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The Sociology of
Hallyu Pop Culture
Surfing the Korean Wave
Vincenzo Cicchelli · Sylvie Octobre

The Sociology of Hallyu Pop Culture
“Closely examining the consumption of and negotiation with media cultures

from South Korea by youth in France, this book gives a fresh insights into how
transnational flows of East Asian media culture has been organized by various
social actors and industries, generated alternative media globalization, engen-
dered cross-border dialogues, and fostered cosmopolitan outlook. This book is
essential reading to anyone interested in the study of “Korean Wave”, cultural
globalization and mediated dialogue.”
—Koichi Iwabuchi, Professor of Media and Cultural Studies, Monash
University
“This is an exceptional work about the Korean Wave (Hallyu) and multi-polar
globalization of culture in general. While providing the context and appropriate
source material surrounding the emergence, promotion, and global diffusion of
Hallyu, the authors also address Hallyu in the theoretical arena, tackling such
emerging concepts as aesthetic capitalism, sweet power, and the theory of cos-
mopolitan elective affinities. A must-read book for understanding the past, pres-
ent, and future of Hallyu!”
—Wonho Jang, Professor of Urban Sociology, University of Seoul
Vincenzo Cicchelli • Sylvie Octobre
The Sociology of
Hallyu Pop Culture
Surfing the Korean Wave
Vincenzo Cicchelli Sylvie Octobre
Centre Population et Développement DEPS - Ministère de la Culture/Centre Max
Université de Paris/IRD Weber (UMR 5283)
Paris, France Paris, France
Translated by Sarah-Louise Raillard
ISBN 978-3-030-84295-6 ISBN 978-3-030-84296-3 (eBook)

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-84296-3
© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature
Switzerland AG 2021
This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether
the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of
illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and trans-
mission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or
dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed.
The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication
does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant
protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use.
The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book
are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or
the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any
errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional
claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.
Cover illustration: © Alex Linch/shutterstock.com
This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG.
The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland
개천에서 용 난다
(A dragon rises up from a small stream)
Korean proverb
This book is dedicated to Hipollène without whom we would never have
thought to investigate on Hallyu
Preface: BTS, Riding the Hallyu Crest1
“I tried to jam myself into molds that other people made…. No matter
who you are, where you’re from, your skin color, gender identity: speak
yourself. Find your name, find your voice by speaking yourself.” It was
with these words that, on 24 September 2018, the musical group Bangtan
Sonyeondan (usually referred to by its short name, BTS*2) became the
first K-pop band to ever speak at the United Nations. BTS took the floor
during the 73rd session of the General Assembly in New York on the
occasion of Generation Unlimited,3 an international initiative launched
by UNICEF to combat violence against children and promote youth
education, with a view to having all young people in school or work by
2030. How did the members of a South Korean pop band (who more-
over perform most of the time in their native language) come to have
such significant international media coverage and thus be involved with
this initiative?
Composed of seven young men who resemble manhwa characters4––
RM and Suga the rappers; Jin the lead vocalist; J-Hope a rapper and
1
In Chinese, hallyu means “Korean Wave.” This term was coined at the end of the 1990s by the
Chinese media to refer to the rapid rise in popularity and market penetration of Korean products.
The epithet has since been translated into English as well as a variety of other languages, including
Spanish (ola coreana) and French (vague coréenne).
2
The South Korean cultural products referred to in this book and marked with an asterisk are pre-
sented in the glossary at the end of the book.
3
https://www.generationunlimited.org
4
The name for Korean comics and print cartoons.
ix
x Preface: BTS, Riding the Hallyu Crest
dancer; Jimin, V, and Jungkook singers and dancers––this group leads

the pack in record sales throughout the world, including in the United
States (where it is rare for a non-American, and especially a non-English-
speaking musician, to top the charts). “Bangtan Sonyeondan,” the group’s
name, is a combination of 방탄, signifying “bulletproof,” and 소년단,
meaning “boy scouts.” The group’s seven members can thus be seen as the
defenders of youth. By blending together a variety of different musical
styles (including rap, pop, R&B, and moombahton5), adopting interna-
tional quality standards, employing tried-and-tested marketing strategies
(such as adapting songs to the styles favored by targeted geographical
regions), and putting on spectacular stage shows with complex choreog-
raphy and special visual effects, BTS has become a major musical phe-
nomenon––not entirely unlike the Beatles of yesteryear.
The group’s popularity can be measured in commercial terms. In 2018,
the album Love Yourself: Tear was at the top of the iTunes charts in over
60 countries. With that success, BTS became the most-watched South
Korean boy band on YouTube, garnering more than 4 billion views
(counting all of their videos combined). “Fake Love,” the single from
Love Yourself: Tear, was released in May 2018; it was then ranked tenth on
the Billboard Hot 100, making BTS the first Korean group to make the
Top 10 and the first Korean artist to reach the Top 10 in the week imme-
diately following a release. The video of their single “Dynamite,” released
in August 2020, amassed more than 100 million views in 24 hours: BTS
has become the first all-Korean group to reach the top of the US Billboard
100 (Cruz 2020). This shows the full extent of the BTS craze around
the world.
Everywhere in the world, BTS draws huge crowds to its over-the-top
shows. At first, the concert venues that the band performed in held only
a few thousand people; these have now been replaced by stadiums on all
continents. BTS has attracted the largest crowds in Asia (especially Japan)
and Latin America (in particular Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia,
Mexico, and Peru). However, in the fall of 2018, BTS twice filled the
Bercy Arena in Paris: the 20,000 seats in this concert venue sold out just
a few hours after being announced, despite a complete lack of promotion
and the fact that each ticket cost several hundred euros. The same
5
This is a fusion genre that combines house and reggaetón.
Preface: BTS, Riding the Hallyu Crest xi
excitement held for a return performance on 7 and 8 June 2019, this time
in the Stade de France, which has more than 80,000 seats. Critical recog-
nition and awards have also kept rolling in: since the beginning of its
career, BTS has won more than 220 prizes and 339 nominations across
the globe. It has been positively reviewed by Rolling Stone, which has
devoted several articles and interviews to the band.
The internet plays a central role in this success: K-pop is mostly dis-
seminated through the internet, and BTS is very active on social media.
One of their accounts, @BTS_twt, allows fans to enjoy their “personal”
photos, while another, @bts_bighit, is used by their agency to make offi-
cial announcements. There is also @BTS_trans, created by English-
speaking fans to disseminate news worldwide. The group’s YouTube
channel BANGTANTV,6 created in 2012, presents clips and videos,
while the YouTube channel ibighit,7 which hosts their clips, had 61 mil-
lion subscribers. BTS also streams videos on V-Life; some of the members
even have their own shows. On Twitter, which created a special BTS
emoji in 2016, Facebook (Bangtan.official), and Instagram (@bts.bighit-
official), BTS already has more than 20 million followers of its “Bangtan
Bombs,” or short videos frequently posted by group members sharing
their daily lives and making jokes. In 2017, BTS members were the most
commented upon celebrities on Twitter. To that number, we can also add
the individual accounts of each of the group’s members, which in some
cases have more than 6 million followers. BTS members are also fashion
influencers on the web (on Twitter, #KimDaily is run by RM and focuses
on streetwear; Vogue US praised the account for its unique take on style).
The boy band is even the subject of a webtoon8 called On: Be the Shield,
which tells the story of seven young men who are tasked with saving the
world, much like Marvel’s Avengers.
The engagement of BTS fans, who go by the acronym ARMY (for
“Adorable Representative MC of Youth”), plays a key role not just in the
group’s commercial success, including sales of physical CDs, with many
6
https://www.youtube.com/user/BANGTANT
7
https://www.youtube.com/user/ibighit
8
The name given to webcomics or manhwa published online in South Korea.
xii Preface: BTS, Riding the Hallyu Crest
of the group’s albums being marketed as collectors’ items,9 but also at

concerts, where they sing along to lyrics they know by heart while wear-
ing t-shirts of the band and wielding the “ARMY bombs,” or light sticks,
that have become ubiquitous at BTS shows. Outside of the arena, BTS
enthusiasts create fan chants10 in Korean, Wave banners, engage in flash
mobs, and perform covers. In addition, fans lobby radio stations to play
the group’s music; they are moreover at the source of various artistic col-
laborations, promoting commercial activities and distributing original
content, including fan fiction, created on fan sites (Amino, Allkpop, and
Bangtan Base). While it is true that musicians and bands have in the past
given rise to similar cultural obsessions, the fans behind Beatlemania or
Jacksonmania simply did not have the same digital tools at their disposal.
Thanks to today’s social networks, young people across the world can
connect to their idols with unprecedented speed, which gives them a
hitherto unknown power to help disseminate musical acts and shape
global success.
This global success is tied to the messages contained in BTS songs,
which are ones of self-love and the promotion of a peaceful relationship
with others and with society more broadly. By and large, K-pop strives to
be positive and modest, thus eschewing any references to politics, sex,
alcohol, or drugs, as well as any criticisms of society or the government.
BTS songs specifically focus on self-acceptance, which explains their suc-
cess among young people. Their songs seek to comfort fans when the
latter experience trouble, anxiety, and various forms of vulnerability.11
“Forget about the fear in your eyes––break it up! Break the glass ceiling
that cages you,” the group sings in “Not Today,” a song dedicated to all
minorities. Similarly, the key message in “Run” is that you should live life
fully and not be afraid of falling––or of picking yourself back up again. It
is therefore unsurprising that the speech given by BTS at the United
Nations was chock-full of affirmations urging young people to express
their individuality, to love themselves, and to share what they feel and
9
Several versions of the same album are often released in a box set, along with numerous goodies
such as posters and cards signed by the singers.
10
Some of these can be seen on the K-pop channel Mnet.
11
These are issues that are particularly relevant to South Korean society, where social pressure leads
to isolation for many, and where the suicide rate is the highest among OECD countries.
Preface: BTS, Riding the Hallyu Crest xiii
think. “I have many faults and I have many fears, but I am going to
embrace myself as hard as I can, and I’m starting to love myself, little by
little.”12 After their win at the Billboard Music Awards in May 2018, the
group spoke in almost evangelical tones: “This award belongs to all the
people by the millions who shine their light and love on us and has made
BTS so proud. Please remember what we say: love yourself!” While the
symbol of the rainbow is generally used to defend a host of political
causes, for BTS it primarily serves to promote the idea of love. Singer V
thus invented the expression “I purple you” to mean “I will love you for-
ever,” since purple is the last color in the rainbow; this expression has now
trickled down into use by young people in South Korea. This is a far cry
from the critical messages disseminated by youth Western counterculture
in the 1960s. Indeed, they do not follow in the footsteps of the countless
pop culture artists that have used their lyrics to speak for their generation
and criticize the culture at large, including such topics as American impe-
rialism, the Vietnam War, British colonialism, capitalism and the con-
sumer society, academic indoctrination, racism, apartheid, and multiple
forms of inequality. When BTS takes a position, it is to denounce school
harassment and accompany young people in their adolescent
transformations (as through the albums of the “school trilogy”—2 Cool 4
Skool (2013), O! RUL8, 2? (2013), and Skool Luv Affair (2014)), or advo-
cate for a midler post-pandemic world (Life Goes On, 2020).
The power of this message with BTS fans stems at least partially from
its embodiment: like all boy bands, these seven young men present a
varied palette of talents and personalities. Different BTS members fulfill
different roles: the life of the party, the soulful and sad one, the dancer,
the rapper, the singer, and so on. For instance, Jimin studied modern
dance and was the valedictorian of his class at Busan Arts College; he was
recruited during a private audition. As for Jin, he was a film student and
tried out as an actor before becoming a singer. Before joining BTS, RM
was already performing as an underground rapper named “Runch Randa”
and had several tracks to his name. Suga was also an underground rapper
in Daegu, going by the name “Gloss.” Finally, J-Hope was part of a street
dance troop called “Neuron,” thanks to which he had already won several
12
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZhJ-LAQ6e_Y
xiv Preface: BTS, Riding the Hallyu Crest
festival prizes in Gwangju before entering the Gwangju Dance Academy.

