Globalization and Popular Music in South Korea

Sounding Out K-Pop

Michael Fuhr

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2015
• ISBN:
  9781317556909
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Mezzi di comunicazione e arti performative
• Subtopic: Musica pop

This book offers an in-depth study of the globalization of contemporary South Korean idol pop music, or K-Pop, visiting K-Pop and its multiple intersections with political, economic, and cultural formations and transformations. It provides detailed insights into the transformative process in and around the field of Korean pop music since the 1990s, which paved the way for the recent international rise of K-Pop and the Korean Wave. Fuhr examines the conditions and effects of transnational flows, asymmetrical power relations, and the role of the imaginary "other" in K-Pop production and consumption, relating them to the specific aesthetic dimensions and material conditions of K-Pop stars, songs, and videos. Further, the book reveals how K-Pop is deployed for strategies of national identity construction in connection with Korean cultural politics, with transnational music production circuits, and with the transnational mobility of immigrant pop idols. The volume argues that K-Pop is a highly productive cultural arena in which South Korea's globalizing and nationalizing forces and imaginations coincide, intermingle, and counteract with each other and in which the tension between both of these poles is played out musically, visually, and discursively. This book examines a vibrant example of contemporary popular music from the non-Anglophone world and provides deeper insight into the structure of popular music and the dynamics of cultural globalization through a combined set of ethnographic, musicological, and cultural analysis. Widening the regional scope of Western-dominated popular music studies and enhancing new areas of ethnomusicology, anthropology, and cultural studies, this book will also be of interest to those studying East Asian popular culture, music globalization, and popular music.

1 Introduction Rising K-Pop, Pursuing the Hyphen

DOI: 10.4324/9781315733081-1

Performing K-Pop

Vignette 1: Staging K-Pop

On a Saturday afternoon in Seoul, I find myself in a swirling mass of Korean teenagers all leaping toward the entrance of the MBC broadcasting studio building, host to one of the weekly pop idol chart shows aired live on the national television channel. Most of the teenagers are middle and high school girls, who apparently joined the crowd after today's school classes ended—they are still dressed in school uniforms. Many of them are accompanied by friends or by their mothers, who chauffeured them to this event and who seem to want to keep an eye on their daughters. As soon as the crowd reaches the square in front of the studio building, the teenagers suddenly diverge into discrete rows and wait patiently, as if they were following a hidden command. The mysterious logic behind the forming of the queues is, as I will learn, the result of a pool of shared knowledge. Each idol group or pop star to appear on the show usually has its own official fan club, and thus each fan club forms its own queue. Unofficial fan club members, who are not registered with an official fan club but are supporters of a specific pop idol, can merge with the official fan club queue or form their own. Special interest groups, for example, foreigners who won their tickets in a prize competition, form separate lines. Ordinary ticket holders start a separate line as well, which is sometimes even subdivided by ticket numbers. Non-ticket holders like me, who are still trying to gain entry, make another line or loosely stand around and await the gatekeeper's decision.

Inside the studio hall, the auditorium is equally segmented because respective fan club members are grouped together. A voice reminds us spectators via loudspeaker to refrain from private filming and photo shooting and to remain seated and silent during the show. Stage hands hectically run around on the stage, sound and light engineers make final technical adjustments, cameras move into their positions, house lights go down, and an off-stage voice starts the countdown in Korean: “… 3, 2, 1.” The show's opening trailer appears on various LCD screens in the auditorium, and three stylish, attractive teenagers, who are themselves members of pop idol groups, present themselves as today's MCs of the show. What follows in the next ninety minutes is a battery of young pop idols with beautiful faces and well-proportioned bodies entering the stage one after another to perform their current hit songs.

On the one hand, we see groups entering the stage in bright and rainbow-colored teenage fashion wear with cute and innocent images, such as plush toys and nursery scenery, and lighthearted lyrics portray the pubescent world of teen pop. On the other hand, we witness more mature images of singers and groups, who are arrayed in glossy-dark business or leather suits and engage in seductive poses and dance moves while presenting morally inoffensive or ambivalent lyrics mostly about heterosexual romanticism. Vibrant electro dance beats meet sugary melodies, skillful rapping, and highly synchronized dance patterns. Sentimental pop ballads feature piano-string instrumentation, crooning voices, and exaggerated emotions. All songs are performed in the Korean language, although they often contain English code-mixing. Although the music is prerecorded, the show is live, and all pop idols are forced to sing live on stage (and some of them thus reveal minor singing talent). Musicians (real or mock) are absent on stage, and idols seem in a rush to finish their acts. Quickly bowing in front of the audience and then leaving the stage after their performance, they have no time to say a word to their fans.

