian, Psy admits that his song indeed reflects a
premeditated strategy: "I'm not that good looking . . . . That’s why 'Gangnam Style' works . . . . If
!106
someone handsome uses that phrase it's just awkward. But if someone like me uses it, it's
funny.”
37
Thus, American critics have failed to understand that K-Pop male idol groups register as
androgynous to U.S. audience. They rarely acknowledge that their own descriptions of K-Pop
could very well describe the white-artist dominated pop industry in the U.S. The typical self-
serious, sexy boy bands of K-Pop are viewed as simply unfit for U.S. industry standards,
centered on normative standards of “youthful sexuality” and “vacuous earnestness.” Therefore,
the standards may not differ between the U.S. and Korean music industries, but Korean boy
bands can only struggle to meet these standards in the very different racialized and gendered
context of the American music scene. In this context, Psy’s parodic acknowledgement of his
failure to meet American gendered normativity and sexual appeal, within the world of Korean
pop, translates easily into his image as an always/already failed masculine subject in the U.S. pop
music scene.
This argument recalls a failed attempt to crossover into the mainstream American market
made years earlier by Rain, who was JYP’s biggest K-Pop artist from 2003 to 2007. As I
demonstrate in the next section, Rain’s attempt to break into the U.S. market failed because his
masculinity did not translate within normative structures of gender and sexuality in the U.S.
Rain: “Manufactured” Success / “Failed” Masculinity
In 2005, the Korean record label JYP Entertainment, named after its founder and perhaps
K-Pop’s most well-known R&B entertainer Jin-Young Park, announced that its top star, “Rain,”
would perform in a two-day concert at Madison Square Garden in early 2006, followed by the
release of a full-length album in English later that year. Rain, born Jung Ji-hoon, established
38
!107
himself in Asia as a hybrid entertainer, balancing his career as R&B artist and actor. In 2001,
Rain released his debut album, Bad Guy, which sold 143,414 copies in Korea and garnered the
attention of the Korean press. The promotional music videos for the hit singles released from
Rain’s debut and follow-up album released in 2003 constructed him as a masculine sex icon,
often teasing viewers with shots of his sculpted chest and abdomen. As media scholar Hyunjoon
Shun notes, his body itself became a marketable commodity, making him the darling among
advertisers who used his image to market cosmetic products. The lyrics of his songs,
39
meanwhile, portray him as an anguished lover, pining for women who have either broken his
heart or are far too pure for his jaded heart. Thus, his star persona moves from the sensitive artist
to a hypermasculine hearbreaker.
Rain’s international stardom in Asia fully took off in 2004, after he was cast as the
romantic lead in the hit KBS drama, Full House. The show became one of Korea’s most
successful of the decade and played a major part in hallyu’s foray into the overseas market. Rain
plays the role of a famed Korean actor and teen idol, whose arrogance hides a gentler spirit. Thus
Rain’s persona as a musical performer was written into the television series’ diegesis, working at
home and abroad to underscore his star persona as a singer. Rain’s third album, It’ s Raining, was
released within a month of the KBS series and marketed heavily in Asia. Whereas he had been
known locally as either “Bi” (the singer) or Jung Ji-hoon (the actor), following the premiere of
his third album he began to perform under the moniker “Rain,” the English translation of his
Korean stage name, in an attempt to make himself more globally accessible. The shift in image
40
branding and marketing strategy proved effective. It’ s Raining sold 1 million copies worldwide
within its first year, and topped charts in ten different countries in Asia, including Indonesia and
Taiwan. Rain also embarked on a massively successful international tour that included Beijing,
!108
Tokyo, and Taipei, and by the end of 2005, earned $8 million in album sales, $20 million in
ticket sales and $7 million in endorsements, for a total of roughly $35 million. The music on
41
the title track of It’ s Raining was far more high-paced and energetic than his previous albums,
while the music videos for the singles displayed deft maneuvering through crisp and dynamic
choreographed routines, rebranding him, for the first time, as both singer and dancer.
Rain’s fame in Asia as a multi-talented artist drew a large diasporic following among
young Korean and Asian American women. Capitalizing on this loyal and passionate fan base in
the States, JYP announced that Rain would perform for two nights in February 2016 at Madison
Square Garden. Tickets for his show sold out within days of JYP’s announcement. The story
42
about Rain’s sold-out concert caught the attention of Korean press outlets as well as major
American news sites. In September 2005, Time magazine’s Asian edition predicted that Rain
43
would become the first Korean star to make significant strides in the U.S. market, while Harry
Hui, CEO of Universal Asia, praised the singer as the first Asian artist introduced to America.
44
In the days leading up to the MSG show, an article published by Chosun Ilbo reported that “big-
time” songwriters and producers had already approached Park Jin-Young every week about
working with Rain. Park told Chosun Ilbo, “The interest in the music industry here shows that
Rain has gone way beyond what we could have imagined.” The Chosun reporter then proudly
declared, “Not so long ago, Korean dance music was described as not actually music at all, but
that no longer seems to matter.”
45
In late January 2006, Deborah Sontag, of the New York Times, also expressed enthusiasm
for Rain’s upcoming show and anticipated his future success in the U.S. She explained to her
uninitiated readers that Rain is often referred to as the “Korean Justin Timberlake” or “Korean
Usher;” and that he is “inspired by American pop music, but his interpretations provide, at the
!109
least, an Asian face and filter.” She pronounced him the “personification of hallyu,” representing
for many fans “a high-quality regional alternative to American cultural dominance.” Sontag’s
46
article thus mapped out for readers how Rain has been theoretically and culturally positioned as
an example of cultural hybridity, and the ways that American cultural forms are localized as a
form of resistance to U.S.-led globalization.
In Sontag’s interview with Rain, the artist enthused to her (with the help of an interpreter)
that “the U.S. is the dominant music market . . . I would really like to see an Asian make it there.
I would like that Asian to be me.” Park provided Sontag with a more specific characterization
47
of the label’s ambitions, noting that “every market has been tapped except for the Asian
market . . . . That’s our base, but I believe that we can move beyond that.” However, according
48
to Park, the challenge that both the label and artist face is primarily one of distinction; he told
Sontag he wished to differentiate Rain’s style of music and performance as more “‘sensitive and
delicate’ than American R&B,” and to avoid “‘being another couple of Asian dudes trying to do
black music’ by embracing their inner delicacy and letting their Asian-ness show.”
49
It is difficult to decipher why Park chose to characterize Rain’s “sensitivity” and “delicacy”
as “Asian-ness.” Perhaps he hoped to preempt historically entrenched perceptions of Asian
masculinity as “effeminate” or “asexual,” and reconstruct them into marketable traits. Or,
perhaps, Park believes these qualities could fill a gap within the R&B market. It is more
significant that Park clearly worked to market both Rain and himself as “Asian,” rather than
“Korean.” Rain, undoubtedly under the coaching advice of Park, expressed a similar sentiment to
Sontag when he remarked that he hoped to be the first “Asian” artist in the U.S., while Park
confronted the perception of them as a couple of “Asian dudes” adapting black music.
