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Asianizing K‐pop: production, consumption and identification patterns among Thai youth

2007; Routledge; Volume: 8; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1080/14649370601119113

1469-8447

Ubonrat Siriyuvasak, Shin Hyunjoon,

Music History and Culture

Abstract 'Asian Pop' cultural products, which include a wide range of media artifacts such as film, music, television drama, comic books, magazines, websites and fashion, have emerged as a popular choice for youth in Asia in recent times. These cultural artifacts feature prominently in the lives of urban youth in major metropolitan centers throughout Asia. This paper examines how Thai youths have become consumers of Korean pop (K‐pop), following the trend of neighboring countries. The popularization of Japanese pop (J‐pop), Taiwanese‐pop and more recently, K‐pop, is welcomed by the Cultural Industry as a sign of expanding borders and as a major step towards expanding its Asian market. On the one hand, growing consumption and mainstreaming of Asian pop might become problematic due to the notion of cultural 'McDonaldization'/standardization, in the future. On the other hand, perhaps nationalism and national ties will manage to overrule this projected standardization. This paper explores the Thai youth's consumption of K‐pop in the process of cultural appropriation vis‐à‐vis their 'national' cultural formation in changing socio‐cultural contexts. Keywords: Popular musicK‐pop (Korean pop)Asian popcultural industriesyouth culturefandomAsianizationcross bordering Notes 1. During the colonial period, 'East Asia' usually referred to China, Russia, Japan and Korea et al. However, in this paper the term East Asia will include Southeast Asian nations since East Asia is a vast geographical and geopolitical area. East Asia will, therefore, encompass two sub‐regions, Northeast and Southeast Asia. 2. During 1985–2003, a period of 18 years, Korea invested a total of 11,023 million baht. In comparison, in 2003 Korea invested 3,505 million baht and in 2002 it invested 3,212 million baht. The amount of investment from Korea has increased manifold over the last few years. Korea is now the eighth major trading partner for Thailand. Thailand, on the contrary, has not been able to invest in a reciprocal manner in Korea. In 2003, Thailand invested 35 million baht and in 2002 it invested 13 million baht. Korean tourism, more than the trade and investment, has been the main source of revenue. In 2002, 700,000 Korean tourists visited Thailand and it generated 15,000 million baht whereas only 50,000 Thais visited Korea in the same year (Ministry of Foreign Affairs Citation2005). 3. As we shall see below, discourses on K‐pop are indivisibly related to those on J‐pop and other kinds of Asian popular trends. Even 'audience studies' about K‐pop have to be comparative because the Asian pop market is still segmented into (roughly) heterogeneous sub‐regional markets, for example Japan, Greater China and Southeast Asia. Then what is the imagination of Asia in the pop music industry? In a CD released by one of the Japanese companies and distributed to other Asian countries, it is said that 'This CD is licensed to be distributed and sold in the following territories: Taiwan, Hong Kong, China, Korea, Singapore, Thailand, Malaysia, the Philippines, Indonesia only'. In this imaginary, Asia is 'East Asia (Northeast Asia) plus Southeast Asia', although in economic terms that phrase is the result of international pricing policy. 4. Glenn La Salle, presently the International Licensing and Publishing Manager, GMM (Thailand) Co, Ltd, recalled that in 1998 he introduced a Korean female R&B group, to the Thai listeners. It did not succeed at all at the time. When he moved to GMM in 2001 he made another attempt. This time he introduced Babyvox, a five‐piece female pop dance group. It was quite a success. From then on GMM was confident that Korean pop music has a place in the Thai musicscape (Interviewed, 27 May 2005). 5. Ragnarok Online (abbreviated RO) is an MMORPG created by Gravity Corp. of South Korea and powered by Aegis. Much of the background of the game is based on the manga or comic strip (manhwa) Ragnarok by Lee Myung‐Jin. The soundtrack is provided by SoundTeMP. An anime was created, Ragnarok The Animation, which is based on the game. Most of the game's mythos is based on Norse mythology, but contains many references to other cultures, such as that of Japan and Africa. Please see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ragnarok_Online for reference. 6. See detailed analysis of World Cup in Inter‐Asia Cultural Studies 5(1). 