As is the case for all K-pop groups, the members of BTS were scouted at
a very young age and trained relentlessly for years to become performers
with both singing and dancing skills. All of this work culminates in pre-
cise vocal performances and spectacular visual shows that play an impor-
tant role in K-pop, whether it is concerts or television appearances (note
that in South Korea, musical appearances on television are live, and do
not use any lip-syncing).
Due to its international success, BTS is a source of national pride. In
October 2018, BTS received the medal of the prestigious Hwagwan
Order of Cultural Merit from the acting Minister of Culture, Do Jong-
hwan. Prime Minister Lee Nak-yeon justified the choice to confer this
honor on its youngest recipients ever by referring to “their efforts at
spreading South Korean culture and language throughout the world”
(Herman 2018). According to the Korean Popular Culture and Arts
Awards, BTS won this award for being “a global musician who has set a
new milestone in the development of Hallyu. They have lifted the status
of K-pop by becoming the first Korean artists to rank No. 1 on the
Billboard 200 chart with two of their albums” (Koreaboo 2018). The
band’s members were also ranked among the 25 most influential people
on the internet by Time magazine, which had BTS on its cover in October
2018 with the title “Next Generation Leaders” (Bruner, 2018). This
Korean influence is recognized throughout the world: in France, for
example, BTS was used by the publisher Hatier in the 2019 Première
d’Histoire et de Géopolitique (high school junior textbook for history and
geopolitics) to illustrate the issue of soft power. In 2020, moreover, the
IPO of their production company, Big Hit Entertainment (now HYBE),
was boosted by their phenomenal success, bringing the full extent of
South Korean soft power to the fore. Indeed, South Korea’s ambitions
seem limitless: in 2021, HYBE bought Ithaca Holdings, which manages
the rights to Ariana Grande, Justin Bieber, and Kanye West, among other
Western pop and rap stars, to accelerate its penetration of the global market.
BTS is therefore not an isolated phenomenon. Before them, there was
Rain,* BoA,* Se7en,* Girls’ Generation,* Big Bang,* 2NE1,* and count-
less other groups on the global music scene. K-pop is not just a fluke: it
is a tidal wave that exemplifies the mutations of global pop culture 2.0.
Preface: BTS, Riding the Hallyu Crest xv
Its economics is based on the idea of a participatory public, while its pro-
duction incorporates the newest technological innovations. K-pop has
developed an inclusive approach that multiples and hybridizes genres,
including comics, television shows, and video games. K-pop is more con-
cerned with being “cool” and well-liked––image is everything, after all––
than with being subversive or countercultural.
The success of K-pop was boosted by the pandemic, and this music
even took the lead in the “feel-good music” range. Its influence, as mea-
sured by the popularity of its online concerts, has tremendously grown:
for instance, KCON:TACT 2020, a week-long online concert organized
in June 2020, attracted over 4 million viewers. UNESCO even suggests
that K-pop has helped young people to cope with the “corona blues,” an
effect never observed for a crisis at this global scale (Jin 2021).
K-pop itself is only the tip of the Korean iceberg: there is a vast ensem-
ble of South Korean products that are popular abroad, including
K-dramas whose actors have become famous around the world (like Bae
Yong-Jun, the star of the television show Winter Sonata,* or Lee Min-ho,
one of the main actors in the series Boys over Flowers*). In order to grasp
the extent of this phenomenon, let us just recall that in 2004, the Japanese
prime minister at the time, Junichiro Koizumi said that “Bae Yong-joon
is more popular than I am in Japan” (Lee 2011). Shinzo Abe, the Japanese
prime minister from September 2006 to September 2007, likewise
declared that he was a fan of the Korean show. As for Lee Min-ho, in a
2014 online poll in a Chinese tabloid, he was awarded the title of “Asian
male god” (HIcap 2014), receiving more than 10 million votes; the same
year, he became the first South Korean celebrity to have his wax figure at
Madame Tussauds (Ji-Young 2014). He was also the guest of honor at the
third conference of South Korea’s Presidential Committee for Cultural
Enrichment in 2014, where he was invited to represent the entertain-
ment industry and contribute to discussions on how to further expand
the reach of Korean culture abroad. Last but not least, the famous Korean
actor Park Seo Joon (starring in 8 movies, including Parasite*, and 14 TV
shows among the most globally successful) will perform in the next
Marvel movie that should be released in November 2022 in the
United States.
xvi Preface: BTS, Riding the Hallyu Crest
There are many indicators that K-pop music, K-dramas, K-films, man-
hwa, webtoons, and, to a lesser extent, Korean video games now play an
important role in global cultural flows, in particular finding a place in the
cultural repertoires of young people around the globe.
What is known as Hallyu encompasses highly diverse products whose
sole point in common, to a layperson, may seem to be that they were
produced in South Korea and are popular internationally. However, the
local reception of this global Korean pop culture highlights how fans
handle the globalization of this formerly peripheral culture, and what
they do with it. Indeed the whole popular Korean culture is not part of
Hallyu: as in every national pop culture, only a part of it reaches global
markets and even less a global success. With this distinction in mind, this
book is devoted to the analysis of the Korean Wave—that is, the products
elaborated by South Korean cultural industries that achieve global suc-
cess—and the conditions of its possibilities, as well as how it comes to
constitute a form of alternative pop culture globalization in the eyes of
Western audiences.
Paris, France Vincenzo Cicchelli

Sylvie Octobre
Bibliography
Bruner, Raisa. 2018. How BTS Is Taking Over the World. Time,
October 10.
Cruz, Lenika. 2020. BTS’s ‘Dynamite’ Could Upend the Music Industry.
The Atlantic, September 2.
Herman, Tamara. 2018. BTS Awarded Order of Cultural Merit by South
Korean Government. Billboard, October 25.
Hicap, Jonathan. 2014. Lee Min Ho Voted No. 1 ‘Asian male god’ in
China. Korean Observer, April 10.
Jin, Yu Yung. K-pop, a cure for the pandemic blues. The UNESCO
Courier 2021–2. https://en.unesco.org/courier/2021–2/k-pop-cure-
pandemic-blues
Preface: BTS, Riding the Hallyu Crest xvii
Ji-Young, Sohn. 2014. Lee Min Ho was Figure Goes on Display in

H.K. KoreaHerald, January 14.
Koreaboo. 2018. BTS Becomes Youngest Recipients of Order Of Cultural
Merit At 2018 Korean Popular & Arts Awards. Koreaboo, October 24.
Lee, Claire. 2011. Remembering “Winter Sonata”, the Start of Hallyu.
KoreaHerald, December 30.
Acknowledgments
The survey upon which this book is based––entitled “La globalisation de

la culture et la transformation de la réception: le cas de la Hallyu”
(“Globalization of Culture and the Transformation of Reception: The
Case of Hallyu”)––was financed by the Département des études, de la
prospective et des statistiques (DEPS) of the French Ministry of Culture
and Communication and was supported by the IdEx Université de Paris,
anr-18-idex-000.
This book is based on interviews conducted by students in Vincenzo
Cicchelli’s classes who were enrolled in the courses Sociologie de
l’adolescences et jeunesse (2019, Sociology of youth and adolescents, year
L2) and Observations qualitatives (2019/2020, Qualitative observation,
year L3) in the Faculty of Human and Social Sciences of the Université
de Paris. The interviews were faithfully transcribed; the translation strives
to respect the linguistic choices of the interviewees to the greatest extent
possible. We thank the interviewers profusely for their work.
The translation from the French manuscript was entrusted to Sarah-
Louise Raillard, whom we warmly thank for her accurate and dedi-
cated work.
xix
Contents
1 Introduction: Hallyu as an Alternative Aestheticized Global

Pop Culture 1
1 Global Pop Culture 3
1.1 The P in Global Pop Culture 4
1.2 Creating a Common Landscape 10
2 The Korean Wave: From the Margins to the Mainstream 11
2.1 Hallyu 1.0: A Regional Success Story 12
2.2 Hallyu 2.0: From East to West 14
3 A Monographic Approach to Hallyu: Production,
Circulation, and Consumption 17
3.1 Through the Lens of Hallyu: A Multiscalar Approach 17
3.2 Hallyu in France 19
3.3 Global Pop Culture and Pop Cosmopolitanism 20
3.4 Hallyu as an Aestheticized Pop Culture System 25
4 Conclusion 27
Bibliography 27
xxi
xxii Contents
2 Is Entertainment Capitalism the Ultimate Stage of

Aesthetic Capitalism? 37
1 A Critique of Aesthetic Capitalism 39
1.1 The Tenets of Aesthetic Capitalism 39
1.2 Addictive Aesthetics 42
1.3 Emotional Aesthetics 43
1.4 The Aesthetics of “Cool” 44
2 South Korean Capitalism 46
2.1 Accelerated and Internationally Oriented Economic
Modernization 46
2.2 The Jurassic Park Syndrome 48
2.3 State Capitalism 50
2.4 The “Cultural Package” Industry: The Example of
SM Entertainment 55
3 The Distinctive Traits of Entertainment Capitalism 57
3.1 Serialized Production 58
3.2 From the Artist to the Transmedia Idol 60
3.3 Fans as Co-producers 62
3.4 Promoting an Ideology of Well-Being 65
4 Conclusion 66
Bibliography 67
3 An Alternative Globalization of Pop Culture 75

1 The Global Pop-Cultural Arena 76
1.1 The Domination of the Big Three League 76
1.2 Toward a New Multipolar Cultural Order 80
2 The Dominance of the United States 82
2.1 The Pillars of US Pop Culture 83
2.2 Signs of Weakening 88
3 Developing an Alternative 91
3.1 The American Lesson 91
3.2 Three Lessons from Japan 92
3.3 Global Pop Culture, South Korean Style 96
4 Conclusion 104
Bibliography105
Contents xxiii
4 From Soft Power to “Sweet Power”111