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We might attribute Park’s phrase, in part, to Rain’s existing international stardom in Asia.
Describing Rain as a regional rather than a national artist underscores that he has a global appeal.
Within the context of the U.S., however, the marketing of an international entertainer from Asia
registers in racialized terms. We might see this construction most clearly exemplified in Sontag’s
slippery conflation between Rain’s national origins and his racial features. When she described
him as the “Korean” version of Justin Timberlake or Usher, she clarified that his interpretations
of American music provide an “Asian face or filter.”
Park decision to market Rain in the U.S. as an Asian entertainer, and awareness that his
music borrows from black genres, suggests an understanding of the racial politics at work within
the American media industry. Park himself developed a keen sense of the genre’s visual and
sonic attributes after spending years cultivating his own career as an R&B artist, in Korea, in the
mid- to-late-1990s. But his knowledge expanded beyond aesthetic tropes. He was also
establishing a career as songwriter and producer for a number of black entertainers in the U.S.,
having already composed tracks for Mase’s album The Love That You Need (2004), Will Smith’s
Lost and Found (2005), and the self-titled debut album of R&B newcomer, Cassie, released later
in 2006. Thus, Park had acquired an insider understanding of how the industry produces and
50
markets race and sexuality. Positioning Rain’s “Asian-ness” as a point of distinction worked to
preempt critiques of racial appropriation and mimicry, highlighting these instead as innovating or
localizing black American cultural forms.
The optimism expressed by Sontag and the Korean press was quickly tempered by two
harsh reviews of Rain’s concert from pop music critics, both of whom pointed to his “sensitivity”
as a formula for failure in the U.S. Jim Faber, the critic for the New York Daily News, described
Rain’s music as “soft and dewy,” and advised, “If Rain really wants to make it here, he'll have to
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toughen his style and hire a hipper producer, someone on the order of Scott Storch or the
Neptunes.” New York Times critic Jon Pareles described Rain as the “product of the
51
globalization that pumps American products through worldwide channels.” He warned that
“[p]eople who fear mass-market threats to local styles need look no further for an example,”
enumerating the many American pop and R&B influences found in Rain’s music. The show
52
followed the “drill of a Michael Jackson concert,” quickly moving from hard beats and “tough
guy preening” to softer choruses and professions of love. The artist’s three albums, Pareles adds,
“dabble” in the “acoustic-guitar ballads of Babyface,” “the light funk-pop of Justin Timberlake,”
and “the importunings of Usher.” He snarked, “Seeing him onstage was like watching old MTV
videos dubbed into Korean.”
53
For Pareles, Rain’s persona failed because he could “see” the manufacture, or the label’s
marketing strategies, at work. A general rule of effective marketing is that audiovisual strategies
must both be seen and unseen by consumers. That is, the viewer must be allowed the pleasure of
being mystified by these strategies, seeing just enough to titillate, but not enough to break the
suspension of disbelief. The mystique has also to fit with the audience demographic.
Earlier in his review, Pareles described the demographic of the concert as “95 percent
Asian, at least 90 percent female and always ready to scream.” That is, according to Pareles’
observations, Rain’s masculinity registered as desirable within a racialized heterosexual
economy of desire. Where Rain’s producer fails, for Pareles, is in the attempt to market his
sexuality for the mainstream, or white male, audience. His review recalls a moment when the
artist quickly dons a romantic persona, and invites a female audience member onto the stage to
present her with roses and a “chaste hug,” before dedicating a ballad to his late mother. From this
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Pareles concludes that “Rain seems like a nice guy, but he doesn't have the tormented charisma
of Jackson, the relaxed sex appeal of Usher or the quick pop reflexes of Mr. Timberlake.”
54
In direct response to the Farber and Pareles critiques, Korean newspaper, JoonAng Ilbo,
observed that for industry insiders “artists in many parts of Asia seem too ‘manufactured.’” The
article includes an alternative view by the Korean music critic, Shin Hyun-jun, who argues,
"Originality is not always a requirement in pop music . . . . The issue is 'how' you're going to
make a hit. In the case of Rain, the target audience is vague. It's unclear whether [his managers]
want to use singers like Rain to represent the branch of world music based on elements of
Korean musical heritage, shape him into an Asian-American pop singer[,] or simply make him an
American idol.” Thus, the JoonAng piece recognizes an underlying expectation from the
55
American media industry for Asian artists to market themselves through cultural difference, to
package their “localization,” so to speak. But the question for Shin is what form will that
difference take? The article concludes with Shin remarking that the “fact that people look for
originality from Asian musicians means something…It means they expected originality, just like
they expect country or rock musicians to be white and hip-hop artists to be black. And this may
be the greatest racial barrier in the U.S. music market today.” For Rain, “Asian” masculinity is
56
the localized product being sold. What registered as inauthentic or manufactured for Pareles was
not so much Rain’s pastiche of American visual and sonic idioms; rather, it was his “delicacy”
and “softness,” attributes that Park highlights as his “Asian-ness,” and core features of his wildly
successful brand image at home.
!113
Manufactured Nationalism
Brand image was no less important for Psy, but “Gangnam Style” also attracted broader
structural critiques about class in Korea. Several Korean American bloggers have read the video
as a pointed critique about wealth and economic development in Korea. For example, in August
2012, during Psy’s quick rise to national attention in America, Jea Kim explained on her blog,
“My Dear Korea,” that the song and video spoke to the economic disparities in Korea,
emblematized by the Gangnam district. In another post, titled “‘Gangnam Style and ‘Gangnam
Oppa’ in ‘Architecture 101,’” Kim maps out the history of real estate development in Seoul,
explaining how social and economic inequality are now geographically divided by the Han
River, which laterally bisects the city between Gangbuk and Gangnam, the areas north and south
of the river. Before the 1970s, Gangbuk housed some of Korea’s oldest palaces and monuments;
however, during the period of rapid economic development in the 1960s and 1970s, speculative
real estate investments moved Seoul’s commercial and residential center south of the river. The
city’s wealthiest families and the country’s most prestigious high schools also relocated to
Gangnam. The concentration of high-end department stores and the leisure culture solidified the
district as the seat of the country’s newfound wealth, while furthering economic disparity and
class ascension.
57
Psy’s “Gangnam Style” video, Kim argues, parodies not just Gangnam’s style culture, but
aspirational attachments to Gangnam symbology embedded within a gendered consumer
economy, in which women spend more than they can afford. For instance, Psy’s repeated
reference to downing a hot cup of coffee refers to the proliferation of cafés throughout Seoul,
which have become sites of feminine leisure. Psy simultaneously mocks the ostentatious displays
!114
of masculine wealth that characterize Gangnam culture; his outrageous costuming throughout the
video works to ridicule high fashion.
