Search Terms
To search for information on Korean popular culture, use the following geographic terms in your subject searches (e.g. Popular culture -- Korea):
- Korea to find materials on the pre-1948 period and works about North Korea and South Korea collectively for the post-1948 period
- Korea (South)
- Korea (North)
“Korean Wave” or Hallyu refers to the growing international influence and popularity of Korean culture, especially music and TV, since the mid-1990s. In addition to subject searches, try these terms in keyword searches in the Library catalog and article databases.
General Resources
- Korean Studies Research GuideA guide to finding Korea or Korea-related materials for your research.
Books:
The Korean Popular Culture Reader by
Over the past decade, Korean popular culture has become a global phenomenon. The "Korean Wave" of music, film, television, sports, and cuisine generates significant revenues and cultural pride in South Korea. The Korean Popular Culture Reader provides a timely and essential foundation for the study of "K-pop," relating the contemporary cultural landscape to its historical roots.
ISBN: 9780822354888Publication Date: 2014-03-07
The Korean Wave by
Since the late 1990s South Korea has emerged as a new center for the production of transnational popular culture - the first instance of a major global circulation of Korean popular culture in history. This edited collection considers the Korean Wave in a global digital age and addresses the social, cultural and political implications in their complexity and paradox within the contexts of global inequalities and uneven power structures.
ISBN: 0415712785Publication Date: 2013-12-05
North Korea's Hidden Revolution by
Drawing on deeply personal interviews with North Korean defectors from all walks of life, ranging from propaganda artists to diplomats, Jieun Baek tells the story of North Korea's information underground--the network of citizens who take extraordinary risks by circulating illicit content such as foreign films, television shows, soap operas, books, and encyclopedias.
ISBN: 0300217811Publication Date: 2016-11-15
In addition to Korean films available to stream on Kanopy, the Library has a collection of contemporary and Golden Age Korean films housed in the Undergraduate Media Center. Learn more at the links below, and be sure to visit the Korean Film Guide for more resources.
- Korean Films and MediaThis LibGuide provides is a comprehensive introduction to Korean film materials in the Illinois Library, including books and journals, search tips, and links for watching Korean films online.
- List of Korean films in the LibraryThe titles are listed in English and Korean
Books and Journals:
North Korean Cinema by ISBN: 0786465263Publication Date: 2012-08-03Like many ideological dictatorships of the twentieth century, North Korea has always considered cinema an indispensible propaganda tool. This volume chronicles the history of North Korean cinema from its beginnings to today, examining the obstacles the film industry faced as well as the many social problems the films themselves reveal. It provides detailed analyses of major and minor films and explores important developments in the industry within the context of the concurrent social and political atmosphere.
South Korean Golden Age Melodrama by ISBN: 0814332536Publication Date: 2005-03-14Immediately following the Korean War, South Korea's film industry flourished with vibrant local production of high-quality films. Conditions that fostered South Korea's cinematic Golden Age were short lived; a brief period of intense poverty and struggle--but also creative freedom--was ended by the dictatorship of Park Chung Hee in the late 1960s. South Korean Golden Age Melodrama is the first English-language book to examine this era of remarkable activity, covering the specifics of the Golden Age as well as the influences it has had on contemporary South Korean film and television.
New Korean Cinema by ISBN: 0814740294Publication Date: 2005-09-01New Korean Cinema provides a comprehensive overview of the production, circulation, and reception of this vibrant cinema, which has begun to flourish again in the past decade, following the lifting of repressive government policies. In addition to providing a cultural, historical, and social context for understanding this burgeoning cinema, the book considers the political economy of South Korea's film industry, strategies of domestic and international distribution and marketing, and the consumption of Korean films throughout the world.
- Journal of Japanese and Korean Cinema (requires Illinois login)Journal of Japanese and Korean Cinema is a fully refereed forum for the dissemination of scholarly work devoted to the cinemas of Japan and Korea and the interactions and relations between them. The increasingly transnational status of Japanese and Korean cinema underlines the need to deepen our understanding of this ever more globalized film-making region.
The Library has many Korean TV shows available to check out. For more options, the links below provide information about streaming services (free and paid).
- Guide to Korean Websites and BlogsA comprehensive list of review and recap sites, discussion boards, and recommended streaming services for Korean TV dramas.
- Watch Korean Films and VideoThis page from the Korean Film and Media LibGuide has several links to streaming sites for Korean film and TV.
- Viki.comStreaming service for Korean, Chinese, Taiwanese, and Japanese movies and TV. Some videos are available for free with ads, with more content available ad-free with subscription.
- Drama FeverThis streaming service offers Latin American telenovelas, Korean soap operas, and other Asian TV and movies. Watch for free or purchase an account to watch ad-free.
Learn More:
Women, Television and Everyday Life in Korea by ISBN: 0415369037Publication Date: 2006-03-01Fusing audience research and ethnography, the book presents a compelling account of women's changing lives and identities in relation to the impact of the most popular media culture in everyday life: television. Youna Kim reveals Korean women as creative, energetic and critical audiences in their responses to evolving modernity and the impact of the West. Based on original empirical research, the book explores the hopes, aspirations, frustrations and dilemmas of Korean women as they try to cope with life beyond traditional grounds.