1 Cultural Diplomacy and Cultural Industries 112
1.1 Three Models of Cultural Diplomacy 113
1.2 “Cool Japan” 118
1.3 Imperialism and Cultural Resistance 120
2 South Korea as a Global Brand 123
2.1 Playing on the International Stage 124
2.2 The Segyehwa Strategy 125
2.3 Telling the Story of Resilience, Modernity, and
Harmony127
3 South Korean Sweet Power 134
3.1 The Sweet Image of an In-Between Nation 134
3.2 Sweet Power and Its Impact on Tourism 137
3.3 The Limits of Sweet Power in Terms of Regional
Leadership138
4 Conclusion 141
Bibliography142
5 The Theory of Cosmopolitan Elective Affinities149

1 The Hallyu Appeal in the Global Pop Landscape 150
1.1 The Appeal of the Familiar and the Exotic 151
1.2 The Poverty of Culturalism 154
2 The Work of the Cosmopolitan Amateur 158
2.1 Understanding Cosmopolitan Reception 159
2.2 Strange Familiarity and Reassuring Difference 162
3 Unknown and Mysterious South Korea 165
3.1 Historically Tenuous Ties with France 166
3.2 Recent Cultural Presence 168
3.3 An All-French Form of Cultural Openness 170
4 The Japanese Bridge 171
4.1 The Japanese Wave in France 172
4.2 A Cultural and Aesthetic Fault Line 175
4.3 Pan-Asian Cultural Contagion 177
5 Portrait of the Young Hallyu Fan 179
6 Conclusion 181
Bibliography182
xxiv Contents
6 From One Wave to the Next: Aesthetics and

Digital Intimacy191
1 Giving Dominant Cultures the Cold Shoulder 192
1.1 A Desire for Something New 192
1.2 American Pop Culture on Trial 194
1.3 In Search of a New Form of Audience Reception 198
1.4 Toward a Cosmopolitan World 201
2 Growing Up with Manga and Anime 203
2.1 The Taste for “Japanness” 203
2.2 The Adolescent Mainstream 205
2.3 From Japan to South Korea 207
3 The Irresistible Aesthetic Canon of South Korea 208
3.1 High-Quality Difference 209
3.2 An Appreciation for Hybridity 211
3.3 A Celebration of Beauty 214
3.4 Perfection Through Asceticism 216
3.5 Beautiful and Virtuous 219
4 Resources for Digital Intimacy 220
4.1 Cultural Mobilization 220
4.2 Proximity Effects with the Idols223
5 Conclusion 225
Bibliography226
7 Looking in the Korean Mirror: Enchantment and

Disenchantment with Elsewhere229
1 Hallyu and South Korean Culture 231
1.1 The Mirror 231
1.2 The Façade 233
2 The Appeal of South Korean Society 235
2.1 The Siren Call of Tomorrow’s Technology 236
2.2 The Confucian Tradition and Respect for Others 238
2.3 Tempered Masculinity 241
2.4 Romance Regained 243
3 Behind the Scenes 246
3.1 The Tyranny of Appearances 246
3.2 Emotional Repression 249
Contents xxv
3.3 Male Dominance and Heteronormativity 251

3.4 Fierce Competition 255
3.5 Of People and Pigeonholes 257
3.6 An Exclusionary Society 258
4 Conclusion 263
Bibliography264
8 Using Hallyu to Stand Out267

1 Growing Up with the Korean Wave 269
1.1 Hallyu and Adolescent Uniqueness 269
1.2 Hallyu and Adolescent Turmoil 271
1.3 Hallyu and Adolescent Stigma 274
2 Eschewing the Mainstream 278
2.1 Asserting Oneself at the Risk of Exclusion 278
2.2 Seeking Support 281
3 Hallyu as Cosmopolitan Empowerment 283
3.1 Empowerment Through Openness 284
3.2 Empowerment Through Reaffiliation 285
3.3 Empowerment Through Autodidactism 288
3.4 Empowerment Through Trend-Setting 291
4 Shaping the Future with Hallyu293
4.1 The Color of Dreams 293
4.2 Betting on Social Mobility 296
4.3 Hallyu as a Supplemental Resource 299
4.4 Salvaging Skills 301
5 Conclusion 303
Bibliography304
9 General Conclusion: Why Does the Global Success of

Hallyu Matter?307
1 The Two-Fold Nature of Hallyu307
2 In Defense of Pop Cosmopolitanism 309
2.1 Rethinking Taste in a Global World 310
2.2 Rethinking Culture in a Global World 312
xxvi Contents
3 A New Cultural Hegemony or Multipolar Globalization? 314

4 Hallyu Beyond Pop Culture 316
Bibliography318
Appendix: Presentation of the Interviewees321

Glossary: List of South Korean Cultural Products
Mentioned in the Book331
Index345
About the Authors
Vincenzo Cicchelli is an associate professor at Université de Paris and

research fellow at Centre Population et Développement (UMR 196,
Université de Paris/Institut de Recherche pour le Développement). He is
the former General Secretary of the European Sociological Association
(ESA); the former founder of the ESA research network “Global,
Transnational and Cosmopolitan Sociology”; and the former director of
the multidisciplinary program “Sociétés Plurielles” (Université Paris
Sorbonne Paris Cité). He is the Director of International Relations at the
Global Research Institute of Paris, Université de Paris. At Brill, he is the
Editor-in-Chief (with Sylvie Octobre) of the “Global Youth Studies”
suite: http://www2.brill.com/gys. He is the author of many books and
articles, of which the latest are as follows: (with Sylvie Mesure, eds)
Cosmopolitanism in Hard Times (2020); (with Sylvie Octobre and Viviane
Riegel, eds.) Aesthetic Cosmopolitanism and Global Culture (2019); (with
Sylvie Octobre) Aesthetico-Cultural Cosmopolitanism and French Youth:
The Taste of the World (Palgrave 2018); Plural and Shared: The Sociology of
a Cosmopolitan World (hardcover edition 2018; paperback edition 2020).
Sylvie Octobre is a researcher at Département des études, de la prospec-

tive et des statistiques, French Ministry of Culture, and research fellow at
Centre Max Weber (UMR 5283, Université Lumière Lyon 2, ENS de
Lyon, and CNRS). At Brill, she is the Editor-in-Chief (with Vincenzo
xxvii
xxviii About the Authors
Cicchelli) of the “Global Youth Studies” suite: http://www2.brill.com/

gys. She is the author of many articles and books, of which the latest are:
Youth Technoculture. From Aesthetics to Politics (2020); (with Vincenzo
Cicchelli and Viviane Riegel, eds.) Aesthetic Cosmopolitanism and Global
Culture (2019); ¿Qiéne teme a las culturas juveniles? Las culturas juveniles
en la era digital (Oceano Traverso 2019); (with Frédérique Patureau, eds.)
Normes de genre dans les institutions culturelles (Presses de Sciences Po
2018); (with Vincenzo Cicchelli) Aesthetico-Cultural Cosmopolitanism
and French Youth: The Taste of the World (Palgrave 2018); and Les techno-
cultures juvéniles (L’Harmattan 2018).
1
Introduction: Hallyu as an Alternative
Aestheticized Global Pop Culture
At a pace similar to South Korea’s rapid and dazzling modernization—

emblematic of what has been called “compressed modernity” (Kyung-
Sup 1999, 2010)—the Korean Wave has conquered the world in just 30
years. Before the rise of Hallyu, American hegemony over pop culture was
virtually unchallenged, even if certain countries could claim success in
specific realms (British pop, Franco-Belgian bandes dessinées, Japanese
animation and manga, Mexican and Brazilian telenovelas, Bollywood
and Nollywood films, for instance). For the first time since its inception,
the cultural industry of the United States has a formidable competitor:
one that offers a wide variety of cultural products and has already con-
quered Asian markets, enjoying such expansion that it can be seen as a
new form of global pop culture, intended here as a planetary cultural
mosaic made of images and contents produced and distributed by global
cultural industries, and consumed and appropriated by local consumers.
To avoid any misunderstanding, in this volume, Hallyu strictly refers
to the global popularity of South Korea’s cultural economy exporting pop
culture (id est entertainment, music, TV dramas, and movies): (a) inde-
pendently from how observers consider the Korean cultural system as a
whole, with its own specificity and history and from how Korean life and
© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 1

V. Cicchelli, S. Octobre, The Sociology of Hallyu Pop Culture,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-84296-3_1
2 V. Cicchelli and S. Octobre
culture are seen, lived, and performed by Korean people itself; (b) linked
to the process of aestheticization and branding of cultural artifacts mar-
keted by Korean cultural industries and the artistic choice made by
Korean artists and producers; and (c) as the result of the public policies
promotion that works to maximize the overlapping success of its various
products at a global scale and to export a certain image of Korea (Lie
2012; Choi 2013).
One of the reasons that the Korean Wave has attracted a significant
amount of attention in the academic realm is that South Korean cultural
production seemed to become a competitive player on the global stage
almost overnight. Research on Hallyu in fact resembles the Korean Wave
itself; it is abundant, diverse, international, multilingual, and interdisci-
plinary. As of February 2020, more than 100 articles on the subject were
published on Sage, 276 on JSTOR, and approximately 1600 on Academia.
edu (MacDonald 2020). Since its start about 20 years ago, the field of
Hallyu studies—which encompasses a large number of scholars and
works from a wide variety of backgrounds and disciplines (Jin and Yoon
2014)1—has helped to foster debate on the globalization of culture, the
transformations of capitalism, the geopolitical issues of a multipolar
world, the pervasiveness of technoculture, and the cultural participation
of amateurs from the greater public. Hallyu studies have innovated and
created their own tools to understand the dynamics of global diffusion
and consumption of cultural products, drawing upon its predecessors in
the fields of global, cultural, pop culture, media, communications, post-
colonial, and gender studies.
Building on certain elements of this vast body of research, we shall
argue that while global pop culture was necessary for its emergence, the
Korean Wave has influenced the former enough to become a viable alter-
native imbued with a cosmopolitan aesthetic that is particularly appeal-
ing to educated, middle-class city dwellers (Kidd 2014; Cicchelli et al.
2019); we shall use the expression “alternative aestheticized global pop
culture” to refer to this new phenomenon.
1
There is even an international academic association devoted to promoting Hallyu studies: The
World Association for Hallyu Studies (https://www.iwahs.org).
1 Introduction: Hallyu as an Alternative Aestheticized… 3
In order to conduct our analysis, we shall consider Hallyu as a “cultural

package” (Hong 2014) rather than focus on any one specific product, as
many publications have previously done. In this package, several concen-
tric circles can be distinguished, according to their network ties and their
international popularity: K-pop and K-dramas are the “essential content”
at the heart of the phenomenon, while a second circle includes “semi-
essential content” such as films and video games. The products belonging
to the two first circles mostly circulate thanks to digitalization. In the
third circle, we find non-digital “para-Hallyu services and products” such
as food, cosmetics, fashion, tourism, and language (Choi 2015a).
Focusing on the products most frequently consumed by young fans in
France (i.e., K-pop and K-drama), our study will primarily deal with the
first circle of Hallyu products and will touch upon the second and third
in less detail. In our considerations, we do not analyze Hallyu as the mir-
ror of Korean history and culture—even though we cannot ignore that
the latter provides the former with patterns, moral codes, and various
sources of inspirations—but as the artifact of Korean cultural industries
that create and recreate a new aestheticized and attractive imaginary of
South Korea for audiences all around the world, even in very distant
places with few (or no) historical links with South Korea.
1 Global Pop Culture