In late August, 2012, Sukjong Hong, a resident writer for opencity.org (an online
publication run by the Asian American Writers’ Workshop) published a short piece using Psy’s
viral music video to highlight broader structural disparities faced by most South Koreans. In
Hong’s essay, “Beyond the Horse Dance: Viral Vid ‘Gangnam Style’ Critiques Korea’s Extreme
Inequality,” she also reads Gangnam as a synecdoche for the polarizing effects that South
Korea’s rapid economic development has had on the country, but highlights the country's
relentless work culture. In 2008, the country ranked third highest in income disparity among
OECD (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development) nations, the wealthiest
twenty percent having seen a rise of more than twenty percent in disposable income. Yet, South
Korea is one of the hardest-working countries in the world. In 2010, Seoul recorded the most
number of work hours among all OECD cities. More than half of the labor force in South Korea
is contingently employed; unpaid or mandatory overtime are a normalized part of the work
culture. When Psy moves from party buses to horse stables in his music video, Hong notes, “he
is showcasing forms of leisure that are not accessible to most Koreans on a regular basis. At the
same time, he can’t quite cut it.” The video portrays a man who falls short of achieving the
markers of economic success, but clings to his delusions of grandeur.
58
Both Kim and Hong offer compelling analyses: they represent a minority discourse
within the many narratives in the U.S. that have circulated on cultural meanings behind Psy’s
music video. Their analyses provide two important historical contextualizations about the
displays of wealth Psy’s video satirizes. First, Gangnam serves as a symbol of South Korea’s
dramatic economic development throughout the 1960s and 1970s, and its concentration within
!115
the hands of the wealthiest families––those who own or wield power in conglomerates like
Samsung and Hyundai––or the chaebol. Korea’s chaebol not only symbolize Korea’s industrial
development, but––as detailed in my introduction––in the 1960s and 1970s, drove Korea’s
export-led industrialization under the nation’s military regimes. Their neglect of the domestic
59
market also caused massive economic disparities between workers and the aristocracy.
Moreover, the IMF Crisis of 1997 catalyzed Korea’s transition into a debt economy. The IMF’s
mandated restructuring forced the Korean government to push the country into a credit-based
economy, which would stimulate spending and bring the country out of its recession. But it also
facilitated Korea’s transition into an IT-based economy driven by speculative finance and
transnational capital investment.
60
Psy, however, expressed somewhat contradictory claims about “Gangnam Style”’s
broader cultural meaning. At times he told interviewers that he never intended for the video to
pose a critique, while at others he claims that he was in fact making a pointed social
commentary. However, Psy’s own personal narrative fits into the text in ways that support a
critique of wealth and class. His father’s company, which manufactures semi-conductor exports,
lay within the main industrial sector that drove Korea’s economic boom in the 1990s (until the
country restructured economically in the 1997 IMF Crisis). This manufacturing sector became a
symbol of success in Korea’s miraculous national development. Under military rule, working in
the manufacturing sector was an act of service and duty to the nation. As Psy noted in
61
numerous interviews, before moving to the U.S., he faced enormous pressure to eventually
assume control over his father’s company. “In Korea, it’s a tradition to inherit your father’s
business . . .” he explained to a reporter at Newsweek. He lamented after, “Unfortunately, I’m the
!116
only son in the entire family, so they were forcing too much.” Psy bucked both his familial
62
obligation and the national imperative to succeed.
One year after he had released his debut album, Psy in a Psycho World (the one for which
he paid a fine for the album’s explicit language), Psy released two more albums, Ssa 2 and 3
PSY. The government banned the sale of Ssa 2 to people under age nineteen, stating its content
was inappropriate. Psy’s music career was put on hold in 2003 while he served two years of his
63
mandatory military service as a technician. However, after it was discovered that Psy did not
complete the necessary requirements of his military service, he was redrafted into the Army in
2007 and served as a soldier for two years. According to Psy, his military redraft in 2007 was a
sobering experience and, in the eyes of the Korean public, he had how committed three strikes:
the censorship troubles, the military snafu, and the 2001 marijuana bust. “Korea is conservative
64
about that sort of thing; very big moral expectations,” he says. “I’ve gotten in big-time trouble
three times, and other singers aren’t reinstated [into the public’s good graces].”
65
Today, the former rebel has become an ambassador for South Korea and an international
star. Recently a performance in front of 100,000 screaming fans at Seoul Plaza brought him to
tears, The U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon introduced him at the U.N. admitting: “I’m a bit
jealous. Until two days ago someone told me I am the most famous Korean in the world. Now I
have to relinquish [that title].”
66
Conclusion
Psy’s failed masculinity and iconoclastic style made him both a controversial but also
popular figure associated with different forms of overt and explicit cultural rebellion and social
commentary. However, this social commentary had to be tempered or obscured for Psy to be
!117
acceptable to US-audiences as nothing more than a “pot-smoking goof ball” who is not trying to
be sexy, serious, let alone political. In a sense, his masculine “failure” which provided a space for
social critique in Korea simultaneously limited his ability to engage in this same critique in the
US. Moreover, this depoliticized American rendering of his performance elevated his status to
one of a celebrated ambassador for the nation in Korea.
!118
CHAPTER 3 ENDNOTES “Psy_Gangnam Style_NBC Today Concert, YouTube video, 12:04, from an episode of NBC’s
1
Today Show that aired live on September 14, 2012, posted by TheArirangSeoul, September 14,
2014, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C6r4y927ljM
Abigail Covington, “Navigating through the Excessive World of K-Pop,” A.V . Club, May 15,
2
2014, http://www.avclub.com/article/navigating-through-excessive-world-k-pop-204421.
David L. Eng, Racial Castration: Managing Masculinity in Asian America (Durham, NC, USA:
3
Duke University Press, 2001); Peter X. Feng et al., Screening Asian Americans (New Brunswick,
N.J: Rutgers University Press, 2002); Russell Leong, Asian American Sexualities: Dimensions of
the Gay and Lesbian Experience (New York: Routledge, 1995); Richard Fung, How Do I Look?:
Queer Film and Video, Eds. Bad Object Choices (Seattle: Bay Press, 1991): 145-168; Nayan
Shah, Stranger Intimacy : Contesting Race, Sexuality and the Law in the North American West,
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 2012).
Marlow Stern, “Doin’ It ‘Gangnam Style,’” Newsweek, October 29, 2012, http://
4
www.newsweek.com/psy-talks-gangnam-style-growing-and-his-next-single-65393.
“‘Gangnam Style’ Was ‘An Accident’, PSY Tells Harvard University Students,” Billboard, May
5
10, 2013, http://www.billboard.com/articles/columns/k-town/1561264/gangnam-style-was-an-
accident-psy-tells-harvard-university-students.
Marlow Stern, “Doin’ It ‘Gangnam Style,’” Newsweek, October 29, 2012, http://
6
www.newsweek.com/psy-talks-gangnam-style-growing-and-his-next-single-65393.
