Towards the Number: Lexington Degree inside Rock and you can Popular music
Kim’s creativity is to look at the your situation of your own Girls’ Generation’s (SNSD) Western debut within an enthusiastic “industrial means” one hits in the world application by using the sociocultural and you can politico-economic climate as well as the hegemonic relationships away from Korea and the You in order to depict women K-pop music idols because the racially and you can intimately proliferated
Lanham; Boulder; Ny; London: Lexington Books [an enthusiastic imprint of your Rowman & Littlefield Posting Category, Inc.], 2019. xxxiv, 153 pp. US$, cloth. ISBN 978-1-4985-4882-step three.
Into the widespread around the globe interest in Korean cultural circumstances instance Korean songs (hereafter K-pop), television dramas, and movies, scholars throughout the world have started to examine the advantage personality and you will associated systemic energy imbalances inserted regarding the factory-layout social production procedure and you will intensive labour practices accountable for new economic success of the world. With its study of the sociocultural conjuncture anywhere between a patriarchal Korean area and the commodified womanliness and sexuality regarding Korean cultural areas, Off Warehouse Girls to K-Pop Idol Female: Social Government out-of Developmentalism, Patriarchy, and you will Neoliberalism inside South Korea’s Musical Business occupies an option position about emerging critical talk demanding good feminist perspective within the K-pop music education.
Section step 1 draws into the linkage ranging from South Korean-layout developmentalism, popularly known as brand new “Magic off Han River,” therefore the K-pop idols, as a beneficial neo-liberal subjectivity; including, for the Playground Jung-hee Routine, lady workers’ extreme labour are expected within the patriarchal industrial program, and that the thing is brand new core trait of the neo-liberal exploitation away from female K-pop idols. Chapter 2 investigates the newest intimate commodification regarding lady K-pop music idols since a neo-liberal expansion from a timeless femininity embedded in the continuity out of patriarchal Korean area. They contends that women K-pop idols’ useful standing about culture world, in addition generating neo-liberalization when you are perpetuating a good patriarchal hierarchy, together with their harsh performing criteria, the thing is that the situations of women factory employees in the “miracle” many years of the latest 1960s to your mid-eighties. When you look at the part step 3, Kim discusses social hybridity as one of the activities one to has generated the worldwide rise in popularity of K-pop. So it phenomenon is the one that numerous other scholars out-of Hallyu (Korean Trend) provides checked in certain outline.
Chapter cuatro expands a great taxonomy out-of generations step 1, dos, and you can step three of your own people idols so you can believe he has perpetuated and you will justified the fresh patriarchy inserted into the Confucian personal norms when you’re chapter 5 turns so you can an analysis of just one ladies superstar whom, Kim contends, has been described as the fresh broke up personalities of sheer womanliness to your the only hands and you will extreme sexuality on the other side since this lady selling products. Which contradiction will be linked to the precarious socio-monetary status away from Korean feamales in neoliberal capitalism, construed because the a breeding of conventional intercourse identity and its own contradictory standard. Section six examines the thought of strength given that a key part away from neo-liberal personal viewpoints and you may constructions out of people subjectivity. It is very in the feeling of obligation you to neo-liberalism wishes to pick, as the a moral standard and you may a moral advantage of women, within female subjectivity. Inside chapter 7, the thought of “self-confident psychology,” represented through the texts expressed from the girls idols, try tied to the fresh commercialized nostalgia to have 90s Korea, the newest fantastic ages of each other monetary success and you may economic crisis. That it nostalgia try emphasized because of the “ToToGa” event, spotlighting old K-pop a-listers as well as their music regarding 1990s, into the fact television show Unlimited Issue, which often romanticizes neo-liberal pseudo-individualism.
One of many importance of Kim’s book was the strategy, particularly the accessibility close textual analysis in lot of sections to discover some seminal K-pop music idols’ sounds videos. Kim’s interpretations grow the latest scope off feminist dialogue out of exactly how K-pop video, once the greatly offered social factors, serve a keen ideology in which people idols are an effective sexualized product and their audio clips end up being sites in which the sociocultural and you will politico-financial assemblages off Korean-build patriarchy and you can steps gather. Meanwhile, a musical video is essentially a compressed program supposed to reputation K-pop watchers to consume K-pop just like the an item are spotted rather than heard.
Training songs video out-of people K-pop idols, while the Kim really does, are thus an effective way for uncovering new process regarding deployment off sexist narratives and you will images inserted on the conventional social values and you may norms strengthened by the male-principal, elitist industry
You to definitely issue that we desired to discover looked a great deal more contained in this book is that out-of taxonomy. Predicated on Kim, “taxonomy articulates and you may categorizes identities and you can distinctions 
around him or her” (65), however, his taxonomies out of around three years such “Generation I which have simple, precious axioms, Age bracket II that have ambiguous womanliness, and you will Age group III which have specific sexualization” (65), do not good enough grab this new paradigm shifts out of womanliness and you can sexualization from the produce out of women K-pop music idols.
Nevertheless, there’s various other exceptional factor toward methods associated with guide. Kim is sold with present circumstances because an alert including a good prognosis of one’s present state away from Korean ladies fight on real-world, like the very intensive labor and severe performing standards related which have women sweatshop workers back in the day, however, which can be nevertheless taking place today. Ergo, Kim’s study audio a security regarding around the world rise in popularity of K-pop’s neoliberal blend of American hegemonic ideology and you can antique Korean patriarchy. In this way, his full conflict has actually an unexpected timeliness within its mining away from an effective feminist direction to the quick alterations in the new K-pop world.
Anybody who desires to comprehend the in the world “Hallyuscape” also the Korean socio-economic and you may political change is always to read Kim’s book cautiously. This type of members have a tendency to appreciate just how deftly Kim weaves the brand new posts of the way in which male-prominent top-notch Korean community and its particular people globe enjoys created good novel kind of people exploitation from a combination of neoliberal capitalism, “structured” patriarchy, and Confucian hierarchy. This book reveals an easier way away from insights just the character away from feminist activism certainly younger Korean people but in addition the radical feminist moves facing old-fashioned social opinions and you will norms on field of Korean neoliberalism.
