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“Sasaengpaen” or K-pop Fan? Singapore Youths, Authentic

Identities, and Asian Media Fandom

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DOI: 10.1080/01639625.2014.983011

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 DEVIANT BEHAVIOR
2016, VOL. 37, NO. 1, 81–94
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/01639625.2014.983011

“Sasaengpaen” or K-pop Fan? Singapore Youths, Authentic

Identities, and Asian Media Fandom
J. Patrick Williams and Samantha Xiang Xin Ho
Nanyang Technological University, Singapore

ABSTRACT ARTICLE HISTORY

Since the late 1990s, the Korean pop-culture wave has had a huge impact, Received 7 July 2014
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achieving immense popularity and sustaining a global community of con- Accepted 17 September
sumers and fans. In Singapore, a significant K-pop fan culture has emerged 2014
among youths. In this article, we study the emergence of the sasaeng fan—a
stigmatized fan identity that refers to individuals who are unhealthily inter-
ested in the personal lives of K-pop idols. Drawing on data from mass and
social media, participant-observation, and interviews, we map the signifi-
cance of the sasaeng fan identity for Singapore K-pop music fans and focus
specific attention on how fans negotiate an understanding of their own
“authentic” identities vis-à-vis the mediated identity of the sasaeng fan.

Introduction
Since the late 1990s, the “Hallyu” (한류) or Korean pop-culture wave has buffeted the shores of
countries across broader Asia. With a highly rationalized industry that spans the breadth of cultural
production and diffusion, K-pop has achieved immense popularity via music, television, and other
entertainment channels with a correspondingly massive following of consumers and fans across East
and Southeast Asia (Chua 2004; 2010; Fu and Liew 2005). Along with the diffusion and consumption
of these media products comes the objectification of the individual artists involved, most prominently
by East and Southeast Asian audiences (Russell 2008; Shin 2009) and a variety of cultural products
used by those artists, including clothes, accessories, and technological goods (Kwon 2007). The boom
of the K-pop industry in the new millennium has been attributed to a domestic culture industry that
pursues total entertainment management through vertical and horizontal integration of products to
encompass an entire range of cultural objects, from music to drama, radio and television programs,
publicity, and other related businesses (Siriyuvasak and Shin 2007). The advancement and prolifera-
tion of digital technologies have allowed K-pop to gain extensive international coverage with its strong
and expanding following active across a variety of digital media platforms. Throughout Asia, exposure
to, and consumption of, K-pop culture continues to increase.
Transnational cultural flows have allowed Korean pop culture to achieve multilayered and multi-
directional mobility beyond national and institutional boundaries (Jung 2006, 2009). The popularity of
K-pop in Singapore, for example, is evidenced by more than 100 events starring K-pop artists held
locally between July 2010 and February 2013, including concerts, showcases, autograph sessions,
meet-and-greet sessions, fan meetings and other appearances in festivals, launch events, fashion
shows, grand prix and award ceremonies, all of which amount to an average of around three events
per month. With K-pop artists flying to Singapore regularly, there is consistent exposure to K-pop and
access is easily made available to Singapore’s large middle class, which has a high per capita Gross
Domestic Product (GDP) compared to other countries in South and Southeast Asia.

CONTACT J. Patrick Williams patrick.williams@ntu.edu.sg 14 Nanyang Dr., HSS-05-41, Division of Sociology, Nanyang
Technological University, Singapore, 637332.
© 2016 Taylor & Francis
 82 J. P. WILLIAMS AND S. X. X. HO

Even before the Korean wave hit Singapore, Singapore was already importing various media/
popular culture products such as the American box office, East Asian TV drama series, as well as both
Western and East Asian pop music. With a very limited domestic production industry, Singapore is
an essentially consumer society highly receptive to cultural flows from foreign countries, which makes
it a prime site for studying the consumption of global popular culture flows. However, past research
on K-pop and its impacts in Singapore has tended toward Korean cinema and television dramas.
Chua (2010:16), for example, has dismissed music’s significance in the Hallyu because of its very brief
listening time and how it is “only meaningful and sing-able if the listener knows the language of the
tune. [W]ithout the requisite language, it is but a string of nonsense sounds.” Yet as K-pop icon Psy
and the more-than-1-billion views of “Gangnam Style” on YouTube demonstrated within the last five
months of 2012, the dismissal of K-pop music is premature at best. Youth culture in Asia is dynamic
and vibrant (Nasir 2012), with fandom playing a significant role in K-pop music’s success throughout
the region.
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The significance of K-pop, whether music, cinema, or film, is now evident, not least in facilitating a
pan–East Asian fan identity based on the production and consumption of East Asian popular culture
(Chua 2004). Such identities are not merely “popular,” however, as evidenced by a relatively new
phenomenon of extreme fan type called sasaeng (사생). Based on the Korean term sasaengpaen
(사생팬), a portmanteau of sasaenghwal (사생활 or “private life”) and paen (팬 or “fan”), a sasaeng
fan is a fan who is overtly interested in the private lives of K-pop idols. There has been no academic
research done specifically on the sasaeng phenomenon, and only brief observations suggesting its
emergence:

Even by the powerful standards of music, young South Koreans have long been some of the most intense, crazed
fans around. . . . Fans surround the stars’ apartment all day and night, singing their favorite songs, disregarding
neighbors’ pleas to quiet down. And woe to the poor woman who dates one of these young heartthrobs, as she
earns the deepest hatred of the stars’ thousands of fans. (Russell 2008: 134)

