Who Cares about Hallyu? — Beyond Petty Nationalism towards a Theory of Korean Pop Culture’s Actual Importance

“It’s da mothafuckin’ remix!” — Against the backdrop and specter of analog forms, a model in drag leads off the drag-themed show in Graphiste Man.G’s collection at Seoul Fashion Week in October, 2019.

The easy answer to the question is that, for the most part, those most interested in hallyu seem to have the biggest stake in its symbolic success value to the nation. This also leads to the ongoing reification errors in measuring its power, import, and value in the first place. This error takes place in the realm of lists, charts, and rankings in the White West. It also causes an erroneous assessment of popular culture’s actual importance in a global, academically meaningful sense. If we were talking about an explosion of Finnish popular culture across the world today, we should be asking deeper questions about not just why or how it happened, but why anyone not deeply interested or staked in the game of Finnish thing should care. This is how we figure out whether this is really anything of importance in the biggest picture of them all — the global scale and whether the hallyu phenomenon is just a flash-in-the-pan case of what will be a string of new and exciting pop cultures taking their turns in the global spotlight, with the Korean case of hallyu just being the first of many countries/cultures taking their turn in a globally digital media spotlight, in which case Korean hallyu will be most notable because it was the first or NUMBER ONE or the biggest or the best at things. But in the end, all of the celebratory writing and researching and jumping up and down at every Korean pop culture of success such as being in this chart or that ranking or breaking that counter it’s all pretty much function of the state of ongoing surprise or elation that Korea is at the top of things that the west values. We even talk about the “soft power“ of Korea in being able to leverage previously undervalued or apparently meaningless popular culture into the geopolitical realm of Real Power.

But is that it? Being first on a global list? It all seems a bit reductiand overly biased towards consider in popular culture as merely A way to get other, more important things done in a very utilitarian consideration of the phenomenon, as opposed to looking at the essential importance of that phenomenon itself.

I’d say that Korea being on top OR the first and foremost at something is truly exciting because Korea’s media and pop culture environment is a harbinger of the hypermodern paradigm shift the entire globe is caught inside. Korea is the unparalleled Adept on many levels and across several media, and is a hint at the way the digital, hypermodern, and ontologically malleable future will be for all humanity. It’s a sneak preview into the future of us all. Right now, Korea is a real-life science-fiction movie, the “Mediabreak” spots in Paul Verhoeven’s Robocop. It’s only weird yet funny because it’s almost true and we all kind of know it’s coming; it’s also a bit scary for that very reason. We all know this is coming and the way things will be. Maybe not down to every minute detail, but we all know it’s right.

Not in terms of the details, but in terms of the style, it’s already happened. Social meanness, neo-liberal callousness, and the saccharine simulation of emotions practiced by Corporations.

SImilarly, the Korean Style is the universal, aesthetic style points of the Future. Or, erm, the present moment that is fast folding itself (and us) into the Future that is here and now.

In even 2002, making aesthetic sense of a Black seonbi scholar from the Joseon era is kind of hard, but in 2019, it just sort of makes sense…and becomes a popular hat trend from Netflix.

That’s why hallyu is important — not because it’s from Korea.

Can you really argue against this? The hypermodern flattening of all signs and symbols, the leveling of all cultures’ representative forms and mediated art practices, the digital folding of professional skills into single button clicks or thumb presses in an app that fits into your pocket, and the cooking of an Alphabet Soup of new media that turns rank amateurs into Industry giants This is an environment that turns outsiders into insiders, those at the bottom into top dogs, Noobs into Experts, the Periphery into the Metropole, boys into girls, and girls who want boys who like boys to be girls who do boys like they’re girls who do girls like they’re boys…

What other cultural texts seamlessly mix together ‘Murican muscle car culture as seen in Tarantino’s Deathproof, Korean Instagram studio rental trends, Japanese sun goddess Ameterasu symbology, ebonics-imbued Korean (mis)pronunciation, and fusing the imagery of Catholic Christian heraldry with Black American bling? Some kvettch about parts of this as “cultural appropriation” but I just call it “The Future.”

This is why K-POP is popular. No one outside of the Korean milieau gives a shit about the “Korea” all the Old Guys give a shit about — that of fan dances, hanboks, the gayageum, or misogynistic gender codes — unless it’s just part of da remix! of Hypermodernity and just for fun.