Abstract
The study and research of the Korean Wave, Hallyu, has been a growing field of inquiry in light of the expanding influence of Korean television dramas around the world. The various contexts in which K-dramas became popular and gained audiences spans Europe, Middle East and USA. Previous research, such as Yasue Kuwahara’s The Korean Wave: Korean Popular Culture in Global Context (2014) and Valentina Marinescu’s edited volume The Global Impact of South Korean Popular Culture: Hallyu Unbound (2014), was therefore focused on understanding why dramas from this particular Asian country resonated so well across so many different contexts and what it was that gained audiences’ interest, affection and engagement.
Transnational Korean Television and The Rise of K-Dramas also focus on various aspects of K-drama transnationalism, exploring the effect of Korean dramas on narratives, content, production, and audience engagement and expanding on previous research with additional case studies. Rather than asking ‘why’ Korean drama was popular, both books explore the complexity of ‘how’ different audiences and industries engaged with these dramas and made them popular; they analyse how watching the dramas spurred active participation in fandoms, travel and tourism, consumerism based on Korean-produced products, and the adaptation of formats.
Transnational Korean Television explores a number of transnational aspects of K-dramas. It is divided into two parts. Part one, titled ‘Transnational Korean Television with East Asia’ is sub-divided into three chapters exploring three main topics. Firstly, it details the development and growth of the Korean Wave in Korea and the effect it had on the television industry and its mode of production. Secondly, focusing on romantic dramas, Ju explores how this particular genre functioned as a transnational vehicle of Hallyu mainly due to its easy relatability and understanding across various contexts and audiences. Lastly, focusing on modes of industry collaboration, the third chapter explores regional cooperation through Korean co-productions with China and Japanese adaptations of Korean formats.
Part two of the book is devoted to the exploration of the American engagement with Korean Dramas. Again, sub-divided into three chapters, the first one explores the engagement of online audiences and fans with the dramas through streaming services, mainly Netflix, and the ways in which the technology enables the creation of community of viewers which shares impressions and recommendations. Chapter two expands on the topic by exploring the prominent role streaming services such as Netflix and Dramafever had on the proliferation of K-dramas in the US. The third chapter focuses on the exchange of formats between Korea and the USA delving into both successful adaptations such as Gut Dakteu[The Good Doctor] (2013) and less successful ones such as Byeoreseo on Geudae [My Love from the Star] (2013) which did not reach the air.
All in all, Transnational Korean Television provides a concise overview of the variety of ways in which Korean dramas travel transnationally in two main geographical regions: East Asia and USA. This wide-angle view limits the book’s ability to account for regional and national contexts and relations; this is not helped by the predominant emphasis on audiences in USA and industry and content analysis in East Asia which makes comparisons between the different contexts difficult. However, this wide-angle does provide an excellent overview of the complexity of K-drama effects across the globe and the myriad ways in which industries and audiences engage with both content and structure of those dramas.
Transnational Korean Television excellently sets up the scene for Park and Lee’s edited volume The Rise of K-Dramas. The volume, divided into three sections, each focusing on a different aspect of transnationalism, provides specific case studies which deepen understanding of the transnational aspects of audience, content, and industry. Part one, ‘Fandom, Consumption and International Relations’, includes four papers all exploring the various ways in which fans consume, engage, and promote K-dramas. They explore a range of impacts, from affecting and shaping the image of romantic intimacy, through the search for Korean food as a way to engage both with the characters in the dramas and the fan community, to the effect Chinese youth and influencers had on the promotion and funding of Korean products and merchandise in China and Korea. Ann-Gee Lee, for example, discusses the role of Chinese influencers in promoting Korean cosmetics in China and the mutual benefits this arrangement can have for the influencer and the Korean company looking to benefit from the Chinese market. In addition, the vulnerability of popular culture to concerns of politics, security, and local production is explored, such as the effect of the THAAD dispute between China and Korea on the promotion and consumption of Korean dramas and products in China.
Part two titled ‘Identity Formation, Transformation and Gender Relations’ presents three papers which focus on questions of gender and identity. These include discussions of the representation of old age on screen, the self-realisation through relationships in fantasy dramas, and of “soft masculinity” as it is represented on screen and experienced in real life by men in Korea. Jae Yonn Park’s chapter is of note here, expanding discussion of representation in dramas to take on not only young romance but also the concerns of the elderly and the challenges, socially and health-wise, that they face in their daily life.
The third and last part, titled ‘Co-Production and Adaptation,’ focuses on three case studies of transnational relations between Korean TV industry and other country’s industries, namely Turkey, USA and China. The three papers in this section explore ideas of: cultural proximity as in the case of Turkish adaptations of K-dramas and their Turkish audiences; Korean adaptations of American dramas such as Suits (2011-2019) and The Good Wife (2009-2016); and the ways in which Chinese-Korean drama co-production both facilitate and limit potential cross-cultural understandings by examining the adjustments made through localisation to fit local industry structures and audience preferences. In particular, Elaine W Chung’s chapter on China-Korea co-production highlights the tension between the national policies, ideologies and aims in transnational cooperations by examining the constraints the Chinese national contexts put on Korean productions such as avoiding representations that may not be compatible with Chinese censorship policies. More generally, the examples discussed point to the role localisation plays in the success or failure of those cooperations, including the success of Turkish adaptations of Korean dramas in adjusting them to the context of the urban Turkish economic divide and family relations and the contrasting failure of US attempts with various Korean formats, some of which never reached broadcast.
Transnationality takes different forms according to the specific local and national conditions. Accessibility to transnational content, made easier through streaming services, has had a significant effect on the expansion of audiences for Korean dramas beyond East Asia. However, streaming services operate alongside more traditional transnational avenues like cable or satellite broadcast, such as the broadcasting of Korean dramas in Turkey, or local adaptations of foreign content such as in China, Japan and the US. The effects of this transnationality of K-dramas also takes different forms as both Ju and Park and Lee explore. Representation of gender shifts perceptions both within Korea, such as the engagement of Korean men with the concept of “soft masculinity”, and for global audiences as Min Joo Jee explores in her chapter in The Rise of K-dramas which examines the impact of images of intimacy that lead young tourists to visit Korea in search for a drama-worthy romance. Both books thus provide a good overview of the complexity of transnationality and a valid exploration in a global world.
Research into East Asian television and Korean television in particular is a growing field. Future research can look at the ways in which international festivals and events contribute to the circulation of Korean dramas in various contexts and the role of streaming services beyond Netflix as a vehicle for dissemination, expanding on Ju’s exploration of Netflix. Looking beyond transnationalism, the exploration of the local Korean context and response of the audience to the success both at home and abroad of those dramas can give an additional perspective on their resonance within their home country.