Hein Kuhn-Oh is a Korean, born-and-raised contemporary artist. After high school, he moved to the United States and studied art and photography in California and Ohio. Although he is not an adoptee artist like those mentioned in Kim’s “Producing Missing Persons,” there are enough similarities in his artistic interests to those described in Kim’s article to make a comparison.

Kim explains that due to the “lack of collective cultural forms, symbols, or images,” the subculture of adoptee artists have found a common interest in photography, abstraction of cultural Korean images, as well as concepts of performance rather than autobiographical finding, in their works. Maya Weimar’s “Seven Families” project includes photographs of the artist posing with tourists and attaching false narratives about her adopted family. Here, photographs which are often deemed as documentary and factual, disrupt the common stereotypes and narratives attached to Korean adoptees and their families. Similarly, Hein Kuhn-Oh is drawn to photography for its documentary, or rather posed documentary possibilities. In an artist profile, he calls photography a document, rather than a documentary form. His most famous works are various portraiture series such as ‘Ajumma’ (1999) and ‘Cosmetic Girls’ (2009) in which he photographs personalities and stereotypes for their external appearances to highlight prejudices in Korean society. Neither Maya Weimar nor Hein Kuhn-Oh are interested in truly identifying the person who is subject to their work, but rather highlighting meaning and reactions to personhood. Both artists have photographed Asian and Caucasian bodies, and both artists travel internationally for work and exhibitions, yet their motivations are inherently different. In “Missing Persons,” Kim explains that adoptee artists will always have a strong sense of activism, in ways that non-adoptee artists won’t, but kate hers is against the notion that adoptee art can only ever be adoptee art. So how do we consider adoptee artists in comparison to Korean born-and-raised artists like Hein Kuhn-Oh? No matter how similar the work, the history of diaspora attached to adoptee artists will continually be attached to the art they produce. No matter how abstract or conceptual, will adoptee artists only ever be exhibited in adoptee artist exhibitions? What if Maya Weimar and kate hers create works not related to dislocation or their adoptee identity, will their work still be conceived as adoptee art? As I mentioned before, based on their success and careers, artists like Hein Kuhn-Oh and Maya Weimar get to travel and exhibit internationally, they studied art in the United States, they photograph the same bodies, and question collective personhood and responses to physical appearances in their work- so where or what is the line that separates them?

http://www.heinkuhnoh.com/index.html?d1=01&d2=04&d3=&lang=eng

While reading Youjeong Oh’s chapter on “The Interactive Nature of Korean TV Dramas,” I was immediately reminded of an original Norwegian webseries called “Skam” which gained a large international following due to its presence on social media. The plot of the show was based on a group of Norwegian teenagers and their lives in high school, however the concept of the show was its existence in real time with the audience. Instead of full episodes, 4-minute clips and social media and text message conversations from the characters are posted on the NRK website daily during the webseries’ seasons. This garnered immense attention on internet- fanbase websites because the audience lived with the characters in real time. Since the posts appear to occur spontaneously, their consumption seems much more natural. An audience member scrolling through their instagram feed might find a new post by one of Skam characters in between those of friends and family.

Yet, I could argue that the concept of the show’s assimilation into the audience’s real life paradoxically makes it extremely unnatural due to its strict timing and production. Then perhaps Korean TV dramas are the shows that assimilate into the audience’s life the most naturally and organically. Youjeon Oh’s chapter discusses the relationship between the audience and production of Korean TV dramas. The practice of live production comes from the importance of audience response, and forces the show to be created on a loose narrative. Instead of big production companies creating a finite product, and people viewing passively, the audience has an impact on the trajectory of the show. Oh notes that many popular series have even changed the finales- concerning the life or death of characters, or relationship outcomes- based on audience responses. Actors who were initially hired as supporting roles might become leads a few episodes later if they gain enough fan support for their characters.

While Skam was finitely scripted with changes based on audience interest only occurring between seasons, Korean TV dramas evolve in real time with the viewer’s interests in a much more natural manner.

Now that Hallyu has globalized Korean cultural products, and many global popular streaming sites such as Netflix and Hulu are getting rights to Korean TV dramas, it will be interesting to see how diverse and foreign responses might begin to shape a series. If the Korean-speaking audience has always been an active agent in the production of a show, then first-generation Hallyu followers might have just been a shadow audience of those productions and their translations. However, today, subtitled series are released within an hour after their release on Korean sites, so non-Korean-speaking audience members can interact with the product in the same time as those in Korea. Depending on how fast the international responses make it back to Korean production companies, I believe that in a few years we could trace how Korean TV drama becomes an international product that is dictated by audience responses all over the world. Simply put, only the production of shows is purely Korean, the shows themselves might become global, universal products.