The politics of apology: The ‘Tzuyu Scandal’ and transnational dynamics of K-pop

Abstract

This article examines how transnational cultural flows such as K-pop create intensified regional dynamics and conflicts by looking at a specific case called the ‘Tzuyu incident’. A young Taiwanese member, Chou Tzuyu, of the K-pop girl band TWICE apologized for waving a Republic of China’s flag on a Korean TV show in an apology video released on JYP Entertainment’s official YouTube channel. The video soon went viral among K-pop fans around the globe, especially in Taiwan, China, and Korea, creating a transnational discursive space that vividly captures the complex dynamics among various actors such as the local media, the transnational entertainment corporation, fans, as well as the artists. Through a close inspection of the apology video made by Tzuyu and JYP entertainment, as well as the responses generated in China and Taiwan, this article examines the complicated power dynamics of a variety of players involved in the production and consumption of K-pop. The article argues that geopolitics in the Tzuyu incident is manifested in gendered narratives, showing the uneven power relations between the entertainment company, consumers, and the artist as well as that between China and Taiwan.

Keywords

East Asia geopolitics K-pop transnational cultural flow Tzuyu

Reading the Tzuyu Scandal: Towards a transnational understanding of K-pop

On 15 January 2016, JYP Entertainment (hereafter, JYP), one of the three biggest Korean management companies in South Korea along with YG Entertainment and SM Entertainment, released an ‘apology video’ on its YouTube channel where a 16-year-old teenage girl bowed deeply to apologize for her ‘careless behavior’ which created a huge controversy among Taiwanese, Chinese, and Korean audiences. The incident can be traced back to November 2015 when Chou Tzuyu (周子瑜),¹ a Taiwanese member of the Korean female group TWICE, waved a Republic of China² (Taiwan’s current national flag) on a Korean entertainment TV show My Little Television (MBC, 2015–2017; Tzuyu was on Episode 16 which aired on November 22, 2015). When the episode first aired on Korean national television, there was no controversy over her waving the national flag initially. Yet the incident caught many Chinese citizens’ attention when Huang An, a Taiwanese singer who had migrated years ago to work in the mainland Chinese market, posted a message on the most widely used Chinese social media platform Weibo on January 8, 2016. Huang condemned Chou’s act of waving the Taiwanese flag on Korean TV for signaling a pro-independence gesture. This post soon went viral among Chinese netizens, creating a huge controversy. Feeling that their national sovereignty was significantly damaged, Chinese netizens called for a boycott of JYP and left messages on JYP’s official webpage demanding that JYP and Chou Tzuyu apologize. As a result, some Chinese media cancelled the scheduled performances of TWICE and that of many other artists who belong to JYP (see Koreaboo, 2016).

This strong backlash from Chinese corporations and Chinese netizens significantly impacted JYP because the Chinese market has arguably become one of the greatest importers of Korean media and popular culture in the region. Therefore, Park Jin Young, the founder of JYP, quickly published an apology letter via the agency’s Weibo account and apologized for not being culturally sensitive about the geopolitical relations in the region. Even with the consecutive apologies which Park published on January 13 and 14, the anger did not subside. To calm Chinese K-pop fans and in fear of the backlash against JYP’s business in China, JYP decided to post Tzuyu’s apology video on its official YouTube channel on 15 January 2016. In the video, Tzuyu, under JYP and her parents’ supervision,³ read a statement in Chinese confirming that she was not an independentist and that she supported the One China policy as the guiding principle that defines Taiwan–China relations.

This apology video, in turn, infuriated many Taiwanese citizens. As Taiwan experienced the process of democratization, the previous China-centered ideology secured by the Nationalist Party (Kuomingtang, or KMT) has been supplanted by Taiwanese identity in the twenty-first century. One China policy may be an option for Taiwanese, but the citizens remain rather suspicious of the communist China. Out of frustration and anger, some Taiwanese netizens left malicious comments on JYP’s homepage, protesting JYP’s decision to release such an apology video, which resulted in JYP’s website temporarily crashing (Ahn, 2016). Compounding the already tense situation, the apology video was uploaded just one day before Taiwan’s presidential election on 16 January 2016, making Tsai Ing-wen’s (the Democratic Progressive Party’s nominee well known for her pro-independence stance) election win even more impressive. As such, the Tzuyu incident was arguably one of the most controversial events in recent years that significantly affected the cultural and political climate in Taiwan, as well as creating diplomatic tensions with China.

