Coventry University DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY Imaginary of East Asia Evoked by the Transnational Popularity of Korean TV Dramas Liu, Xiaodan Award date: 2019 Awarding institution: Coventry University Link to publication General rights Copyright and moral rights for the publications made accessible in the public portal are retained by the authors and/or other copyright owners and it is a condition of accessing publications that users recognise and abide by the legal requirements associated with these rights. • Users may download and print one copy of this thesis for personal non-commercial research or study • This thesis cannot be reproduced or quoted extensively from without first obtaining permission from the copyright holder(s) • You may not further distribute the material or use it for any profit-making activity or commercial gain • You may freely distribute the URL identifying the publication in the public portal Take down policy If you believe that this document breaches copyright please contact us providing details, and we will remove access to the work immediately and investigate your claim. Download date: 27. Sep. 2021 Imaginary of East Asia Evoked by the Transnational Popularity of Korean TV Dramas By Xiaodan Liu June 2017 A thesis submitted in partial fulfilment of the University’s requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy Acknowledgments It is a long journey. I am so grateful of where I am right now. I would like to show my deepest gratitude to my Dos Professor Gary Hall, thank you so much for your valuable guidance in every stage of my research, and thank you, especially, for your impressive kindness and patience which make a doctoral degree a possible ending for me. Dr. Val Hill, I am so lucky to have you during the last three years of my research, thank you for the enlightening instruction, warmest encouragement and the extremely generous help during my last writing-up period. I would not even be able to finish without your help. Dear Will Barton, how are you? Sorry that I have not been in touch with you for a long time, thank you for your professional help at the early stage of my research, I wish you all well. And thank you to Dr. JongMi Kim, you brought me into this interesting field in the first place. Finally, I would like to thank my husband who has always been my rock this whole time, thank you. Abstract Korean TV drama, most of which is romantic melodrama, characterized by exaggerated emotions, stereotypical characters, and interpersonal conflicts, account for at least 80% of the total exports of (South) Korean popular culture. Regarding to the fact of Korean drama’s sudden rise and sustained boom in East Asia for over two decades, the previous studies suggest a commonly identified culture named East Asia responsible for the transnational popularity of Korean dramas. Instead of thinking East Asia as a given cultural fact as in the previous studies, my research studies it as an imagined community constructed by a shared sense of enjoyment. In order to define the nature of East Asia in relation to Korean dramas in particular, my research firstly examines the East Asian history of modernization with the Lacanian version of the theory of the Oedipus Complex in order to address the unconscious desire produced during the symbolic castration by modernity shared by members of East Asia. Along with the pre-modern past (tradition) bonded with the ethnicity (yellow Asian) as a sign of the lack, East Asia is being defined as a ‘female’ in the western capitalist modern discourse. The desire for legitimatizing the denied past in the modern discourse to reclaim a cultural authority for a new and more ideal subject is what initiated the imagination of East Asia in the first place. The paper concludes by showing how Korean dramas work to create an Utopian experience by making the impossibility in relation to the irreconcilable conflicts between East Asia past represented by Confucian tradition and the capitalist west possible again. Key Words: East Asia, Korean TV Dramas, Imaginary, Oedipus Complex, Hybridity, Pleasure IV Table of Contents Acknowledgments .......................................................................................................................I Abstract........................................................................................................................................II Table of Contents........................................................................................................................III Introduction.................................................................................................................................1 Chapter 1: East Asia as an Empty Signifier............................................................................11 1.1 Korean Wave and Korean TV Dramas...............................................................................11 1.2 Literature Review ..............................................................................................................17 1.2.1 Cultural Regionalist Cluster...............................................................................................17 1.2.2 Industrial and Neoliberal Cluster........................................................................................23 1.2.3 Post-colonialist Cluster.......................................................................................................25 1.3 Conclusion..........................................................................................................................27 Chapter 2: East Asia as an Imaginary.....................................................................................29 2.1 The Myth of ‘Hua’ .............................................................................................................30 2.1.1 Hua-Yi Metamorphosis .................................................................................. ...................35 2.2 The Pre-modern Western Imaginary of East Asia ..............................................................37 2.2.1 It’s China ........................................................................................................................... 38 2.2.2 Early Contact......................................................................................................................40 2.2.3 The Ideal Confucianism......................................................................................................43 2.3 Conclusion .........................................................................................................................44 Chapter 3: Modernity as the Name of the Father .................................................................46 3.1 Collective Imaginary and The Theory of The Oedipus Complex .....................................46 3.2 From The Ideal To The Immobile .................................................................................... 49 3.2.1 The Myth of ‘National Character’ .................................................................................... 53 3.3 Asianism: Fighting Against the ‘Father’ of Modernity......................................................55 3.3.1 Fukuzawa Yukichi and Okakura Tenshin...........................................................................56 3.4 Conclusion ........................................................................................................................58 Chapter 4: Self-orientalism ......................................................................................................61 4.1 Collapse of the Myth of ‘Hua’............................................................................................61 4.2 Collapse of the Tributary System ..................................................................................... 62 4.3 Internalization of the Conceptual Dualism ........................................................................64 4.3.1 Producing Guilt: Yellow Skin and White Masks ...............................................................66 4.3.2 The Shackles of Race ........................................................................................................69 4.3.3 The Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere.....................................................................71 4.4 Conclusion: East Asia as a ‘Woman’.................................................................................72 V Chapter 5: East Asia as ‘Signs Taken for Wonders’..............................................................75 5.1 East Asian Stereotypes on the Western Popular Media......................................................75 5.2 The Theory of Hybridity.....................................................................................................79 5.3 Mechanisms of Production of Viewing Pleasure................................................................82 5.4 ‘Signs taken for wonders’ in Korean TV Dramas...............................................................84 5.4.1 Male Protagonist -- The Perfect Other................................................................................85 5.5 Conlusion: Nostalgic Plots..................................................................................................90 Chapter 6: Analysis of Stairways to Paradise 6.1 Uniqueness of Enjoying Korean TV dramas......................................................................94 6.2 Cultural Reading of Stairways to Paradise........................................................................96