The “intensity” of such fans goes beyond loyalty. In their idolization, sasaeng fans reportedly stalk
K-pop artists or otherwise intrude into their private lives, affecting the artists physically and emo-
tionally. In order to stand out in the crowd (literally), individual sasaeng fans have reportedly gone to
extremes. Whether it is going to a television broadcast recording, an outdoor performance, the airport,
practice space, hair salon, or even the artist’s home, sasaeng fans are identified by a need to seek out
their idols’ exact schedules in order to be as close to them as possible, as often as possible. A few have
been reported to slap K-pop stars for attention, intentionally cause car accidents for the chance to
interact with them, and give lingerie and even menstrual blood to them in hopes of being
remembered.
The sasaeng phenomenon initially emerged in Korea. But with the sustained intensity of the Hallyu
wave, some hardcore K-pop fans from other Asian countries have begun adopting social behaviors
similar to Korean sasaeng fans. Singapore, with its large middle class and a national interest in
consuming cultural products from abroad, represents one country with a strong K-pop fan base, many
of whom are willing and able to invest in getting close to their favorite idols. Some Singaporean fans
have not only begun stalking1 K-pop idols on tour in their country, but also travel to Korea in hopes
of coming into direct contact with K-pop idols at the source of the Hallyu wave.
In this article, we explore the authenticity of the sasaeng fan identity by studying the processes
through which K-pop fans and non-fans negotiate that term. We do this first by looking at how
sasaeng fans are described in the Singaporean media, and second by analyzing observational and
interviewee data with Singaporean K-pop fans. In line with research on subcultural authenticities
(Widdicombe 1998; Williams and Copes 2005; Hannerz 2013), we assume that the sasaeng fan

We use the term “stalking” in this article because our research participants used it in everyday talk about their K-pop fandom. For
1

them, the term was not necessarily reducible to the legal sense of a criminal act involving following, pursuing, or harassing a person
(i.e., victim). Instead, fans recognized their pursuit of K-pop idols as a chase or hunt in which the idols would either remain unaware of
them, or seek to elude them. Stalking was thus a challenging exercise requiring skill and luck rather than a sinister activity.
 DEVIANT BEHAVIOR 83

identity is something constructed through social communication and relations, rather than something
that is objectively “real.” As such, one of our key interests is to highlight the construction of the
sasaeng fan identity as a cultural product, manufactured in large part by news and entertainment
media and by K-pop fans in the construction of their own fan identities.

Identifying (as) Singaporean K-pop fans

Mass media and fans alike attempt to represent fan identities as authentic, or real. While “identity”
and “identification” are conceptually similar, we treat them as analytically distinct. Identity refers to a
thing; an object to be dealt with. As du Gay, Evans, and Redman (2000) note, the concept of identity
“provides only simple cover for a plethora of . . . debates . . . concerning the status of the ‘subject,’ the
‘individual’ and the ‘person’” (p. 2). One of the most significant threads in such debates frames
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identity as “constituted . . . in and through the subject positions made available in language and wider
cultural codes” as well as “constructed through difference” (Redman 2000:10). Identity, while discur-
sively constructed, is for most people a “real thing” and is consequential in their lives. To have a
certain identity is to be known as a certain kind of person, whether that identity is rooted in gender,
social practice, or otherwise. Likewise, any identity is predicated on the difference that it implicitly
entails. Thus the identity of a K-pop fan necessarily entails some type of difference from non-K-pop
fans.
An important aspect of this conceptualization of identity has to do with the cultural politics of how
identities are created, circulated, and consumed. Identities are part of cultures, and just as people value
cultural products and practices differently, so do they with identities. In line with other studies of
subcultures of consumption (see, e.g., Williams 2006b), our research suggests that the various
interactive practices facilitated by contemporary mass and social media are a major source of fan
identities. While studies often focus on insider practices in fan communities (e.g., Baym 1999; Jenkins
1992), it is worth emphasizing the power of external definitions in the making of fan identities. In
particular, mass media such as news continue to have a dominating effect on popular understandings
of subcultural and fan identities, with dramatized narratives of individual pathology and deviance
predominating (Jenson 1992). As we will demonstrate in the Singaporean context, the news media are
ripe with a narrowly defined typification of K-pop fans. This objectified fan identity—the sasaeng
fan—is further distributed through social media tools attached to on-line news reporting.
While the objectified sasaeng fan identity carries significant rhetorical prominence, how it is
actually used in everyday life should not be assumed. Following Mead’s (1934) argument that people
do not merely react to stimuli in the environment, we recognize that the meanings of objects,
including identities, are handled interpretively by people. Likewise, we investigate the processes
through which Singaporean youths interpret the sasaeng fan identity as they identify as K-pop fans.
Here, we highlight identification as a process. Individuals negotiate their fan identities partly by
interacting with mass-mediated images of the sasaeng fan, but not only. Further, the meaning of the
sasaeng fan is not treated as monolithic. Fans recognize complex identity hierarchies within K-pop
culture and work against reducing K-pop fandom to a “sasaeng fan–normal fan” binary because
simply rejecting the mass-mediated image of the sasaeng fans would place them equally with all other
“normal” fans. Instead, fans identify themselves in complex ways that support both an authentic sense
of self and the construction of subcultural hierarchies (Copes and Williams 2007; Dupont 2014;
Williams and Copes 2005). Therefore in this article we also explore how a small group of young
Singaporean K-pop fans identify themselves and others as fans. Our findings suggest that fans
constantly negotiate at least two sets of boundaries. The first is cultural and represents passive
consumerism on one side and active, intelligent fandom on the other. The second is social–psycho-
logical and has to do with how fans rationalize their own behaviors to avoid seeing themselves as
uncritical and passive, while also protecting themselves from the stigmatizing effects of news media
representations of extreme fandom.
 84 J. P. WILLIAMS AND S. X. X. HO

