East Asian Journal of Popular Culture - Current Issue

Within this brief editorial introduction to our Special Issue on ‘Queering the Korean Wave’, we unpack just what it means to queer the theorization of Korean popular culture’s transnational circulation both politically and methodologically. We assert that a queer theory of the Korean Wave must always be grounded in a recognition of the paradox of the K-pop industry’s heteropatriarchal and homophobic tendencies while also celebrating the potential for fans to transform it into a resource for combatting heteronormativity through their creative fandom practices. Specifically reflecting on the spread of K-pop fandom among LGBTQ+ communities around the world – and especially in Asia – we ultimately emphasize that it is via fans’ active and transformative engagement with K-pop that queer emancipatory knowledge is produced, exploring how the queer potentials of K-pop are unlocked by fans as the genre spreads transnationally. Finally, while introducing the work of the Special Issue’s contributors, we discuss how a queer theory of the Korean Wave must also always be based in decolonial collaborative relationships which de-couple the generation of queer theory from its traditional centring within Western academic institutions.

Given its accessibility in the last decade, K-pop has become one of the strong cultural forces in Philippine youth media that has heavily influenced the consumption practices of local fans. From collecting photo cards to organizing cupsleeve events, Filipino K-pop fans have embraced and adapted different fan practices, some of which are intimately queer. One such queer fan practice is ‘K-pop shipping’ where fans imagine their favourite idols engaging in romantic, and sometimes sexual, relationships within and outside of their groups. Beyond embracing queer literacies such as boys love, local K-pop shipping has grown intimately queer as Filipino fans developed stories that brought their idols closer to home through a phenomenon termed ‘Filo AU’ (Filipino alternative universe). These Filo AUs are short-form fan narratives on social media that reimagine their favourite K-pop idols as locals who have Filipino backgrounds, live very Filipino experiences and values while finding queer romance. In this article, I examine queer K-pop Filo AU as a result of affective transnational queer literacies that inspire hope, connection and aspiration for queer utopias among Filipinos.

On 2 September 2021, Mainland China’s media regulator SARFT introduced guidelines to ‘clean up’ the entertainment sector, banning the ‘sissy idols’ trend and danmei 耽美 culture (male–male romance by and for women and sexual minorities). A few days later, Sina Weibo, a major Chinese social platform, banned K-pop fan accounts, including BTS, previously criticized for Korean War comments. These crackdowns by Chinese authorities reveal concerns about male effeminacy and homoerotic K-pop idol shipping practices. This article focuses on China’s boycott of BTS as a case study to explore challenges to gender and sexuality norms through K-pop queer shipping practices, where fans imagine romantic relationships among real or fictional figures. Employing discourse analysis of media articles, editorials and netizens’ comments in response to the boycott of BTS, we argue that although Chinese queer K-pop fans are empowered to objectify male bodies and explore sexual desire via creative shipping practices of androgynous idols, their agency is often limited and complicated by fervent nationalistic sentiments, heteropatriarchy and heteronormativity. This study is timely for reflecting on Chinese pushback against the Korean Wave as a purportedly corrupting force, especially for its young women and LGBTQ+ consumers.

Emerging literature on K-pop underscores that many international fans perceive their engagement with this cultural phenomenon as a subversive practice and a means of identity formation. Consequently, members of the LGBTQ+ community often find a sense of belonging in these fandoms that actively challenge societal norms. An analysis of K-pop content on TikTok reveals a specific trend in which queerness is frequently assumed as the default orientation for all fans, exemplified by the popular TikTok trend ‘[y]our sexual orientation based on your bias’. While primarily intended for entertainment, the volume of such videos raises questions about the complex relationship between sexual orientation and fandom affiliation. The study analysed 35 popular TikTok videos and 350 top comments using MAXQDA software to identify key themes. While K-pop fans largely embrace a spectrum view of orientation, this article also addresses concerns about queerbaiting and the insinuation that heterosexuality is incompatible with being a genuine K-pop fan. Additionally, it examines the trend’s paradoxes, such as reinforcing stereotypes while challenging others, and the superficial nature of some engagements within the discourse on K-pop fandom and sexual orientation representation.

This article calls attention to the uncritical use of queerbaiting in anglophone K-pop fan spaces and examines the term as an ‘empty signifier’. It focuses on the media reception of OnlyOneOf, a K-pop idol group that debuted in 2019, whose music video titled ‘libidO’ (2021) had gained traction for its queer themes in addition to the distinctly sensual choreography that revolves around the performance of ‘skinship’. We look at the reception of their discography, including their solo projects in which they highlight overt queer storylines, through the lens of the politics of dislike. Dislike is used not only for the performance of superiority over the disliked object (in this case, OnlyOneOf) and its audience but also to ‘perform identity, self, and community’. This dislike towards OnlyOneOf is observed to have arisen from two sources – homophobia in online fan spaces and allegations of queerbaiting in anglophone K-pop fandoms, with fans borrowing the term from online fan spaces of English-language media.

The Japanese live-action TV adaptations of Kinō Nani Tabeta? (2019) and Tsukuritai Onna to Tabetai Onna (2022) complement and develop widespread efforts to teach LGBT issues in contemporary Japan. As the series’ content often repudiates common LGBT and gender stereotypes in the same forms found in non-fiction media, public discourse surrounding the works lauds their depiction of ‘real’ same-sex relationships. This article analyses the series’ ‘real’ positioning through theories regarding the transmedia development of everyday participatory spaces. The series’ social instruction is echoed in their fixation on recipes made available through associated marketing materials. The combination of content lessons and participation-based marketing creates a visible spectacle of LGBT activism characterized by transmissible instructions shown as achievable in the home lives of participants. That home focus is, however, inseparable from the series’ respectability politics, which use the buzz of visibility to display invisible existences aligned with public normativity. The LGBT awareness promoted by these texts and their surrounding discourse can be read as an addition to contemporary advocacy that positions minorities as non-disruptive societal outsiders. By making invisible lifestyles replicable, these works deploy transmedia forms to construct transmission-based intimacy that is ultimately confined to personal consumption.

Review of: Televising Chineseness: Gender, Nation, and Subjectivity, Geng Song (2022)

Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 252 pp.,

ISBN 978-0-47207-529-4, h/bk, $75.00

ISBN 978-0-47205-529-6, p/bk, $29.95

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