Appropriating South Korean Popular Culture: I-Pop and K-Drama Remakes in Indonesia

Cultural Dynamics in a Globalized World – Budianta et al. (Eds) © 2018 Taylor & Francis Group, London, ISBN 978-1-138-62664-5 Appropriating South Korean popular culture: I-pop and K-drama remakes in Indonesia S.M.G. Tambunan Department of English, Faculty of Humanities, Universitas Indonesia, Depok, Indonesia ABSTRACT: The dynamic flow of South Korean popular cultural products has trans- formed the way “East Asia” is perceived in Indonesia. Consumption of these products greatly influences consumers’ imagination, as argued by Appadurai, which becomes an arena of negotiation as well as contestation in the sites of individual and communal agency. On the one hand, consumers in Indonesia perceive these products as a representation of “East Asia,” which is considered a well-known entity that is often used as a strategic defense mechanism (i.e., against Western cultural domination). On the other hand, consumers are seeking for more familiar goods in the form of mimicking products, such as I-pop’s boy/girl band or Indonesian television sinetron copying plots from K-dramas. This paper investigates how cultural borrowing and/or appropriating are strategically used in the meaning-making process of the new global and the modern portrayed by South Korean popular cultural products and their copycat versions. The author argues that, instead of focusing on the authentic and inauthentic cultural products that oversimplify the debate, this phenomenon should be ana- lyzed as a form of pastiche, which reveals the repetitive nature of popular culture flows in Asia as well as of cultural borrowing and/or appropriating. 1 INTRODUCTION On April 28, 2014, RCTI, one of the biggest television stations in Indonesia, broadcast a local television soap opera, also known as sinetron, entitled “Kau yang Berasal dari Bintang,” which can be literally translated to “You who Came from the Star.” Within the first week of its release, there was a massive outcry accusing the television soap opera as a plagiarized version of a South Korean soap opera, “Man from the Stars” (SBS), which was very popular in 2014. The outcries came from Indonesian fans as well as those from other Asian countries who claimed that the Indonesian version had copied the storyline, the characters, and even the opening scenes. SBS, who had the official intellectual property right of the television show, threatened to take legal actions, which made RCTI decide to withhold the broadcast and finally change the storyline. Indonesia has been accused, even by Indonesians themselves, as a country that plagiarized a large variety of popular cultural products from many countries, especially East Asian countries. This reflects how the flow of East Asian cultural products in Indonesia has not only ignited the rapid rise of Korean/Japanese wave in Indonesia but also the scandalous production of these plagiarizing products. Besides sinetron, the rising popularity of I-pop, which could be seen as the Indonesian version of South Korean idol girl/boy bands, is also an indication of how the popular culture industry in Indonesia constantly reworks and remakes products from South Korea as a ripple effect of K-wave global invasion. Therefore, claims and accusations of Indonesia as a copycat nation have always been the main narration to make meaning out of these recent cultural phenomena. As an end result of the popular culture traffic in Asia, plagiarizing products reflect an ambiguous meaning-making process, as consumers, while longing for the real products, are actually seeking for more familiar goods, such as I-pop’s boy/girl band or Indonesian 291 television sinetron copying plots from K-dramas. In this study, the author argues that the copycat texts could be seen as a pastiche revealing the repetitive nature of popular culture flows in Asia. Furthermore, I-pop and K-drama remakes in Indonesia have strategically used the means of cultural borrowing and/or appropriating. As I-pop, for example, replicates the K-pop industry, the mimicking act is no longer a work of plagiarism, as it becomes a way for the Indonesian music industry to rework the already successful formulae. By analyzing these mimicking cross-cultural products, the study reveals that there is a continuous negotiation between the actors involved in the invasion of K-wave and the process of reinscribing these cultural products. 