Mark Russell, Pop Goes Korea: Behind the Revolution in Movies, Music, and Internet Culture
7
(Berkeley: Stone Bridge Press, 2008), 142.
“In South Korea, K-Pop Gets New King.” All Things Considered, NPR, September 15, 2012,
8
transcript and podcast, http://www.npr.org/2012/09/15/161147846/k-pops-new-king.
Russell, Mark. Pop Goes Korea: Behind the Revolution in Movies, Music, and Internet Culture.
9
Berkeley: Stone Bridge Press, 2008, 152.
“I am South Korean Singer, Rapper, Composer, Dancer and Creator of Gangnam Style PSY .
10
AMA,” Reddit, last updated October 29, 2012, http://www.reddit.com/comments/120oqd; Kyle
McGovern, “PSY’s Reddit AMA: Freddie Mercury Inspires ‘Gangnam Style’ Singer,” SPIN,
October 25, 2012, http://www.spin.com/articles/psy-reddit-ama/; Panda, Robo, “The 20 Best
Answers From PSY’s Reddit AMA,” UPROXX, October 25, 2012, http://www.uproxx.com/
webculture/2012/10/best-of-psy-reddit-ama/.
!119
Melena Ryzik, “His Style Is Gangnam, and Viral Too,” The New York Times, October 11, 2012,
11
sec. Arts / Music, http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/14/arts/music/interview-psy-the-artist-
behind-gangnam-style.html.
Melena Ryzik, “His Style Is Gangnam, and Viral Too,” The New York Times, October 11,
12
2012, sec. Arts / Music, http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/14/arts/music/interview-psy-the-artist-
behind-gangnam-style.html.
Melena Ryzik, “His Style Is Gangnam, and Viral Too,” The New York Times, October 11, 2012,
13
sec. Arts / Music, http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/14/arts/music/interview-psy-the-artist-
behind-gangnam-style.html.
“PSY - Gangname Style M/V ,” music video, 4:12, uploaded to YouTube by officialpsy, https://
14
www.youtube.com/watch?v=9bZkp7q19f0
“Psy - Gangnam Style: Kpop Music Monday,” Eat Your Kimchi, July 2012, http://
15
www.eatyourkimchi.com/kpop-psy-gangnamstyle/. “Psy Finally Returns with ‘Gangnam Style’
on ‘Inkigayo’ + Snippets of MV Revealed!,” Allkpop, July 15, 2012, http://www.allkpop.com/
article/2012/07/psy-finally-returns-with-gangnam-style-on-inkigayo-snippets-of-mv-revealed.
“PSY Releases MV for ‘Gangnam Style,’” Soompi, July 16, 2012, http://www.soompi.com/
2012/07/16/psy-releases-mv-for-gangnam-style/#.U3GgGa1dWCt.
“Words Cannot Even Describe How Amazing This Video Is... : Videos,” Reddit, July 28, 2012,
16
http://www.reddit.com/r/videos/comments/xbsve/
words_cannot_even_describe_how_amazing_this_video/; “Community Post: Crazy K-Pop Of
The Week: ‘Gangnam Style,’” BuzzFeed Community, July 20, 2012, http://www.buzzfeed.com/
eizzle/gangnam-style-1sp3; Neetzan Zimmerman, “Did This Underground Hip Hop Artist from
South Korea Just Release the Best Music Video of the Year?,” Gawker, July 30, 2012, http://
gawker.com/5930283/did-this-underground-hip-hop-artist-from-south-korea-just-release-the-
best-music-video-of-the-year; Neil Prospect, “South Korean Hip-Hop Artist PSY Unleashes the
Most Insane Music Video Ever,” Heavy, July 31, 2012, http://www.heavy.com/music/music-
video/hip-hop-music-videos/2012/07/south-korean-hip-hop-artist-psy-unleashes-the-most-
insane-music-video-ever/.
T-Pain, Twitter, posted July 29, 2012, https://twitter.com/tpain/status/229693595437912064;
17
Josh Grobin, Twitter, posted July 31, 2012, https://twitter.com/joshgroban/status/
230459113790902272
Evan Ramstad, “What’s Up With the ‘Gangnam Style’ Video?,” Wall Street Journal (Online),
18
August 3, 2012, Asia edition, sec. Lifestyle & Culture, http://blogs.wsj.com/korearealtime/
2012/08/03/whats-up-with-the-gangnam-style-video/.
“Rapper Living ‘Gangnam Style’ Goes Viral,” CNN Video, from a televised broadcast of CNN
19
International (Asia) that aired on August 2, 2012, http://www.cnn.com/video/data/2.0/video/
world/2012/08/02/wr-gangnam-style-goes-viral-in-rap-video.cnn.html. Clip can also be found on
YouTube, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bz95ahmCEGQ.
!120
YG’s YouTube video channel generates millions of views per month. On August 14th, female
20
K-Pop idol Hyuna, who is featured dancing opposite Psy in the Gangnam Style video, uploaded
a cover video featuring the rapper. The video quickly generated several hundred million views
for Psy and YG, and as of January 2014 clocks in at 540 million views: “PSY (ft. Hyuna) 오빤
딱 내 스타일,” YouTube, uploaded August 14, 2012, https://www.youtube.com/watch?
v=wcLNteez3c4. As noted in the previous chapter, Korean music labels have been especially
savvy in using YouTube as a promotional tool.
“Gangnam Style vs Call Me Maybe: A Popularity Comparison,” YouTube-Trends, posted on
21
September 12, 2012, http://youtube-trends.blogspot.com/2012/09/gangnam-style-vs-call-me-
maybe.html; “PSY Passes Bieber; ‘Gangnam Style’ New Most-Viewed Video of All Time,”
YouTube-Trends, posted on November 24, 2012, http://youtube-trends.blogspot.com/2012/11/
psy-passes-bieber-gangnam-style.html; “Gangnam Style Makes YouTube History: First Video to
Hit 1 Billion Views,” YouTube Official Blog, posted on December 21, 2012, http://youtube-
global.blogspot.com/2012/12/ytvev.html.
Isaacson, Betsy. “‘Gangnam Style’ Makes Estimated $870,000 From YouTube Alone
22
(CORRECTED).” Huffington Post, January 23, 2013. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/
2013/01/23/gangnam-style-youtube_n_2533620.html.
Eun Joo Kim and Jessica Oak, “K-Pop Primer,” Billboard 124, no. 39 (November 3, 2012):
23
17–18.
Eun Joo Kim and Jessica Oak, “K-Pop Primer.” Billboard 124, no. 39 (November 3, 2012):
24
17–18.
“Public Announcement – Scooter Braun Regarding Psy,” YouTube, uploaded September 3,
25
2012, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sOn3aWDHlsE.
Ben Sisario, “How ‘Call Me Maybe’ and Social Media Are Upending Music,” The New York
26
Times, August 21, 2012, sec. Business Day / Media & Advertising, http://www.nytimes.com/
2012/08/22/business/media/how-call-me-maybe-and-social-media-are-upending-music.html.
