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Women We Love: Femininities and the Korean Wave is an edited volume exploring femininities in and around the Korean Wave since 2000. While studies on the Korean Wave are abundant, there is a dearth of thought put toward the female-identifying stars, characters, and fans who shape and lead this crucial cultural movement. This collection of essays is one of the first works to focus on gender and the key female actors of this global phenomenon. Using “women” as an inclusive term extending to all those who self-define as women, this volume examines the role of women in K-pop and K-drama industries and fandom spaces, encompassing crucial intersectional topics such as queering of gender, dissemination of media, and fan culture.
In addition to the communities engaged with visual culture of the Korean Wave, the audience for Women We Love will reflect the contributors to this text. They are K-pop and K-drama fans, queer, international; they are also academics of Asian histories, sociology, gender and sexuality, art history, and visual culture. The chapters are playful, intersectional, and will be adapted well into syllabi for media studies, gender studies, visual culture studies, sociology, and contemporary global history.
“Women We Love goes far beyond the dyad of the flower boy Hallyu star and his female fan to offer readers an illuminating discussion of plural femininities in the Korean Wave since the turn of the millennium. The essays will answer many burning yet heretofore unanswered questions about the affective resonances and political significance of Korean popular culture’s gender dynamics, which have fascinated, puzzled, and at times frustrated many fans and observers. Rigorously interdisciplinary, yet grounded in textual detail, historical context, and material reception practices, this is a timely and valuable contribution to the study of gender, fandom, and global media.”
—Michelle Cho, University of Toronto
List of Figures vii
List of Tables viii
Acknowledgments ix
Note on Romanization x
Introduction: Femininities and the Korean Wave 1
Kate Korroch, SooJin Lee, and Liew Kai Khiun
Part I: Characters We Love
1. Is Femininity Hard? Naming Femininities in the Age of Soft Masculinity 15
Kate Korroch
2. Tomboy in Love: Korean and US Views of Heterosexual Eroticism in the K-Drama First Shop of Coffee Prince 34
Maud Lavin
3. Miss Kim: God of the Workplace 54
SooJin Lee
Part II: More than Girl Groups
4. Ella Gross and Child Social Media Stars: Rising to Fame through K-Pop Idol Trainee Systems, Mixed-Raceness, and Tabloid Cycle Controversies 71
Jin Lee and Crystal Abidin
5. Girl Groups in Uniform: Moranbong Band and the Staging of NK-Pop in and out of North Korea 95
Douglas Gabriel
6. Ssen-Unni in K-Pop: The Making of “Strong Sisters” in South Korea 116
Jieun Lee and Hyangsoon Yi
Part III: Fans and Fan-Producers
7. Alpeseu (RPS) and Business Gay Performance in the Korean K-Pop World 137
Stephanie Jiyun Choi
8. Females, Frontliners, Fringes: K-Pop’s Performers and Protesters from Southeast Asia 156
Liew Kai Khiun, Malinee Khumsupa, and Atchareeya Saisin
9. Riding the Korean Wave in Iran: Cyberfeminism and Pop Culture among Young Iranian Women 176
Gi Yeon Koo
10. Into the New World: From the Objectification to the Empowerment of Girls’ Generation 201
Erik Paolo Capistrano and Kathlyn Ramirez
Notes on the Contributors 229
Index 233