K-Drama: A New TV Genre with Global Appeal (I-Share) by Publication Date: 2011The way Korean dramas mix nostalgia for older values, new ideas from a new era, and subject matter from a variety of cultural influences has proved equally appealing to Korean and overseas viewers. The dramas that global audiences enjoy today have storylines about affection (with a focus on the traditional family), the purest of love, and success stories in which characters achieve human victories.
K-pop--South Korean popular music--encompasses a huge variety of styles, artists, and genres. Check out Billboard's Top 20 K-pop Songs of 2017 for a sampling (playlist below, and videos and short reviews at the link). Explore the links and books below for more information.
To find materials in the library, try a subject search for "popular music -- Korea" or a keyword search in the catalog or databases for "k-pop."
In the Library:
- Asian Hip HopGet started with research on hip hop in Asia with this section of the Rap and Hip Hop Research Resources LibGuide.
K Pop - the International Rise of the Korean Music Industry by ISBN: 1138775967Publication Date: 2014-09-22K-pop, described by Time Magazine in 2012 as "South Korea's greatest export", has rapidly achieved a large worldwide audience of devoted fans largely through distribution over the Internet. This book examines the phenomenon, and discusses the reasons for its success. Overall, the book addresses the question of how far "Asian culture" can be global in a truly meaningful way, and how popular culture from a "marginal" nation has become a global phenomenon.
Made in Korea by ISBN: 1138793035Publication Date: 2016-08-23Made in Korea: Studies in Popular Music serves as a comprehensive and thorough introduction to the history, sociology, and musicology of contemporary Korean popular music. Each essay covers the major figures, styles, and social contexts of pop music in Korea, first presenting a general description of the history and background of popular music in Korea, followed by essays, written by leading scholars of Korean music, that are organized into thematic sections: History, Institution, Ideology; Genres and Styles; Artists; and Issues.
Globalization and Popular Music in South Korea by ISBN: 1138840017Publication Date: 2015-06-24This book offers an in-depth study of the globalization of contemporary South Korean idol pop music, or K-Pop, visiting K-Pop and its multiple intersections with political, economic, and cultural formations and transformations. It provides detailed insights into the transformative process in and around the field of Korean pop music since the 1990s, which paved the way for the recent international rise of K-Pop and the Korean Wave.
Comics and graphic novels, or manhwa, from Korea are well-represented in the Library's comics collection, with nearly 200 titles from North Korea and South Korea, about half of them in English. Try a keyword search for "manhwa" in the catalog and article databases, and find comic books with a subject search for "comic books, strips, etc." or "graphic novels" and filter by country and/or language with the links on the right side of the page.
Mangasia by ISBN: 0500292434Publication Date: 2017-11-14An exhaustive and visually engaging account, Mangasia charts the evolution of manga from its roots in late nineteenth-century Japan through the many and varied forms of comics, cartoons, and animation created throughout Asia for more than one hundred years. With maps, timelines, and reproductions from Japan, China, Taiwan, North Korea, South Korea, Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia, Cambodia, the Philippines, Vietnam, India, and Bangladesh, this book is the first to explain the significance of key themes, the meanings of embodied myths, and the connections between various manga traditions.
Manhwa Mania by ISBN: 082302976XPublication Date: 2004-09-01Examines the characteristics of Korean comics, and features illustrated, step-by-step instructions for drawing in the manhwa style.
Mostly Manga by ISBN: 1598849387Publication Date: 2012-01-05Appropriate for any public library collection, this book provides a comprehensive readers' advisory guide for Japanese manga and anime, Korean manhwa, and Chinese manhua.
Video gaming in South Korea is more than a hobby--it's a competitive sport, a national pastime, and a public health crisis in the form of video game addiction. The video below explores the dynamics of internet and game addiction in South Korea, following several young people as they go through a treatment program sponsored by the Korean government. A transcript is available at the SBS Dateline site.
Learn more about gaming culture in Korea:
- The world’s most intense online gaming culture (Illinois login required)This study argues that gaming addiction in South Korea is not as prevalent as many believe.
Korea's Online Gaming Empire by ISBN: 0262289512Publication Date: 2010-10-01In South Korea, online gaming is a cultural phenomenon. Games are broadcast on television, professional gamers are celebrities, and youth culture is often identified with online gaming. Uniquely in the online games market, Korea not only dominates the local market but has also made its mark globally. In Korea's Online Gaming Empire, Dal Yong Jin examines the rapid growth of this industry from a political economy perspective, discussing it in social, cultural, and economic terms.
Digital Korea by ISBN: 9780955606908Publication Date: 2007-06-01Digital Korea is a study of the most advanced country for digital convergence, South Korea. Much of what we see in South Korea today sounds like science fiction - but forms the solid reality of life in South Korea today. This is one of the first attempts to understand the current state of digital convergence, ubiquitous computing and the information society that is South Korea.
Webtoons
Webcomics (webtoons in Korea, after a popular platform) are just as popular, if not more so, than print comics. Learn more about Korean webtoons and explore some sites in English below. Wikipedia has a comprehensive list of Korean language webtoon services.
Image: Romance webtoon Cheese in the Trap, available to read in English at webtoons.com. (Image source)
Korean Webtoons in English:
Most sites offer a mixture of free and paid content, with mobile and desktop apps available.
Social Sciences, Health, and Education Library
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