K yung h y un K im hegemoniC miimimiCry Korean PoPular Culture of the twenty-first Century Hegemonic mimicry Hegemonicmimicry Korean PoPu lar culture of tHe twenty- first century • • 2021 © 2021 All ights reserved Pinted in the United States of Ame i ca on acid- free paper ∞ Designed by Mathew Tauch Typeset in Huronia Pro and Quadraat Sans Pro by Westchester Publishing Servces Library of Congress Cataloging- in- Publicaton Data Names: Kim, Kyung Hyun, [date] author. Title: Hegemonic mimicry: Korean popu lar culture of the twenty- ¦rst century / Kyung Hyun Kim. Descipton: Durham: Duke University Press, 2021. | Includes bibliographical references and index. Ident¦ers: ¬¬ 2021000875 (pint) ¬¬ 2021000876 (ebook) µ 9781478013587 (hardcover) µ 9781478014492 (paperback) µ 9781478021803 (ebook) Subjects: ¬: Popu lar culture— Korea (South)— History— 21st century. | Mass media and culture— Korea (South) | Popu lar culture and globalizaton. | Glocalizaton— Korea (South) | K- pop (Subculture) | Popu lar music— Korea (South) | µ ¬: ¬ ¬¬ / Popu lar Culture | / Asia / Korea Classi¦caton: ¬¬ 923.23. 474 2021 (pint) | ¬¬ 923.23 (ebook) | ¬ 306.095195— dc23 ¬ ¬ rec ordord available at htps: // lccnlccn . locloc . gov / 2021000875 ¬ ¬ ebook rec ordord available at htps: // lccnlccn . locloc . gov / 2021000876 Cover art: Tiger JK (left) and Yoon Mi-rae duing a concert, 2019. Photo by Kyung Hyun Kim. For Yourim Lee contents ix Preface: Writing Pop Culture in the Time of Pandemic 1 Introducton: Of Mimicry and Miguk 35 1 Short History of K- Pop, K- Cinema, and K- Televsion 85 2 The Souls of Korean Folk in the Era of Hip- Hop 118 3 Divduated Cinema: Temporality and Body in the Overwred Age 140 4 Running Man: The Korean Tele v sion Vaiety Program and AÄect Confucianism 164 5 The Virtual Feast: Mukbang, Con- Man Comedy, and the Post- Traumatc Family in Extreme Job (2019) and Parasite (2019) 195 6 Korean Meme- icry: Samsung and K- Pop 220 7 Reading Muhan Dojeon through the Madanggǔk 237 Notes 273 Bibliography 289 Index Preface Witng Pop Culture in the Time of Pandemic One of the greatest lines in Korean cinema is delivered by venerable actor Song Kang-ho playng a gruÄ and frustrated country cop in Memories of Murder (dir. Bong Joon-ho, 2003), a ¦lm based on a true story and set in 1986. “You know why Ameican ǵ [agents] insists on [forensic] inves- tgaton?” Song yells. “ Because they’ve got to deal wth the US, where the land mass is too fiËgin’ big!” Implied in Song’s drunken declaraton is that South Korea is much smaller than the United States and does not yet have the technological resources to allow police investgators to use analy sis for solvng murder mysteies. Fast- forward three and a half de cades, when South Korea is a global leader in many areas, including in- fomaton technologÍ (Î, partcipatory democracy, and popu lar culture. Duing the recent global pandemic, South Korea set an example to the rest of the world wth its response to ¬ -19.Ï Ironically, it was locally manu- factured polymerase chain reacton (¬Î test kits (commonly known as swab test kits) based on an / analy sis method in ven ted by Amei- can biochemist Kary Mullis in the prevous century that enabled Korea to quickly put in place systematc mea sures to eÄectvely contain the vrus wthout resortng to border closures or full- scale lockdowns. Whereas in the 1986- set Memories of Murder a seial killer eludes police investgaton largely due to the unavailability of forensic analy sis test kits, in 2020 Korea has been able to suppress the ¬ -19 infecton curve by deployng con ve nient testng sites for the general populaton, implementng eÄectve contact tracing, and, most impor tant, reappropiatng Ameican scient¦c inventons to create a testng infrastructure on its path toward global lead- ership in disease preventon. That South Korean medical technologÍ today is largely borrowed from twenteth-c centuryentury Amei c caa is perhaps no surpise: the best biomedical and pham maac eut c al research centers are stll located in the West. However, in many ways, what most experts reportng on K orea’s success story in con- trolling the spread of ¬ -19 failed to recognize was that the playbook of Korea’s response to the pandemic closely resembled that of the K- pop industry. By redeployng essentally Ameican scient¦c innovatons such as ¬, global positoning systems (, developed by the Natonal Aero- nautcs and Space Administraton [ Ò), and Code Divsion Multple Access (¬ , licensed by Qualcomm) to test, trace, and eÄectvely quar- antne ¬ -19 patents as well as potentally exposed indivduals, and then emphasizing the public’s trust in its health experts, South K orea was perfectng a system that followed a path from mimicking and piratng the West to establishing an authoity of its own. If K- pop moguls borrowed the genres and beats of the West in order to craft their own immaculate danc- ing idols for global consumpton, K orea’s ¬ -19 response redeployed Westen medical technologÍ and tracing tools to eÄectvely control the vrus in such a way that would serve as a model for the rest of the world. Just as South Korea had nurtured its domestc pop talents— sans songwit- ing genius— before developing them into overseas export items, it had now seized on its domestc success wth ¬ -19 to become a major global exporter of medical devces and equipment—sans recognized scient¦c in- novaton in the ¦eld.