38th Parallel

In the 2000s, during the Iraq War, American Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld had a picture of the Korean peninsula in his office. It was a picture taken from space at night. In it, the bottom half of the peninsula, below the 38th parallel, South Korea was glistening, ablaze with light; above, the North shrouded in darkness. It was a division created at the end of the Second World War. A meeting place between communism and democracy. A temporary border between the Soviet Union and the United States that became indefinite. Something the Americans could be proud about. They could see the drastic difference; they could see the dwindling light coming from North Korea. The North Koreans dying of starvation. Communism dwindling; democracy winning.

Light Sticks

Customisable light sticks form part of a Bluetooth-controlled technology that allows thousands of people in the stadium to become part of the same sea of light. They mean that every individual in the audience can be seen by the idols on stage as a pixel of light. It’s a way of showing approval and support. It’s a reciprocal bond formed between audience and performers. K-pop idols are like public servants. They are humble on stage. They are there to please the fans.

Manual for Cultural Technology

The Manual for Cultural Technology was created by the CEO of SM Entertainment, which is one of the largest K-pop corporations. In the company, the manual was a document that all employees had to read. There was a different one for each department and it was adapted to localised preferences across different countries. The choreography version would detail different group formations, and specific hand gestures to be used in Japan, India or the Philippines; the music version, which chord progressions or instruments, song lyrics, titles of songs; and the camera angles to be used in videos (a 360-degree group shot to open, followed by a montage of individual close-ups). The original version of the Manual for Cultural Technology responded to the desires of teenage girls and, over time, its forms of cultural technology were tested on fans and fed back into the original manual, which then evolved. The company learned winning combinations such as using water on stage and having idols dance sensually while rain poured down on them. Likewise, large groups dancing in precise unison was catnip to fans. The philosophical foundation of SM Entertainment since the debut of boy band H.O.T. in 1996 has been the effort to systemise everything. The process of converting tacit to formality.

Monolithic Forms

The aesthetics of K-pop bear a resemblance to North Korean propaganda. Both North and South Korea use highly choreographed bodies in militarised formations. In North Korea, closed-off borders and isolation; in South Korea, pyramids and triangles. Economic fractal systems, symbols of expansiveness, globalisation, statelessness, expandability, hexagons: all become monolithic forms within performances that demonstrate national will.

Black Ocean

A “black ocean” is a phenomenon in which fans show their collective disapproval for something an idol has done. They switch off their light sticks in unison, leaving the idols to perform in darkness. It is one of the most humiliating things idols can experience in their career, the ultimate shame. Idols are like public servants who belong to their fans and their management companies. In this culture of punishment and shame, the guilty must perform an act of self-abnegation. In 2014, following the sinking of the Sewol ferry, in which hundreds of school children died, many of those responsible committed suicide.

Prostitution and pornography are illegal in South Korea but they proliferate in the dark. Since 2017, spycam controversies have seen revelations about hidden cameras in public spaces, with women secretly filmed going to the toilet or getting dressed in changing rooms, or couples having sex in hotel rooms. The footage was quickly distributed online and on chatrooms using the fastest and most accessible internet in the world.

Chaebol

The South Korean economy is dominated by a few centralised and family-run corporations underpinned by a Confucianist kinship structure. These large industrial conglomerates like LG or Samsung are called chaebols. They own stakes in K-pop as well, investing in K-pop corporations. These companies emerged in the aftermath of the Korean war, as the government sought to industrialise the country. The government of Park Chung Hee (in power from 1963 to 1979) would go to companies such as Samsung that had been, up to that point, manufacturing cheap air-conditioning units and microwaves, and tell them, “OK, now you’re going to be manufacturing LCD screens.” In the 1990s, South Korea was far behind Japan in the analogue engineering of Sony and Matsushita, so they bet it all on the digital future, a world of zeros and ones, ideal for standardisation. The country embraced new information technologies fast.