Methods
We utilized two basic research methods in the study: qualitative media analysis (Altheide and
Schneider 2012) and field research, including participant observation and in-depth interviewing.
Having recognized the cultural significance of the term, sasaeng fan, we began our study by searching
for its presence in mass media sources in Asia. We identified 25 news articles from www.allkpop.com,
three news articles from Yahoo! Singapore Entertainment, as well as excerpts from two Korean
documentaries broadcasted by Munhwa Broadcasting Corporation (MBC) and Total Variety
Network (tvN), both of which had been subtitled in English and uploaded onto YouTube by fans.
The news articles were published between December 2010 and March 2013, and the documentary
excerpts were broadcast and uploaded in March 2012. In addition, we analyzed on-line comments
posted in response to these information sources.2 We utilized an ethnographic content analytic
approach to these data (Altheide and Schneider 2012), which conceptualizes information sources
within larger cultural fields of production and consumption and emphasizes the grounding of mean-
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ing through readers’ interaction with such texts. This interpretive stance takes account of the “patterns
of the language used in communications exchange, as well as the social and cultural contexts in which
these communications occur” (Berg 2009: 353). Our analysis identified patterned portrayals of the
sasaeng phenomenon within the news media.
Having been a Singaporean fan of K-pop for several years, Samantha (the second author) had
studied the Korean language and made four trips to Korea between 2011 to 2013 that amounted to
over one year’s stay in the country. There, she participated actively in K-pop culture, both as a fan and
through working with a Korean entertainment agency. While in Korea, she conducted a pilot inter-
view with a Korean fan who had encounters with sasaeng fans and spent three weeks during the
winter of 2012 doing non-participatory observation of sasaeng fans outside two entertainment
agencies. This field research gave us valuable fan-based knowledge that resulted in a more vivid
conceptualization of the sasaeng phenomenon against which news media texts and youths’ behaviors
could be interpreted.
Back in Singapore, Samantha engaged in a combination of overt and covert research of “hardcore”
K-pop fans.3 In a field study, she accompanied a group of youths as they stalked a K-pop band and
covertly recorded field notes of her experiences along with details of the young people’s interactions.
We handled these data ethically in order to protect the identities of those involved along with the
authenticity of the fan context (see Spicker 2011). Separately, she used standard social media channels
such as Facebook to recruit Singaporean K-pop fans for interviews. Asking friends to share informa-
tion about the project on their Facebook timelines, Samantha identified and eventually narrowed
down a sample of ten respondents based on their intentions, motivations and the level of devotion
displayed in their experiences searching for and meeting the K-pop idols in Korea. She conducted
semi-structured interviews between January and February 2013, nine of which were done face-to-face
while one was done on-line. The interviews lasted between 90 and 135 minutes. Our analysis of data
was informed by our previous reading of literature on subcultural and fan identities (e.g., Jenkins
1992; Williams 2011b).

The mediated construction of sasaeng fan identity

The sasaeng fan identity is rooted in a globalized combination of mass- and social-mediated contexts
(Altheide 2000). The actions of a few are sensationalized and then diffused by the news media,
sometimes to promote fear of crazed K-pop fans, sometimes merely for entertainment (Hebdige
2
Comments on www.allkpop.com came from all around the globe, whereas the comments posted on Yahoo! Singapore
Entertainment were more likely posted by Singaporeans. Because we were particularly interested in how the sasaeng phenomenon
in Singapore, our comments data came only from Yahoo! Singapore Entertainment.
3
We operationalized “hardcore” as a fan who had traveled at least once to Korea specifically to consume K-pop and who had
successfully seen K-pop idols through unorthodox means, such as waiting for chance encounters at entertainment agencies or
shops owned by idols.
 DEVIANT BEHAVIOR 85

