In this week’s readings we looked at Hallyu, the AFKN Nexus, and cultural production in South Korea. What intrigued me was the idea of nationalism in both North and South Korea. The country split into two ended up becoming a playing field for the two powers that gave rise to the Cold War, capitalism, and communism. Both sides had their own definition for what made Korea, Korea, the sort of isms, the quintessential qualities that a Korean “should” have. The situation was similar to two children looking at the number 6 from opposite sides. One of the children sees the number 9, but the other child sees the number 6. They’re both right, but they can both be wrong too. It’s all based on perspective and an understanding that people have different ideologies they believe to make sense of the world.
Colonialism and the idea of cultural imperialism plays such a big role in globalism, especially for America. America likes to be the big brother of the world, butting into places and promoting Western Exceptionalism. As Klein’s reading tells us, there is a major military presence around the world. The presence of U.S military serves a dual purpose, not only is it to police embassies and protect sites of U.S interest, it is also a way to tell the world that the U.S has its hand in everything, a remnant of maritime warfare strategy that Teddy Roosevelt believed in, “Speak softly, but carry a big stick.” Introducing people outside of America to Western media creates new fan viewership and customers who thus working into capitalism. The media that Korea was creating was constantly in comparison to Hollywood, which led to a shift in the movie-making industry to not only appeal to a Korean audience, but a global audience as well.
The idea of Han, speaks to the pain and sorrow of the Korean people for the hardship they endured, including the occupancy by the Japanese. The Japanese took over the cultural production of Korea and also did their best to get rid of the historical content in Korea. By eliminating a culture, you eliminate a part of a country’s identity. In return the State Controlled Korea attempted to restore Korean culture by promoting and regulating content. All content was made to promote “Koreanism”, and there was little wiggle room for complaints. While the intent was well meant, it only bottlenecked people more because they had just escaped control, only to be controlled again. At the time, especially after 2 World Wars, the world was already in the process of globalization. By lifting the bans, and giving artists more room for personal expression and development, Hallyu was born.
Above are two separate links to the same instance in both movies called My Sassy Girl . The first is the original movie made in Korea starring Tae-Hyun Cha and Ji-Hyun Jun, and the second is a , and the second is a 2008 remake starring Elisha Cuthbert, and Jesse Bradford. My Sassy Girl is the first Korean movie I ever watched, with subtitles of course. My Korean friend in junior high school showed this film to me and I couldn’t stop laughing until the movie got incredibly emotional. The reason I picked these two scenes is because while they are both conceptually the same, the fact that a remake was made for U.S audiences featuring American actors just goes to show that movie directors and producers believed that this was a profitable venture. It also goes to show that culture doesn’t just flow one way. The readings talk about Japanese influence and US military influence in Korea, but now thanks to Hallyu, not only does outside culture flow into Korea, but Korean culture flows outward to the rest of the world as well, reassuring and reaffirming the mutable and mercurial nature of this intangible thing we call culture.
The Politics of K-Pop 