Ben Sisario, “How ‘Call Me Maybe’ and Social Media Are Upending Music,” The New York
27
Times, August 21, 2012, sec. Business Day / Media & Advertising, http://www.nytimes.com/
2012/08/22/business/media/how-call-me-maybe-and-social-media-are-upending-music.html.
Donnie Kwak, “K-Pop’s Wild Stallion,” Billboard 124, no. 39 (November 3, 2012): 12–14,16.
28
“In South Korea, K-Pop Gets New King.” All Things Considered, NPR, September 15, 2012,
29
transcript and podcast, http://www.npr.org/2012/09/15/161147846/k-pops-new-king.
“In South Korea, K-Pop Gets New King.” All Things Considered, NPR, September 15, 2012,
30
transcript and podcast, http://www.npr.org/2012/09/15/161147846/k-pops-new-king.
!121
Melena Ryzik, “His Style Is Gangnam, and Viral Too,” New York Times, October 11, 2012,
31
sec. Arts / Music, http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/14/arts/music/interview-psy-the-artist-
behind-gangnam-style.html.
“Psy Talks Gangnam Style with Seacrest - Part 1 Interview,” On Air with Ryan Seacrest, 4:58,
32
posted September 10, 2012, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1GlnlyfZdA4. See also Kelly
Ballhorn, “PSY Explains ‘Gangnam Style’ Dance Craze to Ryan Seacrest,”
www.ryanseacrest.com, http://www.ryanseacrest.com/2012/09/10/psy-explains-gangnam-style-
dance-craze-to-ryan-seacrest-video/.
Max Fisher, “Gangnam Style, Dissected: The Subversive Message Within South Korea’s
33
Music Video Sensation,” The Atlantic, August 23, 2012, http://www.theatlantic.com/
international/archive/2012/08/gangnam-style-dissected-the-subversive-message-within-south-
koreas-music-video-sensation/261462/.
Max Fisher, “Gangnam Style, Dissected: The Subversive Message Within South Korea’s
34
Music Video Sensation,” The Atlantic, August 23, 2012, http://www.theatlantic.com/
international/archive/2012/08/gangnam-style-dissected-the-subversive-message-within-south-
koreas-music-video-sensation/261462/.
Ibid. Fisher’s point would prove prescient: the video was the source for numerous politicized
35
parodies that criticized politically repressive regimes, including one made by College Humor
harpooning Mitt Romney’s egregious wealth titled “Mitt Romney Style.”
Hsu, Hua. “Why Psy’s ‘Gangnam Style’ Is a Hit With Listeners Who’ve Never Heard of K-
36
Pop.” Vulture, September 24, 2012. http://www.vulture.com/2012/09/psys-k-pop-crossover.html.
Rayner, Jay. “How Psy Taught Me Gangnam Style.” The Guardian, November 17, 2012, sec.
37
Music. http://www.theguardian.com/music/2012/nov/18/gangnam-style-psy.
Madison Square Garden has a capacity of 20,000. JYP reserved 10,000 tickets for each night
38
of Rain’s concert.
Hyunjoon Shin, “Have You Ever Seen the Rain? And Who’ll Stop the Rain?: The Globalizing
39
Project of Korean Pop (K-pop),” Inter-Asia Cultural Studies 10, no. 4 (December 2009): 512.
“Rain Season Breaks Records Across Asia.” Chosun Ilbo, October 13, 2005, English edition,
40
sec. Culture/Sports. http://web.archive.org/web/20070204104719/http://english.chosun.com/
w21data/html/news/200510/200510130017.html.
“Rain’s Sold-Out New York Gig Could Take K-Pop Global,” Chosun Ilbo, February 3, 2006,
41
English edition, sec. Culture/Sports, http://web.archive.org/web/20070204104741/http://
english.chosun.com/w21data/html/news/200602/200602030011.html.
“Rain to Give Concert in United States next Year,” HanCinema, December 16, 2005, http://
42
www.hancinema.net/rain-to-give-concert-in-united-states-next-year-4719.html.
!122
“Rain’s Sold-Out New York Gig Could Take K-Pop Global,” Chosun Ilbo, February 3, 2006,
43
English edition, sec. Culture/Sports, http://web.archive.org/web/20070204104741/http://
english.chosun.com/w21data/html/news/200602/200602030011.html; “Making It in the Big
Time: K-Pop Wants U.S. Air Play,” HanCinema, February 16, 2006, http://www.hancinema.net/
making-it-in-the-big-time-k-pop-wants-u-s-air-play-5288.html; Deborah Sontag, “A Strong
Forecast for Korean Pop’s Rain,” New York Times, January 27, 2006, http://www.nytimes.com/
2006/01/27/arts/27iht-rain.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0; Deborah Sontag, “The Ambassador,”
New York Times, January 29, 2006, sec. Arts / Music, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/01/29/arts/
music/29sont.html.
“Rain to Give Concert in United States next Year.” HanCinema, December 16, 2005. http://
44
www.hancinema.net/rain-to-give-concert-in-united-states-next-year-4719.html.
“Rain’s Sold-Out New York Gig Could Take K-Pop Global,” Chosun Ilbo, February 3, 2006,
45
English edition, sec. Culture/Sports, http://web.archive.org/web/20070204104741/http://
english.chosun.com/w21data/html/news/200602/200602030011.html.
Sontag, Deborah. “A Strong Forecast for Korean Pop’s Rain.” The New York Times, January
46
27, 2006. http://www.nytimes.com/2006/01/27/arts/27iht-rain.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0.
Sontag, Deborah. “A Strong Forecast for Korean Pop’s Rain.” The New York Times, January
47
27, 2006. http://www.nytimes.com/2006/01/27/arts/27iht-rain.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0.
Sontag, Deborah. “A Strong Forecast for Korean Pop’s Rain.” The New York Times, January
48
27, 2006. http://www.nytimes.com/2006/01/27/arts/27iht-rain.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0.
Ibid.
49
Track titles: “The Love That You Need” (Mase),“I Wish I Made That” (Will Smith), “When
50
Your Body is Talking” (Cassie).
http://www.hancinema.net/making-it-in-the-big-time-k-pop-wants-u-s-air-play-5288.html?
51
stopreward=1
Jon Pareles, “Korean Superstar Who Smiles and Says, ‘I’m Lonely’,” New York Times,
52
February 4, 2006, sec. Arts / Music, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/02/04/arts/music/04rain.html.
Jon Pareles, “Korean Superstar Who Smiles and Says, ‘I’m Lonely’,” New York Times,
53
February 4, 2006, sec. Arts / Music, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/02/04/arts/music/04rain.html.
Pareles, Jon. “Korean Superstar Who Smiles and Says, ‘I’m Lonely.’” The New York Times,
54
February 4, 2006, sec. Arts / Music. http://www.nytimes.com/2006/02/04/arts/music/04rain.html.
“Making It in the Big Time: K-Pop Wants U.S. Air Play.” HanCinema, February 16, 2006.
