The Korean Style: The Medium and Message of Korean Fashion

Vietnamese model and Instagram influencer Salim poses in hot Korean brand Greedilous in the Old Quarter of Hanoi, right after Vietnam International Fashion Week, which took place last week. Korean fashion is hugely influential in Vietnam, for many reasons too lengthy to describe in a caption.

Lately, I have been exploring the way a Korean style defines the snowballing interest in Korean popular culture that is quickly spreading across the planet.

It is an avalanche with varying degrees of stickiness, to be sure, but its advance is as undeniable as it is unstoppable. Yet, the problem I see with this theoretically is that scholars and other pundits tend to only pay close attention to a pop culture “wave” or other kind of social phenomenon when clear, and by definition, exceptional cases burst forth into the popular consciousness.

Examples of this are PSY’s “Gangnam Style” video breaking the YouTube meter, BTS showing up on another numerical metric of success multiple times (Billboard magazine), or a Korean director winning a prize at Cannes, or frankly, any Korean receiving an accolade or prize in an international forum.

The problem lies in the fact that, while laudable achievements, these blips on the Top 10 or 100 or 200 lists, appearances on the Ellen Degeneres show, or breaking of the YouTube hit counter are all, by definition exceptional. They’re worth paying attention to, and being nationalistically proud of, but all the attention often masks the why behind the phenomenon. Much of the reporting — and academic writing , unfortunately— on the subject of Korea’s pop culture success tends to focus on the fact of it having happened, with home team pride being the impetus for the coverage and treatment, followed by little else.

Just because Korean brand Greedilous got worn by Beyoncé doesn’t change the fact of Korean fashion’s wild success with those in the know across the world — it just means a lot of people who didn’t know finally noticed. But it’s still a phenomenon, either way.

And when this celebratory elation only focuses on the big, obvious, and easy-to-track exceptions, the thinkers-that-be often miss the important stuff going on in the background that makes the big, obvious stuff possible. It’s sort of like analyzing American football victories only by the touchdown plays, the final runs into the in-zone. Or summing up a basketball team’s road to success over a season through slam dunk reels.

But I’ll forego further US sports explanatory metaphors and move to a more useful one from human biology. Here, I’d like to talk about the largely ignored “organ” known as the interstitium. It is the fluid that permeates all the spaces between organs and other structures inside the body, and maintains a positive pressure that holds everything up and together. But more than just this, it also is a medium through which nutrients and chemicals are transported. It’s the literal stuff that holds everything together, the watery goo through which all the various parts cohere.

I’d like to make the argument that there is a Korean style (beyond just clothing) that allows the various parts of what people call the “Korean Wave” or hallyu to actually cohere as a singular phenomenon. Indeed, what relates “K-POP” to “K-Drama” to “K-Beauty” to K-anything? In fact, what does the K-prefix even really mean? Obviously, it means “Korean” but it also means something else.

Ask any non-Korean undergraduate or exchange student studying in a Korean university, or a late teenager or early twenty-something from any country why they are here in Korea cleaning guesthouses on a working holiday visa and they will all tell you variations of the same thing. Many will say their K-addiction started in one place such as K-POP but moved on from there, with the desire for K-things deepening and complexifying.

Put more simply, if so-called “Koreaboos” were nothing more than super fans of bubblegum K-POP or K-drama, that’s likely where those interests would stay. But they don’t. From what I’ve seen and through the countless conversations I’ve had with Korea-interested folks on the subject, K-POP is often merely the “gateway drug” for a deeper interest in Korean culture. Stated another way, and more sociologically, the interest that becomes deeper is an interest in contemporary South Korean social norms and values. It isn’t even necessarily about Korean things.

An American exchange student in Korea knows the Korean style, which is defined sartorially by the show, the torn edges of the jeans, the hipster glasses, and the sporty ski cap, none of which Korea invented. But it coheres as Korean nonetheless. And this clothing style is a mere marker of this young lady’s general positive regard for Korean values and cultural norms.

FILA sneakers are obviously not Korean in either make or origin, but they have become seen as “Korean” items in that they are an esssential part of the Korea street fashion aesthetic. What does one make of the this? Is there a “K-shoes” phenomenon? And even if that ridiculous supposition were true, what would it mean if a K-trend were defined by constituent parts that weren’t Korean in origin?

Well, it would look like K-POP, which is constituted by all parts that are non-Korean in origin. Korea didn’t invent the boy band, sneakers, or the 35mm film frame. Similarly, it did not invent the automobile engine, semiconductor ships, or this smartphone. There’s a pattern here.

But indeed, pop culture products are different from physical ones. Cost per unit, functionality, and efficiency are generally certainly not factors that affect a cultural product’s appeal. But yet, there seems to be an underlying, interconnecting common something that unites various Korean phenomena into a singular, larger thing that is signified by that “Special K.” That Special K is an interstitial fluid that give coherence to all the parts, allows one part to communicate with others, and can be seen in society as a complex and densely interwoven skein of Koreanness that makes a greater, larger whole that has tendrils spreading across the earth digitally, with a shape and form that defines a clear, Korean style.

My task is to clearly define the features of this style. I know it’s there, since Korean style is all the rage in Vietnam, China, and most other places in Asia. The styles apparent in fashion (clothing) are only the obvious manifestation of a larger Korean style. Right now, I can just tell you it’s there. It’s all around us, which is why it’s often hard to even see, let alone define.

As Marshall McLuhan famously said of the then-new technology of television, it was both the “medium and the message” that was important to think about when looking at the true social import of what would quickly grow to be called “the idiot box.” Likewise, no matter what one thinks of Korean music, fashion, dance, or cinema defined as a style, it is important. That’s its message. The takeaway is that the interstitium plays a huge role in the system. But we should also not forget that the Korean style is important as a cultural medium of social information exchange, especially as it is intermediated through electronic, social media such as YouTube, Instagram, and Facebook.

This is why fashion coming out of Korea is important, because so many people across the world are anticipating, following, and interacting with it. And also because it is the substratum of all the big K-fields that unites them all, but to which few are giving appropriate attention.