This so-called ‘Tzuyu incident’ clearly demonstrates how transnational cultural flows such as K-pop create new regional movements and conflicts, providing a critical transnational discursive space that captures the complex dynamics among various actors such as local media, transnational entertainment corporation, fans, and artists. These actors may compete and collaborate together generating contested visions of an East Asian popular cultural community. This article therefore unpacks the transnational contestation of desires and conflicts in East Asia by conceiving the Tzuyu incident as a multi-layered cultural text. We especially focus on the cultural politics of the act of apology as it questions who apologizes to whom and for what, which precisely reveals power struggles in the region. To this end, we highlight the unique position that Tzuyu takes as a multinational K-pop idol in the broader context of K-pop industry as a system: that is, K-pop idols have to be transnational to be appealing to the lager global audiences, yet they need to remain apolitical when they are embroiled with antagonistic geopolitical controversy (Fedorenko, 2017) . By carefully examining Tzuyu’s apology video and its derivative media discourse in a transnational context, we demonstrate how the cultural geography of East Asia is contested by the various actors involved in the Tzuyu incident.

The article consists of three parts. First, we map out the political economy of K-pop, treating K-pop not merely as a popular genre of music but as an all-encompassing media and cultural complex. In doing so, we advance our discussion by moving beyond an industry and business-oriented approach to K-pop in thinking about the ethnic and cultural hybridity embedded in K-pop as a genre. Second, we analyze the politics of Tzuyu’s apology video—the factors behind how and why Tzuyu’s apology video was produced and how the incident constitutes a critical moment for reinvestigating the K-pop industry as a whole. By focusing on Tzuyu as a symbolic figure, we show how her body is simultaneously gendered and (de)sexualized in order to quickly resolve the controversy and problematize the ways in which her image as an ‘innocent, naïve girl’ is consumed and circulated in a transnational context. Third, we present Chinese and Taiwanese netizens’ reactions to the incident and examine the online media discourse surrounding Tzuyu’s apology video in both the Chinese and Taiwanese online spheres. Given that Tzuyu’s Taiwanese identity resulted in controversy and strained Cross-Strait relations between Taiwan and China, we analyze how she became a symbol of national contestation in relation to cultural transnationalism in East Asia, ushering to the geopolitical discrepancies in the imagination of not only K-pop but also different identity positions of stakeholders in different places.

Rethinking K-pop as an entertainment system: Hybridity, cultural complex, and the political economy of K-pop

There is no doubt that K-pop has become a hyper-capitalistic cultural complex, encompassing other cultural industries including drama, film, fashion, travel, cosmetics as well as food, expanding beyond simply being just a music genre (Choi and Maliangkay, 2014). In other words, K-pop is located at the extreme end of hyper-capitalism of cultural production. The big three K-pop entertainment companies—SM, YG, and JYP—are leading this trend, experimenting with new(er) strategies to make K-pop and idol bands more appealing to larger global audiences. Idol culture in general, other than the K-pop idol groups from the big three, is an integral part of the Korean entertainment industry as a whole: K-pop idols appear everywhere—from television entertainment shows, musicals, dramas, films, and advertisements to governmental promotional videos.

Previous research on K-pop highlights the political economy of K-pop, conceptualizing K-pop as a successful business model that fits best in the era of neoliberalism (Kang, 2014; Oh and Lee, 2013; Choi and Maliangkay, 2014; Shin and Kim, 2013). Nicknamed the ‘McDonaldization of K-pop’ and the ‘K-pop factory,’ K-pop’s unique training system is well known for its highly controlled management of artists, which engenders ‘uniformity in physical beauty, styling, music and performance’ (Lee, 2015: 18). K-pop stars are not born but made through this highly efficient, factory-like production system managed by a handful of K-pop powerhouses.

Hybridity lies at the heart of the factory system in all levels in terms of music, sound, genre, fashion as well as the company’s marketing strategy and business practices. One primary element that made K-pop hugely successful in the global market is due to its high-quality production value and its explicit East–West hybridity that attracts both Western and Asian audiences (Jin, 2016; Oh, 2013; Shim, 2006). Jin (2016) points out how linguistic hybridity (a mixture of English and Korean) in K-pop lyrics make the songs much more accessible to foreign consumers. Furthermore, the audio and visual hybridity of combining the music of Western sound with Korean fashion creates a successful template for K-pop groups. Big Bang and 2NE1 from YG, SHINee, Girls’ Generation, EXO from SM, 2PM, MissA, and TWICE from JYP are all examples of groups that were formed using this strategy.

Not only are the rhythm, beats, lyrics and the musical style hybridized but the members of K-pop groups are also increasingly multiethnic and multinational, recruiting trainees from all around the world, especially from near East Asia including China, Japan, Hong Kong, and Taiwan. Thus, it is not surprising that many recent K-pop idol groups include at least one foreign member. TWICE, for instance, has four foreign members (two are Japanese, one is Japanese-American, and the other is Taiwanese) out of nine members.

