Entrepreneurial Seoulite

Entrepreneurial Seoulite PDF Author: Mihye Cho
Publisher: University of Michigan Press
ISBN: 0472054163
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 169

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Book Description
Entrepreneurial Seoulite might be read as a memoir on Hongdae based on the author’s observations as a member of South Korea’s Generation X. During the 1990’s, Hongdae became widely known as a cool place associated with discourses on alternative music, independent labels, and club culture. Today, Hongdae is well known for its youth culture and nightlife, as well as its gentrification. Recent research on Korean culture approaches the K-wave phenomenon from the perspectives of cultural consumption, media analysis, and cultural management and policy. Meanwhile, studies on Seoul have centered on its transformation as a global, creative city. Rather than examining the K-wave or the city itself, this book explores the experience of living through the city-in-transition, focusing on the relationship between “the ideology that justified engagement in capitalism” and the “subjectification process.” The book aims to understand the project to institutionalize a cultural district in Hongdae as a demonstration of the coevolution of ideologies and citizenship in a society undergoing rapid liberalization—politically, culturally, and economically. A cultural turn took place in Korea during the 1990s, amid the economic prosperity driven by state-led industrialization and the collapse of the military dictatorship due to democratization movements. Cultural critiques, emerging as an alternative to social movements, proliferated to assert the freedom and autonomy of individuals against regulatory systems and institutions. The nation was hit by the Asian financial crisis in 1997, and witnessed massive economic restructuring including layoffs, stakeouts, and a prevalence of contingent employment. As a result, the entire nation had to find new engines of economic growth while experiencing a creative destruction. At the center of this national transformation, Seoul has sought to recreate itself from a mega city to a global city, equipped with cutting-edge knowledge industries and infrastructures. By juxtaposing the cultural turn and cultural/creative city-making, Entrepreneurial Seoulite interrogates the formation of new citizen subjectivity, namely the enterprising self, in post-Fordist Seoul. What kinds of logic guide individuals in the engagement of new urban realities in rapidly liberalized Seoul—culturally and economically? In order to explore this query, Mihye Cho draws on Weber’s concept of “the spirit of capitalism” on the formation of a new economic agency focusing on the re-configuration of meanings, and seeks to capture a transformative moment detailing when and how capitalism requests a different spirit and lifestyle of its participants. Likewise, this book approaches the enterprising self as the new spirit of post-Fordist Seoul and explores the ways in which people in Seoul internalize and negotiate this new enterprising self.

Entrepreneurial Seoulite

Entrepreneurial Seoulite PDF Author: Mihye Cho
Publisher: University of Michigan Press
ISBN: 0472054163
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 169

Get Book Here

Book Description
Entrepreneurial Seoulite might be read as a memoir on Hongdae based on the author’s observations as a member of South Korea’s Generation X. During the 1990’s, Hongdae became widely known as a cool place associated with discourses on alternative music, independent labels, and club culture. Today, Hongdae is well known for its youth culture and nightlife, as well as its gentrification. Recent research on Korean culture approaches the K-wave phenomenon from the perspectives of cultural consumption, media analysis, and cultural management and policy. Meanwhile, studies on Seoul have centered on its transformation as a global, creative city. Rather than examining the K-wave or the city itself, this book explores the experience of living through the city-in-transition, focusing on the relationship between “the ideology that justified engagement in capitalism” and the “subjectification process.” The book aims to understand the project to institutionalize a cultural district in Hongdae as a demonstration of the coevolution of ideologies and citizenship in a society undergoing rapid liberalization—politically, culturally, and economically. A cultural turn took place in Korea during the 1990s, amid the economic prosperity driven by state-led industrialization and the collapse of the military dictatorship due to democratization movements. Cultural critiques, emerging as an alternative to social movements, proliferated to assert the freedom and autonomy of individuals against regulatory systems and institutions. The nation was hit by the Asian financial crisis in 1997, and witnessed massive economic restructuring including layoffs, stakeouts, and a prevalence of contingent employment. As a result, the entire nation had to find new engines of economic growth while experiencing a creative destruction. At the center of this national transformation, Seoul has sought to recreate itself from a mega city to a global city, equipped with cutting-edge knowledge industries and infrastructures. By juxtaposing the cultural turn and cultural/creative city-making, Entrepreneurial Seoulite interrogates the formation of new citizen subjectivity, namely the enterprising self, in post-Fordist Seoul. What kinds of logic guide individuals in the engagement of new urban realities in rapidly liberalized Seoul—culturally and economically? In order to explore this query, Mihye Cho draws on Weber’s concept of “the spirit of capitalism” on the formation of a new economic agency focusing on the re-configuration of meanings, and seeks to capture a transformative moment detailing when and how capitalism requests a different spirit and lifestyle of its participants. Likewise, this book approaches the enterprising self as the new spirit of post-Fordist Seoul and explores the ways in which people in Seoul internalize and negotiate this new enterprising self.

