Diversity and K-pop

Research Seminar Series

Monday, 6 March 2023 at 3:00 pm – J004, School of Art History and Cultural Policy.

Dr Kim-Marie Spence, Arts Management and Cultural Policy, Queen’s University Belfast.

Multiculturalism has become much more of an issue in South Korean society in the last few decades, due to both the popularity of the Korean Wave and demographic changes. Since its earliest days, K-pop companies have recruited non-Korean members, due to the linguistic and audience demands of firstly the Asian and then the global market. Nevertheless, this sits at odds with a South Korean society that values its homogeneity. Through analysis of interviews with policymakers, members of the industry and K-pop journalists and secondary analysis of blogs and Korean newspaper reports, I argue that the cosmopolitan imperative of K-pop reveals a tension between the demands of a global creative product, especially when that product is from the Non-West, and the local identity and society in which it is embedded. I will discuss some of the ways this tension has characterised K-pop’s engagement with its international fandom. This presentation serves as a comment on global media and pop culture and the uncritical assumption that global popularity should correlate with cosmopolitanism.

Dr Kim-Marie Spence is a Jamaican lecturer in Arts Management and Cultural Policy at Queen’s University. She is also an adjunct lecturer in film studies at the Caribbean School of Media & Communication at the University of the West Indies (Jamaica). She researches popular culture industries and policy of the Non-West with a focus on the music industries of K-pop and reggae. Kim-Marie is particularly interested in (new) cultural policy paradigms, Non-West cultural industries and creative cities. She is a Rhodes Scholar and a former Jamaica Film Commissioner. She has also worked with UNESCO on the Representative List of Oral and Intangible Heritage. She is co-author of Global Cultural Economy with articles published in Journal of Arts Management, Law & Society and Journal of Popular Music & Society.  She also sits on the boards of the MAC Belfast, a leading Northern Irish contemporary art institution, and Kingston Creative, Jamaican cultural district initiative.