AP/KOR 3610 3.00

Contemporary Korea: Korean Pop Culture

The course introduces contemporary Korean popular culture by exploring the hybridized transnational nature of their production, distribution, and consumption. This course examines the recent phenomenal success of Korean popular cultures (also called Korean Wave) in terms of the impact of emerging Korean pop cultures, global consumers, and their transnational practices. It also examines the impact of the development of new media technologies on transnational cultural flows and consumption of Korean popular culture. In particular, this course explores the ways in which television drama series, K pop (Korean popular music), and Korean cinema are produced, circulated, and consumed because of their popularity not only in Korea bust also with global audiences. Some of the specific topics we will consider are: origin and development of the Korean Wave; Korean trendy dramas; innovation and limitation in K pop; and Korean cinema.