Glocalization of the Korean Popular Culure in East Asia: Theorizing the Korean Wave

Abstract

This dissertation examines implications of the Korean Wave in relation to East Asia's contemporary media and popular culture, and discusses complex conditions and processing transformation of the Korean and East Asian media industries in response to the globalizing cultural system.

First, the emotional affinity of the diffused Korean TV dramas among Japanese audiences is explored. This was accomplished by in-depth interviews with Japanese audience members; why and the extent to which this local audiences' resonance contributes to influencing rapid circulation of Korean content. Particularly in relation to Japanese audiences, the analysis shows that exposure to Korean TV dramas produces a higher degree of localized identification, which is described as the re-emerging sentiment of "Asianness" from the East Asian viewers' perspective. The shared modern sensibilities and Asian mentality - undergone through the similar social or individual life experience-presented in Korean dramas demonstrates both subtle foreignness and redeemed nostalgia.

Second, this dissertation investigates how the Korean media system builds a glocal identity among regional media consumers. According to Korean media sales crews, the Korean Wave demonstrates a successful market model, which manifests how Korean home-grown content distributes effectively to broader foreign audiences. The Korean Wave in Japan plays an important role in enriching this wave's impact toward broader international markets. The cultural output from the Korean media industry reproduces in multiple genres and connects different media platforms by employing glocalizing commercialism. In that, Korea's media drive toward glocalization also boosts regional media markets toward commercialization of their own media industries.