7. It might be one of the common characteristics of the star entertainment industry in East Asia, especially in Japan and Hong Kong – the 'idol (aidoru) star system'. The difference between the Korean music industry and Japanese and Hong Kong music lies in the fact that the even the branches of transnational music corporations could hardly enter into this exclusive realm and had to be satisfied with distributing some western pop records to some music enthusiasts. This could be a short explanation of the (g)localization process of the music industry before 'Asianization' in Korea. These characteristics can be applied to Thailand also. In both countries, domestic ('local') popular music as well as the domestic music industry has ruled while 'international'(global or English) pop music has not been so popular since the 1990s. Is it still in the stage of 'hard globalization' or something else? 8. In terms of 'digitalization of music', Korea seems to be the most 'advanced' country in the world. Since the mid‐1990s, the Korean music industry has been transformed into an 'online recording market' completely giving up the 'offline record market', thus bypassing the stage of mass consumption of CD/DVDs. The main components of this online recording market are 'ringtone download services', 'mini‐hompage BGM (background music) services' and 'online music streaming services' which are all closely connected to the big IT industry, especially the 'mobile telecommunication' industry such as SK telecom and KTF. The experience of music has dramatically changed in these ten years along with the profound change of technology of music consumption. The Korean music industry has become a 'service industry'. In 2005, the value size of the online market was three times bigger (about US$300 million) than the offline record market (about US$100 million). By way of suggestion, the Korean music industry peaked in 1998. The value size of the record industry is about US$400 million. So, only production companies who provide 'musical contents' could survive while record companies who specialized in the distribution could not survive or survived only as 'record distribution agencies', which is no more profitable. In the near future, the Korean music industry will be transformed once again by an IT industry that wants to expand by using digital music content. The music industry has already become one component of an entertainment complex, which is closely tied to the IT industry ruled over by big corporations. Recently, Doremi Record and Seoul Records, two of the biggest record companies, were sold to Music City (an internet company) and SK Telecom respectively. 9. It means that Seoul/Korea has little comparative advantage in distribution and financing. Note that 'major' companies who have dominated the pop market in Korea are just 'production companies' or 'entertainment companies', neither transnational corporations nor domestic giants (Chaebol). We can add that the Japanese music industry has comparative advantage in almost every sphere and that the Chinese music industry has a vast potential market, whereas Hong Kong, Singapore, and Taipei serve as the 'regional centers' of the Music Industry in Asia. 10. About various processes of transculturation in the circuit of Asian pop, see Appendices A and B. 11. About this point see Negus (Citation1999: 14–30). He proposed conceptions of not only 'production of culture', but also 'culture of production'. The former means that 'industry produces culture', the latter means that 'culture produces industry'. 12. About the case studies of trans‐local spatiality or 'the local to the local', see Ma (Citation2002) and Fung (Citation2003). But these cases are different from Thai–Korea or Bangkok–Seoul relations. In the former, trans‐local means 'the western to the non‐western' and in the latter 'between some locals (Hong Kong, Beijing, Shanghai etc) in the national (China)'. The Thai–Korean relation is between two non‐western local 'with or without' the national. 13. Rain and Se7en represent the so‐called 'second stage' of Korean wave and K‐pop and new male sexuality, which is not only 'cute' but also 'strong'. The first stage was represented by a 3–5‐piece boy dance group or girl dance group (H.O.T., NRG, Shinhwa, S.E.S., Babyvox) and their popularities were (trans)localized and centered on mainland China, Vietnam and Taiwan, i.e. certain K‐pop stars were popular in a certain country (or region). Now Rain, Se7en, and female superstar Boa is more 'pan‐Asian' and dubbed as an 'Asian star' in Korean media, of course with some exaggeration. 14. See the company profile of GMM Grammy and RS Promotion in Appendix A at the end of the paper. 15. Panadda Ruangwut (Nad) possesses the kind of voice that could hardly be found in anyone else. With the ability to sing as a fine instrument, Panadda won herself first position in Star Search Contest, giving her the chance to become a part of Grammy Gold. Panadda commenced her musical career from singing soundtracks for several dramas, before her first album, 'Panadda Dao Kradas' (Paper Star), took off in 1998. Panadda's latest album, 'Baan Mai Roo Roy' (Forever Bloom), in 2003, is full of sweet romantic songs, which is her trade mark that is adored by a huge audiences. 16. In the cases of most Japanese editions of K‐pop stars' records, all they did was to sing in the studio and dance when the music videos were shot. Songwriting, arrangement, recording, mixing, mastering and others were done by the Japanese staff. And these kinds of records have little traces that they came from Korea. Is so‐called 'cultural odorlessness' also applied to foreign entertainers in the J‐industry? 