1979:96–99). The result for dedicated K-pop fans is that their identities and practices become
measured against the archetypical media representation of the sasaeng fan; one that often misrepre-
sents events, actions, and the lives of those involved (Cohen 1972; Williams 2011a). According to
journalistic accounts, sasaeng fans are typically girls aged between 13 to 22 years old who invade the
privacy of K-pop idols. They are reported to engage in many problematic behaviors vis-à-vis K-pop
idols. Some examples include: installing closed-circuit television cameras near idols’ homes; attaching
tracking devices to idols’ cars, using a global positioning system (GPS) to track their movements;
stalking them around town in taxis; even engaging private investigators to seek out highly personal
information. So-called sasaeng fans have broken laws by breaking into the homes of idols to steal their
personal belongings, trafficking and abusing the personal information of idols, engaging in high-speed
chases and causing accidents while stalking, harassing idols’ families and associates, and assaulting
both idols and other fans. Given the almost wholly negative orientation of such stories, the sasaeng fan
has quickly become a mass-mediated folk devil in Korea, and increasingly across Asia.
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Creating folk devils out of collective youth behaviors is nothing new (Springhall 1998). In his study
of folk devils, Stan Cohen (1972) demonstrated how collective acts that are labeled as problematic in
the mass media can become society-level moral panics, especially when the news media selectively
represent events and individuals in stereotypical ways and then provide the means for morally right-
thinking people to weigh in on matters. Such folk devils are part of a global discourse of fear that has
emerged in recent decades with various consequences for individuals and groups (Altheide 2002). As
the above laundry list of deviant behaviors suggests, mass media sources are rife with portrayals of
extreme K-pop fan behavior and are key in framing information about K-pop fans that is subse-
quently disseminated at the speed of broadband. The inclusion of opinions from “average” fans,
complaints from industry representatives, and commentary from university professors, lawyers,
doctors, and culture critics in journalistic accounts further legitimizes criticisms about extreme
K-pop fandom. Journalism merges fact and opinion into a largely uncritical statement of “truth”
that circulates mimetically throughout the mediasphere.
In our data, the source of the sasaeng phenomenon was allegedly rooted in embodied, pathological
form via hypothesized desires for bodily connection to and recognition by K-pop idols. This was
represented in mainstream news as well as in fan-based documentaries, which added with more
frequency and depth the voice of sasaeng fans themselves. In one example from the latter source, an
interviewed sasaeng fan explained her obsession with the private life of her favorite idol:
I feel like I get to know more about and get closer to the idol I love. If I go to a concert, there are thousands of
people attending, so the idol would not know who I am. But if I become sasaeng, they will recognize me. If I keep
telling them, ‘I am so-and-so. I saw you at that place before. I am so-and-so’, they will start to take note of me
and ask ‘Did you come again today?’ To sasaeng fans, being recognized by idols is a good thing. (Park, Park, and
Yang 2012: 3m40s)

As Ferris and Harris (2011) note,

fans indulge in and develop their interest in the fictional worlds of media texts [and] they may also engage in
strategies to penetrate the membrane of fame that surrounds their favorite actors and learn what is ‘real’ about
the stars themselves. . . . However, in the popular imagination, fans who pursue direct contact with media stars
are seen as suspect, possibly unbalanced, and threatening in a variety of ways. (p. 13)

As the media-constructed story goes, fandom typically begins as normal, but may develop malignantly
to the point where fans become sasaeng fans, who devote their time to stalking their idols, abandoning
their own personal and social lives in the process. News stories report instances of skipping school,
spending nights sleeping in 24-hour Internet cafés or in front of the idols’ houses or agencies,
occasionally dropping out of school or becoming homeless due to the daily practices of idolatry;
even resorting to prostitution to cover stalking-related costs such as taxi fees.
Such examples are embedded within larger discourses of fear and stigma. Goffman (1963) argued
that members of groups whose interests or behaviors are defined as culturally or situationally proble-
matic are given stigmatized “virtual social identities,” which are rooted in assumptions and stereotypes.
 86 J. P. WILLIAMS AND S. X. X. HO

abnormal evil irresponsible

aggressive excessive obsessive

bizarre extreme overboard

brutal frightening pathetic

crazed gang-like scary

criminal horrifying shocking

dangerous ignorant vicious

distorted illegitimate violent

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Figure 1. Sasaeng fan attributes from mass-media sources.

Looking through a sample of mass-media reports on K-pop fandom available on www.allkpop.com,

we found that the virtual social identity of sasaeng fans was assigned a host of undesirable attributes
(Figure 1).
Some of these terms suggest psychological problems (crazed, abnormal); some suggest dangerous,
even criminal elements (aggressive, brutal, criminal, dangerous); while others provide vaguer, yet
extreme, formulations (excessive, extreme, overboard). Together, they suggest that mass media have
diffused an overwhelmingly negative portrayal of the sasaeng fan identity, creating boundaries that
distinguish certain K-pop fans from “normal” society. These findings fit with other studies on the
mediated construction of “deviant” cultural identities and show that similar processes persist in Asia
as well as North America (e.g., Coyle 2010; Eyres and Altheide 1999)
Extreme formulations of sasaeng fan identity were not only communicated in journalistic accounts,
but were regularly recycled by readers who interacted with news texts via social media tools. Looking
at 168 comments made by readers of three news stories published on Yahoo! Singapore Entertainment
during this study, there emerged a rather clear consensus based on disapproval of sasaeng fans’
behaviors. Negative expressions of hatred and disgust, as well as moral judgments of sasaeng fans’
reported actions, included words similar to those found in mass-mediated news (Figure 2).
There was some similarity in the use of terms, particularly referencing mental/psychological
characteristics as underlying reasons for deviant behavior. When dealing with deviant youth sub-
cultures, the semiotics of such negativity is at once supported by the political economy of news
making and supports the social cognition of those who interact with the news (Williams 2011a). Social
cognition serves a notably instrumental function. It facilitates the process of stereotyping, whereby the
characteristics or actions of an individual member of a social category are taken as representative of
everyone within that category.

childish idiotic problem

crazy insane psychotic

disturbing lunatic retarded

dumb mentally deranged sick

godawful obsessively mad too much

goddamn stupid perverted

Figure 2. Sasaeng fan attributes from social media sources.