While this volume does not adopt the triumphalist tone of Euny
Hong (2014), it does nonetheless take seriously the rise of the Korean
Wave as one of the major cultural phenomena of the twenty-first century.
Hallyu has allowed for a large-scale renewal of pop culture analysis in
terms of how the latter helps to create shared principles, ideals, norms,
and values, as well as shared cultural models and imaginaries (Chua and
Hong 2008; Kim 2013; Kuwahara 2014; Kim and Choe 2014; Jin and
Kwak 2018).
1.1 The P in Global Pop Culture
In order to describe the contribution of Hallyu to global pop culture, we

must first outline the five major traits of the latter. While these traits are
rooted in American pop culture, they can be considered as an ideal type
of how pop culture functions nowadays at the global level. In other
words, local pop cultures engage with the six distinctive elements dis-
cussed below to gain a global audience. As the birthplace of pop culture,
the United States has also long represented its most widespread, diverse,
and hegemonic form before being challenged by new powerful Asian
players (such as Japan, India, South Korea, and more recently China).
First of all, since its genesis as an artistic movement—christened as
such by Hubert Artus (2017) on the occasion of “This Is Tomorrow”
exposition, in August 1956, at the Whitechapel Art Gallery in London—
global pop culture has brought together two elements that were other-
wise distinct: art for art’s sake (characterized by a lack of instrumental
purpose) and consumerism (which is linked to highly streamlined com-
mercial reproducibility). “One year before his success at ‘This is
Tomorrow,’ Richard Hamilton (1922–2011) had already defined the
main traits of pop art. This was art that was popular, mass-produced,
transitional, long-lasting, low-cost, young, spiritual, sexy, clever, glam-
our, and big business” (Artus 2017: 50–1).2 From the beginning, pop art
entertained close ties with capitalism, as shown by the example of Andy
Warhol’s Factory, while still proclaiming a strong artistic dimension that
incorporated elements of underground and street art (think of Jean-
Michel Basquiat, for instance). The pop movement later reached music
and film, all the while advocating the primacy of visual media in all
aspects of production, including music thanks to the advent of video
clips, dedicated television stations (MTV at the fore), and YouTube (Prins
and Zameczkowski 2019). In the pop movement, the artist’s image is a
key to how works are received and interpreted, to the extent that the
2
Of course, pop culture has even older roots in European history (serial novels, operetta, vaudeville,
and boulevard theater are just some examples). As we know it today, however, pop culture traces its
origins back to American jazz in the 1920s for music, the emergence of comic strips for the graphic
art form, the rise of detective and noir novels for literature, and B movies for cinema and is tied to
the rise of cultural industries and mass media that occurred in the United States.
artist’s life is part of their work. The staging of an artist’s life—a sophisti-
cated form of storytelling—has become a significant phenomenon,
becoming even more essential at the beginning of the twenty-first cen-
tury thanks to the rise of digital tools and social networks. In addition,
the linkages between art and industry have helped to ensure the standard-
ization of products. In the music sector, for instance, whether we are
referring to the limited recording time of 45 rpm records or the con-
straints of radio broadcasting, production has always followed industry
standards while still attempting to attract the greatest number of listeners
thanks to easily recognizable “hooks” and refrains.
Second, global pop culture justifies its “popular” epithet every step of
the way, from a work’s conception to its distribution and reception. In
fact, the term pop culture alludes to three distinct registers. On one
hand, the connotation of the adjective “popular” contained within “pop”
emphasizes the fact that pop culture is construed as an alternative to
high-brow culture (associated with universities, elites, legitimacy, and
snobbery). On the other hand, “pop” makes us think of the expression
“to pop up”—in other words, it signifies events and works that emerge on
the streets and on the fringes of the established art world. Finally, the
popularity of reception is implied, given that since its inception, pop
culture has unabashedly sought to attract the largest number of people
(see, for instance, the erstwhile success of “pulp magazines,” where the
adjective “pulp” refers to the low quality of the paper on which the for-
mer were printed).
If we consider all of these associations when examining global pop
culture, it makes sense that it would be strongly rooted in technologies of
mass publication and diffusion, of which social networks are of course
only the most recent and powerful example. This characteristic has sim-
ply become more pronounced over time, as contemporary pop culture
has, thanks to the internet, gradually freed itself from the strictures of
television and radio. It has slowly converged with geek culture, itself a
product of Japanese video game culture. While video games—which first
found immense success in Asian countries, Japan first, followed by China,
South Korea, Hong Kong, Singapore, and Taiwan—were not present at
the genesis of pop culture, their influence on mass culture has become
indisputable during the last three decades. Significant convergence has
occurred between the various genres and aesthetic languages of pop cul-
ture; today’s video games are like real movies, with highly sophisticated
scripts, graphics, and soundtracks that often include famous actors (in
Beyond: Two Souls, Ellen Page and Willem Dafoe play the main charac-
ters, for instance). The aesthetics of video games has in turn heavily influ-
enced other audiovisual products, such as The Matrix Trilogy (1999, 2003).
Global pop culture has also given rise to vast fan communities and,
more broadly, participatory publics. Both types of groups have grown
exponentially, thanks to the advent of networks and digital tools, as well
as through convergence with geek and video game culture. Via the mas-
sification of distribution technologies and the emergence of participatory
tools, contemporary pop culture has become an ideal vantage point from
which to examine “a top-down corporate-driven process and a bottom-
up consumer-driven process” (Jenkins 2006: 18). It has flourished in
part, thanks to the shift from a world of official media to one of “spread-
able media” (Jenkins et al. 2013), where consumers and amateurs interact
with cultural industries and participate in the creation of economic and
cultural value.
Third, global pop culture is aesthetically inclusive. It seeks coexistence
and hybridization between the products of dominant aesthetic models
(in the second half of the twentieth century, these were mostly American
and European) and local products (Barbero 1993; Dorfman 1984 [1972];
Martinez 1998; Craig 2000; Chua and Iwabuchi 2008); the resulting
innovations of which are then reintegrated into mainstream production
circuits. This was the case with techno, which was invented in West
Germany under American influences (with the famous group Kraftwerk)
and first became popular in Europe before flourishing in Chicago.
Bringing together musicians, producers, and club kids (Daft Punk,
Laurent Garnier, Air, and other emblems of the “French Touch”), electro
quickly distanced itself from its American and British roots, before being
welcomed back into the fold via a number of collaborations with main-
stream artists such as Madonna (Artus 2017). A similar thing occurred
with Cantonese kung-fu movies, which combined Western values, narra-
tives, and aesthetic preferences with their Chinese counterparts and thus
helped to revitalize the flagging film industry in Hong Kong (Ang 1990).
These films later served as an inspiration for American productions: for
instance, Hong Kong director John Woo directed Mission impossible 2

(2000) and Quentin Tarantino paid homage to this style of film making
in Kill Bill (2003).
Fourth, this capacity for inclusion is itself linked to another trait: a
tendency toward parody, allusion, and self-referential. In fact, “layering
and combining are in pop culture’s very DNA” (Artus 2017: 68). There
are countless examples: the famous collage of 58 individuals (including
pop culture icons) on the cover of the Beatles’ 1967 album, Sgt. Pepper’s
Lonely Hearts Club Band (Draper 2019); the animated film Shrek (2001),3
which references no fewer than 22 other American films, and Steven
Spielberg’s 2018 film Ready Player One, which makes at least 50 different
allusions to pop culture references, including movies, television shows,
songs, and video games (IMDb 2018). In global pop culture, it is com-
mon for creators to parody, adapt, and pastiche other works (from both
high-brow and low-brow culture), especially via the medium of icons
(real people or fictional characters, sometimes even objects) by using
transmedia platforms (Cantor 2003; Ramet and Crnković 2003). This
kind of creative work presupposes a broad and eclectic culture that is
shared by both creators and consumers, as well as a knack for catching
allusions and references. Some have even argued that “the wink” is a
defining characteristic of global pop culture, which often operates at a
meta level (Yano 2013).
Fifth, by drawing inspiration from traditional stories, legends, and
tales—or by creating new ones—pop culture crafts universal myths
(Hatfield et al. 2013; Wolf 2018). From the very beginning, global pop
culture has focused on the big questions: where do we come from; how
was the world created (see 2001, A Space Odyssey); how can we avoid the
end of the world (countless disaster movies portray world-saving heroes);
how do we deal with free will and the crushing responsibility that comes
with power (“With great power comes great responsibility,” the famous
recurring phrase in the Spiderman comics) (Cronin 2015)? Pop culture is
haunted by the possibility of other worlds, including cosmopolitan galac-
tic utopias (Star Wars, The Foundation Cycle) and a post-human landscape
3
For a visual comparison of images of the original and how it is parodied in Shrek, see
Engvalson 2018.
of cooperation with machines, androids, or aliens (ET, Blade Runner, the