17. GMM uses the same strategy with its 8866 music company in Taiwan. The hit albums in Thailand were exported to Taiwan and produced in a Taiwan version. This means translating the lyrics into Chinese and sung either by Chinese artists or Thai artists who learnt to sing well in Chinese. China Doll and other artists made their way into the mainstream of Taiwan music chart. In the 1970s, Francis Yip, a well known Hong Kong vocalist popular among the Thai audience, sang 'White Lotus' or 'Bua Kao', a Thai pop classic, in Thai. She struggled through the Thai lyrics but her grain of voice was able to compensate for all the language deficiencies. 18. 88.0 Peak FM – Western and Thai pop music; 91.5 Hot Wave – pop sound and trendy music for youth; 93.5 EFM – Thai pop music and entertainment news, some DJs are GMM stars; Green Wave 106.5 – Thai Easy Listening music with an environmental image; Banana FM 89.0 Thai and Western Easy Listening music. See http://www.atimemedia.com for more information. 19. FM MAX 88.5 MHz – top‐of‐the‐chart music for youth; COOL FM 93.0 MHz – Easy Listening music catering for white collar workers and LIVE FM 106.0 MHz – Thai music; 'Pua Chiwit' and 'Luktoong' for taxi drivers and working class audience. See http://www.skyhigh.co.th/, http://www.fmmax.com/main.php. 20. 'K‐pop phenomenon' has to be analyzed separately. About the details, see Shin (Citation2005). While J‐pop was invented as the new terminology for domestic popular music in Japan, K‐pop has been designated 'Korean popular music which has been exported abroad' and is closely associated with 'Korean Wave' in general. In short, while the 'K‐pop phenomenon' is closely related with the discourse on 'Asian pop', the 'J‐pop phenomenon' is not so necessarily so. The K‐pop phenomenon is also associated with the official discourse of new‐Koreanness, which is often abbreviated in the catchphrase 'dynamic Korea'. 21. Things change rapidly even during the short period we have been revising this paper: CD Warehouse was closed and when we recently visited another big CD store in Siam Paragon, the biggest department store in Bangkok, there was an 'Asian pop' corner which displays the CDs by Northeast Asian artists by Roman Alphabetical order. So there were three categories about popular music: (western) pop, Thai pop and Asian pop. Here again, we can observe that 'Asia' means 'Northeast Asia', more exactly, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan/Hong Kong. 22. When we met a Thai man who works for RS Promotion, he said, 'Now everybody in Bangkok knows Rain and Se7en. But more than half of them haven't heard of their songs'. And when I asked him 'do you know where they came from?' his answer was, 'I don't know exactly. Did they come from Korea? Not Taiwan? Hong Kong? I don't care much about where they came from. Last year, F4 (from Taiwan) was popular and then Se7en was popular. Early this year Dylan (Guo Dylan from Taiwan) was popular and now Rain is popular. Now nearly everybody seems to forget F4 and Se7en except their enthusiastic fans' (Wittawat Sungsakijha, interviewed 26 April 2005). Maybe his answer would confirm that nationality ('where they came from') became more and more obscure. 23. Our information in this section is compiled from 52 questionnaires and some in‐depth interviews. Half of these are made up of members of Se7en club, general fans of K‐pop and J‐pop. The respondents are secondary school students, university students (in Bangkok and Pitsanuloke province) and university graduates. The majority are females aged between 14–31. We were told that fans of K‐pop are much younger compared with J‐pop and Taiwanese‐pop fans. Hence, they have less money to spend and their club meetings are less extravagant. 24. His latest series 'Full House' is on Channel 7 on Sat–Sun, 9:30–11:00 am, starting from 25 June 2006. This has a direct effect on the overall rating of Rain. It easily hyped up the 'Korean Wave' once again. 25. http://www.se7enthailand.com 26. Unfortunately, Chulalongkorn University is planning to turn Center Point into a new shopping complex adjacent to the Siam Paragon mall, modernizing Center Point to match the latest commercial architectural style. 27. A locally produced CD album costs 400 baht whereas an imported album costs 600 baht. 28. The basic course costs 2,000 baht (or US$50) for 30 hours (10 lessons on Sat–Sun). A Korean dictionary costs 300 baht (or US$7.5). There are four universities offering Korean language in their undergraduate courses since the 1990s. These are Silapakorn University, Burapha University (Eastern region), Songklanakarin University‐Pattani campus (Southern region), Naresuan University (Northern region). 29. A number of respondents stated that they did nothing wrong in becoming Asian pop fans. They did not understand why parents would deny them the right to enjoy what they find to be their liking. 30. Chinese migrants to Thailand went through social and political discrimination during the 1950s–1960s. But accumulated wealth and inter‐marriage between Thai and Chinese over the years have gradually put the Chinese in top business positions and officialdom. The rigid ethnic division begins to blur as they become more powerful. See a concise discussion about a business Chinese family and ethnicity in Thailand in Pasuk and Baker (Citation2004). 31. See http://www.thailove.net, http://www.thaifeel.com/, http://migrantsinkorea.net/ and http://migrantsinkorea.net/blog/blog/index.php?blog_code=yasoton among others. The former two are related tourism (to Thailand) and the latter two are related to migrant labor (to Korea), i.e. different kind of transmigration.