The Korean Popular Culture Reader (Book Review)

Paciic Afairs: Volume 88, No. 2 – June 2015 ‘Japan’ had the most to gain from acting as if they were loyal to the Japanese nation” (251). The overall result is a delicately nuanced, decidedly fair, study of the processes through which the two warring empires redeined their “problematic” ethnic minorities into idealized ones, and how these populations responded to their new circumstances as free, calculating agents. Race for Empire is an outstanding contribution to a growing number of studies focusing on racial politics in Japan and the United States, which began in earnest with John Dower’s War Without Mercy (Pantheon Books, 1986). Canadian scholars will undoubtedly draw useful comparisons with Mutual Hostages (University of Toronto Press, 1990), by Patricia Roy et al., and especially Stephanie Bangarth’s Voices Raised in Protest (UBC Press, 2008) and Greg Robinson’s A Tragedy of Democracy (Columbia University Press, 2009), books which engage, at least partly, with the question of race and the wartime treatment of Japanese Canadians in a transnational setting. Meticulously researched and brilliantly written, Race for Empire nevertheless feels like it should have brought the concept of “race” under more critical scrutiny, especially as it evolved from what is, apparently, a strictly biological phenomenon to one with more cultural undertones. For example, Fujitani notes how Japanese American volunteers who practiced “quintessentially Japanese and nationalistic sports” such as kendo and judo were rejected as a result of the authorities’ cultural racism (154). In fact, however, many martial arts dojo on the American West Coast were in a trans-Paciic relationship with such nationalist organizations as the Dai Nippon Butoku Kai, which included individuals with proven, strong links with the Japanese military. That members of these dojo would appear suspicious to the American military during times of war is not racist in itself. This should not, however, detract from what is otherwise an excellent book. McGill University, Montreal, Canada Daniel Lachapelle Lemire THE KOREAN POPULAR CULTURE READER. Kyung Hyun Kim and Youngmin Choe, editors. Durham: Duke University Press, 2014. xi, 450 pp., [8] pp. of plates (Tables, igures.) US$28.95, paper. ISBN 978-0-8223-5501-4. Korean popular culture has become a global sensation in the early twenty-irst century. Starting with television dramas in the late 1990s, Korean popular cultural forms, such as ilm, music (K-pop) and online games have rapidly penetrated the global cultural markets and created global fandom. Previously, the Korean Wave (Hallyu), known as the rapid growth of Korean cultural industries and popular culture, was based on the export of television dramas and ilm within Asia; however, the Hallyu phenomenon has experienced a dramatic change because of its interplay with social media. The Korean Popular Culture Reader, edited by Kyung Hyun Kim and Youngmin Choe, 330 Book Reviews is a timely and valuable contribution to the expanding collected works on the Korean Wave tradition, mainly because it relates “the contemporary cultural landscape to its historical roots.” It aptly traces and documents the historical evolution of Korean popular culture, focusing on transnationalism and cultural politics. As the result of a workshop held at the University of California, Irvine in June 2010, two editors recruited both local-based and Western-based scholars to extend their focus, from traditional media areas, such as ilm and music, to non-traditional media areas, encompassing literature and sports. In order to systematically combine relevant chapters, the editors compartmentalized the sections alongside ield demarcations rather than along with the lines of historical chronology. The book is divided into ive sections. Part 1, Click and Scroll, includes four chapters, such as “The World in a Love Letter” and “The Role of PC Bangs in South Korea’s Cybercultures.” These chapters explore the ways in which the landscape of modern-day consumers is shaped by a quick ix with celebrity gossip, serialized comics and blog culture. Part 2, Lights, Camera, Action, contains four chapters on Korean cinema, including “Film and Fashion Cultures in the Korean 1950s” and “The Star as Genre in Bong Joonho’s Mother.” The chapters raise several ideological matters surrounding cultures of celebrity and fan consumption practices built around them from questions about how images signify within cultural economy. Part 3, Gold, Silver, and Bronze, contains chapters titled “Sports Nationalism and Colonial Modernity of 1936” and “Female Athletes and (Trans)national Desires.” The two chapters focus on sports, which are capable of creating overnight sensations, compared to movies and music. Part 4, Strut, Move and Shake, comprises chapters that focus on ethnomusicology. They include “The Seo Taiji Phenomenon in the 1990s” and “Girls’ Generation: Gender, (Dis)Empowerment, and K-pop.” In theorizing hybridization strategies, partially, if not entirely, these chapters analyze the evolution of contemporary Korean popular music, from the 1930s to the early twenty-irst century. The inal part, Food and Travel, encompasses three chapters, including “The Commodiication of Korean Cuisine and Touristic Fantasy,” “Photographic Desire,” and “Catastrophic North Korea.” By employing the notion of spectacle, these chapters focus exclusively on the contemporary period and attempt to conceptualize approaches to state-sanctioned art. While there are several signiicant strengths of this book, it especially develops three major theoretical practices: the historicization of cultural forms, the diversiication of Hallyu discourse, and the appropriation of the notion of cultural politics. To begin with, the obvious asset of this volume is its consistent analysis on the historical background of each cultural form. The chapters show the intimate connection of Korean popular