General Society: Society: News: Hankyoreh

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2020 is coming to an end, which is more unrealistic than any sci-fi genre you have encountered in movies or novels. There are things I learned about this world and us by observing and writing about the actions of BTS, which was as amazing as the science fiction the virus forced into this world. This is not science fiction, it is reality, it is the real face of this world, and it is also the shape of the world to come. Last year, three years of field research and observations were published in the book. During the three years of writing this book, BTS has evolved beyond East Asia into a popular singer all over the world, and I tried to understand the meaning of this journey that no one has ever been while meeting fans at their world performances. Young people from around the world lined up in tents in the venues, record sales of albums, surprising results on billboards and YouTube, or the economic impact of this success. Several trillion wonThrough the feast of unknown figures that reach, it can be seen that BTS are now BTS in the world, but the majority of adults in Korea still find it difficult to understand why they are and how such a reaction is possible. In a way, here is the start of BTS’ amazing success. The message of BTS is because it touches the difficulties faced by the young generation globally, which is difficult for the older generation to understand.

Bulletproof Boy Scouts debuted as a hip-hop idol under Big Hit Entertainment, which was only a small, powerless entertainment company in the K-pop market where large companies SM, YG, and JYP were divided into three at the time in June 2013. . While the idols of large agency companies erased traces of their hometowns and were reborn as stylish performers, they practiced under the conditions of autonomous practice and creation as much as possible. I did not forget the anguish of the anxious youth. In addition, their situation of competing on a slanted playground with other idol groups making their debut on the red carpet laid out by a large agency was melted into the music in a way that contemporaries in similar situations can relate to. The young Korean generation to which BTS belongs was raised after hearing that their parents had to sacrifice a lot for them and strive to meet their expectations, but they should live the life of an adult under conditions that are worse than their parents’ generation, such as job potential, stability, and the gap between the rich and the poor. Became. In Korean society now, as evidenced by the war on education and real estate, anxiety among the middle class is prevalent, and the West has entered a society of crisis of class decline earlier than ours. Anxiety about the future, loss of self-esteem due to infinite competition, and the uncertain future of the planet, as shown by environmental crises and pandemics. Currently, young people on the planet share these conditions of survival, even considering regional differences. The early songs that are the basis of BTS’s faithful fandom formation contain the process of overcoming the hardships and anxiety of life in an unfair competition. The solution that BTS provides is not the logic of self-development to change oneself to neoliberal competition, but to accept yourself as you are, and to keep your self-esteem without kneeling and to solidarity for the future. This message was communicated through various channels such as song lyrics, Twitter, Vlive, and performances. In particular, the speech at the United Nations on narcissism to accept one’s identity as it is is a support for progressive gender politics and a confirmation of global fame. As it was interpreted as, it greatly influenced the expansion of the age and sexual areas of BTS fans. The predominant audiences of their message are contemporary young people, but as the elements of pop in their music increased and their visibility increased with success in the United States, the audience was greatly expanded. In BTS’s large-scale performance hall, a wide audience of people in their 30s and 60s is observed. Although women have an absolute advantage over men, male fans are also increasing. They re-experience the youth’s harmony in the music of the past BTS, are comforted in their trivial daily life, and talk about learning a lot about the organization and group of modern society in the process of growing up as a team. Many of the older generations of Korea said, “I saw something like this in my lifetime… at the fact that the seven young Koreans, a small country in East Asia, are at the forefront of global popular music with songs mostly sung in Korean… I can’t hide the response. The names of first love embroidered on the books of those who spent their youth during the democratization movement in the 80s were three parts:’Sophie, Phoebe, and Brook’. This generation memorized or sang English lyrics, envying an exotic atmosphere and freedom that escaped the persecution of Korea at the time, and some hidden and indulged in Japanese popular culture that was not allowed at the time. In the 1990s, when cultural thirst burst out amid the relative freedom gained by the democratization movement, it was the formation period of K-pop that began with Seo Taiji.

BTS attends and speaks at UNICEF’s new youth agenda’Generation Unlimited’ partnership launch event held at the Trusteeship Council meeting hall at the United Nations Headquarters in New York on the afternoon of August 24, 2018 (local time). By New York/Kim Jeong-hyo, staff reporter [email protected]

