Recently over the last few months, I’ve been getting more into Korean pop culture… mainly because of the Korean romantic comedy reality TV series “We Got Married”. Then I spun off to have a look at Korean pop bands. Lately, I’ve been tracking two of the current most popular girl groups in Korea – the 5-person Wonder Girls and the 9-member Girl’s Generation a.k.a. So Nyeo Shi Dae (SNSD). I think I’ve watched about every YouTube video featuring them in some capacity or another.
Then along comes a video like this, which I think is very interesting… it succinctly captures the very different approaches that the two girl groups took towards fame.
But what I find really interesting, after being exposed to about 5 months of Korean pop culture, is how the Korean media industry is structured. It really is unlike a lot of the other media industries in the West, as James Turnbull explains here. What I find strange and sad is how vicious the life of a celebrity is in Korea. Fans haunt them constantly, there are death threats if they do something that’s even remotely unpopular, and all this fame is fickle and transitory. Half the stars I remember watching on variety shows two or three years ago no longer appear. But not just that. The Korean public seems to be in such a craze over these celebrities that new celebrities are now… “manufactured” is perhaps the best word I can think of… by media companies specifically to take advantage of the public’s interest and appetite for more and more titillating entertainment. Sort of like the Roman circus, except the violence and blood of the gladiators are now substituted for beauty and sex appeal of celebrity idols.
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I have a lot of thoughts about the Korean media industry and Korean culture, but I can’t seem to put them into words coherently. But there are far better bloggers than I who are blogging regularly about Korean culture, with a critical eye. Those blogs are worth reading. I just wonder… the Korean media and culture craze, known as the “Hallyu” wave, is spreading all over South-East Asia, and across the rest of the world, thanks to the Internet. Some of the professors in my department are studying it. Even my brother and sister are caught up in it. And I wonder… is it wise to let them absorb cultural values through Korean media without turning a critical eye on what that media is portraying?