Pick Me, Pick Me, Pick Me Up

After signing the 1953 Mutual Defence Treaty with the Americans, which limited the development of military technology on an aggressive scale, South Korea decided to pursue information technology and entertainment as forms of power and military strategy. Its arsenal became forms of spectacle. In the realms of soft power, image and appearance are key. In audition shows, wannabe idols perform in highly competitive environments that follow the rules of social Darwinism. Survival of the fittest, eradication of the weak, pyramid structures, ending up with the final product at the top.

DMZ Loudspeakers

K-pop is a tool for diplomacy. It’s also the stage where South Koreans can show off their latest technologies. Holograms, artificial rainbows, programmable fireworks and cutting-edge screens. From the battlefield to the cultural sphere – a much more effective way of infiltrating another person’s country. The South Koreans installed loudspeakers that would blast K-pop over the border to North Korea. Songs about how great it is to be in South Korea, how modern it is, how everyone’s life in the South is so fantastic. A lot of the defectors who came out of North Korea have said that K-pop was one of the reasons that they knew that the government was hiding something from them; otherwise, how could all these people have such perfect lives, while the citizens of the North suffered?

BTS

A lot of the fans of BTS are young women or teenage girls and when asked why they love the group so much, they talk about its message of positivity. The group reminds you to love yourself, to take care of your mental health. The members talk about everyday life pressures, about dealing with depression, even drawing from Jungian theory in their album Map of the Soul: 7 (2020).

Milk Debt

“Milk debt” is an ancient Buddhist concept, the karmic debt you owe your mother for giving birth to you. Mothers transform their very flesh and blood into milk. They call the milk white blood. This ideology binds you to the responsibility of taking care of your parent for the rest of your life. After the economic restructuring in the 1990s, this ancient concept was more or less abandoned, fracturing family bonds and the family unit, leaving older citizens at the mercy of society. Younger generations now feel no responsibility towards their parents, shipping them off to homes on Jeju Island where a generation of older people is left to die on its own.

IMF Crisis

The 1997 Asian financial crisis led to a major restructuring of the Korean economy by the International Monetary Fund. South Korea was able to pay back its loan to the fund three years ahead of schedule, as a result of its centralised, government-driven economic strategy. The state was able to mobilise different parts of the economy rapidly. This also meant that millions of individuals were left behind in precarious situations. South Korea has the tenth highest suicide rate in the world. K-pop is part of a message of positivity and growth: looking toward the future, forgetting about the past, gaining respect on the international stage, putting aside past traumas.

Han

Koreans say that han is untranslatable. It’s a psychological state of deep sorrow and helplessness mixed with hope. After the war, han was used to promote solidarity through a sense of shared suffering, in response to feeling out of control of your own fate, which felt decided by powerful external forces. My parents always told me this. It gets reinforced in state schools, by your family, the press and scholars. Han. Han. Han. A result of han. Centuries of trauma and wrongdoing. Han is psychic damage, a wounded heart.

I recently found out that han actually originated during the Japanese occupation of Korea, that it was a Japanese concept, a term given by the Japanese to describe Korean art, particularly pottery. To reinforce the hierarchy of Japanese art, they claimed that this artwork was full of sorrow, and that this must be because of a history of oppression. Telling people they are traumatised is a good way to oppress them, to hold them down. Today, we tell it to ourselves. It’s a belief we have, that we are inherently traumatised, the beauty of sorrow. The concept of han naturalised Korean suffering as something inherent and inevitable. It was a way to claim back what was Korean, what is Koreanness, our national identity. One artificially formed after years of occupation.

Love Yourself

Children as young as seven are taken to live together in training houses. They sign 13-year contracts, often called “slave contracts”. During this time, they belong to their management companies. They eat and train to perform to sing and dance like ninjas until they reach perfection. Even then, there is no guarantee that they will make it into a final idol group. They may never have a debut, but it’s worth the shot. Believe in yourself; it’s part of the process. Don’t give up now or you’ll never know how it will turn out. Even if you die trying, it’ll be worth it in the end. You’ll be proud of yourself for having taken the risk. Push yourself; challenge yourself; believe in yourself.

Thank you for singing this song together. ◉