Recently, I participated in a seminar about Korean culture and Hallyu [1] here in Stockholm, which was arranged in collaboration with the South Korean embassy. As one can notice on the picture below, an ambassador said a few words before the event begun.
The reason for my participation is that Hallyu and comtemporary Korean culture is something that I have chosen to focus on, not just on a personal-preferential level, but primarily as a scholar. I have a master’s degree in the history and social scientific studies of religion (Uppsala University, 2012), so even though my perspective is multidisciplinary, I look into these things from that kind subject viewpoint.
That is also the main reason why I do study Korean at the moment. It is far from easy to get a Ph.D. scholarship for a project that you, more or less, have suggested on your own, and therefore I have to participate in events like this, produce articles – both peer-reviewed journal articles and popular scientific material of good quality – and do other constructive things that may increase the probability of getting funding by and at a particular department at a specific university. It is a continuous process but also about concrete results that can be incorporated into one’s CV.
Since I have chosen to this instead of being a upper-secondary school teacher or full-time personal trainer, I do never complain about working part-time in parallel with full-time studies of Korean. However, if I will not get a scholarship in 2015 or 2016, I will probably (have to) get back into regular teaching on a full-time basis. On the other hand, since I have invested time and effort into this particular area, I will somehow use it in the near future and hopefully spend a considerable amount of time in South Korea – regardless of the degree of academic success (or failure).
Back to the actual seminar, it included two interesting lectures: one by Dr. Hyunsun Yoon, senior lecturer at the School of arts and digital industries, University of East London, titled ‘Korean Wave: Past, Present and Future’ (in English); and another by Elin Mellerstedt and Johanna Stillman, ‘Hallyu and K-Pop fans’ (in Swedish).
The former, in her earlier research, has focused on European media reception and discourses on Hallyu, particularly K-pop, as a gradually emerging global phenomenon. Overall, many journalists tend to be unbalanced and/or ethnocentric in their depictions of, for instance, ‘the invasion’ of K-pop in England. She did also offer an overall description of the history of Hallyu, but emphasized that her work could not contribute to any predictions about this phenomenon’s probable future.
The two latter have written a reportage book on K-pop fans and the scene in general, as it was constituted ‘pre-Psy’, Loverholic robotronic: En reportagebok om K-POP, fans och Sydkorea (2013), which they of course used as a point of reference.
Even though a quite large part of the contents in these two lectures is ‘old news’ for me, they still included interesting details and percipient comments and observations, particularly about the fandom of K-pop. This is not one of my main sub-areas of research but still relevant to know more about, since many of the different aspects of Hallyu overlap each other. When one is taking part of material made by people with a lot of knowledge of a particular subject – whether it is scholarly or more journalistically oriented – you always learn more things which in turn add to a body of already existing knowledge.
Personally, I am a fan of both particular K-pop groups and artist, K-films, and K-dramas, but have never been a part of the fan culture of any sort. It is not being part of my personal inclination, so to speak. With that said, one has to give credit to all the fans who have translated, created, distributed, and/or re-elaborated different kinds of Hallyu-related material, especially on YouTube, during the last years.
[1] The term is generally understood as ‘The Korean wave’, refering to that in 1999 (or perhaps a couple of years earlier according to some sources), some Beijing journalists identified the rising popularity of South Korean popular cultural products in China. They labeled this phenomenon ‘hallyu’ (romanized from Hanja), which more literally means ‘flows of Korea’. In Han’gul (Korean), the term is 한류, and you can find equivalents in other countries where South Korean popular culture has become widely known, such as Japan. Somewhat later, the term has come to designate contemporary South Korean (popular) culture in general, but many people – both fans, scholars and journalists – tend to use specific labels such as K-dramas (South Korean TV dramas), K-pop, and K-literature in order to specify which kind of category one has in mind.Nyligen deltog jag på ett seminarium om hallyu, den koreanska vågen, här i Stockholm som anordnades i samarbete med den sydkoreanska ambassaden. En ambassadör på plats inledde med ett kort anförande.
Anledningen till att jag deltog beror på att det, utöver det personliga intresset, är det jag inriktar mig mot i akademiskt avseende. Det är också därför som jag läser koreanska på heltid, parallellt med deltidsarbete och även en del forskning om det aktuella ämnet.
Det var ett föreläsningsbetonat seminarium, och de två föreläsningarna var båda intressanta och dessutom lagom långa, ungefär en halvtimme vardera. Dr. Hyunsun Yoons – senior lecturer vid the School of arts and digital industries, University of East London – bidrag var betitlat ‘Korean Wave: Past, Present and Future’ (på engelska), och det andra, av Elin Mellerstedt och Johanna Stillman benämndes som ‘Hallyu and K-Pop fans’ (på svenska).
Det förstnämnda behandlade ämnet ur ett medieperspektiv och bygger på tidigare forskning av Yoon. Fokus var på hur stora europeiska publikationer, som Financial Times och The Economist, har betraktat den koreanska vågens inträde i Europa. Ofta har det rört sig om grova överdrifter av vågens omfattning (“invasion av fans” och liknande) och/eller nationalistiska eller etnocentriska perspektiv. Vissa koreanska medier – om man likt Yoon växlar till det perspektivet – har överdrivit spridningen av K-pop till andra länder som ett led i en nationalistisk diskurs, medan europeiska journalister har framställt sig som storögda över det faktum att en del européer gillar koreansk populärkultur.
Yoon beskrev dock även hallyu i allmänhet och hur företeelsen har vuxit fram historiskt, men ville dock inte sia om dess eventuella framtid. Hon betonade dock framför allt fansens roll i sammanhanget och det är kanske framför allt de, i egenskap av “aktiva konsumenter” (min term), som avgör framtiden för sydkoreansk populärkultur, oavsett om det rör sig om tv-serier, musik, mat eller någonting annat.
De två senare har i sin tur skrivit en intressant reportagebok som handlar om K-pop och K-popfans så som dessa tedde sig innan Psy slog igenom 2012, Loverholic robotronic: En reportagebok om K-POP, fans och Sydkorea (2013). Denna användes förstås som ett slags referenspunkt i anförandet. Man betonade bland annat att fansen inte är så fanatiska som de ibland framställs som, men också att det finns skillnader mellan koreanska fans och fans från andra länder och regioner. Medan K-popfans i andra länder brukar gilla ett flertal artister och grupper, har koreanska fans oftast fokus på en enda artist eller grupp som de ger support ungefär som ett fotbollsfans som håller på ett visst lag. Dessutom åtnjuter de så kallade idolerna en helt annan status i Sydkorea än i de flesta andra länder. Utanför Sydkorea, och möjligen även Japan och enskilda andra länder i Öst- och Sydostasien, blir K-pop mer av en subkultur och niche market inom musikindustrin, medan det i Sydkorea rör sig om omfattande kändisskap.
Mycket av detta är gamla nyheter för mig, men jag lärde mig definitivt en hel del nytt, inte minst om fankulturen.