While the hybrid formation of K-pop groups aims to maximize corporate interests, this practice also creates unexpected tensions and conflicts among various actors involved in the K-pop industry. For instance, Hankyung, a former Chinese member of the Korean boy band Super Junior, was the first foreign member who withdrew his contract and filed a lawsuit against SM in 2009 for placing various restrictions on him as a foreign member, an excessive work schedule, and unfair profit sharing. Eventually, Hankyung left Super Junior and debuted as an actor and a singer in China under a new contract with a Chinese entertainment company. He has become a national star in China. A few years later, two Chinese members of the SM-based boy band EXO, Chris and Luhan, breached their contract with SM, following a path similar to Hankyung. As it was to Hankyung’s case, the hostility that Chris and Luhan faced from their transnational fans was harsh as they were seen as ‘traitors’ who betrayed the band for the promise of money, seeking larger profits in China despite their training in the K-pop system. Put differently, being a foreign member in K-pop’s ‘assembly line to stardom’ oftentimes is a double-edged sword—where it debunks impossibility of K-pop manufacturing factory while offering an excuse for K-pop’s ever-increasing hybridity.

This article therefore looks at a critical disjuncture where K-pop’s hybridity engenders multiple ruptures. It conceptualizes K-pop not merely as an entertainment or a business model that aggressively embraces hybridity but as a (cultural) space where politics and historical memory intersect, altogether creating transnational desire and conflicts simultaneously. We especially highlight an inherent conflict that the K-pop idols embody. As Fedorenko (2017: 511) writes, ‘For Hallyu celebrities to reach a global potential, they have to move away from being Korean and become transnational, apolitical symbols of pan-Asian, nation-less modernity.’ In other words, K-pop stars’ national identity is constrained by the contestation between global capitalism and regional nationalism.

Given that K-pop idols’ celebrity culture is profoundly based on transnational fandom culture, however, it is surprising that there have been only a relatively small number of studies that specifically examine the (individual) K-pop star as a cultural text.⁴ Yet these studies are mainly about native Korean idols and no research has examined non-Korean members extensively. It is in this context that reading Tzuyu as a transnational K-pop idol figure becomes important as it complicates our understanding of the cultural politics of today’s K-pop. We specifically read Tzuyu as a cultural text where her multiple localities and identities are contested: for instance, she is a Taiwanese teenage girl and a transnational idol, artist, and laborer. In other words, her multiple identities as a transnational idol figure is a cultural site where competing powers—K-pop fans, K-pop management companies, idols, and governmental entities in some cases—are in conflict, altogether complicating our understanding of regional cultural politics in the era of the Korean Wave 2.0.

‘Tzuyu Apologized’: Tzuyu as a transnational laborer and a gendered subjectivity

This section specifically analyzes Tzuyu’s apology video and the media discourse around the incident, more specifically the power dynamics surrounding the apology itself. Demonstrating that the text is multiply layered, we show how Tzuyu’s image in the video is gendered, which in turn offers a critical perspective on how the K-pop system functions. In the apology video, Tzuyu is dressed in a black turtleneck sweater without wearing makeup (see Figure 1). Calmly and without emotion, Tzuyu first bowed and then read in Chinese off a prepared script:

Hello. I am Chou Tzuyu. I am sorry. I should have apologized earlier. […] There is only one China. The two sides of the Taiwan Strait are one. I have always considered myself to be Chinese and felt proud of this. As a Chinese person, I feel very, very sorry and guilty that my inappropriate words and actions while abroad harmed my company [JYP] and the feelings of netizens on both sides of the Taiwan Strait. I’ve decided to terminate of all my activities in China and seriously reflect on this. Once again, I am very sorry.

Figure 1.

Screenshot of Tzuyu in the apology video.

After finishing reading the statement, she bowed deeply again, expressing her deepest apology to her viewers. The video was short, about one and a half minutes, but it went viral in Taiwan, China, and Korea and garnered attention from K-pop fans and communities in other parts of the world including North America, Europe, and the Middle East. Western news outlets such as BBC and CNN also covered the story. According to the BBC report (BBC Asia, 2016), ‘By Monday [three days after the apology video was posted], the video had been viewed more than 5.7 million times on YouTube, with more than 300,000 dislikes and 22,000 likes, as well as more than 140,000 comments.’ As such, the incident was indeed a transnational cultural text for larger fan communities of K-pop.