augmented reality game Pokémon Go). It examines the wide variety of
problems that humanity constantly faces. In short, “a fundamental trait
of pop culture is that it does not shy away from the dark side of human-
ity, of the world, of the past and present—it suggests living without fatal-
ism but with hedonism” (Artus 2017: 81).
At the heart of American pop culture, the uniqueness of these myths is
their ontological optimism, an attitude that is closely linked to the his-
torical context in which this form of culture was developed (i.e., the
United States in the middle of the twentieth century, following the defeat
of Nazi-fascist and imperialist powers, with the country presenting itself
as the world’s best hope in fighting the Communist threat and promoting
faith in “good men” and their ability to triumph over adversity). Starting
in the 1940s, countless heroes and protectors, unshakeable in their faith
and infallible in their actions, became part of the mythical landscape,
such as Captain America and Superman (Lawrence and Jewett 2002;
Jewett and Lawrence 2003). In the 1960s—that is, after the golden age
of the superhero (Kaplan 2008)—as new fictional worlds were explored
and new frontiers were crossed (Star Trek, Battlestar Galactica), even the
most self-destructive urges were ultimately redirected toward the com-
mon good (The Incredible Hulk). Even the darkest of characters had their
Apollonian counterparts (Batman versus Superman, for instance). This
heroic phase of pop culture found an ideal outlet in comics and Hollywood
films portraying good and deeply honest protagonists ready to sacrifice
themselves for the greater good (two roles played by James Stewart imme-
diately come to mind: Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (1939) and It’s a
Wonderful Life (1946), both films directed by Frank Capra).
More recently, American production has led pop culture, especially in
terms of movies, to explore darker fare, as seen in Christopher Nolan’s
trilogy when Batman grapples with his uncertain status as a hero and the
blurring of the lines between Good and Evil, the ontological nihilism of
The Joker, or the unending thirst for power displayed in Game of Thrones
and House of Cards. Other sectors of pop culture have likewise delved into
antihero territory, in particular cyberpunk and post-apocalyptic Japanese
films, manga, and anime such as Akira,4 Ghost in the Shell (which strongly
inspired The Matrix),5 Tetsuo: The Iron Man,6 Gundam,7 and Fist of the
North Star.8
Nevertheless, global pop culture continues to have a relentlessly opti-
mistic undercurrent, which has recently taken the form of the hero’s
return (Wonder Woman and Black Panther) and renewed interest in sun-
nier fare (romantic comedies, love songs, musicals, etc.). In this context,
rising actors on the global scene (from Japan, India, China, and South
Korea in particular, as we will see in this volume) are creating new forms
that embrace pop culture’s lighthearted and positive underpinnings.
Six, global pop culture does not overlap with the popular culture of a
specific country, even if this country occupies a central position in the
world cultural system. Even though the United States dominated the
sphere of global pop culture, folk music—and related dances, both very
popular in that country—struggled to be exported. Some of the jurors on
American Idol, the world-known musical contest, for example, are
virtually unknown to global audiences, even though they are stars in their
own countries (such as country music singer Luke Bryan). Conversely,
what reaches global success may sometimes appear stereotyped, even cari-
catured to national audiences. The 2021 Eurovision9 contest gives an
example of this phenomenon: Barbara Pravi, the French contestant was
placed second, playing on the imagery of Edith Piaf (singing alone under
the spotlight, dressed in black and with a very emotional singing voice),
4
Akira is a Japanese cyberpunk manga series written and illustrated by Katsuhiro Otomo (1982).
The manga is also famous for spawning the seminal 1988 cyberpunk anime film adaptation of the
same name. Akira was instrumental in the popularity surge of manga outside Japan.
5
Ghost in the Shell is a Japanese cyberpunk media franchise based on the manga series of the same
name written and illustrated by Masamune Shirow (1989). Animation studio Production I.G has
produced several anime adaptations of the series: these include the 1995 film of the same name.
6
Tetsuo: The Iron Man is a 1989 Japanese cyberpunk body horror film. It was written, produced,
edited, and directed by Shinya Tsukamoto.
7
Gundam is a Japanese science-fiction anime, created by Yoshiyuki Tomino featuring giant robots,
or mecha, with the name “Gundam.” The franchise was launched in 1979.
8
Fist of the North Star is a Japanese manga series written by Buronson and illustrated by Tetsuo
Hara. The anime was first appeared in France in 1988.
9
The Eurovision Song Contest is an international song competition organized annually by the
European Broadcasting Union (EBU) which features participants representing primarily European
countries, with competing countries then casting votes for the other countries’ songs to determine
a winner.
a style far from the contemporary national production as a whole.10

Therefore, we shall here focus on South Korean cultural products that
reach global audiences with success and their reception (Chua 2004;
Choe and Russell 2012), neglecting the effect of Hallyu on its national
audiences or media, a topic investigated by other scholars (Kim 2007a).
Indeed, only a selection of national popular cultural products and art-
ists reaches the global flux and becomes part of the global pop culture. The
reasons for this selection are uncertain, and the production of culture is a
prototype economy (Cowen 2002), in the context of the global competi-
tion (Crane et al. 2002), where many conscripts will only give way to a
few chosen ones. Hallyu refers to both a space of production (South Korea)
and of reception abroad. Consequently, the expression Hallyu does not
just signify Korean pop culture, but rather the global success of various
sectors of Korean culture abroad. In other words, answering the question
“what is the K in K-Wave” (Lie 2012) is a very tricky one, and the same
applies to every kind of pop culture reaching global success, as pointed out
by many Korean scholars, first, because the Hallyu does not reflect South
Korean pop culture as a whole and, second, because its success comes
from the use of many stereotypes that foreigners have (or have built
through their consumption of cultural product) about what the “K” means.
1.2 Creating a Common Landscape
Given that many elements which help to unite the world are inherently
cultural (Lechner and Boli 2005) and that capitalism uses culture as a sort
of Trojan Horse to gain access to our everyday lives (Robertson and White
2007), pop culture—defined as the culture produced by cultural indus-
tries, distributed by networks and mass media, and consumed by global
publics (Pickering 2010; Parker 2011; Williams 2018)—is an ideal perch
from which to examine the inclusive dynamics of globalization. The latter
is a phenomenon which operates through the production and consump-
tion of cultural products whose circulation puts very distant cultures in
contact with each other (Cicchelli and Octobre 2018a).
10
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCtlN-Ff1AivzUjTNLf-_wqQ
Pop culture is omnipresent in everyday life, offering individuals around

the globe a vast panoply of choices as well as an important (and often
interlinked) inventory of cultural touchstones to reference (Shim 2006;
Ryoo 2009; Pickering 2010; Kidd 2014). As a powerful creator and
vector of myriad images of the world, which spread through capillary
action at unprecedented speed, thanks to digital and audiovisual tech-
nologies (During 1997; Song and Jang 2013; Jin and Yoon 2014; Lee and
Nornes 2014; Octobre 2020), pop culture produced the global com-
mons, which is fostered through the imagination of desirable “elsewheres”
(Appadurai 1990, 1991, 1996) and affiliation with imagined transna-
tional communities. A plethora of highly seductive images of modern life
are conveyed by pop culture, which provokes both desire and frustration
in its publics (Suarez-Orozco and Qin-Hilliard 2004; Regev 2019). To
paraphrase Raymond Williams (1958: 4), pop culture is a “whole way of
life—the common meanings.”
It is after the 1960s that pop culture was finally able to become the
most significant modality of cultural dissemination, thanks to the wide-
spread adoption of radio and television and the emergence of youth cul-
ture. Starting in the 1980s, pop culture became worthy of sociological
study (Bennett 1980). It should be noted that until the 1970s and 1980s,
pop culture was largely a Western affair. After this period, however, Asian
countries—with Japan in the lead—began to join the global landscape of
pop culture, gradually understanding not only just economic but also
symbolic stakes of exporting cultural products (Kim 2009a). Consequently,
our contemporary context is characterized by unprecedented competi-
tion between cultural products made in the West and those “made in the
East” (Kim 2009b).
2 he Korean Wave: From the Margins

T
to the Mainstream
Hallyu, the Korean Wave, is a product of global pop culture, certain traits
of which it has preserved while nonetheless offering new characteristics
linked to the context in which it was born.
2.1 Hallyu 1.0: A Regional Success Story
The Korean Wave looks like a global pop culture success story, experienc-
ing in the space of three decades a transition from contents that were
“made for Korea” in the 1990s to ones that were “made in Korea” in the
2000s, and now global products that are “made by Korea” (Jin 2012;
Prins and Zameczkowski 2019).
One may be surprised that until the middle of the 1990s, Korean
products were seen by Asian and Western audiences as largely devoid of
aesthetic interest (Shim 2006), as evidenced by this 1994 excerpt from
World Music: The Rough Guide about Korean music: “The country has
developed economically at a staggering pace, but in terms of popular
music there is nothing to match the remarkable contemporary sounds of
Indonesia, Okinawa, or Japan” (Kawakami and Fisher 1994: 12).
Similarly, the Oxford History of World Cinema published in 1996, while
seeking to provide an exhaustive overview of international cinema, did
not mention a single Korean film, though it awarded many pages to films
from China, Japan, Hong Kong, and Taiwan (Nowell-Smith 1996).
Korean cultural products were really only concerned with attracting a
local public. This lack of interest, or even ignorance, in Korean culture on
the part of the broad audience and on some critics only makes the advent
of the Korean Wave and its successful story at the global level all the more
remarkable and sheds light on the shifting of cultural flows.
Hallyu was primarily the result of coordinated government action to
emancipate the country from its colonial heritage. Starting in the 1990s,
the South Korean government thus set its sights on creating its own pop
culture industry by the end of the century, with a view to perhaps even
influencing other cultures (Hong 2014). In the last decade of the twenti-
eth century, amidst a backdrop of media liberalization in many Asian
countries (Iwabuchi 2004), and after it had improved the quality of its
products and started producing them more cheaply than its Japanese
competitors, South Korea began to export its K-dramas and films to its
neighbors, countries which were already used to receiving high-quality
exports from Hong Kong and Japan. South Korean exports first found
popularity in East Asia, with China becoming the first country where
appreciation for Korean products was recorded, a few years after the two
countries had resumed diplomatic relations (1992). K-pop and in par-
ticular dance music became increasingly popular amongst Chinese teen-
agers after it was introduced in 1997 by a radio program broadcast from
Beijing called Seoul Music Room.
The first goal was conquering the Japanese market, which was at the
time the second-largest music industry market (after the United States).
Increasingly, slick K-pop groups with diverse styles (pop, dance, R&B)
such as BoA,*11 TVXQ,* Girls’ Generation,* SHINee,* and Kara* were
gradually introduced to Japanese consumers. However, Japan was truly
won over with the advent of the television show Winter Sonata,* rebroad-
casted by the Japanese channel NHK. The series was an instant hit, trans-
forming its lead actor Bae Yong-jun into an Idol for Japanese female fans
(Lee, 2011). Tourism from Japan to South Korea began developing at
this time, with many fans of the series going to visit where it had been
shot (Korean Cultural Center, 2019).
The Korean Wave also began to wash over other countries in the region:
the K-dramas Autumn in My Heart* and Jewel in the Palace* were very
popular in Thailand, Singapore, and Hong Kong between 2002 and
2006 (Jin and Yoon, 2014). During the same period, South Korean mov-
ies met with box office success across Asia: this was the case for My Sassy
Girl,* a romantic comedy directed by Kwak Jae-yong which made 1.7
million USD at the box office in Hong Kong and 4.3 million USD in
Japan. The film was also the subject of remakes in India, China, and even
the United States (Jung-Kim 2014).
The success of this first, regional Hallyu at the end of the 1990s and the
beginning of the 2000s can be attributed to the ability of South Korean
producers to adapt the content and format of Western (and especially
American) products to the tastes and expectations of Asian publics, while
nonetheless respecting traditional Confucian values (a topic we shall dis-
cuss further) (Chua 2004; Yang 2012). Another decisive element in the
Korean Wave’s early success was the low cost of Korean production (Kim
2007a; Yang, 2007). Prior to the 2000s, South Korean television shows
11
The South Korean cultural products referred to in this book and marked with an asterisk are
presented in the glossary at the end of the book.
cost about one-quarter of the price of their Japanese counterparts and