Since the 2000s, the hot Korean wave in East Asia has made Korean singers and actors the hottest fandom in East Asia. As of 2020, Korea’s superiority over Japan in the entertainment industry is revealed through Japanese reactions over Korean eyes. While the Korean Wave in Japan in the early 2000s was based on a middle-aged female fandom, the Japanese who now consume K-pop and Korean dramas consume it because it is superior in quality to Japanese popular music and dramas. It is now common sense that Chinese and Japanese idol wannabes improve their skills and gain worldwide popularity in the Korean system. The global success of BTS is a crown placed on the competitiveness of K-pop and the Korean pop culture industry. The fact that BTS are Koreans and most of them sing songs in Korean has an important cultural meaning far beyond the’several trillion won effect’ that calculated their success as a direct or indirect economic effect. The cultural influence that we see by observing the platforms through which BTS and K-pop fans such as YouTube, VLive, Twitter, etc. communicate, is not immediately visible, but it implies a change that could not be imagined in our 80s and 90s described above. Above all, the fact that BTS are men in East Asia and the object of the passionate fandom spread all over the world suggests that the racial imagination between East and West has undergone a great shift in perception. Among foreign Korean Wave fans, especially K-pop fans, there are some people called the Koreaboo who idealize Korea in extreme ways.It is a process by which some radical fans pass rather than a group of fixed fans, and through this, the principle of correct behavior as a fan is learned. It is the same identity as the rite of passage. Hallyu fans in this process evaluate everything in Korea as the best and make fetishes fall into the charm of Korean idols and think that Koreans are the best reason. Since the vast majority of visible K-pop fans are women, this phenomenon has put Korean men in the position of the most attractive men since Dangun. However, beyond the Korean part phenomenon, the faces of the seven youths of BTS produce meaning as East Asians rather than Koreans. This is because an alternative to the attractive and dominant masculinity built on the whiteness that Hollywood’s entertainment industry has made throughout the 20th century has finally emerged. The success of BTS was achieved in the context of the progress of globalization and the development of digital culture, in which the cultural diversity and sensitivity of the young generation who are proficient in digital culture have greatly increased. There is already an atmosphere in which 100% Asian stories that take place in Singapore can be greatly successful in theaters, as in the US, and global attention is given to who will play the role of Asian heroes in superhero movies or Asian characters in live-action animated films of Disney’s. The market of popular culture has become global enough to attract attention, and the cultural diversity and racial sensitivity of the audience are also changing. However, in the entertainment culture centered on white men in the United States and Europe, stories and image processing that make actors stand out are centered on white people. Korean-American actor Stephen Yeon has been racialized in the production of attractiveness so subtly and surely that Hollywood is taking pictures of other white actors more handsomely than he is, even though he is the main character. The charm of BTS members, whose aesthetic techniques of the Korean Wave culture industry and K-pop system are beautifully embodied, is hitting the world’s attention as much as the popularity of their music. The success of BTS, which composes themselves and connects with fans around the world with philosophy and messages, is that the elite group of white media in the West, who were convinced of their philosophical and aesthetic superiority, are passive singers performing performances practiced like men and robots. It made it difficult to maintain the disparaging attitude any longer. Above all, it can be seen that the eyes of people around the world are finally changing so that they can see East Asians ideally implemented by BTS as beings full of charm. The male image that BTS shows on a daily basis through social network service (SNS) as well as performance, reveals his feelings honestly and develops friendships that preserve physical and mental intimacy among men, while soft masculinity that takes care of themselves. to be. The masculinity embodied by these BTS not only violates the existing racial hierarchy created by the dominant white middle-class heterosexual male gaze, but also violates the strong masculinity customs of the West. The gentle masculinity that BTS shows is currently being accepted by young people around the world as a very attractive and liberating male image regardless of their sexual identity. In particular, the news is that not only the second generation of Korean Americans in the United States, but also Asian American youth who have been alienated under the dominant masculinity hierarchy of the white middle class are regaining their self-esteem. This in itself gives great power to all East Asians and is an important energy to change the future. Then, what kind of influence does BTS have on Korea? Needless to say Korean (Korean)It is progress in the world of HangulThe population who wants to learn is increasing rapidly, and it is revealed as examples of the creation of Korean Studies due to the demand for students at various universities around the world. The increase in the number of foreigners who speak Korean well in the Korean media is only visible evidence of this change. This change was not achieved by BTS alone, but the increase in the transnational influence of Korean popular culture for a long time and the popularity of K-pop became the background. Many of the videos they produce are distributed with multilingual subtitles, but as fans deepen their hearts, they want to communicate directly with their favorite star in his language. In addition, Korea’s economic growth has raised the possibility that Korean language acquisition is not just a small job, but a future job or job, so becoming a fan of Korean pop culture means investing energy and interest beyond just listening to music or watching drama. Became. The meaning of the path that BTS has been at the forefront of K-pop cannot be reduced to such an economic effect of several trillion won, and can not be reduced to a billboard or Grammy award given by the United States. In addition, you can see how consciously or unconsciously the questions about how long BTS, K-pop, and Korean Wave will last, self-help and prejudice. It may not be possible to immediately dream of the world after the pandemic next year, but the soft power of Korea and Koreans will continue to grow on the new path that BTS is leading ahead.

Hong Seok-kyung Professor, Department of Journalism and Information, Seoul National University