Ó In this book, I have sought to understand the bluring of bound aies be- tween innovaton and plagiaism and between hegemony and underdevel- opment that has occurred over the past several decades of the postcolonial, ultracapitalist era by studyng and analyzing the queston, “How did South Korea achieve so much success wthout necessaily developing its own unique technologÍ, styles, and culture in the twenty- ¦rst century?” I was amazed to lean that even duing the ¬ -19 pandemic, when concerts and public events throughout the world came to a screeching halt, South Korea dominated headlines not because it was a medical technologÍ inno- vator but because it was able to quickly adapt to the cisis and deploy the tools innovated elsewhere, ¦rst for local applicaton and then for mass for- eign export. South Korea is a country of only ¦fty million people, so for any domestc mass producton to succeed, w hether of refigerators, K- pop ¬s, or vrus test kits, extenal markets must be found. While witng this book, I was constantly reminded of the words of Stuart Hall, who claimed that the logic of capital “would translate everyt hing in the world into a kind of replica of itself.”itself.”ÔÔ South KKoreaorea contnually excelled, not by repackaging its local cultures for the necessites of moden life but by surrepttously and xÑÇ ¬ implicitly referencing its own cultural impulses while reenactng Ameican styles, music, and trends. Most people, including academics, who stll remember Korea as a back- ward country that suÄered from dire poverty and military dictatorship throughout the twenteth century may ¦nd perplexng the fact that duing the ¦rst two de cades of the twenty- ¦rst century, both the most success- ful non- English- language ¦lm (Parasite) and the best- selling non- English- language pop star (µ) in the United States have been from Korea. The year 2020, which most people wll remember as one of the worst years of their lives, was ironically a noteworthy year for Korean culture, as the coun- try’s ¦lm industry was recognized for its achievements by the US Acad - emy of Moton Pictures and Sciences and its pop music industry produced three No. 1 tracks on the US Billboard Singles chart (µ’s “Dynamite,” “Savage Love [Laxed- Siren Beat],” and “Life Goes On”)— a feat rare for a group of foreign artsts associated wth neither a major studio deal nor a major US- label contract. These cultural products, however, exemplify the conditon oÕ “hegemonic mimicry” that I have temed for this book as a descipton of the Korean cultural conditon of the past several dec ades, which is deeply connected wth both the commercial and military ascent of the United States and the decline of a monolithic and unitary asserton of whiteness associated wth Pax Ameicana.Ö South Korea also expeienced a good porton of what Henry Luce once referred to in Life magazine as the “Ameican Century”— t hat is, taking part in the same po lit cal, economic, and linguistc sphere as the Ameicans, wth the naton’s elites growng up leaning En glish for more than two generatons.× What the success of Parasite and µ indicated was that South Koreans had come of age, which signaled both the end of the old Ameican Century and the beginning of a new era where Ameican-ness had to embrace, among others, Korean-ness. Throughout this book, I make the case that Korean cultural products of the past several de cades became ambivalently hegemonic through their cre- atve praxs of mimicry, a practce that is both unique, due to its eÄectvely opaque underscoing of traditonal cultural identty, and ordinary, because on the surface it in no way diÄers from other cosmopolitan neo- Ameican aesthetcs and styles commonly seen on YouTube and in shopping malls around the world. When, for instance, hallyu actress Song Hye- gÍo and K-pop idol µ are featured on billboards and department store advertse- ments around the world alongside Keira Knightley, LeBron James, and LioLio- nel Messi, this no longer comes as a surpise to most passersby. The Korean Ç ¬Ñx faces are just as familiar and nondescipt as t hose of any other famous person gracing a Louis Vuiton or Clinique advertsement.