Feb 16 4 pm "Our Misery Is Your Entertainment: S K Culture as a Venue for Addressing Social Ills"

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Se-Woong Koo

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I don't know how this really happened, except that my dear friend Sujung Kim at Depauw University asked me if I would be interested in giving a lecture. That was back in November and I thought it was a great idea.

Now that the event is two days away (!) and I hear there is even a panel discussion afterwards, I am asking myself what I could possibly say about the Korea Wave and K-culture, but that's what it is.

Reimagining Asia Talk Series (Spring 2022): Sex, Music, and Shouting through Social Media, Canon, and Entertainment

Dr. Se-Woong Koo

Journalist, Founder of Korea Expos, and [former/still/sometimes] contributor to The New York Times, Al Jazeera, and BBC World Service

Date: February 16

Time: 4 pm EST

Panel Discussion After Talk

Zoom: https://tinyurl.com/3z3ybh7r

"Our Misery Is Your Entertainment: South Korean Culture as a Venue for Addressing Social Ills"

When South Korean drama Squid Game debuted on Netflix in September 2021, it prompted multiple global conversations about the prowess of the South Korean cultural industry, the extent of personal debt in South Korea, and the nature of social inequality worldwide in this new gilded age. It had some South Koreans half-joking, "our misery has become the world's entertainment." But the capacity of South Korean culture to serve as a transnational venue for social and political discourse has been remarked on since much earlier, starting with the ability of the Korean boy group BTS's fan base to channel its size and influence into a force on a global scale.

• What has prompted the rise of contemporary Korean culture?
• What has enabled Korean cultural products to be vehicles for international audiences concerned with ills that their domestic cultural media also could address?

The talk is open to the public if you are interested in watching (but why should you be?

Far better to follow

• Michelle Cho at the University of Toronto,
• Stephen Epstein at the Victoria University of Wellington, or
• Jo Elfving-Hwang at the University of Western Australia

for more profound insights and expertise on contemporary Korea).

119Sandra Fahy, Daham Chong and 117 others

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• Sarah Eunkyung Chee

  I love your self-deprecating self-promotion. I want to attend your talk even more.

  

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