The K stands for Kingdom

Constructed narratives of Korean Popular Culture

The primary task set out by Norbert Elias was regaining the lost perception of the long-term and never-ending process of shaping “civilization” (Goudsblom 1994). According to Elias, civilizations have started to gradually adopt more and more restrictions, primarily as a result of early state-formation (NRC 1990; Goudsblom 1994). While his work directed itself to the West, and is not directly applicable to Asia, the topics that Elias discusses actually relate to Asian history and the Confucian concept of propriety, which also constructs society, but only through certain unspoken moral codes of behavior.

However, these theories originally were never meant to apply to culture, as that medium always proved itself problematic when trying to govern or control it. According to Elias and Dunning (1986), the primary function of culture is to provoke pleasurable forms of excitement and a means to escape the routinization that the civilising process engenders. However, the K-Pop music industry is booming and actually grossed an estimated 3.4 billion US$ in 2012. It is currently recognized as the biggest South Korean export product (Time 2012). The increased K-Pop consumption saw the government promoting the music by reconstructing it as part of a state-crafted identity. This identity was embodied by all K-Pop performers, with the intent to enhance soft power and reconfigure the industry to the Confucian standards (Lie 2012). Currently, the state-packaged music is not only globally distributed but also performed all over the world (ibid). K-Pop artists have become national icons that define South Korea’s national identity (Lim 2018).

Music is widely regarded as an act of liberation (Munkittrick 2010; Sherman 2013; Hirsch 2014). Feeling the freedom to express yourself is an integral part of being able to make music (Hirsch 2014). Similarly, the popularity of K-Pop among Korean youths derives from its ability to tackle difficult topics such as mental health, sexual preference (LGBTQ+ rights), and suicide.

Nevertheless, despite tackling these current societal issues, the music still exhibits social distance due to the reliance on electronic music, elaborate stage design and repetitive phrasing (Ravina 2009). The songs might have emerged out of genuine emotions and a need for expression, but the eventual product has underwent a marketing makeover; packaging the emotional narrative in a way that guarantees consumption, while providing no room for raw emotion or error on stage. K-Pop walked the path of affectless sound instead of affective music.

The Korean government employs supportive policies that favor the spread of Korean Popular Culture, such as subsidies and low-interest rates to boost the cultural industry (Ravina 2009; Kong 2016). This sponsoring is favorable for the economy, but equally legitimizes more governmental monitoring on K-Pop production. The government has played a major role in banning certain types of K-Pop music on the grounds of it being too sexist, political, anti-governmental, and even pro-North Korean (Eun 2014; Connelly 2017). Still, not all music that displays these themes are banned, as gendered censorship makes female music groups the preferential target.

This gendered censorship could stem from the dichotomy between the Confucian and K-Pop version of what makes a ‘woman’. The Confucian philosophy prescribes all women to be in the sole employment of serving one’s individual family (Leung 2012). They are described as passive and inferior beings, and can never gain more importance than the male figure (Hays 2013). Hence, when it became clear that K-Pop allowed females to make it in the culture industry, this ideal needed to be re-imagined.

Still, this was only done in very minimalistic ways. Their ability to have a career supports the notion of female empowerment in theory, but in practice female performers were (and still are) increasingly obstructed in their movement within the entertainment industry (Leung 2012). The South Korean government experienced difficulty in giving shape to female K-Pop groups. As such, these groups now alternate between a “wholesome” appearance that guarantees national consumption, and a “provocative” appearance to increase international consumption (ibid). All the same, it became clear that female K-Pop performers now served the national family.

Physical traits became a major power play in the K-Pop business. The industry created a beauty aesthetic that not only constructed performers but also the audience (Williamson 2011). Beauty became inextricably linked to productivity, and in an effort to emanate idols fans have been known to save up for cosmetic surgery or receive it as a gift from their parents (ibid).

K-Pop in this sense constructed a type of docile bodies. This concept is used by Foucault (1975) to illustrate the control that society exerts on the individual through technology and power balancing. Docile bodies are created through human interaction with three different societal aspects, which can all be seen to relate back to the K-Pop industry:

To conclude, while K-Pop was set up as a musical alternative to denote a sense of cultural freedom, it could point to the start of a new civilizing wave that will legitimate itself through time. New norms of civilization are created and are gradually anchoring their roots further and further into South Korean soil.

K-Pop worked as a cultural prison from the start. Even though the prison bars might consist of spotlights rather than steel.

— M

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