Scan barcode
Reviews
Korean Masculinities and Transcultural Consumption: Yonsama, Rain, Oldboy, K-Pop Idols by Sun Jung
s_books's review
2.5
This is really a 2.5 star book. It's somewhat heavy in the language, more like a master's thesis than a book written for the general public and it's amount of coverage varies, depending on the topic. The chapter about K-pop star Rain is pretty well-done (which is to be expected, since he is also the cover image of the book) as well as the chapter about the "Yonsama" phenomenon in Japan but the Oldboy chapter felt a bit all over the place and talked about many things concerning Oldboy but not all of them related equally to Oldboy and how Korean masculinity is seen through Oldboy, there was more a focus on the "otherness" and "coolness" perceived through "neo-Orientalism" (which, I get, would probably not have been perceived the same way if the main character of Oldboy was a female but it would have helped to have it pointed out more how that pertains to the "masculinity" aspect and not just the foreign/Asian aspect; for example, comparisons could have been made to the treatment and reaction to female characters in Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance and Lady Vengeance, the other two films in Park Chan Wook's "Vengeance" trilogy, along with Oldboy).
Lastly, it feels like there was a huge missed opportunity with the K-Pop Idol Boy Bands chapter which is more of an aside than a real chapter (9 pages versus the average 40.5 for the other chapters) -- it seems like the author doesn't know too much about K-pop or K-pop fandom, aside from Rain, since she (he?) only mentions how 2PM is seen as a "beast-dol" yet also dresses as girls and performs aegyo. Jung doesn't at all talk about how many other boy groups are not only seen as "flower boys" but are even sometimes seen as surpassing that and being prettier than girls (e.g. Nu'est's Ren, SHINee's Taemin, etc.) or why the dressing up as girls is so prevalent and accepted in K-pop or the whole OTP thing in K-pop fandom (where fans will "couple" together two members of a group but still at the same time see them as heterosexual sex objects). For that matter, there wasn't really any coverage of "fanservice" either, which goes along with the OTP thing -- members of a group will act physically close and even flirtily with one another which is totally approved of by fans while the members actually dating females receives a negative reaction. Perhaps Jung felt that she (he?) covered this enough in the first two chapters, where there was quite a bit about "soft" masculinity and it's history in ancient Korean scholars ("seonbi masculinity") as well as Japanese manga but then she (he?) barely even mentions that they already talked about it in previous chapters. The K-pop boy band chapter just felt like such an after thought when really, along with "extreme" genre films like Oldboy, it could be considered the primary way most Western audiences experience the portrayal of Korean masculinity.
Lastly, it feels like there was a huge missed opportunity with the K-Pop Idol Boy Bands chapter which is more of an aside than a real chapter (9 pages versus the average 40.5 for the other chapters) -- it seems like the author doesn't know too much about K-pop or K-pop fandom, aside from Rain, since she (he?) only mentions how 2PM is seen as a "beast-dol" yet also dresses as girls and performs aegyo. Jung doesn't at all talk about how many other boy groups are not only seen as "flower boys" but are even sometimes seen as surpassing that and being prettier than girls (e.g. Nu'est's Ren, SHINee's Taemin, etc.) or why the dressing up as girls is so prevalent and accepted in K-pop or the whole OTP thing in K-pop fandom (where fans will "couple" together two members of a group but still at the same time see them as heterosexual sex objects). For that matter, there wasn't really any coverage of "fanservice" either, which goes along with the OTP thing -- members of a group will act physically close and even flirtily with one another which is totally approved of by fans while the members actually dating females receives a negative reaction. Perhaps Jung felt that she (he?) covered this enough in the first two chapters, where there was quite a bit about "soft" masculinity and it's history in ancient Korean scholars ("seonbi masculinity") as well as Japanese manga but then she (he?) barely even mentions that they already talked about it in previous chapters. The K-pop boy band chapter just felt like such an after thought when really, along with "extreme" genre films like Oldboy, it could be considered the primary way most Western audiences experience the portrayal of Korean masculinity.
More...