55
http://www.hancinema.net/making-it-in-the-big-time-k-pop-wants-u-s-air-play-5288.html.
!123
Park Soo-mee, “Making It in the Big Time: K-Pop Wants U.S. Air Play,” HanCinema,
56
translation of article originally written in Korean for Joongang Ilbo, posted on February 16,
2006, http://www.hancinema.net/making-it-in-the-big-time-k-pop-wants-u-s-air-play-5288.html.
Jea Kim, “MY DEAR KOREA: KOREAN MUSIC: PSY’s ‘Gangnam Style’ and ‘Gangnam
57
Oppa’ in ‘Architecture 101’ (1),” MY DEAR KOREA, August 9, 2012, http://
mydearkorea.blogspot.com/2012/08/korean-music-psys-gangnam-style-and.html.
Sukjong Hong, “Beyond the Horse Dance: Viral Vid ‘Gangnam Style’ Critiques Korea’s
58
Extreme Inequality,” Open City (Asian American Writers’ Workshop), posted on August 24,
2012, http://opencitymag.com/beyond-the-horse-dance-viral-vid-gangnam-style-critiques-
koreas-extreme-inequality/.
Martin Hart-Landsberg, The Rush to Development: Economic Change and Political Struggle
59
in South Korea (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1993); Gary Gereffi and Donald L. Wyman,
Manufacturing Miracles: Paths of Industrialization in Latin America and East Asia (Princeton,
N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1990).
Bruce Cumings, “The Asian Crisis, Democracy, and the End of ‘Late’ Development,” in The
60
Politics of the Asian Economic Crisis (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1999).
Bruce Cumings, Korea’ s Place in the Sun: A Modern History, Updated edition (New York: W.
61
W. Norton, 2005).
Marlow Stern, “Psy Talks Gangnam Style, Growing Up, and His Next Single,” Newsweek,
62
October 29, 2012, http://www.newsweek.com/psy-talks-gangnam-style-growing-and-his-next-
single-65393.
Marlow Stern, “Doin’ It ‘Gangnam Style,’” Newsweek, October 29, 2012, http://
63
www.newsweek.com/psy-talks-gangnam-style-growing-and-his-next-single-65393.
Ibid.
64
Ibid.
65
Ibid.
66
!124
CONCLUSION
At its core, this dissertation asks how K-Pop has shifted popular imaginaries in the U.S.
about Korea and its relationship to the global economy. I situate my critical investigation at the
theoretical tensions between the global and local, and focus on two main narratives produced by
American journalists about K-Pop. Some read K-Pop’s relationship with YouTube as a sign of
shifting power relations, suggesting that globalization has fulfilled its promise of building
mutually open pathways between liberal democratic nations. Others assert that K-Pop will
remain relegated as a YouTube phenomenon. Idol and idol groups’ “manufactured” genders, they
submit, do not translate over to American audiences who crave authenticity and performances of
local culture rather than “imitations” of American music.
I conclude here with a brief consideration of a case study that pushes back on discourses
of gender and racial authenticity. Since 2009, we have seen an increasing number of
collaborations between Korean and black American artists. In February 2013, Tina Xu posted an
article on the website for music cable network Fuse TV titled, “The K-Pop/U.S. Music
Connections You Never Knew Existed.” Coming on the heels of Psy’s explosive success in the
States, Xu clarifies with readers that “K-pop's seemingly overnight introduction to the American
music scene is actually far from accurate” and that American and Korean artists have been
collaborating for years. To prove her point, she includes an infographic charting the numerous
1
connections that have taken place between the American and Korean music industries:
!125
The chart shows that rap and R&B artists like Snoop Dogg, Lil Jon, Ne-Yo, B.O.B., and
Ludacris, to name just a few examples, have all made their imprint on Korea’s music industry.
Xu does not offer her own analysis of why these collaborations take place, instead asking readers
to comment upon any surprising connections they might have noticed. However, the
preponderance of collaborations between black rap and R&B artists and K-Pop idols is apparent.
I remark upon some of these collaborations in previous chapters. In chapter 2, I mention
that the Wonder Girls’ first U.S. single, “Like Money,” features a cameo by rapper Akon, while
!126
Figure 21. Fuse TV’s chart of collaborations between American and Korean
producers, entertainers, songwriters.
Girls’ Generation’s debut American track, “The Boys,” was produced by renowned R&B
producer Teddy Riley. However, my analysis does not include the numerous other examples
which have populated the U.S. and Korean media industries. For instance, will.i.am, hit-maker
and member of rap group Black Eyed Peas, produced a track with YG girl group 2NE1 called
“Gettin’ Dumb” (2014). Psy and iconic rapper Snoop Dogg uploaded their duet single,
“Hangover,” to YouTube on June 8, 2014. It received approximately 11 million views by the
following morning.
2
There are several industrial conditions which might explain for the proliferation of these
collaborations. For one, Korean music distributors have noted that the consolidation of the music
industry has made it difficult for American entertainers and producers to develop new artists or
new work. Meanwhile, K-Pop has shown itself to be a growth market independent from the U.S.-
based “Big Three” (Sony Music Entertainment, Universal Music Group, and Warner Music
Group). American artists and producers are seeing the lucrative possibilities in collaborating with
Korean record labels, especially as they maintain a foothold in Asia, especially in China, which
has the potential to become the largest music market in the world.
!127
Figure 22. Still from Psy and Snoop Dogg’s music video, “Hangover” (2014).
Korean producers and entertainers reciprocally have much to gain. For one, teaming up
with an established American artist brings cultural currency to Korea’s roster of unknown idols
among American audiences. Moreover, as I mention in chapter 3, from a marketing standpoint
partnering with rappers and R&B artists who have established hyper-masculine personas
potentially preempts criticisms about male K-Pop idols being too “feminine” to succeed in the
American market. This tactic was particularly noticeable when Rain paired up with Omarion on a
single called “Man Up” (2006) just shortly after music critics panned him for being too soft and
derivative for U.S. audiences. However, explaining partnerships like those between Psy and
Snoop Dogg, or 2NE1 and will.i.am, strictly as a marketing strategy misses an opportunity to
tease out some of the more complex configurations of gender and homage taking place in these
collaborations.
Many music critics in the U.S. have disparaged K-Pop for being overly imitative of
American musical styles. Even Korean scholars engage in vigorous debate about what
specifically makes K-Pop “Korean,” usually arriving at the conclusion that nothing, at least
aesthetically speaking, makes K-Pop a distinctly local or national form. These lines of
argumentation fail to register that K-Pop does not simply borrow from “American” pop, but
specifically black American idioms. Collaborations between Korean and black artists do the
work of naming these historical and cultural connections. I argue that these citations of black
musical performance have often allowed K-Pop artists to disrupt gender conventions within the
Korean industry. The following section examines a collaboration between G-Dragon, one of K-
Pop’s most global recognizable K-Pop idols, and Missy Elliott, one of the most iconic female
rappers in the U.S.
