K-Pop Music and Transnationalism

This chapter provides a key themes and approaches and explains the state of the highly interdisciplinary research on Korean Pop (K-Pop), which can further the of music in Korea. It highlights the significance of music in understanding Korean culture and society. K-Pop’s transnational makeup has become the genre’s most salient feature. Shaped and reflected by multiple practices and textures, K-Pop exhibits high eclecticism by merging a plethora of techniques, styles, and genres on linguistic, aural, visual, and performative levels. The representation of female identities in K-Pop is standardized within a similarly narrow continuum of beauty ideals, of which the innocent-yet-cute “girl-next-door” and the sexually enticing imageries figure prominently at the respective ends. The playfulness and re-fashioning of gender roles in K-Pop offer great visual pleasure to audiences and have opened up a discursive space in which traditional roles of masculinity and femininity can be critically reflected, reoriented, and transformed in ways that may allow a more open discussion of sexuality.