By Elaine Wong • BSc Anthropology
As a music lover from Southeast Asia, I have been listening to South Korean pop music (K-pop) on-and-off for 10 years. However, it was only after my trip to Seoul last summer that I became interested in the impacts K-pop had on society – both locally and globally. 
So, I decided to write my 3rd year dissertation on this topic, linking it to anthropological theories I have learnt over my course (e.g. affect theory and digital infrastructures). My provisional title asks: How does Korean pop music as a local and global infrastructure affect social and political relationships? In order for me to explore relevant key ideas such as affective infrastructures, political censorship, and celebrity status, I plan to do fieldwork this July using a mixed methods of interviews and internet research. As such, I did some preliminary research and organized my pre-existing knowledge and sources into rough notes in preparation for my fieldwork.
K-pop group VROMANCE promotional busking before debut in Hongdae
Following a month of learning Korean language and culture last summer, I gained most of my insight about the K-pop world through a program where I was trained as a K-pop idol at an entertainment company for 2 weeks. This led me into spending another week in Seoul last month to get a better sense of what types sources I can collect data from during my actual fieldwork in the summer. During the week, I met up with some of the friends and company staff I kept in touch with from last year’s events. Some of the points that came up in casual conversation appealed to me:
My training schedule in the first week of my K-pop training experience at RBW
- Social and cultural urban life:
- Everyday social life and most working environments (including the entertainment industry) are dominated by hierarchies that put more emphasis on age rather than experience.
Local and foreign obsession with South Korean beauty and fashion is closely linked with fans looking up to K-pop idols as role models (e.g. many stores play K-pop music for customers’ shopping experience; shopping malls in Dongdaemun open 10am-4am).- Culturally distinct districts in Seoul reveal how different agents and activities related to K-pop are distributed. For instance, some of the ‘big-shot’ entertainment companies have their headquarters situated around Apgujeong and Gangnam. Hongdae and Edae are university hubs, where there are a lot of young buskers and dance groups performing covers of K-pop songs.
- Political situation:
- On the South Korean side of the Korean demilitarized zone (DMZ), K-pop music (with liberal messages embedded in the lyrics) is blasted through life-sized speakers towards North Korea.
- Current political relationship with China has negative effects on K-pop marketing and the overall economy.
Lyrics to K-pop song ‘Voice Mail’ by IU with detailed annotations for singing technique and emotion
The current state of my research shows that K-pop has a large influence on interactions of demographic and material factors with social and political infrastructures. Keeping this in mind, I feel that my next focus should be on constructing a structured but flexible plan for asking the right questions to the right people via the most appropriate format during my fieldwork. Looking forward to my next trip to Korea!
Anthropolitan 