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“Get Ur Freak On,” “Get Your Crayon” – Two Queens, One Crown
In August 2013, an energetic crowd at the Los Angeles Sports Arena anxiously awaited
the headlining performers at the second annual KCON to take the stage. KCON is a K-Pop
convention sponsored by CJ E&M, the entertainment subsidiary of Samsung, Korea’s largest
multinational conglomerate. The convention typically begins with an all-day festival and
concludes with a live concert featuring at least six to seven K-Pop artists, ranging from brand
new acts to some of the most established performers in the industry. KCON was designed to
provide a platform for K-Pop artists to build or connect with their already existing American fan
base as well as boost CJ E&M’s brand identity as the largest distributor of Korean content in the
U.S. That year’s headliners were G-Dragon, one of the most globally recognized K-Pop idols,
and American rap diva Missy Elliot who produced some of the most distinctive songs and music
videos of the late-1990s and early-2000s.
I attended that year’s convention and concert with a dear friend–a scholar of Asian/
American popular music and interlocutor. The choice of headliner was initially surprising given
that Missy had not produced a new record nor performed live since her 2005 release of The
Coobook (Elliot revealed in 2008 that she was battling Graves’ Disease). The choice seemed
especially strange once Missy came out onto the stage. I gleefully watched her perform all of her
hits from Supa Dupa Fly (1997), Under Construction (2002), and The Cookbook (2005) only to
realize quickly that the crowd that night, who ranged between the ages of thirteen and eighteen
years old, could not historically or culturally place her or her music. However, the collaboration
made sense during the final performance of the night when G-Dragon brought Missy Elliott back
onto stage to perform a new duet single, “Niliria” forthcoming on G-Dragon second full-length
album, COUP D’ETAT. The song’s title, “Niliria,” refers to the name of an old Korean folk song
!129
that is traditionally sung by farmers. G-Dragon’s track opens with a traditional arrangement of
the folk number before it gets chopped up and sampled across an energetic rap beat. G-Dragon
and Missy then alternate versus, G-Dragon rapping in Korean and Missy in English.
When asked why he chose to work with Missy on this track, G-Dragon states that he has
always been a big of hers, and because “Niliria has the motive of using a Korean folk song, I
wasn't looking for a popular artist of today but more of the past, and a female more than a
male.” G-Dragon does not expound upon this curious statement, but it offers a provocative
3
historical intersections nonetheless. Before bringing Missy back onto stage, G-Dragon screams,
“Guess who’s back?” re-inviting her literally back onto the stage and symbolically back into the
music scene (Missy’s return to the industry was confirmed by her appearance in the 2015
Superbowl Halftime Show alongside pop singer Katy Perry). But, it also performed a sonic and
visual recall of Missy’s influence on G-Dragon’s own work and K-Pop, more generally.
G-Dragon began his career as part of YG Entertainment’s five-member boy band Big
Bang, who made their debut in 2006 and went on to become the label’s most successful group
acts. Several members from Big Bang simultaneously pursued solo careers, but none have
received the same level of high-profile media attention. G-Dragon debuted his solo album,
Heartbreaker, in 2009 immediately distinguishing him as an innovator in the industry. His
outrageous wardrobes and hairstyles often spark conversation on fan sites and K-Pop blogs, but
he has been particularly deft at distinguishing himself as industry iconoclast through his gender
defiant performances both on-stage and in his music videos.
Fans have variously remarked upon G-Dragon’s slippery gender presentation. On Korean
entertainment blog SeoulBeats, several fans engage in a roundtable discussion about K-Pop’s
androgynous idols. One fan expresses appreciation for G-Dragon “just doing their thing instead
!130
of performing to anyone’s standards about what men look like. They are not looking at gendered
norms for how they have to be styled.” Other fans remark upon an intentionality behind G-
4
Dragon’s gender bending performances. Another commentator on the same Seoulbeats post
names G-Dragon as their favorite androgynous model because he “is very fluid in his appearance
and consciously plays with it.” On K-Pop fansite soompi, a user named “jbarky” makes a
5
similar observation. They include G-Dragon in their list of Korea’s nine most androgynous
celebrities and remarks, “I think he deliberately goes for that androgynous feel in order to give
off a sense of mysteriousness.”
6
G-Dragon’s music video “Crayon,” a single from his 2012 EP One of a Kind, actively
plays with his reputation for sparking online chatter about his androgyny. During the opening
verse of the song, we see G-Dragon and two male friends seated on a couch in a loudly decorated
living room, their eyes glazed over as they watch a television set. The camera cuts to the
television screen where we see a curvaceous feminine figure dressed in a tight black dress
walking seductively away from the camera. The erotic tension in the scene begins to amplify as a
!131
Figure 23. Still from G-Dragon’s music video “Heartbreaker” (2009) which
launched his career as a solo artist. Image credit: soompi.
series of cuts between the male viewers and the feminine body who swings her hips from side to
side for the camera. When the music breaks, the woman whips her head over her shoulder to
reveal herself to be G-Dragon. With a cutting yet playful expression on her face, G-Dragon
mouths song’s lyrics: “Why so serious?” The song then erupts into the hypnotic chant of the
chorus, “Get your crayon.” The sound of electronic sirens and a thumping dance beat unravel
into sonic chaos while G-Dragon and his friends explode into a rowdy dance all over the room.
!132
Figure 24. In G-Dragon’s music video “Crayon” (2012),
the singer and two friends leer at the television set.
Figure 25. We see a feminine figure seductively posing
for the audience and male viewers watching her within
the diegesis of the video.
Figure 26. Eyeline matches build up erotic tension until the woman
turns around to reveal herself to be G-Dragon.
Teddy Park, once a member of YG boy band 1TYM and now a hit-making songwriter for
the label, said in an interview, “At YG, one of our favorite artists has been Missy Elliott, from
her music to her outside-the-box visuals.” Missy’s influence can be see across G-Dragon’s work.
7
The song’s chorus, “Get Your Crayon” evokes Missy’s iconic lyric and track “Get Ur Freak
On” (2001), making the same call for audiences to get crazy, lose control, and dance. Visual
citations of Missy Elliot’s debut single/music video “The Rain” (Hype Williams, 1997) can be
found throughout “Crayon” whether in their shared surrealist distortions of pastoral imagery or
ornate and theatrical fashions.
!133
Figures 27 and 28. G-Dragon’s video “Crayon” (2012) borrows the grotesque pastoral scenes depicted in Missy
Elliott’s “The Rain” (1997).
Figure 29 and 30. G-Dragon’s wardrobe and performance style in “Crayon” (2012) recall the ornate and theatrical
fashions seen in Missy Elliott’s “The Rain” (1997).
