For the Record: Lexington Studies in Rock and Popular Music. Lanham; Boulder; New York; London: Lexington Books [an imprint of The Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, Inc.], 2019. xxxiv, 153 pp. US$90.00, cloth. ISBN 978-1-4985-4882-3.
With the widespread global popularity of Korean cultural products such as Korean popular music (hereafter K-pop), television dramas, and films, scholars across the world have begun to examine the power dynamics and related systemic power imbalances embedded in the factory-style cultural production processes and intensive labour practices responsible for the economic success of the country. In its examination of the sociocultural conjuncture between a patriarchal Korean society and the commodified femininity and sexuality of Korean cultural industries, From Factory Girls to K-Pop Idol Girls: Cultural Politics of Developmentalism, Patriarchy, and Neoliberalism in South Korea’s Popular Music Industry occupies a key position in the emerging critical conversation calling for a feminist perspective in K-pop studies.
Chapter 1 draws on the linkage between South Korean-style developmentalism, popularly known as the “Miracle of Han River,” and the K-pop idols, as a neo-liberal subjectivity; for example, during the Park Jung-hee Regime, female workers’ intensive labour was required under the patriarchal industrial system, which parallels the core characteristic of the neo-liberal exploitation of female K-pop idols. Chapter 2 investigates the sexual commodification of female K-pop idols as a neo-liberal extension of a traditional femininity embedded in the continuity of patriarchal Korean society. It argues that female K-pop idols’ functional position in the culture industry, simultaneously promoting neo-liberalization while perpetuating a patriarchal hierarchy, together with their harsh working conditions, parallels the circumstances of female factory workers during the “miracle” years of the 1960s to the 1980s. In chapter 3, Kim looks at cultural hybridity as one of the factors that has produced the global popularity of K-pop. This phenomenon is one that many other scholars of Hallyu (Korean Wave) have examined in some detail. Kim’s originality is to investigate the case of the Girls’ Generation’s (SNSD) American debut as part of an “industrial strategy” that achieves global consumption by using the sociocultural and politico-economic system and the hegemonic relationship of Korea and the US to represent female K-pop idols as racially and sexually proliferated.
Chapter 4 develops a taxonomy of generations 1, 2, and 3 of the female idols to argue that they have perpetuated and justified the patriarchy embedded in Confucian social norms while chapter 5 turns to an analysis of one female celebrity who, Kim argues, has been characterized by the split personalities of pure femininity on the one hand and intense sexuality on the other as her selling points. This contradiction is then linked to the precarious socio-economic condition of Korean women in neoliberal capitalism, construed as a reproduction of traditional gender identity and its conflicting expectations. Chapter 6 examines the concept of resilience as an integral part of neo-liberal social values and constructions of female subjectivity. It is also associated with the sense of responsibility that neo-liberalism wishes to find, as an ethical norm and a moral virtue of women, within female subjectivity. In chapter 7, the concept of “positive psychology,” illustrated through the messages conveyed by female idols, is tied to the commercialized nostalgia for 1990s Korea, the golden age of both economic success and economic crisis. This nostalgia was highlighted by the “ToToGa” episode, spotlighting old K-pop stars and their music from the 1990s, on the reality television show Infinite Challenge, which generally romanticizes neo-liberal pseudo-individualism.
One of the strengths of Kim’s book is its methodology, particularly the use of close textual analysis in several chapters to read some seminal K-pop idols’ music videos. Kim’s interpretations expand the scope of feminist discussion of how K-pop music videos, as intensely marketed cultural products, serve an ideology in which female idols are a sexualized commodity and their music videos become sites where the sociocultural and politico-economic assemblages of Korean-style patriarchy and hierarchy converge. At the same time, a music video is essentially a compressed showcase meant to condition K-pop audiences to consume K-pop as a commodity to be watched rather than listened to. Reading music videos of female K-pop idols, as Kim does, is therefore an excellent method for uncovering the processes of deployment of sexist narratives and images embedded in the traditional social values and norms reinforced by the male-dominant, elitist industry.
One issue that I wanted to see explored more in this book is that of taxonomy. According to Kim, “taxonomy articulates and classifies identities and differences amongst them” (65), but his taxonomies of three generations such as “Generation I with innocent, cute concepts, Generation II with ambiguous femininity, and Generation III with explicit sexualization” (65), do not sufficiently capture the paradigm shifts regarding femininity and sexualization in the manufacture of female K-pop idols.
Nevertheless, there is another remarkable aspect to the methodology of this book. Kim includes recent cases as a warning as well as a diagnosis of the current state of Korean women’s struggles in the real world, such as the extremely intensive labour and harsh working conditions associated with female sweatshop workers back in the day, but which are still happening today. Thus, Kim’s study sounds an alarm about the global popularity of K-pop’s neoliberal combination of American hegemonic ideology and traditional Korean patriarchy. In this way, his overall argument has an urgent timeliness in its exploration of a feminist perspective on the rapid changes in the K-pop scene.
Anyone who wants to understand the global “Hallyuscape” along with the Korean socio-economic and political changes should read Kim’s book carefully. These readers will appreciate how deftly Kim weaves the threads of the way male-dominant elite Korean society and its culture industry have constructed a unique form of female exploitation from a fusion of neoliberal capitalism, “structured” patriarchy, and Confucian hierarchy. This book proposes a better way of understanding not only the nature of feminist activism among young Korean women but also the radical feminist movements against traditional social values and norms in the realm of Korean neoliberalism.
Hyejin Jo
Simon Fraser University, Vancouver