EALC086 - Korean Popular Culture

"Korean Wave" (Hallyu) is currently raging throughout non-Western parts of the world, especially Asia, and may be making its way to the West. From South Korean tele-dramas and K-pop music to their respective celebrity icons, these popular cultural forms from Korea are increasingly becoming part of the everyday landscape and vocabulary. We will attempt to understand and evaluate this cultural phenomenon-its promises and limitations as well as its popularity and backlash against it. More specifically, this course explores the ways in which television, music, manhwa (comic books), and the internet participate in the transnational production and circulation of culture, modernity, tradition, ideology, and politics. Some of the more specific topics covered may include: Korean emotions and melodramas; imitation versus innovation in K-pop; fictions of history in period dramas; the marketing of new masculinity; revival of folk culture; preservation of traditional values in postmodern times; repatriation of Korean American pop stars to Korea; and youth culture. Requires outside viewing and listening.