 DEVIANT BEHAVIOR 87

We found that social media users negotiated the meanings of the sasaeng fan identity in one of two
ways. Some commenters used mass-mediated information to build up the image that the “K-pop fan”
was, at large, a problematic identity: “There’re a lot of crazy stupid K-pop fans around”; “All this
K-pop is a divergence and detrimental to one’s sanity.” Other commenters wrote about K-pop fandom
positively, but were clear to establish semantic boundaries between themselves and the behaviors in
which sasaeng fans engaged. Some commenters, for example, claimed to be fans, yet qualified the
extent of their fandom by writing things such as, “I respect the idol’s privacy”; “I will never go to that
extreme”; “I’m not that crazy to stalk them”; “The most I would do is to buy their concert tickets”; “I
will never do anything so sick like that.”
It is not uncommon for participants in youth cultures to actively work at controlling the identities
of others (Milner 2006, chap. 5). In on-line discussions, Williams (2006a) found that straightedge
music fans members were vociferous in maintaining a strict boundary between those who participated
in the culture the “right” way versus the “wrong” way. Similarly, some K-pop fans used the comments
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section of news reports to disassociate themselves with sasaeng fans by declaring that the latter were
actually “not fans” and explaining how true fans like themselves behave: “[Sasaeng] aren’t fans, just
pure stalkers invading privacy. If you’re a true fan, spend the money buying the albums and concerts
to support them, not stalking”; “Most of us ain’t that crazy . . . we just like their songs.”
Such interactions work toward naturalizing certain ways of being a fan, which further entrench
everyday assumptions about K-pop fandom every time they are invoked within media texts. Through
interactions with and through mass and social media, “normal” K-pop fans actively construct a
codified sasaeng fan identity that becomes a monolithic Other, reduced either to a voyeuristic
spectacle or to an object of fear. As mass-mediated spectators, K-pop fans and non-fans alike build
up an image of revulsion and appall despite a seeming lack of first-person experience with self-
identifying sasaeng fans. Mass and social media quickly diffuse the sasaeng fan identity. And to the
extent that such Othering discourses circulate unchallenged, the myth of the sasaeng fan is strength-
ened, further limiting assumptions about “right” and “wrong” ways to be a K-pop fan.

Being a Singaporean K-pop fan

We now move beyond media discourse and interactions to investigate the lived experiences of
Singaporean K-pop fans. Among the fans we studied, the most common ways of consuming K-pop
culture without leaving the country were through mass media, social media, or by attending local
K-pop events. The latter were the only viable chance most fans had to connect with K-pop idols, but
such connections were typically fleeting and/or indirect. The Singaporean K-pop fans interviewed
therefore clearly and collectively expressed the importance of social media to share and receive
content about K-pop. Examples included publishing their own websites or blogs, participating in
social networking sites dedicated in part or in whole to K-pop, posting messages on K-pop forums,
and uploading multimedia content such as photos and videos. The Internet bridged the geographical
gap that fans felt would otherwise severely constrain their ability to maintain an interactive relation
with K-pop culture; it also intensified the pleasures of active engagement with other fans, as well as
helped develop a sense of commonality among disparate fans. Singaporean fans updated themselves
on news and gossip by religiously visiting entertainment news websites such as www.allkpop.com and
by watching and sharing information about new music video releases, song or dance covers, and clips
of Korean television programs on YouTube.
The Korean culture industry helps ensure that fans globally are kept abreast of the K-pop scene.
Idols promote new releases on weekly music television programs Thursdays through Sundays, and
video recordings are subsequently distributed by Korean entertainment news websites. All respon-
dents reported relying on social networking websites for information about such news, the two most
significant being Facebook and Twitter. Respondents “liked” the official Facebook pages of their
 88 J. P. WILLIAMS AND S. X. X. HO

favorite K-pop idols to receive updates directly from the idols’ management, as well as followed
K-pop-related Twitter accounts for real-time updates by K-pop idols themselves, entertainment news
websites, fan websites and individual fans who would translate tweets from Korean into English. They
also relied on fan-made cultural products available on fan-published websites and blogs. All respon-
dents watched Korean dramas and variety shows subtitled in English on-line, while more than two-
thirds reported using Tumblr to consume fan-taken photos and videos as well as fan art. About a third
of those interviewed read fan fiction posted on-line, while a small number were actively involved in
translating K-pop dramas, variety shows, news articles, or tweets.
Due in part to their geographical displacement from the origin of K-pop, Singaporean K-pop fans
experienced K-pop differently than Korean fans. Many found mediated fandom to be insufficient to
sustain their desire to participate more intimately in K-pop culture, not least because they recognized
that Korean fans were physically, intellectually, and emotionally closer to their Korean idols. We note
two consequences of Singaporeans’ differentiated experiences. First, because opportunities to connect
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were less frequent, some young Singaporean fans were willing to make their own opportunities when
possible, which increased the likelihood that they might be labeled as sasaeng fans. Second,
Singaporean fans who came up against the sasaeng fan identity found it necessary to evaluate and
negotiate their personal identities and practices vis-à-vis the mediated social identity of the extreme
K-pop fan. In the remainder of the article, we look at the interactions within such situations to see
how fan identities were negotiated.

Chasing K-pop idols

While attending local K-pop events might be considered a very practical measure of K-pop fandom to
the average Singaporean K-pop fan, the young people we interviewed sought ways of distinguishing
themselves from the average fan, who they saw as being relatively uncritical in their fandom. One
preferred method of expressing their stronger commitment to K-pop was through hiring what they
called “stalking vans”—high-capacity passenger vans operated by full-time drivers—and following
K-pop idols as they moved around the city before and after a performance or event.
During the study, Samantha had the opportunity to join a group of 11 Singaporean fans (10
females, 1 male), aged 15–18, as they “stalked” Big Bang, a five-member K-pop boy band who was in
Singapore during their Big Bang Alive Galaxy Tour 2012. Several days before the performance,
Samantha found out about the group through a retweet by SG K-Wave, a Singapore-based K-pop
community website providing news and information about events in Singapore. After establishing
contact, Samantha was added to a mobile chat group, where members chatted and gossiped with each
other and made arrangements for meeting up and paying for the van. The group disclosed their
stalking plans through various social media as they searched for other fans to share the $450 SGD
charge for hiring the van and received strong criticisms from fellow fans. A few excerpts from
Samantha’s Twitter log show a now familiar process of articulating the sasaeng fan identity:

