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Korean Masculinities and Transcultural Consumption. By Sun Jung. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2011. 221 pp. $50.00 (cloth); $28.00 (paper).

2012; Cambridge University Press; Volume: 71; Issue: 3 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1017/s0021911812000952

1752-0401

Hyangjin Lee,

Asian Culture and Media Studies

Hallyu is a key word for understanding currents in global popular culture. Following new Korean cinema in the late 1990s and TV drama in the 2000s, K-pop took over as the flagship of hallyu fandom in the 2010s. The growing fandom of K-pop in Europe and other parts of the world disputes the skeptical view of the transnational consumption of South Korean popular culture as a short-lived, regional trend led by middle-aged, (new) middle-class women across Asia. Hallyu in 2011 attracts a wider spectrum of audience regardless of gender, age, or region. The male star-led popularity of hallyu dramas has also changed. From this perspective, the new stage of Korean Wave, “sin-hallyu,” led by K-pop, requires a new, critical inquiry into the radically shifting trends of hallyu consumption and the political economy of the idol industry, its globalization strategy, and the institutional support of the government in national branding. On the other hand, the active engagement of younger Internet users or K-pop fans has resulted in a different fandom culture from the consumption styles and desires of older generations, or drama and film fans. In short, hallyu continues to resist the up-down trends of global popular culture, disturbing the division between the center and the periphery of production and distribution.Korean Masculinities and Transcultural Consumption makes a very significant contribution to the study of South Korean popular culture, providing a firsthand, stimulating discussion of its transcultural consumption and fan culture. The author, Sun Jong, offers an engaging discussion of the theoretical frameworks of global popular culture and their applicability to the study of hallyu fandom in different regions. The author also effectively surveys the existing studies and materials on the hallyu phenomenon written in English and Korean. Based on these discussions and surveys, she suggests the notion of “mugukjeok” (non-nationality) as a theoretical framework to define transcultural hybridity, the principal trait in globalizing South Korean popular culture.The book consists of five chapters. Chapter 1 introduces the theoretical frameworks and key concepts for the analysis. The following three chapters present an analysis of regional and global fandom: “Bae Yong-Joon, soft masculinity and Japanese fans,” “Rain, global masculinity and Singaporean fans” and “Oldboy, post-modern masculinity, and Western fandom on film review websites,” respectively. Chapter 5 reinforces the main arguments of the book with a brief discussion of K-pop Idol boy bands for further study.Postcolonialism (Japan), trans-pop-consumerism (Singapore), and neo-Orientalism (the West) are the key notions deployed to identify the local specificities of three forms of transnational consumption of South Korean popular culture. Three types of hybrid South Korean masculinities are identified: soft, global, and postmodern.The analysis chapters clearly argue for regional differences among the transnational fandom of South Korean popular culture. However, the research thesis itself and the selection criteria for fans and regions have been somewhat predetermined by the nationality, English competence, age, or gender of individuals. The emphasis on regional division also tends to overlook the generic diversity between pop music, TV drama, and film, as well as the differences between the comments of unspecific Internet site users, identified fan café members, and interview results conventionally collected. Japanese fans of Bae Yong-joon (BYJ), for example, are not always middle-aged women fantasizing about “purity” or “sexually neutral tender charisma.” Regardless of age, many of them are vigorously engaged in Internet fan communities, showing similar desires and behavior to Singaporean “trans-pop-consumerism.” Another issue is the reference to Korean Confucian notions to classify and discuss masculinities, for instance “seonbi” masculinity for the soft masculinity of BYJ and “sadaebu yangban” (patriarchal authoritarian) masculinity for the global masculinity of Rain in the case of Singaporean fandom. This is not very convincing and needs to be more thoroughly elaborated. The notion of hegemonic violent masculinity suggested in chapter 1 for the analysis of Oldboy, in fact, is not referred to in chapter 4 in this context. Chapter 5 concludes the study without any further mention of Confucian notions of South Korean hegemonic masculinities.The author uses “mugukjeok” as a theoretical framework to identify “local specificities or the regional audiences, and the technology-driven global consumerism” (p. 167). In other words, she argues that non-nationality “does not mean complete non-nationality” (p. 3). To a great extent, the three regional fandom studies are in fact informed by notions of nationality and English Internet site accessibility (the West vs. non-West). Furthermore, the author concludes that “instead of mugukjeok, I suggest the notion of ‘chogukjeok (cross- or trans-national[ity])’ to describe the transcultural production and consumption of the hybridized Korean popular culture signified by idol boy bands” (p. 167). This cautious reservation in using the notion of “mugukjeok” highlights the complexity inherent in discussing the transnational consumption of South Korean national popular culture.Korean Masculinities and Transcultural Consumption presents a very useful and critical discussion of theoretical paradigms for the transnational fandom study of South Korean popular culture, informed by the originality of the hallyu fandom surveys. It fills a gap in the English-language literature on popular cultural studies, which is heavily inclined towards the global consumption and re-localization of American or Japanese popular cultures.