one-tenth the price of Hong Kong-based productions (Shim 2006). The
regional success of Korean products helped to transform the country’s
image amongst its neighbors. The peninsula, which had been colonized
and dominated by several different countries, was finally viewed—per-
haps for the first time in centuries— as a modern economic powerhouse.
South Korea was seen as culturally influential, including with regard to
its former colonizers, and yet abstained from dabbling in military and
territorial expansion itself. This was the era of products “made in Korea”
that skillfully copied existing formats but were successful exports on
account of their lower cost.
2.2 Hallyu 2.0: From East to West
In the 2010s, the Korean Wave went global (Choi and Maliangkay 2015a;
Kuwahara 2014; Hong-Mercier 2013): every region of the world, even
the most remote, was hit by the “Hallyu tsunami” of K-pop (Lansky
2012). This new phase was variously called the “new Korean Wave” (Jin
2014) or “Hallyu 2.0” (Lee and Nornes 2014). We prefer the latter term,
as it more precisely describes this unprecedented phase in the globaliza-
tion of pop culture enabled by digital and network technologies, as well
as by the emergence of fan and amateur communities that are highly
engaged in participatory forms of culture. This global expansion does not
only mark vast commercial success but also highlights a number of struc-
tural shifts in how global pop culture functions. The Korean “brand” is
now something worthy of exporting—this is the idea behind “made by
Korea”—and has in fact become synonymous with quality, originality,
and success. This brand relies heavily on a competitive industrial sector
but also on an alternative vision of global pop culture (which competes
with Japanese and American dominance), on national policies support-
ing industry and culture, and on vast networks of fans that are highly
involved in promoting it throughout the world.
In order to fully grasp the global reach of the new Korean Wave, we
must first briefly outline the main characteristics of Hallyu 2.0 and what
makes it unique among other global cultural flows.
First of all, Hallyu 2.0 is an integrated and transversal pop culture phe-
nomenon. Aesthetically, the cross-cutting Korean style can be identified
in every product, as has been stated clearly by JungBong Choi and Roald
Maliangkay (2015b) when analyzing music:
Stylistically, K-pop is best described as an integrated popular culture sui

generis—an entertainment of its own class. It is a mosaic that blends story-
telling, music, group dance, body performance, and fashion show. In terms
of musical and performative conventions, it draws on hip hop, Euro
techno, grunge, pop, and rap, all the while incorporating contemporary
choreographies, acrobatics, and runway acts. Linguistically, it routinely
fuses Korean with English words, introduces neologisms and mobile
device-based jargons, and occasionally interjects Japanese and Chinese
onomatopoeia (4).
This integration is closely linked to the modes of production, as evi-

denced by the ubiquitous reference to “entertainment” in the names of
South Korean labels. In addition to functioning as a kind of wink or
meta-reference (common in pop culture more generally), the Korean
Wave’s insistence on entertainment truly refers to a panoply of intricately
linked products promoted using sophisticated marketing strategies with
a view to conquering all sectors of the entertainment market. In fact, a
vast number of diverse products were labeled as “Korean contents” at the
2020 MIPCOM, the world’s largest content market, where South Korea
was the guest of honor.12 Album and film releases are accompanied by
videos, actors become singers, manhwa characters become the protago-
nists of K-dramas, television and game shows employ pop stars as partici-
pants, and so on.
Secondly, we argue the Korean Wave is first and foremost a global pop
culture phenomenon: strictly speaking, it is not defined in terms of eth-
nic or national aesthetics (as may be the case for Chinese, Taiwanese, or
Hong Kong cinema, for instance). A few numbers to get an idea of its
scope: in 2018, there were 89 million self-proclaimed Hallyu fans in the
world. In 2018, there were 1843 Korean Wave fan clubs (focusing on
12
https://www.mipcom.com/en-gb/conferences-events/country-of-honour.html
various actors, singers, cultural elements, etc.) outside of South Korea, in

113 different countries. Although the greatest number of K-pop fans live
in Asia and Oceania (70.59 million members in 457 different fan clubs),
they are also a sizeable presence in the Americas (11.8 million members
in 712 clubs) and Europe (6.57 million members in 534 clubs). Africa
and the Middle East (230,000 members in 140 clubs) are the regions
with relatively fewer fans (Yeon-soo 2019).
Finally, this new global pop culture is characterized by an intensive and
extensive use of communications technologies and participative cultures.
Unlike the Korean Wave 1.0, which was heavily reliant on radio channels
and television stations, Hallyu 2.0 allows for the dissemination of South
Korean culture on digital devices and social networks, which are them-
selves globalized. Any analysis of the second Korean Wave must therefore
take note of transnational flows (Ono and Kwon 2013) and the specific-
ity of media environments (Jung and Shim 2014) and of how individuals
appropriate these for themselves. Korean movies, television shows, and
music all circulate on networks and platforms such as YouTube, V-Life,
Netflix, and Rakuten TV. In the past few years, streaming platforms, with
Netflix leading the charge, have begun to invest in the production of
K-dramas, which appeal to both Asian and Western audiences (e.g.,
Netflix has produced Kingdom,* Persona,* Love Alarm,* and My Holo
Love,* among others).
We have even seen new cultural forms appear, such as webtoons, and
specific commercial venues pop up, such as manhwabangs,13 and the abil-
ity to purchase pages of manhwa online. This use of the internet and
social media is accompanied by a shift in perspective, since fan communi-
ties now play a major role: “from user generated content web sites to
peer-to-peer networks, these channels play a central role in global cul-
tural circulation” (Jin 2012: 6). The Hallyu model does not use the media
just to distribute cultural products but also to coproduce consumption
experiences. This has been made easier by the fact that South Korea was
an early proponent of a “user-oriented” digital society (O’Reilly, 2007).
In fact, according to Statista (2016), in 2016 the average internet speed
13
Manhwabangs are private libraries and reading rooms devoted to manhwa. They allow patrons to
rent manhwa 24 hours a day and to read them onsite for a low cost (about 20 cents per title).
in the country was already 28.6 megabits per second and 95% of the
population had access to it. A 4G wireless network already covered 95%
of the country’s territory, with South Korea boasting the highest rate of
smartphones connected to the Internet in the world (100% among 18- to
20-year-olds).
3 Monographic Approach to Hallyu:

A
Production, Circulation, and Consumption
The Korean Wave is a unique product of global pop culture, but it has
also transformed the latter. In order to fully account for the contribution
of Korean pop culture, our analysis will look at both consumer agency
and infrastructure, examining modes of production, methods of circula-
tion, geopolitical uses, and the consumption of globalized Korean pop
cultural products. In this theoretical framework, we methodologically
separate Hallyu as a globally oriented product from Korean culture, as
our analysis does not focus on the link between the contents conveyed by
Korean industries and Korean culture but on their production, circula-
tion, and reception abroad.
3.1 hrough the Lens of Hallyu:

T
A Multiscalar Approach
In her study of Hello Kitty, the ubiquitous Japanese icon of what the
author calls “Pink Globalization”—defined as “the transnational spread
of goods and images labeled kawaii (glossed in English as ‘cute’) from
Japan to other parts of the industrial world” (Yano 2013: 6), Christine
Yano outlines a macro and a micro level of analysis. The first is based on
the global political economy of “cuteness,” which rose to the fore in the
2000s and of which Hello Kitty was one of the major drivers. The second
level is individual and pertains to everyday life. “These personal stories
etch intimacy upon the pink, global encounter. Pink Globalization thus
searches for the personal in the political as much as the political in the
personal” (Yano 2013: 9).
With an increased degree of complexity, we shall also adopt this scalar

approach combining macro- and microanalyses, also used by Henry
Jenkins and his coauthors (Jenkins et al. 2013). In this volume, we invite
the reader to see Hallyu as a South Korean variation on global pop cul-
ture, first focusing on industrial systems of production, then on the
advent of a non-hegemonic global pop culture alternative, and finally on
the close relationship between cultural industry and diplomatic strategy
embraced by “The Land of the Morning Calm.”14 These first three levels
of analysis will allow us to understand the structural conditions under-
girding the emergence of the Korean Wave. However, to fully compre-
hend Hallyu’s role as a new form of global pop culture and truly take
advantage of our monographic focus, we shall also explore the reasons
behind the public’s new appetite for Korean products, as well as their
varying uses of these cultural products. In fact, the globalization of the
Korean Wave is closely linked to its two-fold nature as the production of
cultural contents, stricto sensu, and the production of culture more
broadly. These two aspects operate independently of each other, at least
in part: the first concerns the production of goods, while the second con-
cerns a cultural phenomenon, the expression of the desires and practices
of consumers who are scattered around the globe but linked together in
participatory loops. Fans can therefore be seen as actors in the cultural
process, even if they remain outside of where cultural products are manu-
factured. Fans take on roles as cocreators (staging flash mobs, creating
covers, etc.), publicists (publicizing cultural contents), media commenta-
tors (by explaining and interpreting content with a view to creating more
fans), and distributors (sharing contents).
Our approach thus lies at the intersection between pop cultural stud-
ies—which investigate the close linkages between production, distribu-
tion, and consumption/reception but curiously tend to overlook the
globalization of culture (Grazian 2010; Storey 2012; Danesi 2015)—and
global studies, for which the globalization of culture has become a hob-
byhorse, without nonetheless ever converting pop culture into a serious
14
The Korean toponym Choson was erroneously translated by nineteenth-century missionaries as
“The Land of the Morning Calm.” Despite the initial mistake, this expression has made its way into
common usage.
subject of study (Featherstone 1990; Tomlinson 1991, 1999; Robertson

1992; Appadurai 1996; Curran and Park 2000; Crane 2002). Our
approach is also intended as a dialogue between Western and Asian
(mostly Korean and also Japanese) analysis of pop culture studies in order
to shed light both on the distinctiveness and similitude of Hallyu, on its
unique contribution to the global landscape of pop culture, and on its
inspiration from American and Japanese pop culture.
3.2 Hallyu in France
In our examination of the Korean Wave, France stands out as a prime

example. Contrary to expectations, the turning point of the global spread
of Hallyu took place in France, rather than in the United States—a mar-
ket that some K-pop groups had in vain tried to penetrate prior to the
2010s. Five K-pop groups represented by the Korean agency SM
Entertainment (TVXQ,* Girls’ Generation,* Super Junior,* f(x),* and
SHINee*) held their first concert in June 2011 at the Zénith in Paris:
6000 tickets were sold in under 15 minutes. Ultimately, more than
140,000 fans coming from all over Europe attended the concert (Oh
2011). Hundreds of young French and European fans protested their
inability to get tickets by hosting a flash dance in front of the Louvre and
posting it on social media (Cha and Kim 2011). SM Entertainment then
added two more concerts to meet the demands of fans. This popularity
was surprising, given that Asian pop was at that point only appreciated by
a happy few in France. Entertainment agencies learned their lesson in
France, however, and began to deploy the full range of possibilities offered
by social networks and digital platforms such as YouTube, Facebook,
Twitter, and TikTok (Oh and Park 2012; Jung and Shim 2014) to gain
traction and take advantage of a growing fanbase. The latter are of course
powerful tools to disseminate cultural products far and wide (by drawing
on the desire of users to share what they love), but they also encourage
consumers to discuss contents, which makes the latter more visible and
thus more likely to be appropriated by a broad range of individuals (Song
and Jang 2013). The stunning success of Psy’s “Gangnam Style,”* released
in July 2012, helped K-pop transition into the realm of global fame,
thanks to a tidal wave of one billion YouTube views in under six months,
from which France was not immune.
The extent of this craze may seem surprising if we compare it to the
niche markets that are the remnants of previous cultural “waves,” such as
the Bollywood wave that hit France at the start of the 2000s (Litaud
2013) and which was largely appreciated by young French persons of
Northern African descent, in particular from Morocco.15 The scope of the
Korean Wave is also stunning if we consider the weak migratory flows
and low levels of tourism between France and South Korea, especially
compared to other geographical regions such as Northern Africa.
3.3 Global Pop Culture and Pop Cosmopolitanism
The reason we are proposing a monographic approach to the Korean