WTH! People r gonna stalk BIGBANG when they r here? Sasaeng fans. Hope it’s not like what suju fans did last
time. Embarrassing!4
Stalk Big Bang vans??? I don’t think I’m that crazy!
Alr got ppl plan to stalk Big Bang alr, Lol wtf.. And gathering in a group summore. Wtf is wrong with u all ah.
Lol. Privacy for them please.
“Interesting in stalking Big Bang?” – DON’T EVEN THINK ABOUT IT. STOP UR PLANS, I’M TELLING YOU.
IF U DO THAT, YOU’RE A SASAENG FAN.

On January 28, 2011, Singapore’s The New Paper reported that Leeteuk and Heechul, two members of Korean boy band Super
4

Junior, were involved in a traffic accident the previous evening during rush hour. Eight fan vehicles were trying to get close to the
van with the band members, resulting in a six vehicle pile-up, including the idols’ van.
 DEVIANT BEHAVIOR 89

Members of the stalking group were aware of these messages and accounted for their actions by
highlighting other fans’ jealousy as well as defending the standards of their discretion, as excerpts
from their private group chat on Whatsapp demonstrate:
Let them tweet la xD5;
Aiya they jealous only;
O we won’t be retarded or what lah. Tsk;
Ya lor jealous people lmao;
They talk cock la these ppl not like we gonna whack BB wat siao la;
Ya la this is not called sasaeng pls;
Sasaeng is like stalk until go hotel room leh.

What is perhaps most interesting in this conversation is how the participants collectively posi-
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tioned themselves as simultaneously better than those who were afraid to stalk (i.e., more passive),
while being careful to distance themselves from the more problematic behaviors of sasaeng fans. Later
in their chat, one person claimed that they were not sasaeng fans as “sasaeng [fans are] more scary”
and they would “only follow [Big Bang].” Such posts suggested a clear recognition of the mass-
mediated sasaeng fan identity and highlighted how members of the stalking group worked to distance
themselves from it.
The fans were prepared to stalk from the moment Big Bang arrived in Singapore and therefore met
at the airport before their expected afternoon arrival. Most of the afternoon was spent waiting for and
then photographing members of Big Bang as they passed through the arrivals lounge and climbed into
three black Mercedes, which whisked them to their hotel. The sasaeng van followed, often pulling
alongside the Mercedes so the fans could display handmade “fanboards” in the windows, and the
group subsequently joined a small crowd of fans that had already formed outside the hotel entrance
(the hotel staff had set up barricades to prevent fans from entering the lobby). To escape the heat, the
group spent some time in the van cooling off and gossiping. Samantha took the opportunity to
question group members about other fans that were present at the hotel.
Samantha: Do you guys not like [the other fans] or something?
Fan: No lah, the stupid Charles gang.6 Tell you the whole story. They are just like some freaking casuals.
Samantha: So they like idols from every band?
Fan: Yar, they go for every band event, waste money. Give us money lah, we [need to] pay for our van. . .
Samantha: Do they also have a van?
Fan: No lah, they just come to the hotel. Stupid shit right?

As in other studies of fan cultures and subcultures (see Jenkins 1992; Lewin and Williams 2009), we
found that the fans we studied consciously divided the Singaporean K-pop fan community into fans
that were either too extreme, too casual, or just right. Whereas they had earlier worked to distance
themselves from sasaeng fans, who they saw as too starstruck, deviant, or unstable, here they
denigrated fans that, in their eyes, were not sufficiently refined in their K-pop tastes to be considered
authentic fans. The fans in our study were not fans of all things K-pop; rather they developed
relatively strong loyalty to specific K-pop idols/groups and displayed idol worship that was more
“passionate” in comparison to that of casual fans (while not being so extreme that they could not
5
In everyday speech most young Singaporeans use Singlish, an English-based creole consisting of words from several other
languages including Malay, Hokkien, Teochew, Cantonese, and Tamil. Our social media data included many Singlish expressions
and the following are visible: “ah,” “aiya,” “la,” “lah,” “leh,” “lor,” “siao la [siao liao],” and “talk cock.”
6
The Charles gang refers to a separate group of fans who were also awaiting Big Bang at the airport and outside the hotel entrance.
While they were stalking the idols at the public spaces similar to our study subjects, they did not hire a stalking van. The Charles
gang was apparently known for being fans of many other K-pop artists and attended virtually every local K-pop event, thus
“proving” their uncritical, mainstream fan status.
 90 J. P. WILLIAMS AND S. X. X. HO