The apology video requires an in-depth visual analysis about the ways in which Tzuyu was presented in the video—for instance, the mise-en-scéne, costume choice and color, and shot and scene composition send us a particular message. Her black turtleneck sweater coupled with the plain gray wall background made the video’s overall visual frame seem bleak. To some degree, this visual imagery is reminiscent of a hostage video in which the subject is alone in a room talking to a camera seemingly giving a statement under duress. For the very same reason, Taipei Times, a major Taiwanese newspaper published in English, highlighted this point, indicating that the way the video is shot and how Tzuyu is treated made her seem like a victim (Chin and Chung, 2016). Indeed, as we will discuss in the next section, Taiwanese netizens were angry with the video for its portraying Tzuyu much like a criminal, assuming the blame for an incident that was entirely her fault.

This particular image of Tzuyu in the apology video precisely captures how an idol (as a cultural commodity) is treated within the K-pop system. Symbolically, she was there as a hostage of JYP and of the K-pop system, while more broadly speaking, revealing how young female idols, their bodies and sexuality are controlled and strictly managed by their entertainment company (Kim, 2011). While K-pop groups’ de-individualization and uniformity is common for both boy bands and girl bands (Kang, 2014), girl bands’ appearance and performance are much more standardized, whereas boy bands generally enjoy a greater degree of individualism compared to girl bands (Maliangkay, 2015: 91). It is not uncommon for management companies to strictly control female idols’ appearance, diet, and privacy in order to maintain idols’ best image so that they remain desirable and thus, profitable. Moreover, female idols’ appearance and performances are highly sexualized and eroticized in the K-pop music scene. In many girl band videos, including music videos, performance videos, or even when they perform on television, the camera work is erotic, guiding the viewer’s gaze from toes to legs to hips (Maliangkay, 2015: 94).

In this context, the fact that Tzuyu wore no makeup and covered her body by wearing a shapeless black sweater starkly contrasts with the highly sexualized image of the female idols. Tzuyu’s image here is de-sexualized. Instead, her image as a vulnerable teenage girl is highlighted: she is just a naïve girl who does not know much about politics but who worked so hard to make her dream (being a K-pop star) come true. As Kim (2011: 340) rightly points out, the female idols’ sexuality is ‘placed between pretty child/seductive adult and split between conflicting binaries of purity/sensation, innocence/maturity and neatness/vulgarity.’ Tzuyu is no different when fitting into this dichotomy: her body is glamorized as a perfect image of feminine sexuality within the entertainment industry in order to attract the largest number of fans, especially male fans, but in times of crisis, she should remain naïve and innocent.

Interestingly, both the Korean and Taiwanese media mobilized the narrative of Tzuyu as a naïve young girl, yet each had a different motive. JYP and the Korean media needed the innocent girl image to evoke compassion from viewers and mitigate negative public sentiment. Taiwanese netizens and media mobilized Tzuyu’s image as a helpless girl in order to blame JYP for its cruelty in forcing a young naïve girl to apologize (although JYP denied this accusation). Although the intention was different, both countries needed Tzuyu to be portrayed as a young naïve girl to reinforce the image of female idols as a visual object (to be consumed), not as a subject within the system of K-pop.

Constructing female idols’ girlness—their naïveté, innocence, and purity—is indeed a transnational phenomenon. In Japan, female idols’ innocent, pure, and child-like image is highlighted in Japanese idol culture (Jung and Hirata, 2012). For instance, Minegishi Minami, one of the members of AKB48, the most popular and representative female idol group in Japan, released an apology video in 2013 when she was embroiled in a sex scandal with her then-boyfriend, Shirahama Alan, a dancer in a boy band (BBC Asia, 2013). In the video, Minami, in tears, (voluntarily) shaved her long hair as a way to express her sincere regret for ‘betraying’ fans for breaking ‘no dating’ rule. This case clearly demonstrates that female idols’ sexuality is an object of (audience) surveillance and something that should be protected as pure for the sake of fans’ (sexual) fantasies. While Tzuyu’s incident itself is not comparable to Minami’s sex scandal, the ways in which entertainment companies portray female idols at a time of crisis are starkly similar in the sense that they both should retain their image as a naïve innocent girl who has little knowledge of politics (Tzuyu’s case) or sexual experience (Minami’s case).

In Tzuyu’s case in particular, she was portrayed as a victim; a ‘young girl’ who flew to Korea full of passion and eager to pursue her dreams but who now traumatically suffers due to an unexpected political scandal that ‘adults’—whether it is an entertainment company who does not want to lose potential revenue or politicians who want to appropriate the moment for their political agenda—have created for the sake of their own interests. In this circumstance, she needs to remain a young naïve girl in order to reconcile political and economic tensions among various interest groups.

Tzuyu as a symbol of identity contestation: Views from across the strait

What complicates the case even further is the fact that Tzuyu is a transnational laborer: as an artist who is a Republic of China national yet now works for a Korean entertainment company. As Tzuyu’s flag scandal escalated, the star’s reception in China and Taiwan grew from being well known among a particular K-pop fandom to becoming a national icon whose significance has been contended by participants at the national, institutional, and individual level. Owing to the tension across the Taiwan Strait, responses have centered on the Chinese nationalism that boycotts the artist even more than the Korean corporate who released the apology video.

