Title
Gangnam, South Korea: The Hallyu Entertainment Industry Capital and the Locus of Social Evil
Abstract
Anyone genuinely curious about what makes South Korean pop culture tick should look no further than Gangnam. Having been wildly celebrated by an unlikely K-pop superstar called Psy in 2012, it is the epicenter of Hallyu, the Korean Wave. Gangnam is an exclusive zone of wealth and privilege that has lured pop culture industries to take root and flourish since the 1980s.
At the same time, Gangnam is widely regarded as a breeding ground for ‘social evil’ (sahoeak) in South Korea as it has firmly established itself as the shrine of the unholy trinity of Korean capitalism: real estate speculation, adult entertainment/sex industry, and college-prep private education business. Gangnam’s foul sense of place, associated with such social evils as organized crime, sex work, and overheated educational competition, has helped create compelling villain characters in South Korean film and television drama. Moreover, Gangnam often makes the evil contagious to other characters, who become complicit either in evil acts perpetrated by villains or in corrupt social institutions.
Prof. Kim analyzed Yeon Sang-ho’s animation The King of Pigs (2013) and Yoon Jong-bin’s film Beastie Boys (2008) as the main visual texts in this talk to demonstrate the dark side of South Korean society. This dark side encompasses school bullying to entertainment industry scandals to misogynistic violence, all of which have provided compelling narratives for an increasing number of Hallyu media products.
Biography
Pil Ho Kim is Associate Professor of Korean Studies at The Ohio State University. A sociologist by training, he has covered a wide range of topics related to modern Korea in his research and teaching, including popular music, cinema, urban culture, and social polarization. He is the author of Polarizing Dreams: Gangnam and Popular Culture in Globalizing Korea (University of Hawai‘i Press, 2024). His next book project investigates the trans-Pacific cultural impact of Black freedom movements on modern Korean history.