Abstract

Japanese youth¡¯s consumption of Korean pop culture :
Pseudo-hybridity in the ¡®Korean Wave¡¯ in Japan

Kyong-Won Yoon / Postdoctoral research fellow/Institute of Asian Research,
University of British Columbia, Canada

Mi-Su Na / Full-time lecturer/Dept. of Journalism & Mass Communication,
Chonbuk National University

The article, on the basis of qualitative field studies in Tokyo, Japan in 2004, investigates Japanese university students¡¯ reception of the so-called ¡®Korean Wave¡¯. In particular, it explores how young Japanese consume Koran popular cultural commodities such as TV dramas, movies and Korean pop songs, in order to understand the role which Korean culture plays in the re-articulation of Japanese cultural identity. The research reveals that the consumption of Koran pop cultural commodities is not a ¡®mainstream¡¯ cultural activity in Japanese youth culture. However, this does not necessarily imply that the consumption of Korean popular culture is considered to be a negative activity. Indeed, young Japanese audiences of Korean pop culture tend not to have any clear feature of marginalized subcultural groups, but rather enjoy Korean pop cultural products as a new resource, not being deeply aware of its origin. By consuming Korean pop cultural commodities, Japanese young people discover characteristics which Japan has assumingly lost in the process of rapid modernization. However, in so doing, young Japanese perceive Korea as the ¡®other¡¯ without appropriating Korean pop culture within their own popular cultural scenes and producing the possibility of hybridity.