The Special Section The Korean Wave: Retrospect and Prospect, guest-edited by Dal Yong Jin and Tae-jin Yoon, published on May 23, 2017 includes eight articles by Asian media scholars.

The Korean Wave refers to the increasing popularity of Korean pop music, TV dramas, and movies throughout the world. Also known as hallyu in Korean, the term was first coined by the Chinese press in the late 1990s to describe the growing popularity of Korean pop culture in China.

The rapid growth of Korea’s cultural industries and the penetration of Korean cultural products in the global markets celebrates its 20th anniversary in 2017. The Korean Wave primarily started with a few well-made television dramas that were popular in East Asia; and Korean cultural industries subsequently developed other cultural forms, such as K-pop and digital games, that have gradually penetrated global markets.

The collection of articles in this Special Section explore the history of the Korean Wave as a catalyst of regional and global change by analyzing the evolution, structure, mechanisms, and strategies employed by the music, television, film, digital games, and animation industries in the global markets and their shifting relationships with the nation-state. They not only provide empirically plausible frameworks to examine their operations, but also discuss several key dimensions of the Korean Wave to help readers understand the nature of the emerging local popular culture and digital technologies as a new trend.

We invite you to read these articles that published in the International Journal of Communication.  Please Ctrl+Click on the article titles below for direct linking to the papers of interest.

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The Korean Wave: Retrospect and Prospect ― Introduction
Dal Yong Jin, Tae-jin Yoon

K-Pop in Latin America: Transcultural Fandom and Digital Mediation
Ben Han

K-Pop Fans React: Hybridity and the White Celebrity-Fan on YouTube
David Oh

When Indonesians Routinely Consume Korean Pop Culture: Revisiting Jakartan Fans of Korean Drama Dae Jang Geum
Jae-Seon Jeong, Seul-Hi Lee, Sang-Gil Lee

Domestic Hallyu: K-Pop Metatexts and the Media’s Self-Reflexive Gesture
Michelle Cho

Korean Wave Studies as Method: Reconsidering the Television Format Phenomenon between South Korea and China through Inter-Asian Frameworks
Younghan Cho, Hongrui Zhu

Cultural Translation of K-Pop Among Asian Canadian Fans
Kyong Yoon

Between Hybridity and Hegemony in K-Pop’s Global Popularity: A Case of “Girls’ Generation’s” American Debut
Gooyong Kim

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Larry Gross
Editor

Arlene Luck
Managing Editor

Dal Yong Jin, Tae-jin Yoon
Guest Editors