The South Korean Film Industry

The South Korean Film Industry PDF Author: Sangjoon Lee
Publisher: University of Michigan Press
ISBN: 0472056921
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 324

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Book Description
A multifaceted exploration of the South Korean film industry

Mediating the South Korean Other

Mediating the South Korean Other PDF Author: David C. Oh
Publisher: University of Michigan Press
ISBN: 0472055453
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 255

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Book Description
Multiculturalism in Korea formed in the context of its neoliberal, global aspirations, its postcolonial legacy with Japan, and its subordinated neocolonial relationship with the United States. The Korean ethnoscape and mediascape produce a complex understanding of difference that cannot be easily reduced to racism or ethnocentrism. Indeed the Korean word, injongchabyeol, often translated as racism, refers to discrimination based on any kind of “human category.” Explaining Korea’s relationship to difference and its practices of othering, including in media culture, requires new language and nuance in English-language scholarship. This collection brings together leading and emerging scholars of multiculturalism in Korean media culture to examine mediated constructions of the “other,” taking into account the nation’s postcolonial and neocolonial relationships and its mediated construction of self. “Anthrocategorism,” a more nuanced translation of injongchabyeol, is proffered as a new framework for understanding difference in ways that are locally meaningful in a society and media system in which racial or even ethnic differences are not the most salient. The collection points to the construction of racial others that elevates, tolerates, and incorporates difference; the construction of valued and devalued ethnic others; and the ambivalent construction of co-ethnic others as sympathetic victims or marginalized threats.

Korean Families Yesterday and Today

Korean Families Yesterday and Today PDF Author: Hyunjoon Park
Publisher: University of Michigan Press
ISBN: 0472054384
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 351

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Book Description
Korean families have changed significantly during the last few decades in their composition, structure, attitudes, and function. Delayed and forgone marriage, fertility decline, and rising divorce rates are just a few examples of changes that Korean families have experienced at a rapid pace, more dramatic than in many other contemporary societies. Moreover, the increase of marriages between Korean men and foreign women has further diversified Korean families. Yet traditional norms and attitudes toward gender and family continue to shape Korean men and women’s family behaviors. Korean Families Yesterday and Today portrays diverse aspects of the contemporary Korean families and, by explicitly or implicitly situating contemporary families within a comparative historical perspective, reveal how the past of Korean families evolved into their current shapes. While the study of families can be approached in many different angles, our lens focuses on families with children or young adults who are about to forge family through marriage and other means. This focus reflects that delayed marriage and declined fertility are two sweeping demographic trends in Korea, affecting family formation. Moreover, “intensive” parenting has characterized Korean young parents and therefore, examining change and persistence in parenting provides important clues for family change in Korea. This volume should be of interest not only to readers who are interested in Korea but also to those who want to understand broad family changes in East Asia in comparative perspective.

