Feminism in Motion: Korean Female K-pop Fans’ De/Re-constructing Discourse, Identity, and Culture

• In Event: Korea in Motion: Shifting Sounds and Cultural Identifications in Transnational, Multiethnic Korea

Abstract

K-pop is conventionally defined as an idol group-centered popular music that features catchy melodies and danceable rhythms, performed by physically appealing young idol stars trained and promoted by Korea’s pop entertainment industry. Contrary to this simplistic definition, K-pop can be understood as inclusive cultural phenomena (Shin 2005). Its fandom, constructed and performed transnationally, characterizes and diversifies K-pop in particular. Focusing on Korean female K-pop fans and their activities, this paper will investigate how women re-create gendered discourse, identity, and culture through their construction and performance of K-pop fandom both online and offline. For this investigation, I will look at how Korean women manipulate their identities and challenge the negative discourse on female fandom by writing posts and leaving threads on the online discussion boards for K-pop musicians. Also, I will explore how these women reconstruct cultural and identity cohorts using the utilization of their own specialty for other K-pop fans both online and offline. I will then argue that Korean female fandom not only transforms K-pop into a recursive community but also initiates a new phase of the Korean feminist movement through women’s everyday cultural practices in a context of the contemporary Korean society, which is shaped by the multilayered influences of postcolonialism, capitalism, and neoliberalism.

Author

• Jungwon Kim, University of California at Riverside