Fandom and its Influence on Korean Entertainment

Meron Derseh

INTS 249

Lindsey MacDonald

4/17/2019

Fandom and its Influence on Korean Entertainment

Question: “What kinds of digital labor do kpop (korean) fandoms perform, and how do those activities benefit kpop record labels and musicians “?

South Korea is a country located in the east of Asia. In 1991 South Korea experienced the International Monetary Fund crisis that almost threw the country into bankruptcy. The country was saved at this time through the unexpected raise and globalization of the Korean entertainment industry. The raise of popular culture in South Korea took place over three decades. Digital labor is “the exploitation of users’ unpaid labour, who engage in the creation of content and the use of blogs, social networking sites, wikis, microblogs, content sharing sites for fun and in these activities create value that is at the heart of profit generation” (Fuchs,.et. al). Kpop fandoms perform digital labor to benefit the company brand through tweeting, Subtitles, fandom projects and donating in artist names to get their artist to be better known.

The Rise of Hallyu

The 1970s and 1980s focused on trot singing and Japanese influenced music. The real rise of popular music in South Korea started with a group called SeoTaiji and the Boys. According to John Lie SeoTaiji and the Boys were pioneers in bringing western pop music with a focus on performance into South Korea (Lie 351). The group used American trends in music and dance and created the genre that later became known as K-pop. SeoTaiji and the Boys become a group that represented the voices of South Korean youths and much like the rise of hiphop in The United States, Korean popular music began to spread out of South Korea and into China and Japan. Korean entertainment became popular outside of Korea in the late 1990s. “Hallyu…which…referred to…wind hailing from the Korean Peninsula, spread rapidly in East Asia, signaling the coming of South Korean Popular Culture” (Lie 351). The rise of Korean popular culture was unexpected, not only because of the success of the music in China and Japan but also because the whole Korean entertainment industry was exported out of the country to neighboring east Asian countries. Kdrama industry successfully pass over into China and Japan through the “2002 KBS drama series Winter Sonata” (Lie 351) which was a commercial hit.

The rise of the Korean Popular culture is due to the youths that the music and shows were targeting. Youths formed fandoms around the artists and actors/actresses they liked. Fans gave themselves fandom names and they had fandom colors. In the late 1990s and early 21st century social media was not the dominant form of communication. Fandoms had regional presidents whom other fans used as a bridge to their favorite artists. They had communities in which they planned special events for their artists. Communication between international and home fans was difficult. This all changed in the mid to late 2010s with the raise of social media. “Media fandom is a phenomenon that encourages individuals to collectively and socially unite within a subculture based on shared interests or appreciation of a media world or product” (Tsay-Vogal, Sanders 32). The rise of social media allowed for better communication between fans.

What is Fandom?

Fans are described as “extremely devoted followers with an obsessive attachment to media stars or texts”(Stijn Reijnder et al., 1). Big fandoms that exist are The Harry Potter series, Star Wars, One Direction, American football and supernatural. Because the industry is one that was created for fans and became successful due to the hard work of fans, fan Communities in South Korea have the biggest impact not only on the success of an artist but also the image of an artist. The South Korean general public (usually older generation/hiphop or solo-enthusiasts) has always had a negative view of kpop artists because they think of them as company created pretty boy machines with no actual artistic talents. This negative view of the kpop fandom as well as artist does not only exist in South Korea, the sentiment is global. Many non-Korean fans are asked why they fangirl over Korean groups when they can not understand the language of the music, because of that kpop fans all around the world are looked down upon by other fandoms. This is a very narrow minded view of what music is, there is no language barrier in music, it is all about the individual experience that becomes a group experience in fandom.

