We’re honoured to share an article written by Dr. Jiyoung Lee, one of our guest panelists at the 3rd AAPlab International Conference! Here Lee shares her insights after participating in our 3 days of panels and screenings, reframing Hallyu as a capacity for opening and connecting with others. We extend our heartfelt thanks to all who contributed to the illuminating journey of this conference. We aim to continue this exploration and inquiry into the surface tension of K-arts in the Hallyu era!

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"The merits of Hallyu: Opening and connecting the world

Last month I attended an international conference on the Korean Wave organized by the Asian Arts and Publishing Lab (AAPLab) in Montreal, Canada. My expectation that the conference would be dominated by analyses of K-pop and K-drama was pleasantly misplaced: this was solely an entry point. The panelists delved into new angles of research on colonial-era Korean films, painters like Kim Hwan-ki and Yoon Hyung-geun, documentaries on the development of Saemangeum, and the historical trauma of colonization in Korean drama.

These researchers set aside the typical approach to Korean Wave analysis in South Korea, which tends to emphasize the glamorous aspects of a handful of Billboard chart hits or Academy Award-winning films within its national narrative of outstanding industry. At this conference, what was happening in the approach to the Hallyu phenomenon was something quite different. The panelists' expanded research and interests went much deeper and further, in a prism of many facets of the Korean Wave phenomenon generating the Hallyu content of this moment in time. Recognizing that the influence of Hallyu extends beyond pop culture to contemporary art, I felt an urgency to reexamine and reconsider Hallyu outside of the rote Korean perspectives.

The closing event of the conference was a screening of media art and documentary films by Korean-Canadian artists and Korean immigrants based in Canada, as well as one documentary on the movement to save Chinatowns in North America. Initially, I didn't understand the connection between these works and the Korean Wave. But as the films continued, I began to see that the Korean Wave has a certain intrinsic power for opening and connecting that extends beyond Korean national borders or ethnicities, allowing us to make intercultural connections with diverse nations and peoples.

If we disregard this potential of the Korean Wave and consider it only in the light of commodity production, the phenomena is reduced to a flash in the pan, a passing fad. The conference made me realize that the intrinsic merit and power of the Korean Wave is its capacity to open us up to people from different cultures and connect with them, to explore common and shared interests with them, and to dream of a better world together.

Contrary to what is often said in Korea, Hallyu is not just a “foreign currency buzz” or "soft power" for Korea. Neither celebrating Hallyu as a successful cultural product nor dismissing it as irrelevant allows a sober analysis of the phenomenon in progress. This will be the necessary attitude if we are to discuss and understand the Korean Wave."

Jiyoung Lee, Professor, Hankuk University of Foreign Studies. Author of BTS, Art Revolution, 2019. (Trans. Stella Kim, Myungji Chae, Jiye Won, Shinwoo Lee).

Original Article

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