As show time is short and the list of pop acts is long, the program is highly compact and reduced to essentials; it is mainly designed to highlight the physical appearance of the pop idols. Their stage presence is mandatory, though it need not coincide with the full length of the pop song. This is most obvious in the disrupted performances of some pop idol acts. Usually, short breaks between two songs are filled by the moderators. In some cases, however, groups leave the stage before their songs have ended, and a video clip of the group substitutes for its stage performance. Screened on the LCDs in the studio hall, the music video plays the song to its end, while the next group enters the stage. This kind of artificial disruption might be regarded as a lack of authenticity for Western pop audiences, but it is apparently no problem for my younger, Korean, fellow viewers in the studio auditorium.

Somehow, I find myself seated amid a crowd of highly euphoric and strongly engaged Korean female fans. Their support for a particular female pop idol on stage is vividly expressed by sweeps of uncontrolled screaming, the loud performance of organized fan chants, and the rhythmic waving of colored balloons, banners, light sticks, and other fan paraphernalia. These chants, which accompany or are interspersed with the idol's vocal parts during key moments in the song, are usually developed by fan club officials and circulated through the fan club's website before the date of the show. In this way they are adopted by the fans. The result is highly organized and disciplined rhythmical shouting. A girl's yell from the back is ostentatious and deafening. Its cathartic effect can be read on her face.

In the end, after the ultimate winner of today's chart show has left the stage and the house lights are on again, I see many exhausted yet happy faces. Although Korean pop idols or K-Pop groups seem, at first glance, to be quite similar to pop idols in the West or elsewhere, K-Pop is far from being a replica. Its local performance context bears remarkable differences, for example, the specific contradiction between strict rationalization and unbounded sentiment during the performance and the quick and effectively organized form of collective engagement and subsequent exhaustion. Ultimately, K-Pop exposes a local cultural vision of what globalized modernity means in South Korea.

As I pass by the back gate of the studio building, I see crowds of fans hoping to catch a glimpse of their idols; however, the pop stars leave the building in big black cars with tinted windows.

Vignette 2: Watching K-Pop

South Korea is a land of TV screens. It would be nearly impossible to visit Seoul and not watch any K-Pop videos or listen to K-Pop music. In subway cabs and halls, buses and trains, restaurants, bars, and shops, at street food stalls (called p'ojangmach'a) or at the market stands TV screens appear. Whether on oversized LCD screens in high-definition quality, on clunky TV sets, or on iPads and smartphones, even on GPS devices in the car, people are able to watch their favorite TV dramas, personality shows, or video clips.

South Korea is also a land of sound, or more precisely, of sonic stimulation and sound-designed environments. It is a land where washing machines play a tune to signal when the laundry is done or where passengers on the high-speed train KTX are bid farewell at their final stop with a kayagŭm (traditional twelve-string zither) version of the Beatles’ song “Let it Be.” Loudspeakers at public places are not unusual. Even my daily walk across the university campus is accompanied by light instrumental pop songs from the campus loudspeakers, and the supermarket near my place in the Sinchon district blasts the surrounding streets with loud K-Pop songs. K-Pop is mainstream music in South Korea. Initially modeled for the teenager market, this music of the country's youth has become the most pervasive music in Korea, effectively shaping the sonic public sphere, the musical tastes among different generations, and the imaginative worlds of its consumers and producers. What kinds of visions are presented, and what kinds of stories are told in K-Pop?