At the beginning of her career, Tzuyu was portrayed by Taiwanese mass media as a promising Taiwanese performer who is active on the international stage. Her fans in Taiwan referred to Tzuyu’s debut in Korea as the ‘light of Taiwan’ (Apple Daily, 2015; ETNews, 2015), a phrase commonly adopted by Taiwanese mass media to describe people with exceptional talents who have gained international recognition. Similar usage has been applied to athletes recruited to the New York Yankees (Wang Chien-ming), Japan’s Yumiuri Giants (Yang Dai-kang), or Taiwanese artists performing on the Ellen Show (Zony and Yony, Lin Yu-chun). Nevertheless, as the flag incident developed—especially following the release of her apology video, Tzuyu has been considered both an example of the pride of Taiwan as well as a national icon of victimhood. Across the Taiwan Strait, the pop star’s expression of identity has likewise become an issue of national sovereignty worth fighting for.

Throughout the Tzuyu incident, one can find geopolitical discrepancies between Taiwanese and Chinese netizens across the Taiwan Strait that is mediated by the Korean entertainment industry. The commercial interest of K-pop is indeed a driving force for the creation and circulation of the apology video, which demonstrates power imbalance between Korean entertainment companies and the massive Chinese market. Moreover, the Tzuyu incident is a reflection of the changes that took place within and outside of Taiwan, both domestically and regionally, especially concerning Cross-Strait relationships. Specifically, the tension between Chinese and Taiwanese citizens has been greatly heightened throughout the production and consumption of multinational K-pop stars.

The China–Taiwan relationship has experienced several phases in the past century, from Taiwan’s concession to Japan in 1895, the return of Taiwan to the Republican China in 1945, Chiang Kai-shek regime’s (ROC) retreat to Taiwan, and the decades of Cold War antagonism with Communist China (PRC), until the Cold War came to an end and the PRC replaced the ROC as the China representative in the United Nations. As the PRC began a movement of economic reforms since the late 1970s and resumed diplomatic relations with global polities, Taiwan and China also conducted formal meetings. Taiwan began a process of democratization since the 1970s, when indigenous consciousness and even a nation-building movement that could sever the island(s)’ ties with China was made possible. Since then, a spectrum of political orientations, from pro-unification to pro-independence, has formed in democratic Taiwan. The Nationalist Party maintained a pro-unification policy, asserting a ‘1992 Consensus’, also known as the One China policy. With the increasing Taiwanese consciousness in the past decades, however, many Taiwanese have become highly critical of the One China policy upheld by the Nationalist Party, and the interpretation of the Consensus is still contested between Taiwanese and Chinese. Therefore, the Tzuyu incident should be examined in the context of democratic, partisan Taiwanese politics, as well as against the growing power across the Strait. This section demonstrates how the intimate relationship between popular culture and geopolitics is contested in the context of the rise of nationalistic impulses in both the ROC and PRC.

‘Nation first and idols next’: The Chinese view

Ultimately, Chinese netizens suggested that it was not the flag waving that was truly upsetting to them but the artist’s response when Tzuyu was asked about her place of origin. On a Korean entertainment show A Look at Myself (KBS-2, 2015–2016) where Tzuyu and Jackson, another JYP performer from Hong Kong who is a member of a boy band GOT7, were both invited as guests, both were asked about their nationalities. Tzuyu answered ‘Taiwan’, whereas Jackson said that he was from China (Apple Daily, 2016a). Jackson added that Tzuyu was from Chinese Taiwan (Zhongguo Taiwan) but Tzuyu did not say anything in response. The artists’ use of flags or stating their hometowns, which initially were simply innocuous elements of entertainment, became a political act.

Chinese mass media has demonstrated a China-centric view of Taiwan, considering the island(s) an ‘inseparable part of China’ (News of the Communist Party of China, no date). As a result, the act of waving a Taiwanese flag and Tzuyu naming ‘Taiwan’ as her home instead of ‘China’ were interpreted as infringing upon Chinese sovereignty. In order to appease angry Chinese consumers, JYP revised Tzuyu’s official homepage three times, from ‘Nationality: Taiwan’ to ‘Birth Place: Taiwan’, and eventually: ‘Birth Place: Chinese Taiwan’ (Koreaboo, 2016). Despite this, JYP defended Tzuyu by stating that the artist’s ‘[young] age and experience are deficient in [allowing her to form] a political viewpoint’ (Yulequan, 2016). Yet the Chinese mass media’s response showed that such a politically innocent perspective was impossible.