The Rise of Social Media

Social Media, especially twitter has been one of the biggest forms of communication for fan communities. A study was done on the #kpop to see how many people talked about kpop from November 9, 2011 to February 15, 2012. “A total of 16,788 Twitter users sent at least one Tweet containing the hashtag #kpop during the data collection period”(Kim). This was during a time when social media was still relatively new to the kpop fandom, twitter released how many numbers the #Kpop pulled in 2018. The numbers show the drastic change that has occurred within the last 7 years as the digital age became more important in the success of artists. According to billboard 5.3 billion tweets relating to kpop were tweeted in 2018 alone.

Social media is an important part of fandom culture, in the Korean entertainment fandoms twitter is one of the biggest platforms for fans to communicate with each other and help spread the entertainment culture. “ Korean fans tend to use Twitter to share information and emotions toward their favorite celebrities’ due to its rapid speed in uploading information on the web” (Razak, et al., 1). Kpop fans use twitter to reach each other faster and spread information about different artists to people from different parts of the world. Most kpop Idols have several big fan bases dedicated to them on twitter and those fan bases help new fans get to know Idols better and become long time fans. In the article “Web Mining in Classifying Youth Emotions” the researchers talk about the effects that kpop has on the emotions of kpop fans from Korea and Malaysia. They looked at the emotions mostly associated with the kpop hashtag on twitter and did an experiment to see how events within the kpop industry affects the emotions of fans. “For the ‘Sad’ emotion, one of the events which occurred was one of reality shows to search for boy groups with 101 participants ended. 11 of them were chosen to debut using the group name ‘Wanna One’. The emotion of ‘Anger’ was associated with an event featuring the Korean idol, EXO who came out with their new album. The fans and haters of the EXO group had arguments on social media” (Razak, et al., 8). By reading through the article I realized that depending on how fans communicate online the reception of kpop news can cause fans to experience stressful emotions or positive emotions. If there are enough people talking about the events because of the emotions they are feeling, it can impact an artist positively or negatively. For example The Kpop group EXO had a comeback but the emotion that was associated with their comeback was anger. This made me think, if there are fans of other kpop groups that were not involved in the fight between the EXO fans and the antis, after having experienced the fight on social media will the new fans think that EXO is not a good group to be a fan of? Will it lead to them believing in lies told by anti fans? And how can that lead to a possible success or failure of the comeback?, on the other hand I realized that if new fans saw EXO fans protecting EXO with facts and fighting back against antis in a civil manner, it could make new fans want to be part of that fandom more and end up liking the group. I always wondered why anti fandoms exist and what their purpose was. “..Mental health experts offer descriptions of psychic dysfunction like ‘erotomania’ and ‘Othello’s syndrome,’ and suggest that the increase in fan attacks on celebrities may be due to an increasingly narcissistic society…” (Lewis 11). Anti fans become as obsessed with a celebrity as a fan with their hatred and start attacking celebrities due to their possible ideologies or narcissistic personalities.

Social media has become a way for fans to put their artists name out there outside of the region/ country/ continent that the artist is heavily promoting in. “Newly arisen grassroots-led bottom-up distribution through social media networks in particular has played a significant role in the rapid rise of transnational flows of information, images, sounds, symbols and ideas” (Huat, Jung 1). Fans from all around the world communicate with each other through social media and help each other get information on when a new album is coming out, or when a new tv show with their favorite actor is coming out. Sometimes if the company does not promote an artist, fans can use word of mouth to help promote the artists.

Showing Love, Contributing to the World

Fan activism is one of the keys to the success of an artist, according to Ditionary.com a fanbase is the “fans of a celebrity, team, media franchise, etc., when considered collectively”. According to Fan activism, cybervigilantism, and Othering mechanisms in K-pop fandom by Sun Jung within fandom culture exists something known as Fancom. “Fancom (fan company) in the K-pop scene refers to the way fans systematically manage their own stars” (Jung, Sun 1). The fans participate in “fundraising, donating to charity, and volunteering in emergency situations” (Jung, Sun 1) in the names of their artists. This can help bring awareness to the artists from the general public and put the artists, company, as well as fandom in good and favorable light. The evolution of fandom culture does not always have a good social impact. According to Jung the creation of Fancom has changed the fandom scene “…fans now consider their stars to be subjects whom they keenly manage and systematically guide, which is different from the pre existing notion of fandom that emphasizes the ways in which fans adore and worship their stars” (Jung, Sun 2). Fans start to see their artists as objects that they can use to achieve greater things and at some points it can stop being about liking the artist and become having a twisted pride in being able to say “I made that artist who they are”. This is a toxic mentality that could have negative consequences on artists.