reject the sasaeng fan label). Casual fans, on the other hand, tried too hard to be “all rounded” or
“well-versed” by following K-pop indiscriminately.
Despite fears expressed by Twitters users (above) that the group was up to no good, they
remained relatively docile throughout the evening. Around 8 p.m., the Mercedes chauffeuring Big
Bang emerged from the hotel carpark, prompting a rush back to the sasaeng van. Again the driver
tailed the idols, driving alongside them as much as possible while the fans attempted to get the
idols’ attention. The atmosphere was frantic and excited, with squeals and shouts as the fans
flashed their fanboards, waved at the windows, and even knocked occasionally on the van
windows. The next stop was a press conference venue, where another crowd of reporters and
fans had already gathered. The group leaped out of the van and clambered over grass patches,
holding up their fanboards and snapping photos at the same time. A heavy rain began to fall, yet
the fans remained outside hoping to get a glimpse of their idols. After Big Bang entered the venue,
the fans returned to the van and the driver circled around the area to kill time while the fans
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dried themselves. Two fans left then—one had a curfew and another decided that it was “point-
less” as he did not manage to see the idols as much as he had expected. A while later, the
Mercedes reemerged and took Big Bang to the Singapore Indoor Stadium to rehearse for their
performance the next day. Upon arrival at the concert venue, the fans once again rushed out to
catch a glimpse of Big Bang entering the backstage door but failed to do so as the idols had
entered via a sheltered loading bay. It was 10 p.m. by then and the fans decided to call it a day
and were dropped off at nearby metro stations.

Avoiding deviant labels

Because the Singaporean K-pop fans we studied happily engaged in behaviors that were connected in
mediated discourse to being sasaeng fans, they positioned themselves in such a way that they could
claim to be outside passive consumer-fandom on the one hand, but not to be deviant or extreme fans
on the other. In the previous sections we saw how this was done in everyday conversations with other
fans; here, we look at how they accomplished this during interviews. When asked, all our interviewees
denied being sasaeng fans and professed themselves to be relatively normal fans, but drew on
information that demonstrated clear understandings of what would be considered problematic fan
behavior. In the first example, a fan admitted that her trips to Korea could be seen as “crazy” by some
people, but that she had never engaged in any behaviors that were not otherwise beyond scrutiny.
“The craziest thing I’ve ever done would probably be just flying over to Korea to watch the concert. I
don’t think there is anything else I would do that is crazier than that” (Brenda, interview).
Implicit in her talk was a belief that her actions were normal. Thanks to her personal savings from
her previous jobs, she could afford the trip and she saw her actions as being within the bounds of
typical consumer/fan behavior. Other interviewees sought to prove their normality by offering
additional information that highlighted not only the boundary between normal fans and sasaeng
fans, but on which side of the boundary they stood. “No. I don’t know how to install a CCTV”
[laughs] (Nicole, interview).
In a study of young men with stigmatized identities, Hochstetler, Copes, and Williams (2010)
found that their interviewees regularly attempted to establish rhetorical distance between their own
sense of authenticity and the stigma that resulted from their criminal activities. Although they had
been convicted of violent crimes, the interviewed individuals routinely dismissed the idea that they
were authentically violent people, insisting instead that their own behaviors were either acceptable
given the circumstances or excusable in comparison to others’ more violent actions. Similar strategies
have been found in other studies where actors attempt to avoid being attributed a categorical identity
(see, e.g., Widdicombe 1998; Williams 2013). Our respondents likewise described their fan behaviors
to be less intense than the actions of sasaeng fans and refuted suggestions that their behaviors were
even comparable.
 DEVIANT BEHAVIOR 91

Stalking is the intrusion of privacy, but our kind of stalking is just waiting for and following the K-pop idols from
schedule to schedule, venues to venues; not to the level of stalking such as finding out their phone numbers, call
records and bank transactions. There are different levels of stalking—ours is just the amateur level. (Jean,
interview)

While acknowledging that stalking was often associated with the intrusion of privacy, Singapore fans
denied the significance of “their kind of stalking” in comparison. Interviewees talked about searching
out their idols in public spaces (e.g., waiting for chance encounters, gathering at locations for expected
appearances, following them on the roads), but emphasized that they did nothing illegal, nor did they
intrude on what they saw as personal space or private lives.
Singaporean fans compared their behaviors to those of Korean sasaeng fans as a way of justifying
the relative normality of their own choices and practices. They also expressed what they saw as a
different mentality from that of sasaeng fans by assuming a more understanding standpoint towards
K-pop idols. A recurring theme across interviews was the boundary between idols and fans when they
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meet in person, in which all respondents claimed to maintain a respectful distance: “I don’t like being
close to the idols. I make sure I try to stay far away. I want to give them space. If I were them, I would
feel very pressured if there was a fan staring at [me] all the time. As a fan, I don’t want to pressure
them” (Shirley, interview).
For fans, celebrity status was attractive, but there were socially-constructed limits to that attraction.
Whereas the celebrity auras that K-pop idols possessed seemed to function as candles to which Korean
sasaeng fans were drawn like moths (at least according to mass media reportage), those auras
functioned more as wards for our sample of Singaporean fans, much like for fans in other
Southeast Asian countries (Siriyuvasak and Shin 2007).
I wouldn’t chase them to that extent. To me, they are idols and that’s why they are untouchable. There is no need
to be so close to them, they’re not my friends. If you get too close to them in real life, you will start to see all their
flaws, like a lot of them actually have their own dirty private lives, and other things that I’d rather not know
about. I don’t want to know. (Mindy, interview)

Sasaeng fans were characterized as those who breach the limits of the idol-fan boundary to get as close to
idols as possible, while the Singaporean K-pop fans we interviewed claimed a collective disinclination
toward getting too close, be it physically or personally. A majority of interviewees expressed the desire to
maintain an ideal image of idols in their minds and feared that getting too close might spoil that.
However, these fans were quick to describe how they had ventured further than the “average fan” to meet
idols when they felt such talk would not stigmatize them. In sum, Singaporean K-pop fans engaged
regularly in face work to establish a unique position with consumer-fan culture.