Rediscovering Korean Cinema

Rediscovering Korean Cinema PDF Author: Sangjoon Lee
Publisher: University of Michigan Press
ISBN: 0472126091
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 612

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Book Description
South Korean cinema is a striking example of non-Western contemporary cinematic success. Thanks to the increasing numbers of moviegoers and domestic films produced, South Korea has become one of the world’s major film markets. In 2001, the South Korean film industry became the first in recent history to reclaim its domestic market from Hollywood and continues to maintain around a 50 percent market share today. High-quality South Korean films are increasingly entering global film markets and connecting with international audiences in commercial cinemas and art theatres, and at major international film festivals. Despite this growing recognition of the films themselves, Korean cinema’s rich heritage has not heretofore received significant scholarly attention in English-language publications. This groundbreaking collection of thirty-five essays by a wide range of academic specialists situates current scholarship on Korean cinema within the ongoing theoretical debates in contemporary global film studies. Chapters explore key films of Korean cinema, from Sweet Dream, Madame Freedom, The Housemaid, and The March of Fools to Oldboy, The Host, and Train to Busan, as well as major directors such as Shin Sang-ok, Kim Ki-young, Im Kwon-taek, Bong Joon-ho, Hong Sang-soo, Park Chan-wook, and Lee Chang-dong. While the chapters provide in-depth analyses of particular films, together they cohere into a detailed and multidimensional presentation of Korean cinema’s cumulative history and broader significance. With its historical and critical scope, abundance of new research, and detailed discussion of important individual films, Rediscovering Korean Cinema is at once an accessible classroom text and a deeply informative compendium for scholars of Korean and East Asian studies, cinema and media studies, and communications. It will also be an essential resource for film industry professionals and anyone interested in international cinema.

Polarizing Dreams

Polarizing Dreams PDF Author: Pil Ho Kim
Publisher: University of Hawaii Press
ISBN: 0824899865
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 245

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Book Description
Anyone genuinely curious about what makes South Korean pop culture tick should look no further than Gangnam. Celebrated in a song by an unlikely K-pop superstar named Psy in 2012, Gangnam is the epicenter of Hallyu, the Korean Wave. It is an exclusive zone of privilege and wealth that has lured pop culture industries since the 1980s and fueled the aspirations of Seoul’s middle class, producing in its wake the “dialectical images” of the modern city described by Walter Benjamin: sweet dreams and nightmares, visions of heaven and hell, scenes of spectacular rises and great falls. In Polarizing Dreams, Pil Ho Kim presents South Korea’s Gangnam-style urban development as a unique case of cultural globalization in the age of social polarization. Unlike previous genre- or industry-focused publications on Hallyu, Polarizing Dreams mobilizes sources that may be unknown to many K-pop fans—dissident poetry and protest songs from the 1980s, B-rated adult films, tour bus disco music, obscure early works by famous authors and filmmakers, interviews with sex workers and urban entrepreneurs—to weave together Gangnam’s rich backstory and give readers a deeper appreciation of such acclaimed films as Bong Joon Ho’s Parasite and Lee Chang-dong’s Burning and the Netflix drama series Squid Game. Kim takes an unflinching look at the darker side of Korean society that includes school bullying, entertainment industry scandals, and misogynistic violence, all of which have provided compelling narratives for an increasing number of Hallyu media products. The Gangnam portrayed in this volume is the site of rampant disaster capitalism and rising inequality as well as the engine of cultural and technological innovation. In short, Gangnam is at the heart of Korea’s global-polarization. As one of a handful of books on Korean cultural history that bridges the twentieth and the twenty-first centuries, Polarizing Dreams will have a lasting impact on the study of Korean pop culture and beyond.

Dress History of Korea

Dress History of Korea PDF Author: Kyunghee Pyun
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1350143383
Category : Design
Languages : en
Pages : 369

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Book Description
Bringing together a wealth of primary sources and with contributions from leading experts, Dress History of Korea presents the most recent approaches to the interpretation of dress and fashion of Korea. Through close analysis of visual, written, and material sources-some newly excavated or recently re-discovered in global museums-the book reveals how dress and adornment evolved from the period of state formation to the modern era. Authors with a range of academic and curatorial experience discuss the close relation of dress and adornments to the socio-political and cultural history of Korea and place the dress history of Korea within broader contexts in studies of fashion, material culture, museology, and costume design. As in other cultures, modern Korean fashion owes many of its styles to historic dress and this process of adaptation is explored within high fashion and popular culture contexts in ways that benefit historians, curators, and designers alike. With key materials newly available to global readers, Dress History of Korea is the indispensable guide to the study of Korean dress and fashion.