Wave is because we believe that this will be a more heuristic method to
understand the global interest in South Korean cultural products, as it
accounts for the transnational mechanisms of pop culture as well as the
joint action of industrial infrastructures of production and distribution,
policies of international promotion, and technologies of global diffusion
and transnational consumption (Cicchelli and Octobre 2021). While we
will not engage with the analysis of the aesthetics of the Korean products
in this volume,16 we leave the fans the care of account of their taste for
Korean culture.
Our monograph-based approach devotes Chaps. 2, 3, and 4 to analyze
the international scientific literature (to which South Korean researchers
have notoriously contributed) as well as Korean official reports, with a
view to investigating what David Wright (2015) calls “the infrastructure
of tasting,” that is, the ecosystem created by producers, intermediaries,
institutions, technologies, and the state. This analysis will allow us to
understand how Korean products go beyond the borders of their country
of origin and become accessible to international publics and specifically
French publics in our case.
15
Every year, Morocco hosts the Marrakech International Film Festival (Basini 2012).
16
This analysis exceeds the scope of this book and will require another approach that we intend to
develop in a forthcoming research.
To do so, we will examine the specific modes of capitalist production

that govern Hallyu (Chap. 2). Associated with the production of aesthetic
goods, capitalism has become aesthetic or artistic (Boltanski and Chiapello
2006; Böhme 2017; Pharo 2018) and has marketed difference
(Emontspool and Woodward 2018) as a strategy to maintain elevated
demand. The desire of consuming the others (a sort of neo-exoticism
stripped of its colonial and elitist underpinnings) has become a key driver
of global growth. This desire is cleverly stoked by permanent emotional
stimulation (Illouz 2019), which transforms consumption into an experi-
ence of self-construction. South Korean cultural industries have devel-
oped a highly specific model of production—which we term
“entertainment capitalism”—that cuts across various cultural spheres and
competitive markets and is based on a close partnership between the state
and private enterprise. This sui generis variety of aesthetic capitalism relies
on highly serialized production according to international norms and
presents a new figure of the artist (the Idol ) which breeds great attach-
ment amongst fans (Lie and Oh 2014; Kang 2015; Choi 2015b). It also
exploits digital publics to ensure success and promote an ideology of well-
being through its products, which is even more attractive given that con-
sumers are invited to become cocreators of this ideology.
While pop culture was born under the aegis of American culture, the
Korean Wave offers a litmus test to identify the defining characteristics of
an alternative globalization of pop culture (Chap. 3) in terms of counter-
flows (Shim 2006; Yang 2007; Chua and Iwabuchi 2008) stemming from
a non-hegemonic player. In this vein, it displays the advent of a multipo-
lar cultural order. Historically, cultural products produced in subaltern
countries were subject to exoticism, while the cultural products of domi-
nant world powers were consumed around the globe as symbols of
modernity. Given that South Korea is a modern and highly attractive—
but not dominant—country, this dichotomy no longer applies. While
Korea is not the first example of the “Asian miracle” in the cultural sphere
(Iwabuchi 2004), the country has now become the most credible alterna-
tive to its regional superpower Japan, as well as the global superpower of
the United States, in terms of providing a coherent vision of the world
that stems from its cultural products as crafted, aestheticized, and mar-
keted by Korean cultural industries. Today, the Korean Wave has
Another random document with
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hengissä, näyttipä vähitellen toipuvankin, vaikka kuume toisinaan
ottikin lujalle. Silloin aina vaivasi sairasta muisto, että hänen oli
täytynyt heittää päämääränsä, että Kohtalon käsi oli tullut väliin ja
katkaissut tien, — se se kovimmin koski.
Sisar meni nuoren sankarin luo, pani vilpoisen kääreen hänen

otsalleen ja istahti viereen kuin pahoja unikuvia torjuakseen.
— Mikä sinulta jäi, sen toiset tekivät, koko Suomi on vapaa. Eivät
ole turhaan taistelleet Pohjanmaan pojat, Härmän, Lapuan ja
Kauhavan sankarit eivät ole hukkaan vertansa vuodattaneet —
ajatteli Alina riemuisin mielin.
*****
Potilas oli jo päässyt rauhalliseen uneen ja sisar nousi avatakseen

akkunan, sillä huoneessa oli painostavan kuuma.
Suloinen kevätilma virtasi huoneeseen ja alkava lintujen liverrys

metsässä, todisti aamupuolen jo olevan käsissä.
Ovinurkasta kuului valitusta. Mies, jonka veren viheriäbasilli oli

myrkyttänyt, oli vilunarka ja pelkäsi ikkunasta tulevaa vetoa.
Hoitajatar sulki sen ja meni hänen luokseen.
— Onko teidän taas paha olla?
— On, neiti, minun on aina vähän vilu ja kun minä vaan näenkin,
että ikkunaa avataan, niin minua paleltaa heti.
— Minä tiedän sen, mutta kun täällä on niin monta yhdessä, tulee
niin kuuma, että pakostakin täytyy vaihtaa ilmaa.
— Niin täytyy, vaihtaa sitä täytyy, — äänteli ukko. Hänen
vihertävänkelmeät kasvonsa osoittivat lapsenomaista
myöntyväisyyttä ja hänen suuret silmänsä loistivat syvistä
kuopistaan sisarelle kuin sanoen: Tee sinä vaan, niinkuin tahdot,
hyvin sinä kaikki teet.
Ja sisar kääri peitettä tiiviimmästi ympärille ja ukko veti huulensa

hymyyn, huulet, jotka ohuina kuin paperi peittivät kellervän
hammasrivin.
Vielä siveli hieno käsi parroittunutta poskea ja kevein askelin

poistui valkopukuinen olento viimeiselle vuoteelle suuren huoneen
peränurkassa.
— Eikö teitäkään nukuta?
— Ei, ei minua nukuta.
Vieno punastus levisi kummankin kasvoille. Jouko Toivonen

kohottaikse hieman: — Siellä se näkyy olevan — ja Alina ymmärsi,
että hän tarkoitti sitä matalaa jakkaraa.
Taas oli sisar tavallisella paikallaan. Nuoren jääkärin pää painui

pieluksille ja hänen kasvoiltaan saattoi lukea, että nyt oli kaikki,
niinkuin olla pitikin.
Kaikki huoneessa nukkuvat, kuuluu vaan tasainen, syvä hengitys

ja lintujen valtainen aamulaulu, joka suljettujen lasienkin lävitse
tunkeutui huoneeseen.
Muut eivät sitä kuule, he kaksi vaan valvovat.

Jouko otti hoitajattarensa käden ja sulki sen kiinteästi omaansa,
samalla kuin toinen käsi toista etsi.
Silmät silmiä hakivat, katse katseeseen uppoutui ja nuoria

sydämiä vavisutti sanomaton riemu.
— — Aika kuluu — Syvässä unessa huudahtaa joku. — Ukko

ovensuussa käännähtää, voihkasee, — sokea poika peränurkassa
kevään valosta uneksii — — mutta he kaksi ihmistä ovat toisilleen
unohtuneet, käsikkäin, silmä silmässä istuvat.
On kuin katkeaisi ajan ainainen kulku, on kuin itse ijäisyys hetkiä

lukisi ja sanattomasti keskustelee kaksi ihmistä hämärässä keväisen
yön.
— — — Sinä, sinä! — Sinua ikäni olen etsinyt, sinun silmiäsi,

käsiäsi kaivannut. — Sinulle minä kuulun, ja minulle sinä. — Niin on
ollut jo silloinkin, kun en sinua vielä tuntenutkaan, vaan salaisesti
olemassa oloasi aavistelin. — Niin on ollut ja on aina oleva! —
*****
Näin katse katseelle puhui, silmä silmälle saneli. — Sade oli

laannut. Hiljalleen valkeni keväinen aamu ja tulisessa ruskossa kylpi
jo koillinen taivaanranta. Mutta kun auringon ensi säteet viistoon
akkunoista tunkeutuivat, silloin havahtui tyttö ja nousi lähteäkseen,
mutta toinen ei hänen käsiään hellittänyt.
— Minä menen nyt. — Hyvää yötä!
— Hyvää huomenta! — vastasi toinen ja heidän kasvojaan kirkasti

keväinen hymy.
Uni oli kaukana Alinan silmistä, mutta hän makasi vuoteellaan
hiljaa kuunnellen sydämensä voimakasta sykintää. Ja tunnelmat
tulivat, nuo puhtaat, väkevät, hurmaavat. Ne syöksyivät hänen
ylitsensä, kuin leppoisat aallot, huuhdellen ihanasti hänen
olemustaan. — Ei sanaakaan ollut sanottu, mutta hän tiesi olevansa
— morsian.
XV
Menneet ovat myrskyt, tau'onneet taistelut ja sodan arvet ovat

umpeen kasvamassa. On rauha maahan palautunut, kansalle kallis
vapaus.
On kylmään pohjolaankin kesä kerennyt, sen saloille saapunut

suvinen juhannus. — Eikä muuttanut elämän kulkua kauhujen,
tuskien vuosi — minkä hävitti sota, korjasi kuolema sen aikoi elämä
uudelleen rakentaa.
Ja Pohjanmaan avarat viljavainiot taas sinisenvihreinä aaltoilevat

ja silmänkantamattomien niittyjen yllä värjyy kukkien tuoksu. Soi
ylhäällä lintujen laulu ja lehdoissa kilpaa kukkuvat käköset.
Mutta halki tasangon virtaa leveä joki, joka päivän paisteessa

hopeanhohtoisena juovana välkkyy, tehden loivia mutkailuja kautta
lakeiden rantain, missä rantaleppä joskus sen äyräällä kohottaikse,
kuin ilahuttaakseen ylhän ystävänsä yksinäistä aikaa. Ja hyväksyen
hymähtää virta, sen kuvaa kalvossaan heijastellen, mutta kiertäen
kauniin kaaren se aavojen vainioiden väliin painuu, vapautuneena,
helpoittuneena, unohtuen oman olemuksensa tyveneen rauhaan.
On yllä taivas korkea, sinivalkoinen ja sees ja etäiset ilmanrannat
siniseen hämäryyteen sulavat. Lauha, suvinen tuuli henkii yli
lakeuden, jolle pyhäinen rauha laskeutuu.
*****
Kauttaaltaan juhannuskoivujen ympäröimänä on hallavanpunainen

kaksikerroksinen talo. Köyryharjaisella katolla hulmuaa uusi
sinivalkea lippu ja kylän kansa, juhlavaattehissa, piirittää pihan. —
On poissa nyt arkiset aatokset ja huolet, jäi syrjään surut — on
rinnoissa hillitty riemu ja kasvoilla, muulloin totisilla, nyt hymyn
kirkastus.
Pois heittivät L:n kylän tyttäret täksi päiväksi surupukunsa, joita

kantaen kaiken kevättä ovat sodassa kaatuneita omaisiaan
murehtineet. — Jo vilahteli viidakoissa vilkkaat värit ja luhdin
naulassa riippuneet punahameet taas nuorten varsien verhona
hulmusivat.
Supatus ja kuiskutus käy kautta tyttöparven korean, ja harmaissa

