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Korean Popular Culture and the Selling of Place by Youjeong Oh examines the use of K-pop music and Korean dramas with an aim to promote the rural and urban places in South Korea. To facilitate this, the book provides a framework insight on ways in which South Korea has aggressively used a number of aspects such as K-pop, K-drama, K-food, plastic surgery, and tourism to develop multiple strategies. In addition, the book expounds on the crucial relationship between urban planning and Hallyu. It uses an academic point of view to bring out the role of Korean cities through its production of television and music programs to boost their images and attract tourists. The book does so by documenting, historicizing, and using visuals to support the narrative of Korean culture.
Pop City examines that pop culture features place selling facilitated with two separate domains: Korean globalization and political centralization of Korean culture. Based on the book, the local elections put in place in the 1990s enhanced the desires among the cities to develop and promote their rural areas. A good example is Wando County, a rural village that invested approximately $8 million and used its historical sites to create a K-drama that resulted in an increase of 50 million tourists with an income of $160 million in 2008 (Oh, 2018). The same case has been used in other rural areas where they use Korean entertainment to attract foreign tourists and sponsors. The elected local leaders also portray the political dimension. The local council has the authority to pass the city and governor’s budget. With such authority and mandate, they have had the capacity to promote drama sponsorships. It means that the local government has a political centralization to dominate the decision-making process without the residents’ consent.
In addition, Pop City analyses the process of culture featured place marketing. The book illustrates that the urban spaces in Korea are produced and sold in a similar way K-pop and k-drama are promoted using spectacular images rather than using the cultural and physical qualities that are in existence. For instance, the Anseong city attempted to commodify to be featured in the television show the Baudeogi; the city invested $9 million to develop the region and ensure that the city’s cultures stand out, such as dancing, singing, acrobatics, and circus performance (Oh, 2018). The action was nullified as the locals claimed “that the spending of taxpayers’ money should be cautious, the local council, in particular, asked for a formal process to collect citizens’ extensive opinions.” (Oh, 2018). However, it is important to note that most of the K-dramas have featured different marketing regions through pseudohistory, artificial images, and fabricated representation that creates a fantasy of the reality. Hence, Pop City has demonstrated selling places through the consumer exploitative, image-based, and speculative nature of the Korean pop culture. It enhances shaping the commodification of the rural and urban regions.
Furthermore, Pop City illustrates the reasons K-pop is a popular means of entertainment globally. K-pop is popular as the production uses desirable images that create an intimacy that is appealing to the consumers; it includes visual quality, associated products, and idolized locations (Oh, 2018). It enables the consumers to create a relationship with the television show. Secondly, they use an idolized system that strongly influences K-pop. In Korea, entertainment agencies strategically produce idols who appear in films, television shows, dramas, and music. It states that “When releasing a new idol group, the gihoeksa invests a significant amount of effort in crafting unique and marketable images for it.” (Oh, 2018). The idols are used as marketing products that are used to captivate the consumer’s mind and sell the designed items such as K-pop places, music, drama show, and merchandise. The success of the idols towards the competitive market enhances profit generations.
Furthermore, the book illustrates the diverse aspects of using human geography to market Korea’s urban areas and K-pop. It defined human geography as “emotional engagement with a place turns visitors into agents of value creation on its behalf—that is, into facilitators of place selling.” (Oh, 2018). It emphasizes that for a consumer to engage with K-pop music and K-drama, the entertainment needs to be invested with the consumer’s emotions and bodily experiences. These aspects can be achieved from different places through displaying emotions of desires, love, longing, and tensions. Hence, it explains how tourists visit the K-pop music and K-drama sites to engage in an interpersonal and precognitive way, as demonstrated in the emotions of these pop. Human geography plays a significant role in pop culture, capitalizing on these emotional qualities and the way humans enact, feel, and extending their cultural involvement with the physical location.
Moreover, the book examines the extension of Hallyu disclosure through connecting with the urban placing. According to the reading, the Korean culture industry began during the existence of Hallyu due to the unanticipated global fame of the Korean culture that was led by the acquisition of the new markets. For instance, the K-drama series Jewel in the palace produced in 2003 reached over 60 countries (Oh, 2018). It impacted the industry to grow through attracting new industry players such as recording labels, entertainment management agencies, producers, and idols. It recognizes that the supply rather than the demand drives the Hallyu hype. It is because “Despite the risks involved in the oversupplied race, both the cultural producers and place marketers appear confident because of the sheer amount of uncertainty involved.” (Oh, 2018). It is also a result of increased finance channels. Since there is an oversupply of Hallyu talent, the industry tends to invest in the surplus value without producing any tangible benefits to society. For instance, K-pop takes advantage of the existing culture without investing in it.
In conclusion, Korean Popular Culture and the Selling of Place by Youjeong studies the Korean wave from a different perspective from K-food, K-pop, K-drama, fashion, tourism, and plastic surgery. All these aspects of Korean culture have enhanced the marketing and selling of Korea’s culture and locations globally. The book has enacted this by identifying that pop culture features place selling mediates through two separate domains: Korean globalization and political centralization. The political centralization is acquired through the local government having the power to promote their regions through drama sponsorships. In comparison, the globalization aspects are illustrated on the K-pop power to use their culture to earn profit and sell the place. Such reasoning and documentation of the book with supporting evidence create a well-designed, innovative, and creative reading. It is recommendable to any reader interested in the Korean culture, urban planning, and sociology of the Hallyu.
References
Oh, Y. (2018). Pop city: Korean popular culture and the selling of place. Cornell University Press.
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