From Factory Girls to K-Pop Idol Girls: Cultural Politics of Developmentalism, Patriarchy, and Neoliberalism in South Korea’s Popular Music Industry

For the Record: Lexington Studies in Rock and Popular Music

by Gooyong Kim, Douglas Kellner (Foreword)

Focusing on female idols' proliferation in the South Korean popular music (K-pop) industry since the late 1990s, Gooyong Kim critically analyzes structural conditions of possibilities in contemporary popular music from production to consumption. Kim contextualizes the success of K-pop within Korea's development trajectories, scrutinizing how a formula of developments from the country' rapid industrial modernization (1960s-1980s) was updated and re-applied in the K-pop industry when the state had to implement a series of neoliberal reformations mandated by the IMF. To that end, applying Michel Foucault's discussion on governmentality, a biopolitical dimension of neoliberalism, Kim argues how the regime of free market capitalism updates and reproduces itself by 1) forming a strategic alliance of interests with the state, and 2) using popular culture to facilitate individuals' subjectification and subjectivation processes to become neoliberal agents. As to an importance of K-pop female idols, Kim indicates a sustained utility/legacy of the nation's century-long patriarchy in a neoliberal development agenda. Young female talents have been mobilized and deployed in the neoliberal culture industry in a similar way to how un-wed, obedient female workers were exploited and disposed on the sweatshop factory floors to sustain the state's export-oriented, labor-intensive manufacturing industry policy during its rapid developmental stage decades ago. In this respect, Kim maintains how a post-feminist, neoliberal discourse of girl power has marketed young, female talents as effective commodities, and how K-pop female idols exert biopolitical power as an active ideological apparatus that pleasurably perpetuates and legitimates neoliberal mantras in individuals' everyday lives. Thus, Kim reveals there is a strategic convergence between Korea's lingering legacies of patriarchy, developmentalism, and neoliberalism. While the current K-pop literature is micro-scopic and celebratory, Kim advances the scholarship by multi-perspectival, critical approaches. With a well-balanced perspective by micro-scopic textual analyses of music videos and macro-scopic examinations of historical and political economy backgrounds, Kim's book provides a wealth of intriguing research agendas on the phenomenon, and will be a useful reference in International/ Intercultural Communication, Political Economy of the Media, Cultural/ Media Studies, Gender/ Sexuality Studies, Asian Studies, and Korean Studies.

Genres: Nonfiction, Music

194 pages, Kindle Edition

Published July 6, 2020

Reviews

[Hani Aqil · Rating 3 out of 5]

As a certified communist and loona stan, I’m always looking for critique that situates k-pop as a product of capitalism and patriarchy. In many ways, this was the book I was always looking for and there are certainly instantly quotable, insightful passages peppered all throughout the text, accompanied by hard-hitting facts. But unfortunately, there are also many things I find disconcerting about it.

The texts biggest weakness is not only that it centralises the male perspective, but that it seems to ignore the thoughts and feelings of its subjects (both female k-pop idols and women who consume their content), almost arrogantly presupposing them instead; all while operating from the author’s pseudo objective point of view. (He even addresses it in the conclusion, like if you were aware of the obvious limitations in your study, why didn’t you do something to correct it earlier on…)

In a chapter on idol Suzy, he completely goes off the rails hypothesising that female performers put their bodies on display as an act of hypersexuality due to narcissism. Not only is this egregiously stupid, but it undermines his thesis by individualising the problem of forced sexualisation and shaming women even if they do make a choice. Throughout the book, sexualisation, whether it is coerced or not, is presented as inherently degrading and always a thing motivated by male attention or forced onto women by men. Also notable are the random pop psychology terms he throws out in this chapter, like narcissism and schizophrenia. He also cites allkpop as a legitimate news source. Are you kidding me right now? Am I watching a youtube top 10 list or reading a serious academic text?

This book could have been perfect. But as long as men do not understand that neither sexualisation nor modesty is empowering, the choice to do either is empowering, their critiques of sexuality under capitalism is less than worthless.

[Paschalia · Rating 4 out of 5]

excellent overview of the nexus between neoliberal government policy and culture industry productions in Korea based on Kpop idol girl groups

[Angie · Rating 3 out of 5]

Aunque creo que presenta verdades se siente limitado puede no toma en cuenta las experiencias personales de las idols femeninas a las que analiza.