Mediating Gender in Post-Authoritarian South Korea

Mediating Gender in Post-Authoritarian South Korea PDF Author: Jesook Song
Publisher: University of Michigan Press
ISBN: 047290437X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 351

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Book Description
Mediating Gender in Post-Authoritarian South Korea focuses on the relationship between media representation and gender politics in South Korea. Its chapters feature notable voices of South Korea’s burgeoning sphere of gender critique enabled by social media, doing what no other academic volume has yet accomplished in the sphere of Anglophone studies on this topic. Seeking to interrogate the role of popular media in establishing and shaping gendered common sense, this volume fosters cross-disciplinary conversations linked by the central thesis that gender discourse and representation are central to the politics, aesthetics, and economics of contemporary South Korea. In the post-authoritarian period (the late 1980s to the #MeToo present), media representation and popular discourse changed the gender conventions that are found at the core of civic, political, and cultural debates. Mediating Gender in Post-Authoritarian South Korea maps the ways in which popular media and public discourse make the social dynamics of gender visible and open them up for debate and dismantling. In presenting innovative new research on the ways in which popular ideas about gender gain concrete form and political substance through mass mediation, the book’s contributors investigate the discursive production of gender in contemporary South Korea through trends, tropes, and thematics, as popular media become the domain in which new gendered subjectivities and relations transpire. The essays in this volume present cases and media objects that span multiple media and platforms, introducing new ways of thinking about gender as a platform and a conceptual infrastructure in the post-authoritarian era.

The Postdevelopmental State

The Postdevelopmental State PDF Author: Jamie Doucette
Publisher: University of Michigan Press
ISBN: 047290468X
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 234

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Book Description
Over the last 25 years, South Korea has witnessed growing inequality due to the proliferation of non-standard employment, ballooning household debt, deepening export-dependency, and the growth of super-conglomerates such as Samsung and Hyundai. Combined with declining rates of economic growth and turbulent political events, these processes mark a departure from Korea’s past recognition as a high growth “developmental state.” The Postdevelopmental State radically reframes research into the South Korean economy by foregrounding the efforts of pro-democratic reformers and social movements in South Korea to create an alternative economic model—one that can address Korea’s legacy of authoritarian economic development during the Cold War and neoliberal restructuring since the Asian Financial Crisis of the late 1990s. Understanding these attempts offers insight into the types of economic reforms that have been enacted since the late 1990s as well as the continued legacy of dictatorship-era politics within the Korean political and legal system. By examining the dilemmas economic democracy has encountered over the past 25 years, from the IMF Crisis to the aftermath of the Candlelight Revolution, the book reveals the enormous and comprehensive challenges involved in addressing the legacy of authoritarian economic models and their neoliberal transformations.

Shrimp to Whale

Shrimp to Whale PDF Author: Ramon Pacheco Pardo
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0197674542
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 358

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Book Description
South Korea has the most remarkable of histories. Born from the ashes of colonialism, partition and a devastating war, back in the 1950s there were real doubts about its survival as an independent state. Yet South Korea did survive, and first became known globally for the export of cheap toys, shoes and clothing. Today, South Korea is a boisterous democracy, a vibrant market economy, a tech powerhouse, and home to the coolest of cultures. In just seventy years, this society has grown from a shrimp into a whale. What explains this extraordinary transformation? For some, it was ordinary South Koreans who fought to change their country, and still strive to continue shaping it. For others, it was all down to forward-looking political and business leaders, who had the vision that their country would one day be different. Whichever version you prefer, it's clear that, at its core, South Korea's is the story of a people who dreamt big, and saw their dreams coming true. This is the history of South Korea, from its millennia-old roots, through its foundation as a nation-state and economic development under dictatorship, to its present as a rich, free and cool country on the world stage.