The Soft Power of the Korean Wave: Parasite, BTS and Drama

At this fascinating historical moment, this timely collection explores the new meaning of the Korean Wave and the process of media production, representation, distribution and consumption in a global context as a distinctive and complex form of soft power.

Focusing on the most recent phenomenon of Korean popular culture, this book considers the Korean Wave in the global digital age and addresses the social, cultural and political implications in their complexity within the contexts of global inequalities and uneven power structures. The collection brings together internationally renowned scholars and regional specialists to examine this historically significant, visibly growing, yet under-explored current phenomenon in the global digital age. Drawing on a wide range of perspectives from media and communications, cultural studies, sociology, history and anthropology, and including a series of case studies from Asia, the USA, Europe and the Middle East, it provides an empirically rich and theoretically stimulating tour of this area of study, going beyond the standard Euro-American view of the evolving and complex dynamics of the media today.

This collection is essential reading for students and scholars interested in Korean popular culture and in film, media, fandom and cultural industries more widely.

Youna Kim is Professor of Global Communications at the American University of Paris, joined from the London School of Economics and Political Science where she had taught since 2004, after completing her Ph.D. at the University of London, Goldsmiths College. Her books are Women, Television and Everyday Life in Korea: Journeys of Hope (2005), Media Consumption and Everyday Life in Asia (2008), Transnational Migration, Media and Identity of Asian Women: Diasporic Daughters (2011), Women and the Media in Asia: The Precarious Self (2012), The Korean Wave: Korean Media Go Global (2013), Routledge Handbook of Korean Culture and Society (2016), Childcare Workers, Global Migration and Digital Media (2017), South Korean Popular Culture and North Korea (2019).