Korean dramas gained popularity across Asia in the late 1990s, and their global fandom continues to grow. Despite cultural differences, non-Asian audiences find "K-dramas" appealing. They range from historical melodrama and romantic comedy to action, horror, sci-fi and thriller. Devotees pursue an immersive fandom, consuming Korean food, fashion and music, learning Korean to better understand their favorite shows, and travelling to Korea for firsthand experiences. This collection of new essays focuses on the cultural impact of K-drama and its fandom, and on the transformation of identities in the context of regional and global dynamics. Contributors discuss such popular series as Boys over Flowers, My Love from the Star and Descendants of the Sun.

At this fascinating historical moment, this timely collection explores the new meaning of the Korean Wave and the process of media production, representation, distribution and consumption in a global context as a distinctive and complex form of soft power. Focusing on the most recent phenomenon of Korean popular culture, this book considers the Korean Wave in the global digital age and addresses the social, cultural and political implications in their complexity within the contexts of global inequalities and uneven power structures. The collection brings together internationally renowned scholars and regional specialists to examine this historically significant, visibly growing, yet under-explored current phenomenon in the global digital age. Drawing on a wide range of perspectives from media and communications, cultural studies, sociology, history and anthropology, and including a series of case studies from Asia, the USA, Europe and the Middle East, it provides an empirically rich and theoretically stimulating tour of this area of study, going beyond the standard Euro-American view of the evolving and complex dynamics of the media today. This collection is essential reading for students and scholars interested in Korean popular culture and in film, media, fandom and cultural industries more widely.

This book, the third volume in the K-Culture series intended to promote contemporary Korean culture overseas, introduces foreign audiences to Korean dramas. K-Drama and Hallyu K-Drama: The Beginning of Hallyu K-Drama Reaches into Asia and Beyond Why K-Drama? The Appeal of K-Drama Foreign Media Respond to K-Drama History of K-Drama 1960s: The Age of Enlightenment 1970s: Entering the Era of True Entertainment 1980s: Portraits of a Modern Korea 1990s: More Ideas, Better Results 2000s to the Present: K-Drama Goes Global Top K-Dramas and Stars Top 10 K-Dramas Top K-Drama Stars From Little Acorns

The contributors analyse the subject of Asian pop culture arranged under three headings: 'Television Industry in East Asia', 'Transnational-Crosscultural Receptions of TV Dramas' and 'Nationalistic reactions'.

The rise in popularity of South Korean entertainment and culture began and is promoted as an official policy of the Korean government to revive the country's economy. This study examines cultural production and consumption, glocalization, the West versus. Asia, global race consciousness, and changing views of masculinity and femininity.

The first scholarly volume to investigate the impact of social media and other communication technologies on the global dissemination of the Korean Wave

K-Pop: Popular Music, Cultural Amnesia, and Economic Innovation in South Korea seeks at once to describe and explain the emergence of export-oriented South Korean popular music and to make sense of larger South Korean economic and cultural transformations. John Lie provides not only a history of South Korean popular music—the premodern background, Japanese colonial influence, post-Liberation American impact, and recent globalization—but also a description of K-pop as a system of economic innovation and cultural production. In doing so, he delves into the broader background of South Korea in this wonderfully informed history and analysis of a pop culture phenomenon sweeping the globe.