One employee from Anhui TV, a regional Chinese television station, published a series of screenshots on Weibo that was rapidly shared by other users and ignited a firestorm of comments (Yulequan, 2016). Showing a firm nationalist stance, the Weibo entry’s author referred to the ‘massive [Chinese] netizens’ about their patriotic responses against Tzuyu and JYP and expressed impatience with JYP’s politically ambivalent attitude. Many Chinese netizens castigated JYP for not abiding to the One China policy more staunchly and immediately. The enraged Chinese consumers claimed that they would ‘make an [concerted] choice’ to boycott JYP artists and products if JYP ‘could not choose between Taiwan and China’ (Yulequan, 2016). Eventually, with the apology video, JYP demonstrated that they supported the One China policy as described earlier.

The Tzuyu controversy demonstrates that culture and politics are intertwined despite the profit-seeking entrepreneur’s business ambitions. Before the apology video was eventually released, JYP published a statement claiming that the company is a ‘cultural enterprise’ whose owners and artists had never carried out ‘any political speech or activities’ (Yulequan, 2016). Although the entertainment company wanted to divorce itself from political associations, geopolitics have become an inseparable part of pop culture.

In addition to an entertainment industry corporation’s response (in this case, JYP), K-pop fans in China also made a choice between the star and the nation. While K-pop consumers form fan clubs for transnational stars, they could suspend their activities based on a ‘nation-first, idols-second’ principle. At the height of the Tzuyu incident, many of her online fan clubs in China were shut down (Jennifer, 2016). The China-based Chou Tzuyu Global Fan Club, for instance, published a statement firmly asserting its nationalist stance: ‘Forever support the One China [policy]! No idol before the nation! No negotiations for Taiwan independence!’ (see Figure 2). As the newspaper of the Chinese Communist Party, People’s Daily commented on the incident and illustrated the Chinese fandom’s patriotism: ‘[Chinese] fans hailed “Nation first and idols next!” … Every nation-loving heart is worth careful accommodation.’ In doing so, People’s Daily restated the One China principle. In addition, the Chou Tzuyu Global Fan Club demonstrated its nationalist position by disseminating stickers of an actress crossing her arms—meaning ‘no’ to Taiwan independence (see Figure 2). The caption states, ‘[We] can tolerate your Princess Syndrome and your sassiness, but not this crap’. According to this caption, a teenage pop star in the Chinese market is viewed as a little princess with whom fans could pamper but the bottom line of Chinese nationalism nevertheless existed.

Figure 2.

Screenshot of Chou Tzuyu’s Global Fans Club based in China.

Prior to the Tzuyu incident, there has been a surge of Chinese consumer nationalism at times of transnational conflict. The nationwide protests against Japan in 2005 and 2012 due to historical or territorial disputes between the two nations affected Japan-related businesses in China, including consumer electronics, cars, and restaurants (Chen, 2016; Liu, 2006). In 2008 in response to the Tibet independence protest in Paris, consumers boycotted the French multinational supermarket chain Carrefour (Nyiri, 2009), while the recent installment of the missile defense system THAAD triggered anti-Korean sentiments and especially targeted the Korean supermarket chain Lotte Mart’s operations in China (Jin and Yang, 2017). The boycott of Tzuyu and JYP is another example of Chinese consumer nationalism, manifested by the Chinese netizens who protested against JYP online, as well as the fan clubs and domestic media.

The controversy aroused by Tzuyu’s waving an ROC national flag has exemplified the geopolitical nature of popular culture. As Dittmer (2010) suggests in Popular Culture, Identity, and Geopolitics, both popular culture and geopolitics are doubly geographical—and therefore highly geopoliticized. Dittmer (2010: xvii) argues, ‘like popular culture, geopolitics is doubly geographic—shaping places in various ways and also demarcating the places and people who do the shaping and those who do not.’ In other words, the transnational production and consumption of popular culture created what scholars have called a transnational cultural imagination in East Asia (Chua and Iwabuchi, 2008; Black et al., 2016); however, this transnational imaginary space is re-territorialized (as opposed to de-territorialized) through the act of re-orienting the location of a nation on the geopolitical cultural map.

‘Today’s Tzuyu, tomorrow’s Taiwanese people’: The Taiwanese view

In the meantime, Taiwanese viewers interpreted the Tzuyu incident and her apology video from a geopolitical perspective. While the Chinese netizens were offended by expressions of Taiwan identity, the Taiwanese were repulsed by Tzuyu’s seemingly involuntary apology. Taiwanese netizens circulated the slogan ‘Today’s Tzuyu, tomorrow’s Taiwanese people’, fearing that the PRC regime might use its economic and political power to deprive the Taiwanese of their choice of identity (Taiwan News, 2016).