1.1 Conceptualizing and contextualizing South Korean pop culture in Indonesia It is of utmost importance to see how the flow of South Korean products, or other East Asian countries’ products, such as those from Japan and Taiwan, actually works in the Indo- nesian context. Intra-Asian cultural traffic, which has intensified in the last decade, does not imply that the emerging regional connection between Asian countries is happening because of its geo-cultural connection. The regional dynamics occurs because “Asia” is considered a depository of in-betweenness. There has been a capitalization of Asian cultural affinities in order to create a suppositious network of intra-Asian cultural traffic. Chen Kuan-Hsing argued that historical memories within Asia have shaped the redefinition of Asia in each context. “Inside the region itself, anxiety over the meaning of Asia arises from the politics of representation” (2010, p. 215). The term Intra-Asia, in the case of Indonesia, actually empha- sizes the construction of a bordered imagined space of “Asia” in order to ensure the flow of unthreatening cultural products. It reflects not only the geographical space of the flow itself but also the setting of the boundaries in the distribution and consumption of East Asian cultural products in Indonesia to separate clearly what is considered “Asia” and not “Asia.” During the time when Indonesia’s social and political condition is overpowered by escalating politics of morality and anti-West rhetoric, East Asian television series, for example, is used as a strategic defense mechanism, creating a bordered imagined space of “Asia” to ensure the flows of unthreatening cultural products (Tambunan, 2013). Furthermore, East Asian popular culture should not be seen as an essentialized materialization of Japanese/Taiwanese/ Korean culture. Iwabuchi argued that: “These popular culture are undoubtedly imbricated in U.S. cultural imaginaries, but they dynamically rework the meanings of being modern in Asian contexts at the site of production and consumption. In this sense, they are neither ‘Asian’ in any essentialist meaning nor the second-rate copies of ‘American originals.’ They are inescapably ‘global’ and ‘Asian’ at the same time, lucidly representing the inter- twined composition of global homogenization and heterogenization …” (Iwabuchi, 2002, p. 16) East Asian cultural products are the embodiments of global and Asian, so they could not be simply categorized as an antithesis of Western cultural products. In other words, these products, including the television dramas or idol bands, are already hybridized products. To theorize and make sense of these copycat idol bands or television series remakes are a complicated task. Most research mainly deals with “… a superficial point-by-point, pluses-and-minuses kind of analysis. Often this kind of discussion employs a common strategy: the critic treats the original and its meaning for its contemporary audience as a fixity, against which the remake is measured and evaluated. And, in one sense, the original is a fixed entity” (Horton & McDougal, 1998, p. 15). In previous research, the original text is often considered a fixed authentic text and then the researcher would analyze and evaluate the remake or the copycat text based on the original text. Therefore, even though it is significant to refer to the original text, as argued earlier to say that something is original or not is contestable, it would be more fruitful to analyze the 292 remake/copycat text as an entity in itself. In other words, the analysis needs to go beyond the superficial level of what is original and what is not to see how the new text has reworked the formulae or structure of the original text. Therefore, the research will explore the underlying agency in response to the original text’s overbearing recognition. 1.2 I-pop: Mimicking K-pop cross-bordering characteristics The first case study to be explored in this study is I-pop, which is an amalgamation of the word Indonesia and K-pop. I-pop has become a significant part of the Indonesian music industry, although there is a strong resistance from Indonesian consumers. As reported by Arientha Primanita in a Jakarta Globe article (2012), the Tourism Minister, Mari Elka Pang- estu, speaking at the Indonesia Creative Products Week (PPKI), pointed out that Indonesia’s creative industry would be able to craft I-pop as an innovative commodity. There are two main developments of I-pop to be highlighted in this discussion, which are the earliest wave in 2010–2011 (SM*SH and Cherrybelle) and the latest ones, which would be categorized as the made-in-Korea version of I-pop (S4 and SOS). The four boy/girl bands mentioned are examples from each stage of development. They are considered the most rep- resentative in terms of popularity and recognizability. The first two, SM*SH and Cherrybelle, are the earliest K-pop “look and sound-alike” groups, which receive a lot of resistance from Indonesian consumers. Local media entertainment companies produce these two groups. Meanwhile, S4 and SOS are groups formed, trained, and produced by a local entertainment company in cooperation with a South Korean music agency, emphasizing the made-in-Korea distinctiveness. The discussion will now focus on the characteristics of these two waves of I-pop as they resonate K-pop’s global and cross-bordering characteristics. A palpable characteristic of SM*SH and Cherrybelle, which enunciates a K-pop zest, is the standardized practice of idol fabrication.

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