In 2009, the nine-member group Girls Generation (Sonyŏsidae) had sensational success on the local music charts with its hit single “Gee.” The song's music video clip went viral on numerous Internet platforms and thus attracted viewers at home and overseas. Due to its enormous success, the group released a second version of the song in Japanese. The song is bubblegum pop at its best: a slick dance pop production full of digitally synthesized sounds, electronic drum beats, catchy melodies, and shrill teenage female vocals that support the song's central theme of cuteness. The video features synchronized dance routines with signature moves in high-heeled shoes, while emphasizing the flawless faces and figures of the nine group members, who are all dressed in trendy, vivid colors and placed against the multicolored backdrop of a stylized fashion boutique. In performing exaggerated gestures, along with wide eyes, gaping mouths, pneumatic pouts, and fingers or palms on their cheeks, the pop idols employ and reiterate the standardized and gendered behavioral codes for female cuteness in Korean society. In Korean parlance, it is called aegyo, a term that may translate into “charm” but implies more ambivalent notions underlying the coquettish behavior of young Korean females. Their high and squeaky girlie voices are congruent with this gestural repertoire, framed by a dreamy innocent recitative in the introduction and girlish giggles at the end of the song. The lyrics are sung in Korean (except for the introductory lines spoken in English and the often-repeated word “Gee”) and revolve around the standard theme of juvenile heterosexual desires and problems. Here, they deal with the coyness and worries of a girl who has fallen in love (with a boy) for the first time. The “Gee” music video puts much emphasis on the group's dance performances, which are embedded in a narrative. The plot begins with the nine girls being displayed as mannequins in a shop window of a fashionable clothing store and coming to life after a male staff worker (played by the girls’ record label colleague Minho from boy band SHINee) closes the store and leaves the scene. In his absence, the awakened mannequins begin to discover their surroundings, as well as their desire for and adoration of the attractive young employee, whose portrait as “the employee of the month” is hung on the wall. In the end, he returns to the store and finds that the mannequins have left.

The story comes as a pop musical rendition of the ancient Pygmalion motif, transferred into an urban and postmodern setting of late consumer capitalism. It recalls earlier video clips of Anglo-American pop songs, such as Starship's 1987 song “Nothing's Gonna Stop Us Now,” which served as the soundtrack to the romantic Hollywood movie Mannequin, or Sophie Ellis-Bextor's song “Get Over You,” released in 2002. The musical and visual language of “Gee” is clearly directed toward an audience beyond national borders. It largely follows the standards set by Anglo-American pop music but is re-modeled in a Korean way featuring Korean language, faces, and bodies, and it primarily targets local and East Asian demographics. The song has proven to be successful among transnational audiences. Easily transferable between national consumer cultures, it is a vibrant example of what K-Pop producers like to call “global music, made in Korea.”

Vignette 3: Dancing K-Pop

In an out-of-the-way mid-sized town in Western Germany, I walk in the city park where I am suddenly struck by familiar sounds, although I have never heard them before in public spaces in Germany. Suspiciously, I follow the sounds and gravitate toward a distant boom box and its owners. I am surprised to find four white German teenage girls dancing to a K-Pop song. They tell me that they love K-Pop and that they regularly meet up to listen to the songs and practice the synchronized group dances shown in the K-Pop videos. They do not have any specific interest in Korea as a country, nor do they have Korean friends, Korean language skills, or a deep interest in Korea-related topics. They have also never visited Korea. How then did they get in touch with K-Pop? What made them want to dance to the music? Considering the fact that K-Pop records, up to this point, have never been officially distributed, and Korean idols have never held performances or received any media coverage in Germany, it is an astonishing phenomenon.

The answer is, of course, the Internet. Thanks to social networking services (SNS), such as online video channels, fan blogs, and forums, the four girls have been able to access K-Pop songs and related information and communicate them to their peers. They tell me that they were previously more interested in Japanese popular culture but gradually switched their focus when people in their Japanese pop forums started posting comments on K-Pop. They began to view K-Pop as a fresh alternative not only to Western pop music, but also to Japanese pop; it provided a way to deliberately distinguish their musical tastes from those of their classmates in school and other teenagers in their neighborhood. K-Pop appeared to help them to cultivate their role as social outsiders or “nerds” in their surrounding offline communities. One of the girls admits that the music has stirred her interest in Korea, and she thinks about studying Korean language or Korean culture in the future.

A few weeks later, I meet a bigger crowd of K-Pop teenagers dancing in a different city. A German K-Pop fan club had invited its members to a public “dance flash mob”—a recent trend in the global online fan community. In the end, about fifty female teenagers (with different ethnic backgrounds and from different p...