culture to Korea’s historical roots starting in colonial histories. The chapters develop a historical discussion of local popular culture because contemporary popular 331 Paciic Afairs: Volume 88, No. 2 – June 2015 culture is “linked to related historical precedents” (xi) so that the readers can fully understand the roots of the contemporary stardom of local culture in the global market. Secondly, the diversiication of the Korean popular culture discourse is another strength of this volume. The book is successful in its goal to depart “from the “intra-Asian cultural low” model that had been proposed by media studies scholars who tended to rely on primarily data-driven, audience- and fan-oriented research”(3). The editors consciously select several key topics, both in media-driven and non-media-driven ields, including literature, ilm and music, sports and food studies. Combining translations of a few essays written in Korean by local scholars with new works by Western scholars, the chapters expertly map out cultural uniqueness embedded in Korea’s socio-political context that has contoured the growth of local popular culture. Through the process, they achieve their aim in advancing “the interpretations of values set by the most obvious ideologies that determine image creation”(3). Thirdly, the book thematizes cultural politics as the most signiicant component running through the volume. It identiies cultural policies as a form of social and political dynamic, including the movement for social democracy, that have shaped Korean popular culture in given periods, from the colonial period to the contemporary neoliberal regime. As the landscape of Korean popular culture has changed and continued within the period’s political agendas, the majority of chapters carefully engage with socio-political situations, from censorship to the resistance to colonial and/or neoliberal oppression; therefore they prove the signiicance of the active roles of cultural creators in relecting the ordinary people’s mentalities. The book is not without areas of concern. Although I understand the limitation of space, there are no serious discussions on a few eminent areas, such as social media and cultural policy issues. The book sparsely touches on these areas; however, it is unfortunate that it does not more deeply analyze these matters. Secondly, it lacks an investigation of contemporary popular culture. Regardless of a few chapters emphasizing the Korean Wave phenomenon, it does not include analyses of the inluence of the historical evolution of Korean popular culture on contemporary practices. Lastly, it could have detailed the role of globalization. Since globalization started several decades ago, the clear appropriation of globalization alongside transnationalism would have enhanced the value of the book. Overall, this volume nurtures the readers with a generous abundance of information on Korean popular culture. It is well designed and thoughtfully presented and makes a convincing contribution to a growing body of literature on Korean studies, media studies, and anthropology. It is a 332 Book Reviews must-read book for those who desire a common introduction to the diverse local cultural landscape and those interested in popular culture in tandem with Korean society and culture. Simon Fraser University, Burnaby, Canada Dal Yong Jin THE TWO KOREAS AND THE POLITICS OF GLOBAL SPORT. By Brian Bridges. Leiden; Boston: Global Oriental/Brill, 2012. x, 188 pp. US$120.00, cloth. ISBN 978-90-04-23339-3. Most research on sport politics either focuses on state government of sport and the implementation of public policy or on the way in which sport organizations wield their power for their own sectional interests, usually at the expense of other interest groups. Brian Bridges, the recently retired head of the Department of Political Science and director of the Centre for Asian Paciic Studies at Lingnan University in Hong Kong, takes a distinctively diferent approach by placing the state into the centre of analysis and introducing a functionalist dimension to the political scientist’s understanding of sport in international relations. His double history of Korean sport looks at the simultaneous development of sport politics in two states and their interactions in national and global sporting arenas over the past sixty-something years. The result is a valuable, though way too pricy contribution to the still sparse literature on sport in non-Western nations. It is unique in the sense that it attempts to compare the development of national sport systems in both Korean modern states. Bridges has been known as an avid writer on sport in East Asia among the few political scientists who acknowledge the political nature of sport. Bridges is particularly interested in the dimensions that make sport politically useful in international relations in East Asia, e.g., for the projection of national images, the conveying of messages of dissent or consent, or the mitigation of rivalry and conlict. Some of his earlier journal articles, in which he discussed the aforementioned aspects, provide the core chapters of this book: the troublesome relations of the International Olympic Committee, with two states claiming to represent one nation (chapter 4); the politics behind the Seoul Olympics (chapter 5); and the exaggerated expectations towards the Beijing Summer Olympics as facilitator of inter-Korean encounters (chapter 7). Previously unpublished work ills the gaps within the historical account of sport politics in Korea. Since chronology dictates the sequential arrangement of chapters, the 23 pages (chapter 3) between the theory chapter and the ICO chapter must tackle the ambitious goal of summarizing the trajectory of sport in Korea from premodern times through centuries of feudalism, exposure to the Chinese cultural sphere of inluence until the colonial period and the early years of postcolonial state formation. Similar gap illers—all of 333