Journal of Fandom Studies, The - Volume 3, Issue 1, 2015

The majority of academic literature on Hallyu, or the Korean Wave, focuses on its acceptance in the geographically and culturally proximate societies in Asia and the economically wealthy markets of North America. Very little attention has been given to other regions such as Africa, South America and the Middle East. Thus, looking at the Israeli case study allows us to examine how Korean culture is being accepted in non-Asian, non-western and non-English contexts. The most salient characteristic of Hallyu fans in Israel is that the majority of them have never been to Korea. They experience Korean culture mostly through Korean TV dramas, and fandom itself becomes a cultural journey between the known and the unknown. This journey resembles the practice of pilgrimage, e.g. an emotional exploration of new places accompanied by a deep sense of fulfilment. Korean culture is perceived as an exotic and distant ‘other’. At the same time, this ‘other’ is domesticated by local fan communities and serves as a means to connect one’s own identity with Hallyu’s ‘promised land’. Based on media and discourse analysis, an online survey and interviews with Israeli fans, this article examines the popularity of the Korean Wave in Israel and its impact on Korea’s image among fans. The article also explores the inner world created among fans of the Korean world, the formation of a fan community and their fictional ‘Hallyu Land’.

The global circulation of Asian cultural products has been on a constant rise since the 1990s. However, the arrival to Spanish-speaking audiences is a more recent phenomenon, one that is linked to the consolidation of web-based tools for consumption, distribution and discussion of cultural artefacts. The different stages in which Hallyu, or the ‘Korean Wave’, reached different countries determined the intensity of scholarly interest in the phenomenon. If the research gap between Asia and Europe is wide, the later arrival to Spain and Latin America means that studies on the reception of Korean popular culture, including those dealing with fandom, are quasi-non-existent. This article is a first attempt at mapping the demographics of K-pop and K-drama fans in the Spanish-speaking world, through an analysis of an online survey. Drawing from the uses and gratifications approach in mass communication research, we discuss fans’ appropriation of K-pop, describe their shared iconography and analyse the peculiarities of male fans by studying their self-narratives. We conclude with a discussion on the need for studies of fandom to transcend national boundaries as exemplified by the advent of a ‘transatlantic connection’ linking fans in Spain and in Latin America via South Korea.

This article discusses the recent emergence of adult male fans of Korean pop (K-pop) music who openly engage themselves in fan activities typically associated with teenagers (particularly teenage girls) and the significance of their adoration of young female celebrities. The recent appearance of the ‘samchon/uncle fans’ in the K-pop culture discourse marks the first instance since the early 1990s, when teenagers became the primary target audience of South Korea’s entertainment industry, in which male adults reclaimed a significant position as a demographic group of fans. The samchon fans differ from the traditional ajossi (middle-aged, patriarchal men) listeners of adult contemporary music in the kinds of singers and musical genres to which they listen, as well as in their self-identification as fans, participation in fan activities and mass media portrayals. I investigate the implications of the men’s consumption pattern and their representation in South Korean mass media within the contexts of the history of the construction of hegemonic masculinity in South Korea and of recent developments in East Asian popular culture. I also explore possible ways to apply, complicate and question existing theoretical and conceptual frameworks to explain the phenomenon and argue for the possibility of politically potent, alternative masculinities constructed and manifested through the men’s conspicuous consumption of cultural commodities.

Employing performance studies and queer studies, this article explores the subversive nature of western female fandom’s consumption of male dancing bodies in Korean pop (K-pop) culture. By offering close readings of fan-made compilation videos and analysing fans’ comments on YouTube, this article analyses how K-pop male idols’ androgynous gender fluidity provides a space for queering female desire against normative white masculinity. Through video editing, fans ‘choreograph’ their desire by fetishizing K-pop male dancers’ specific body parts and movements and transform themselves from displayed objects to subjects of the gaze. Moreover, through active engagement online, fans transcend their status from spectators to performers who actively enact alternative sexualities and gender roles in a public space. K-pop male singers’ gender performativity is significant, as it challenges rigid gender binaries in western culture – homosexuality/heterosexuality, masculine/feminine body and behaviour, and masculinized gaze/feminized object – as embodiments of hybridized male femininity, which this article calls liminal masculinity.

This article examines how Korean pop (K-pop) idol fans develop their public image through the construction of participatory culture. K-pop idol fans, mostly teenaged girls, have long-provoked criticism in Korean society due to their fanatic behaviours. In the late 2000s, however, the transnational popularity of K-pop idol groups encouraged the public to reconsider the negative stereotype of K-pop idol fandom. This social atmosphere is indebted to news journalism, which sheds light on the contribution of fan communities in the K-pop music industry. Donation activities are one of the main items that journalists focus on in covering idol fan communities. Through an analysis of news articles, this article argues that Korean idol fandom strategically employs donation activities in order to reshape stereotypes about idol fandom, reconnect with the public and redefine the notion of idol fandom in Korean society.

Among many different forms of celebrity fandom, this article pays attention to fan-produced novels, that is, fanfic. In Korea, fanfic indicates a homoerotic story between two members of a singing group in real life that fan authors create and circulate online, which this article conceptualizes as queering stars. Thanks to the development of digital media, the fanfic subculture flourished, thereby capturing the eyes of the entertainment industry. This article investigates the ways in which media professionals and celebrities make use of and commercialize fans’ queering stars with a case of SM Entertainment (SME), a leading entertainment company in Korea. It argues that digitally empowered fans are repositioned as a pivotal axis in the contemporary mediascape, and the entertainment sector observes and exploits fans’ culture more than ever. This article concludes that the relationship between fans and industry is not unilateral in the digitalized and capitalized age. Rather, it is inter-animating and multi-layered, and interaction is ongoing and recurring.