After JYP published Tzuyu’s apology video on YouTube, an article entitled ‘Chou Tzuyu Apologized’ generated thousands of comments on PTT, the largest and the most popular electronic discussion forum in Taiwan since the 1990s. The article was published on one of the largest discussion boards—gossip—where netizens could gather and discuss any issue from entertainment to technology or politics. The article’s publication took place in the evening before Taiwan’s presidential election, and around 1,500 comments appeared within 2 hours. With the particular layout of the electronic bulletin board system where PTT is stationed and the popularity of its platform, articles usually fall by the wayside among the high volume of posted articles as the bulletin board continuously updates. A total of 1,500 comments within 2 hours is a rather impressive number, showing the netizens’ engagement with the incident.

It is worth noting that PTT’s comment service is more suitable for emotional rather than rational responses, given the comments’ word count limit of no longer than one line or twenty Chinese characters. For instance, about one third (482 comments) of the article’s 1,500 comments were filled with curse words and sexual analogies which alluded to uneven and forced relationships, as well as sentiments of rage and discomfort. Analyzing those 1,500 comments, the keywords and phrases repeated the most within the article include sentiments expressed towards the people or groups that were deemed responsible for the incident (including the Nationalist Party, China, Hwang An, and JYP), or references to the political and economic principles relevant to the incident such as the 1992 Consensus or market forces in China.

Subsequent to the publication of Tzuyu’s apology video, furious PTT users considered the pro-PRC approach bolstered by the incumbent Nationalist Party to be a mistake. Within the 1,500 comments, 36 referred to the ‘One-China policy’, 10 directly addressed ‘the 1992 Consensus’, while 72 mentioned ‘the Party’ with a mixture of appellations, including Kuomintang (the National People’s Party, the official name of the Nationalist Party), Goumindang (the dog people’s party, a denigrating reference to the Nationalist Party), to lesedang (the trash party). Since this incident happened during the Nationalist administration, its affinity to the PRC outraged these PTT users. To these netizens, the Nationalist Party and its pro-China stance have resulted in a weak government, under which the country’s sovereignty is infringed upon the international stage.

The Taiwanese netizens were therefore exasperated when the waving of the Republic of China flag was considered an act of the independence movement. While the controversial 1992 Consensus was understood as a One China policy which accommodates for different ‘expressions’ of China (一中各表 yizhong ge biao, meaning One China in a different interpretation), creative netizens supplanted the word for ‘expression’ in the yizhong ge biao slogan for the homonym biao (婊), which literally means ‘bitch’ or to ‘bully’ someone (or to act in a bitchy way) in colloquial Taiwanese. To the many Taiwanese who endorse a Taiwan identity with a separate history and a different political system from the PRC, they feel bullied by the more powerful China.⁵

China was another target of PTT netizens’ condemnation. The generalization of ‘China’ was frequently referred to in malicious terms. As part of the PTT netizen culture, the more official appellation Zhongguo (literally, the Central Kingdom) was replaced with a derogatory title ‘China’ (支那). The use of the latter title has a demeaning, imperialist connotation, reminding readers of a history of foreign invasion. With similar phrases of aggression, these PTT netizens generalized and belittled PRC as a homogenous group which has been attacking Taiwanese sovereignty verbally and diplomatically. Viewing China as the Other, some users invoked the use of the phrase ‘Taiwanese people’ to delineate themselves from the mainland Chinese in order to ignite a sense of Taiwanese nationalism and solidarity. Among the 43 uses of the phrase, one exclaimed that ‘Taiwanese people are always the ones harmed under the One China policy’ while another counselled: ‘Taiwanese people need to wake up.’ To many Taiwanese netizens, China was not only capable of oppressing a Taiwanese teenage singer pursuing her career in Korea but also threatened the Taiwanese people’s freedom of expression at the international level. Using extremely antagonistic rhetoric, some netizens even referred to Korean and Chinese people as ‘Korean dogs and Chinese pigs’—analogies which have circulated within the Taiwanese Internet community for years. The Koreans as a country, nevertheless, have apparently received minor attention during this incident while the majority of the comments were about the PRC.

Other than the considerable number of netizens who hold the same ultra-patriotic attitudes and hurled emotional missives against the Chinese and Korean people, some netizens showed practical attitudes toward the incident. These netizens, for instance, indicated that the transnational market economy conditioned the subordinate position of ideology under financial gains. Some netizens also pointed out that the oppression of an independent Taiwanese sovereignty is a reality of which the Taiwanese should be mindful. Despite the prevalence of patriotic comments, some users suggested that the netizens had been too naïve about Taiwan’s international status and may have overestimated the Taiwanese consciousness of transnational entertainers.