"vormupuvuissaan" seisoskelevat miehetkin katsovat kelloaan. —
On heistäkin hidas nyt ajankulku.
Jo narahtaa ovi, astuu kuistille joku, sinne kääntyvät nyt kaikkein

katseet.
Mutta tulija olikin Kokkolan Jukka, jonka olemuksesta

hyväntahtoinen hilpeys huokui ja se ainainen suopea hymy oli taas
hänen huulilleen palautunut.
— Kohta tulevat, — hän odottaville ilmoittaa, kuistin penkille

istahtaen.
Silloin kajahtaa kuulakkaassa ilmassa kirkonkellon ääni, joka
kaikuna vierii kauvas yli lakean maan.
On vanha se kello ja tuttu sen ääni, mutta entistä heleämmin se

tänä aamuna tuntuu soivan, kuin olisi sen kova metallisydän nyt
suviseen riemuun värähtynyt.
Taas aukenee ovi ja tuvasta astuu nyt viheriässä vormussaan

jääkäri, rinnallaan morsiamensa, valkoinen sisar.
Ja ympärille kiertyy kylänkansa sulkien heidät piiriin keskellensä,

tervehtien, kättä puristaen. Niin tulvailevat onnittelut ja siunaukset
kansan hartaan.
Vaan aika rientää, pihan poikki kulkee nyt morsiuspari, kirkkotielle

kääntyy ja mukana seuraa saattueena kylän väki. — Heidän
toivonsa ja ylpeytensä oli Jouko ollut. Yhteinen oli nyt ilo, kuten
surukin ennen ja hänen onnensa oli nyt heidänkin omansa.
Mutta tien vierestä, niityn mättäältä, pyrähtää lentoon leivo,

kohoaa, kohti kuulakasta korkeutta ja ratkeaa riemuisaan lauluun.
On kuin pakahtuisi sen pieni rinta onnensa kylläisyydestä, on kuin

pusertuisi sen povesta koko luomakunnan äänetön riemastus ja ilma
helkkyy ja laulu soi kuin tulvailisi se aina taivaanrajoilta tänne,
ihmisten ilmaiseksi iloksi —. Mutta mieleen muistuu jo pesässä
odottava puoliso, jo katkeaa virsi ja nuolena syöksyy pieni laulaja
pyörryttävästä korkeudesta alas, suoraan armaansa lämpöiseen
syliin, jossa vartoo häntä lempensä runsas palkka.
Vaan tuulessa hulmuaa se valkoinen huntu, joka peittää

morsiamen tumman pään ja hänen lumivalkoisiin verhottu vartensa
näyttää niin hennolta, voimakkaan jääkärin rinnalla. — Kuin unessa
kulkee kirkkotiellä sisar Alina, niin kumma tunne hänen mielensä nyt
täyttää ja hänen on vaikeata uskoa todellisuudeksi tätä. On kuin
toiseksi muuttuneena koko maa, on kuin paennut olisi täältä
ahdistus, tuska ja pimeys, kuin tulvailisi tuhlaillen valoaan taivas ja
rakkauden ikuinen olemus ihmisten sydämmissä asustaisi.
Harmajan kivikirkon ympärillä lepattavat kahisten vanhojen

haapojen lehdet. — Avoimesta ovesta kuuluu urkujen soitto ja pieni
seurakunta hartaasti veisaa:
"Jo joutui armas aika ja suvi suloinen. Kauniisti joka

paikkaa koristaa kukkanen. Aurinko maamme puoleen
lähestyy lähemmäks, Virvoittaa luonnon kuolleen, sen tekee
eläväks."
Kesäpäivän kirkkaudesta astuvat he hämäräiseen kirkkoon, jonka

pienet ikkunaruudut vain niukasti valoa läpäsevät ja vilpoisa
kosteahko ilma vastaan hengähtää.
Voimakkaana vyöryy nyt urkulehteriltä häämarssi. Ilma värisee ja

tuntuu kuin pieni kirkko perustuksiltaan vavahtelisi.
Kuin sävelten kantamina kulkevat kautta kirkon nuoret, polvistuen

alttarin eteen, ja kotikylän kansa ympärille kuoriin kokoontuu.
Mutta kapeasta ikkunasta lähettää kirkkaat säteensä

juhannusaurinko, luoden kultaisen hohteen alttaritaulun
Kristuskuvaan ja morsiamen valkohohtoiseen pukuun.
Tavalliset vihkilukunsa lukee pappi, kehottaen heitä toinen

toistansa rakastamaan, ikäänkuin rakkaus käskyä kaipaisi, eli
kenenkään kehoitusta. —
Mutta Alina ei kuule, hän vaan näkee kirkastusvuorella seisovan

Kristuksen rakkautta säteilevät kasvot ja kädet, jotka heitä kohti kuin
siunaten ojentuvat. On tumma yö hänen ympärillään ja pimeys
peittää kukkulan juuren, mutta taivaasta tulvailee valo, joka
sädekehänä ympäröi pyhän pään ja häikäisevänä hohtaa hänen
päällään valkea viitta.
Toimitus on päätetty, urut alkavat jälleen soida. — Jouko ottaa

kädestä omaansa ja katsoo häntä kyyneleistä kosteisiin silmiin. —
Mikä lujuus ja luottamus hänen katseessaan, mikä rajattoman
rakkauden voima! Alina näkee kuin kirkastuksen hohteen hänenkin
kasvoillaan.
— — Niin hiljaa hymisten soivat urut, kuin kuuluisivat nuo vienot

säveleet itse taivaan korkeudesta tänne alas. — Kansa hiljaa
kirkosta poistuu, mutta alttarin edessä vielä viivähtää morsian kuin
tahtoisi hän jäädä tänne, kivisen kirkon hämäryyteen, unohtua
urkujen hiljaiseen hyminään ja oman onnensa täyttyneeseen
unelmaan, vierellä ystävä, kallis, ja edessä kirkastusvuoren valkea
Kristus, joka siunaten kätensä kuroittaa.
Mutta kaunista morsiantaan katselee kummissaan Jouko.
— Kalpenet — on kirkko kylmä — hän kuiskaa, käsivartensa

hellien sen vyölle kietoo ja ohjaa ulos.
*****
Niin valtavana helkkyy ilmassa lintujen laulu, niin somasti puhelee

poppeleissa suvinen tuuli ja viehkeänä, lupaavana kutsuu ihmistä.
Elämä.
*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK VALKEA
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Ebook The Sociology of Hallyu Pop Culture Surfing The Korean Wave 1St Edition Vincenzo Cicchelli Online PDF All Chapter

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The Sociology of Hallyu Pop Culture :

Surfing the Korean Wave 1st Edition

Social Media and the Cultural Politics of Korean Pop

K pop The International Rise of the Korean Music

Administering Affect Pop Culture Japan and the Politics

A Different Germany Pop and the Negotiation of German

The Korean War in Turkish Culture and Society 1st

Primary Mathematics 3A Hoerst

Muy Pop Conversations on Latino Popular Culture 1st

Rapunzel and the Prince of Pop Karyn Gorman

Vincenzo Cicchelli · Sylvie Octobre

“Closely examining the consumption of and negotiation with media cultures

Translated by Sarah-Louise Raillard

ISBN 978-3-030-84295-6 ISBN 978-3-030-84296-3 (eBook)

Cover illustration: © Alex Linch/shutterstock.com

dancer; Jimin, V, and Jungkook singers and dancers––this group leads

of the group’s albums being marketed as collectors’ items,9 but also at

festival prizes in Gwangju before entering the Gwangju Dance Academy.

Paris, France Vincenzo Cicchelli

Ji-Young, Sohn. 2014. Lee Min Ho was Figure Goes on Display in

The survey upon which this book is based––entitled “La globalisation de

1 Introduction: Hallyu as an Alternative Aestheticized Global

2 Is Entertainment Capitalism the Ultimate Stage of

3 An Alternative Globalization of Pop Culture 75

4 From Soft Power to “Sweet Power”111

5 The Theory of Cosmopolitan Elective Affinities149

6 From One Wave to the Next: Aesthetics and

7 Looking in the Korean Mirror: Enchantment and

3.3 Male Dominance and Heteronormativity 251

8 Using Hallyu to Stand Out267

9 General Conclusion: Why Does the Global Success of

3 A New Cultural Hegemony or Multipolar Globalization? 314

Appendix: Presentation of the Interviewees321

Vincenzo Cicchelli is an associate professor at Université de Paris and

Sylvie Octobre is a researcher at Département des études, de la prospec-

Cicchelli) of the “Global Youth Studies” suite: http://www2.brill.com/

At a pace similar to South Korea’s rapid and dazzling modernization—

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 1

In order to conduct our analysis, we shall consider Hallyu as a “cultural

1 Global Pop Culture

1.1 The P in Global Pop Culture

In order to describe the contribution of Hallyu to global pop culture, we

instance, Hong Kong director John Woo directed Mission impossible 2

of cooperation with machines, androids, or aliens (ET, Blade Runner, the

a style far from the contemporary national production as a whole.10

1.2 Creating a Common Landscape

Pop culture is omnipresent in everyday life, offering individuals around

2  he Korean Wave: From the Margins

2.1 Hallyu 1.0: A Regional Success Story

cost about one-quarter of the price of their Japanese counterparts and

2.2 Hallyu 2.0: From East to West

Stylistically, K-pop is best described as an integrated popular culture sui

This integration is closely linked to the modes of production, as evi-

various actors, singers, cultural elements, etc.) outside of South Korea, in

3  Monographic Approach to Hallyu:

3.1  hrough the Lens of Hallyu:

With an increased degree of complexity, we shall also adopt this scalar

subject of study (Featherstone 1990; Tomlinson 1991, 1999; Robertson

3.2 Hallyu in France

In our examination of the Korean Wave, France stands out as a prime

3.3 Global Pop Culture and Pop Cosmopolitanism

The reason we are proposing a monographic approach to the Korean

To do so, we will examine the specific modes of capitalist production

Paris, France Vincenzo Cicchelli

1 Introduction: Hallyu as an Alternative Aestheticized Global

2 Is Entertainment Capitalism the Ultimate Stage of

3 An Alternative Globalization of Pop Culture 75

4 From Soft Power to “Sweet Power”111

5 The Theory of Cosmopolitan Elective Affinities149

6 From One Wave to the Next: Aesthetics and

7 Looking in the Korean Mirror: Enchantment and

3.3 Male Dominance and Heteronormativity 251

8 Using Hallyu to Stand Out267

9 General Conclusion: Why Does the Global Success of

3 A New Cultural Hegemony or Multipolar Globalization? 314

Appendix: Presentation of the Interviewees321

1 Global Pop Culture

1.1 The P in Global Pop Culture

1.2 Creating a Common Landscape

2 he Korean Wave: From the Margins

2.1 Hallyu 1.0: A Regional Success Story

2.2 Hallyu 2.0: From East to West

3 Monographic Approach to Hallyu:

3.1 hrough the Lens of Hallyu:

3.2 Hallyu in France

3.3 Global Pop Culture and Pop Cosmopolitanism