Among numerous theories and frameworks in globalization research, cultural hybridity or hybridization has been most frequently associated with explaining the Korean Wave phenomenon (Ryoo, 2009; Shim, 2006). It investigates power relations between the center and the periphery from the postcolonial perspective, and scholars have employed hybridity in postcolonial contexts to explicate various phenomena of transnational media culture, both in the non-West and the West (Appadurai, 1996;
Bhabha, 1994; Kraidy, 2002; Ryoo, 2009; Shim, 2006; Shome & Hedge, 2002; Young, 1995). According to dependency theory, media play an ideological role as part of the cultural superstructure that results from the economic relations of dependency. In this pattern, the peripheral or Third World countries depend on the central or First World countries for capital, technology and most manufactured goods (Hamelink, 1983;
Straubhaar, 1991).
While this center-periphery binary relation can be influential, this logic is limited when explaining the Korean Wave phenomenon in a global/international context for its reductionist approach to view Korea as a producer that is neither part of the traditional world centers nor peripheral, and also individual fans’ participatory practices. Bhabha (1994) argues that hybridity should not be understood as the denial or contradiction of identity, but rather that its core function is always mixed, relational, inventive and negotiable. Hybridized media culture invites people into a distinctive location that is neither an authentic locality nor power-neutral. Therefore, hybridization is neither merely
imitating different elements that ultimately form a culture-less identity, nor simply aggregating differences. Rather, the hybridized media culture marks the continuous negotiation of various discourses and identity among producers and individual audience members.
In a political perspective, Kraidy (2002) considers hybridity as a space where practices are continuously negotiated and resistant to domination. However, hybridity and domination are not mutually exclusive. In other words, there is power inequality and struggle within hybridity. We need to understand hybridity not as a descriptive tool but as a practice for it allows us to recognize the complex and stratified hierarchy of transnational media culture. In order to move beyond cultural imperialism’s analyses of economic determinism and provide a needed correction to post-imperialists’ work that ignores power and inequality, Kraidy’s (2002) intercontextual theory of hybridity provides a useful framework. It explicates transnational cultural dynamics by articulating hybridity and hegemony in a global context. It allows us to understand under what conditions ideological elements become consolidated by emphasizing the discursive processes of making something to appear as norms, such as good/bad opposites (Bhabha, 1994), white people’s tendency to position themselves as “unmarked” race (Phelan, 1993), high culture/low (popular) culture opposites (Fiske, 2011) and dominant/subordinate opposites (Hall, 1998). Thus, hybridity should not be used to simply justify a transnational phenomenon of media culture, but as a communicative practice and a mode in which identity is practiced, reinforced, negotiated and reproduced.
Theoretically recognizing hybridization as an inevitable phase for all contemporary cultures in the era of globalization (Nederveen Pieterse, 1994) is necessary in order to understand the politics of global and local relations, especially when it comes to popular culture. In the midst of the dynamic flow of hybridized media culture, the Korean Wave provides a unique case study. Scholars have attempted to study this unexpected worldwide popularity from this hitherto sub-imperial, sub-central nation.
Previous studies have demonstrated that the non-threatening, clean-cut and visually pleasing aesthetic of Korean media texts appeal to Asian audiences because they are less violent, less aggressive and sexually less explicit than American media (Anderson &
Shim, 2015; Jin, 2016; Shim, 2006). For example, the popularity of K-drama in Asia has been cited as presenting ‘Asian-ness’ with a modern image by skillfully repositioning and repackaging traditions into cultural products of highly modernized quality now, as Japan did 15-20 years ago (Iwabuchi, 2002; Larsen, 2008). As Boyd-Barrett (2013) stated, the Korean Wave illustrates a good example of precisely the phenomenon that led Tunstall to reverse his argument from “The Media are American” in 1977 to “The Media were American” in 2007. It also illustrates the increase of multiple modernities—which differs from the Western modernity—within globalization.
An extremely high level of hybridity is manifested in K-pop. The origin of a musical style (e.g., Hip Hop) loses significance within reciprocal processes of cultural interchange (Kim, 2013). Choi (2006) stresses the variety of times and places from which K-pop comes, claiming that Korean Wave texts encompass dimensions from traditional, modern and postmodern times from Korea, the United States, Europe, Africa, Japan, and
many other countries. To put it simply, the Korean Wave is an exemplar of contemporary global hybridity, just as Western culture itself is hybrid. Hall (1991) in his discussion of modernity, said, “Modern nations are all cultural hybrids,” (p. 617) pointing out that even the West, which is commonly understood within historical Eurocentrism and modernity, is also radically hybrid.
Kraidy (1999) focuses on the ‘transformative practices’ that define the intersection of globality and locality, and narrows down on the unavoidable issue of identity. Hybridity helps us to understand the local not merely as a location, but as a crossroads of transnational receptions (Murphy & Kraidy, 2003). Therefore, instead of simply looking at how global media impacts locality, I find it more meaningful to seek out how cultural identities are reconstructed at the intersection of global and local discourses about the Korean Wave.
2. SOFT POWER AND TRANSNATIONAL MEDIA CULTURE