In addition to the emotional charges and the reflective comments examined previously, many netizens responded with a call to vote in political elections as the means to pursue justice. During this incident, the younger generation of Taiwanese people showed a political stance that was more pro-independence and more anti-China. Many saw this incident as a humiliating experience which strengthened their determination to vote against the pro-China Nationalist Party (BBC Asia, 2016). A search for the word piao (票, which is the equivalent to a ballot or a vote in English) shows 51 results out of 1,500 comments. Among these results, 21 users pointed out that this incident was like a campaign (催票) which successfully urged the Taiwanese to vote against the Nationalist Party, while others used colloquial expressions such as, ‘send away the KMT [with your ballots]’. These PTT netizens showed their agency through voting against undesirable candidates. Although PTT users were not directly mobilized into an organized voting army, the netizens were able to exchange information, opinions, and sentiments through this online platform and strengthen their nationalist sentiments.

To sum up, Tzuyu has advanced from a commercial artist to Taiwan’s national icon. Her apology was viewed as a signal to other Taiwanese citizens that they would not be able to freely express their political identity. The Tzuyu incident has also revealed an active Taiwanese consciousness among netizens who are eager to participate in a civil society. In addition, the case demonstrates that the consumption and the reception of a K-pop idol are not free of regional geopolitics. The expansion of a multinational K-pop fandom beyond the domestic market has created a terrain for identity contestation when nation, sovereignty, or territory are defined differently by Korean, Chinese, and Taiwanese communities. These PTT netizens from Taiwan interpreted the incident from a localized perspective, through examining the domestic party politics, the One China policy, as well as by envisioning Taiwan’s future.

Conclusion

This article has used the Tzuyu incident to examine the intertwined relationship between geopolitics and popular culture. Geopolitics in the Tzuyu incident is manifested in gendered narratives, showing the uneven power relations between consumers and artists as well as between China and Taiwan, and even beyond. We have argued that it is the relationship among Korea, China, and Taiwan and its complex grid of commercialism and nationalism that shapes Tzuyu incidence as well as its reception in these local communities. Through a close investigation of Tzuyu and JYP entertainment’s apology, as well as the responses generated in China and Taiwan, we have observed the complicated power dynamics of a variety of players involved in the production and consumption of K-pop. K-pop stars’ national identities have engendered friction among consumers of different societies, although these national identities can be their cultural capital which appeals to the regional market and shortens the cultural distance between artists and national audiences.

For a transnational entertainment corporation, patriotism is a double-edged sword for the creation of attraction and aversion. Geocultural distance has not only generated attraction through proximity and distinction, providing a sense of familiarity and strangeness (Chua and Iwabuchi, 2008), but also consumers’ aversion due to intensified identity clashes. This is the sociohistorical context in which Tzuyu was assigned a Republic of China/Taiwan national flag in the Korean entertainment program that in turn led to protests in the Chinese mass media. In contrast to a world of fantasy in the entertainment sphere, the governance of the star(s) and the political movement prompted by the incident showed the constant power struggles existent on the individual and institutional levels.

Therefore, geopolitical and the economic connotations always underlie the question ‘Where are you from?’ in the pop cultural industry. When Western media asked Park Jin Young where he was from, rather than stating his national identity, Park claimed to be a man from the future (Hong, 2014). Park’s post-national view seems to transcend the national boundaries that demarcate countries. Nevertheless, the consumption of transnational K-pop has triggered nationalist sentiments, and consumer-driven nationalism is strong enough to be a significant force when boycotting K-pop artists and products, as the Tzuyu incident exemplified.

However, the Tzuyu incident is not merely a story of uneven power relations inside and outside of the K-pop industry. The consumer masses in Taiwan and China, the artist, and entertainment company demonstrate the flux of power and interest dynamics in the pop cultural industry. On one hand, the apologies by both Park Jin Young and Chou Tzuyu showed that Chinese money (or RMB as the Taiwanese netizens refer to it) could politicize the production of pop culture. The Taiwanese netizens, on the other hand, made their own choice by voting for a pro-independence candidate. On top of the presidential election, Tzuyu has earned international fame and become a celebrity known by the masses in Korea, China, and Taiwan. Subsequent to the national flag incident, Tzuyu continues to gain popularity in Korea, while her band TWICE has received awards in Korea, Hong Kong, and the Philippines (Apple Daily, 2016b; Fandom, no date). Tzuyu and JYP continue to profit from the production of K-pop. It is this dialectic of national(istic) geopolitical contestation and transnational capital that calls for a renewed perspective on K-pop in order to challenge the imaginative cultural boundaries of K-pop in East Asia and beyond.

Footnotes

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Notes

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