K-Culture Glossary
100 Terms to Get You Started with Korean Popular Culture
What is K-Culture?
K-Culture is a neologism referring to the sweeping wave of South Korean popular culture. The term was coined in the late 1990s, when various elements of Korean pop culture - from drama, to films, music, fashion, food, comics and novels all began to spread, first into other Asian countries, and then further afield. What is the secret ingredient of K-Culture? What is historical and cultural backdrop against which K-Culture began to be consumed?
This "K-Culture Glossary" is designed to provide a background to the diverse cultural and historical context that shaped the K-Culture movement, as well as offering analysis of the various trends and phenomena crucial to South Korean popular culture today. The authors have selected 100 key terms, with detailed accompanying elaborations and expert commentaries.
Authors’ biography
Ji-hyeon Kim / Media researcher
Ji-hyeon earned a doctorate in Cultural Studies from Goldsmiths, University of London, and has since been teaching media theory and popular culture at several UK universities. Her research concentrates on South Korean popular culture and digital media. She has developed her interest in independent publishing through her research on self-publishing as mnemotechnics. In conjunction with this, in 2020 she established Jikim Publishing Limited – the first enterprise in the UK that publishes a series of guidebooks of South Korean Culture. <K-Culture Glossary> is the second book of the series.
Su-hui Son / TV producer
Su-hui is an expert in Korean broadcasting, film and feminism, currently working in the South Korean public broadcasting service. Over the past 10 years, she has produced a broad range of entertainment shows, such as <Singing Battle> and <Hello Counsellor> at the KBS (Korean Broadcasting System). Presently, she is interested in directing and presenting women’s stories to the world. In this book, she identifies some of the recent trends regarding South Korean films and feminism. She holds a BA in Media Studies and an MA in Cultural Studies, both from Hankuk University of Foreign Studies, South Korea.
Junyoung Yu / Media researcher
Junyoung is a Visiting Fellow in Media and Communications at the London School of Economics and Political Science. As a sociologist of media, his research is concerned primarily with the intersection of data technologies, digital platforms, algorithmic systems and social life, and how the newly emergent socio-material environment of communication shapes the way we live everyday life. His interest has also recently extended into digital platforms in South Korea (such as Kakao and Naver), and relatedly he authored an article on the shifting cultural production and digital labour in the Korean platform contexts.
Kathia Sya / Founder of personal care brand
Kathia’s formative experience in the world of skincare began in 1987, when she accompanied her mother, a Paris-trained aesthetician, starting a spa business in the northern states of Malaysia. Her interest in cosmetics has since deepened, taking her through the highs and lows of each emerging industry, from J-Beauty, T-Beauty and since 2005, K-Beauty. She has since served as the first Beauty Editor for <Tongue In Chic>, Southeast Asia’s top fashion lifestyle web magazine. She holds an MA in Sociology from Goldsmiths, University of London. She is also trained as a perfumer and founded her personal care brand: Drops of Humanity in 2015.