Music videos like “The Rain” put the rap diva on the map as a visual and sonic alchemist
in the industry. However, Missy’s influence on the industry and G-Dragon’s performance style
extends beyond just aesthetic similarities. She was and is a sonic visionary who brought a black
feminist avant-garde into mainstream consciousness, laying the groundwork for other
transgressive black female artists like Nicki Minaj to Azalea Banks. She exploded feminine
convention, her unruly body and ecstatic dance scenes pushing up against the frames of the
television screen. She always included gender queer women within the scenes of desire she
created in her videos, whether in the form of cameos featuring female masculine rappers like Da
Brat or her tomboy backup dancers. Elliot’s music and visuals always worked to remind
audiences about the pleasure and necessity of disrupting the boundaries of commercial culture
from inside of it.
These aspects of Missy’s work have made the most significant imprint on G-Dragon.
When G-Dragon looks over his shoulder and asks, “Why so serious?,” he directly and
unapologetically flaunts his gender queerness. However, his wardrobe, the way he walks, also
references how female K-Pop idols are constructed and positioned as the feminine object of
desire. He disrupts K-Pop’s erotic economy of desire by pointing to certain absurdities in K-
Pop’s over-production of masculinity and femininity. His performance effectively asks why, as a
culture, we take his gender and the sexualized culture of K-Pop so seriously, turning arguments
about gender “authenticity” on its head. In other words, G-Dragon does not just queer K-Pop
convention. Rather, like Missy, he exposes the queerness always embedded within our culture.
When G-Dragon and Missy Elliott took the stage together to perform “Niliria” at KCON,
he writes his transgression of Korean gender norms within a history of black feminist
performance. In his lyrics, he raps that “he’s the king of a new generation,” but then makes
!134
apparent that two queens share that crown. In Korean, he raps, “It’s easy for me – Missy and I,
have you heard of us? You don’t want none. Get your freak on babe get your cray on babe. This
is international diplomacy by rap, babe.” When he brings “get your freak on” and “get your
crayon,” he reminded K-Pop fans that night to whom his work is indebted. But he also poses
another provocative cross-racial, transnational intersection.
If Missy and G-Dragon represent international diplomacy by rap, what does it mean for
two queer rap icons to serve as ambassadors of Korea? What does it mean to locate K-Pop’s
origins at the intersection of black and Korean production than in manufactured histories about
the Korean War, and in queer transnationalism rather than state-sponsored nationalism?
Most of the audience at KCON that day was comprised of young black, Latino, Asian
American queer youth. Perhaps G-Dragon and Missy Elliott are ideal representatives of K-Pop.
!135
Figure 31. Missy Elliott and G-Dragon share an embrace at the conclusion of their finale performance
at KCON 2013 in Los Angeles, CA.
Perhaps they locate the lure of K-Pop in its sense of irreverence and self-reflexive
acknowledgment that eros is not the point of the music, or that it offers an alternative space of
desire. Perhaps the manufactured harmonies of K-Pop’s dance routines and melodic
arrangements create a sense of belonging for those who feel alienated and queer within
heterosexual spaces of music culture, or what Josh Kun describes an audiotopia. Kun describes
an audiotopia as an architecture of sound that has the power to make us both self-aware and
strangers to identity. For him, “Listening to a song’s whole was always listening to its parts, to
8
the crossings and exchanges and collaborations that went into its making. Music can offer maps
in this way, and when I was younger the maps I heard were not just the map of the song’s
cultural and historical genesis, but the map of my own life, a musical ‘You Are Here’ that
positioned me within the larger social world.”
9
K-Pop’s musical and visual hybridity always bear the traces of black musical forms that
were imported into Korea through U.S. military bases and transpacific movements of producers,
artists, and entertainers between Seoul and Southern California. As a queer Korean, a diasporic
Korean, I always feel both culturally and geopolitically located and dislocated within K-Pop’s
visual and sonic architectures, its crossings and exchanges always making me acutely aware of
the hybridity of my own identity. K-Pop creates for me, and perhaps for others, a queer
audiotopia.
!136
CONCLUSION ENDNOTES Tina Xu, “The K-Pop/U.S. Music Connections You Never Knew Existed,” Fuse.tv, February
1
12, 2013, http://www.fuse.tv/2013/02/kpop-connections-infographic.
I personally tracked the number of YouTube clicks it received in 24 hours.
2
Jesse Lent, “G-Dragon Explains Why Missy Elliott Was His First Choice For ‘Niliria’
3
Collaboration,” Kpopstarz, September 10, 2013, http://www.kpopstarz.com/articles/
41029/20130910/gdragon-missy-elliott-niliria.htm.
“Roundtable: What’s with Androgynous Idols?,” Seoulbeats, September 25, 2013, http://
4
seoulbeats.com/2013/09/roundtable-whats-androgynous-idols/.
Ibid.
5
jbarky, “9 Most Androgynous Korean Celebrities,” soompi, May 21, 2012, http://
6
www.soompi.com/2012/05/21/9-most-androgynous-korean-celebrities/.
Jaeki Cho, “The Making of G-Dragon’s ‘Coup D’Etat,’” Complex, September 10, 2013, http://
7
www.complex.com/music/2013/09/g-dragon-coup-detat-making-of/niliria.
Josh Kun, Audiotopia: Music, Race, and America (Berkeley: University of California Press,
8
2005), 3.
Josh Kun, Audiotopia: Music, Race, and America (Berkeley: University of California Press,
9
2005), 3.
!137
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Asset Metadata
Creator
Ahn, Patty
(author)
Core Title
Aftermarkets of empire: South Korean popular music and global logics of race and gender in the U.S. media industries
School
School of Cinematic Arts
Degree
Doctor of Philosophy
Degree Program
Cinema-Television (Critical Studies)
Publication Date
08/05/2017
Defense Date
07/09/2014
Publisher
University of Southern California
(original),
University of Southern California. Libraries
(digital)
Tag
Gangnam Style,hallyu,Korea,Korean War,Korean Wave,K‐Pop,media industries,music videos,OAI-PMH Harvest,popular music,Psy,SM Entertainment,YouTube
Format
application/pdf
(imt)
Language
English
Contributor
Electronically uploaded by the author
(provenance)
Advisor
Seiter, Ellen (
committee chair
), Imre, Anikó (
committee member
), Kun, Joshua D. (
committee member
)
Creator Email
pahn@usc.edu,pattyahn@me.com
Permanent Link (DOI)
https://doi.org/10.25549/usctheses-c3-627356
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UC11307135
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etd-AhnPatty-3803.pdf (filename),usctheses-c3-627356 (legacy record id)
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etd-AhnPatty-3803.pdf
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627356
Document Type
Dissertation
Format
application/pdf (imt)
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Ahn, Patty
Type
texts
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University of Southern California
(contributing entity),
University of Southern California Dissertations and Theses
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The author retains rights to his/her dissertation, thesis or other graduate work according to U.S. copyright law. Electronic access is being provided by the USC Libraries in agreement with the a...
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Tags
Gangnam Style
hallyu
Korean Wave
K‐Pop
media industries
music videos
popular music
Psy
SM Entertainment