EXO is a hybrid South Korean and Chinese group that debuted as EXO-K (Korean) and Exo-M (Mandarin) from SM Entertainment on April 8th of 2012. Their Fandom is known as EXO-L, The L stands for Love, and represents another subunit of the group, the L that comes between K and M. I was able to talk to certain “influential” fans and received information about different fan projects. “In the age of the do-it-yourself media consumer, it seems that anyone, anywhere, with access to the internet and a specific text has the potential to be a contributor to a complex community of productive consumers” (R.M. Milner, 491–92). Fans that have access to the internet have used it to their advantage to make their artists more known by creating fan products and distributing them online. Digital labor is done by fans “When they tweet about a show using a hashtag, or when they tell a friend about that show, they’re completing free labor for the television network whose show they’re watching” (Chin et al., 2). Fanfiction, YouTube fan videos, fan projects are some of the examples I found within the EXO fandom. There was a fire in South Korea April of 2019 and the EXO-L fandom donated 17 million Won in the name of EXO (Naver). A few days ago it was The 7th anniversary of EXO and fans bought EXO a deed on Mars. EXO fans have also donated to many social causes under the name of EXO. In 2018, The Chinese fanbase of EXO put a short Video of EXO on the Burj Khalifa, they also put pictures and videos of EXO on buses and subways. This was all done to promote EXO to the public.

Breaking Language Barriers

When it comes to Korean entertainment fan subbers are one of the most important people because they translate the Korean TV shows/ movies into different languages. This allows for the show to reach a more broad audience and exposes actors outside of South Korea. “Dramafever was the first site to provide a legal alternative for watching South Korean drama online to audiences in North America, five to six million unique monthly users of which were watching dramas through illegal sources at the time (Garcia 2010)” (Tolou, 14 ). Dramafever was one of the first websites I used to watch Kdramas. They usually offered the first 3 episodes of a show and then in order to watch the rest you had to subscribe. The website was taken down in late 2018. One of the biggest platforms for Kdramas is ViKi, it is also has one of the biggest fan sub communities. “ViKi is a community-powered or ‘crowdsourced’ 2 Internet platform allowing “anyone to discover and enjoy the best of world TV and movies in their own language”’ (DWYER, 218). ViKi is one of the platforms I use the most to watch Kdramas, they have hundreds of shows, not only from Korea but from all over the East Asian countries. For the first time after 2 years of using ViKi I looked at their community tab to see what they offer their subbers in exchange for volunteering. According to the page, subbers are given perks special perks and get to make friends from all around the world. At the end of the day it is still a form of digital labor because the fans are volunteering their time to sub the episodes of Kdramas without getting monetary pay.

While I was on ViKi I looked through the comments of Kdramas with low ratings and realized that more than half the time the reasons for the low rating is because they have not been subbed into either English or Spanish fast enough. So fans that want to see the show right away give the show a low rating because they are mad at the slow subbing which in turn can become a disadvantage to the show because it could have been an amazing show but due to slow subbing it has a low score which makes people feel like not watching it. I choose not to watch a show due to its low ratings before I realized that the ratings do not reflect the quality of the show. This is an example of fandom influencing the success of an artist.

Why is Fandom Important?

The research matters because there is still a lot of research being done on fandom cultures and the Kpop fandom is one of the most interesting fandom phenomena within the last 20 years. My intended audience is Kpop fans as well as people who have an interest in fandom history and culture.

Citation

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