Conclusion
This study has illuminated the social production of meaning within mass- and social-media contexts
and demonstrates the highly contested nature of allegedly authentic fan identities. As we previously
noted, fan identities are rooted in the cultural politics of knowledge production. In line with mass-
media studies of fear and moral panic (Altheide 2002; Eyres and Altheide 1999), we found that the
sasaeng fan identity was constructed largely through mass-mediated discourses of social control. Yet
those identities were not uncritically accepted. Some scholars have argued that fans differ in whether
or not they “pose their fandom as a resistant activity, one that keeps them one step ahead of those
forces which would try to market their resistant tastes back to them” (Taylor 1999:161). Our study
suggests that Singaporean fans are not necessarily either passive or resistant, but rather that they
participate in a more complex set of processes within which they may both enjoy and resist aspects of
public discourse surrounding the object of their fandom.
While the political–economy of K-pop has received significant attention in the last decade,
particularly among Asian scholars (Chua 2004; Shim 2006), there has been virtually no research
published that focuses on K-pop fan experiences within the context of mass-mediated images of
 92 J. P. WILLIAMS AND S. X. X. HO

deviance. This study not only contributes to the micro-sociological literature on K-pop fandom in
Southeast Asia, but also deals specifically with the processes through which deviant identities are
constructed, diffused, and negotiated. We first analyzed the negative bias found in many mass-media
portrayals of K-pop fandom, which we argue has resulted in the emergence of the sasaeng fan identity.
We subsequently explored how K-pop music fans interacted with that mass-mediated identity in
social-mediated and face-to-face contexts.
Many studies construct the fan in contrast to the celebrity and rely on rather taken-for-granted
assumptions about the differences between them. Celebrities are typically taken for granted (i.e.,
treated as normal, if not invisible), while either fans or fans’ relations with celebrities become the focus
of study. Hills (2006) has argued that we need to better account for the creation of celebrities from
within particular social matrixes of fan culture. The relevance of his work for our study has to do with
reimagining the concept of the celebrity. In the media-saturated realm of Korean popular music, the
sasaeng fan has emerged as a seemingly self-contained identity that garners nearly as much attention
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as the K-pop artists themselves. What we would suggest here is that mass and social media are
increasingly becoming sites for the co-construction of certain fans as a type of infamous celebrity in
their own right. Just as many journalists constantly search for dirt on celebrities in order to feed
audiences that are allegedly ravenous for such information, interactions among mass and social media
users enable the propagation of deviant fan identities that become objectified as consumer commod-
ities. The sasaeng fan identity is one such example—it now functions both as a moniker for
excessiveness that captures media consumers’ attention, and as a stigma that must negotiated by
fans in everyday life.
The relationship between fans and idols “seems to be an increasingly important one given the
amount of ‘extra’ artifice and simulation” in contemporary media societies (Holmes and Redmond
2006: 4). Alongside this, we would add that the relationships among mass and social media and fans
are also growing increasingly complex and therefore worthy of scrutiny. Following from this, our
research specifically explored the processes by which fans constructed a meaningful sense of self that
was authentic to them by distinguishing themselves both from so-called normal and deviant fans.
Study participants made great efforts to defer association with the latter due to the mass-mediated
negative connotations surrounding the identity, yet also took pains to avoid being seen as uncritical, a
finding that reflects earlier insights into the role of mass media in contemporary moral panics
surround youth culture and music (Thornton 1996). The construction of authentic identities is rooted
in categorical/status divisions within fan- and sub-cultures that justify one’s pleasures as less perverse
than those of some others, yet more passionate than the mainstream. Authentication helps avoid the
weight of negative labels relative to the perceived acceptability of one’s cultural choice and practices.
Respondents specifically positioned themselves somewhere between the two opposite ends of the fan
spectrum such that, while they were significantly more proactive than a mainstream fan in maximiz-
ing their experiences in K-pop consumption, they also claimed to be less deviant or extreme than
sasaeng fans.
Finally, we found that, for Singaporean fans of K-pop, social media sources were very important, as
they provided participatory pathways within fan culture. News and video sites, peer-to-peer networks,
and communications apps were all used daily by fans as ways of staying in touch with idols and with
each other. Social media networks facilitated the diffusion of meanings within K-pop culture, both
among fans who felt stigmatized by mainstream-media representations and among fans who engaged
in stigmatizing practices. Fans used social media alongside a variety of other fan practices, including
concert attendance, music shopping, and “stalking,” and further enriched those experiences. This
supports other research on the strength of both on-line and off-line sources for spreading subcultural
knowledge, even among individuals who are not invested in the subculture or fan group (Blevins and
Holt 2009; Holt and Copes 2010). Our study thus further substantiates research on the role of social
media in the everyday life of K-pop fans outside Korea, as well as of members of stigmatized
subcultures more generally.
 DEVIANT BEHAVIOR 93

Notes on contributors
J. PATRICK WILLIAMS is Associate Professor of sociology at Nanyang Technological University. He has many
research publications on the experiences of individuals who self-identify as subcultural and is particularly interested
in the social construction of subcultural authenticity. He has edited and authored several books, including Authenticity is
Self, Culture and Society (Ashgate, 2009) and Subcultural Theory: Traditions and Concepts (Polity Press, 2011).

SAMANTHA XIANG XIN HO graduated from Nanyang Technological University with a Bachelor of Arts in Sociology
degree and from Yonsei University Korean Language Institute in Korea. She currently works as a researcher at the Korea
Trade-Investment Promotion Agency in Singapore.

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