User:EmCarp24/Fandom culture in South Korea

In South Korea, fandom culture has largely formed around K-pop idols and Korean dramas. These fandoms support a large market for official and unofficial fandom memorabilia. Fandoms in South Korea are politically viewed as a mainstream culture and not as a subculture. Fan culture in South Korea emerged post-war, and has contributed to South Korea's economic growth. South Korean fan culture differs from other fandoms due to the fan's involvement with their favorite groups. K-pop fans contribute to the group's success through promotions, merchandise production, streaming, voting for awards such as MAMA (Mnet Asian Music Awards), Melon Music Awards, and Seoul Music Awards, and creating fan accounts on social media that serve as a way to promote idols and their group. This kind of heavy engagement with K-pop artists creates a fan culture that deviates from Western fan culture, developing relationships with artists that span beyond the music itself.

K-pop fandoms[edit]
See also: Korean idol

Fandom culture refers to the phenomenon in which people voluntarily choose a certain celebrity or genre and come together to create a specific 'acceptance' culture.

Fandom culture of Korean pop idols began in the 1970s with singers Nam Jin and Nahuna. In 1980, Cho Yong-pil appeared in the public arena, ushering in the fan girl culture. Fandoms started to become popular during the early 1980s and continued to grow rapidly into the 1990s with the emergence of Seo Taiji as a teenage idol. Fan girls gained more prominence in the press after the retirement of Seo Taiji and Boys in the late 1990s, and were described as teenaged girls who dedicated their everyday lives to following, watching, or admiring an idol star.

Around the year 2000, many fan clubs appeared and Korean youth culture became a subject of academic study. Many traditional South Koreans disapproved of enthusiastic fandoms, and early studies of the subject took a negative view.

In the earlier times, K-pop idols were pushed to act and look innocent. Companies achieved a pure and innocent appearance by banning tattoos, earrings for male idols, and a risque style of dancing. This image of idols was modern enough for the Korean youth to enjoy and conservative enough to be supported by the adults.

History[edit]
Although early fandom was strongly perceived as a fan culture involving a few fanatic people, it has recently brought about a shift in perception that can be accessed in a variety of ways only by the name of a star or related search terms on portal sites, which is largely due to the development of the Internet and media.

Among the numerous fandoms in cyberspace, especially the nation's "idol" fandom has steadily expanded its influence in various ways to date, starting with "Seo Taiji and Boys." In the past, idol fandom culture was called "girl culture" or "teenage culture" and was considered primarily an immature culture for teenage girls, while the third-generation idol fandom has recently expanded to men and over 40s, exerting influence on cultural consumption aspects for all generations.

In the United States, it is argued that K-pop sensations BTS paved the way for K-pop music to become mainstream in the Western hemisphere, promoting Korean fan culture in various parts of the world. Before BTS however, the Kim Sisters were the very first Korean born group to create a reputation in the United States in 1959. Many consider the Kim Sisters to be the very first introduction to music that established the foundation for what K-pop is today.

Beginning in 2008, this era of K-pop gained international recognition with groups such as Bigbang, Super Junior, and Girls Generation. Fans conveyed their devotion to groups on social media platforms like Twitter and YouTube, participating in South Korea's fan culture by interacting with one another and developing a digital space for fans to promote new music.

The “Korean Wave”, also known as Hallyu has become a sensational hit around the world and continues to grow every year since it began to politically take over the world in the early 2010s. While K-pop had of course existed before that, between 2011 and 2012, the government budget grew over 250% for the business. The Korean Wave played a massive role in boosting South Korea's economic affairs, and its identity served as a means for Korea to compete commercially with the rest of the world, promoting the morale of Korea in a palatable manner.

In 2015, South Korean Idols set themselves apart from many of their Western counterparts by not only joining the major social media platforms such as Instagram and Twitter, but Naver Corporation created a streaming website/app called “V Live”. While Instagram and Twitter are international apps that allowed for the idols to reach their fans, V Live allowed for streaming of live (or uploaded) videos or voice only recordings. The idols can read the comments from the fans in real time and respond. As of 2022, V Live has been purchased by Weverse, a company that allows idols to livestream from around the world, interacting with fans across the globe as well as marketing for merchandise all in the same platform.

Positive[edit]
Members of idol fandoms may better themselves in the pursuit of their obsession, such as by studying to enter the same university as their idol, learning foreign languages to follow their idol's career abroad or learning image-processing techniques to edit photos of the idol. Fandoms may also lead to other interests, for example, idol group JYJ's fans like musicals because of musical appearances by Kim Junsu.

Fans role in creating their own fan content allows for idol groups to gain mainstream exposure in the west, and have tours abroad.

In addition to benefitting the idols themselves, Korean fan culture has the potential to improve fan's mental health. Fans can develop a social identity online, which allows them to interact with other fans who have the same interest in a specific group or idol and form relationships outside of the fandom itself. One's self-esteem can also be uplifted by partaking in South Korean fan culture, with other fans encouraging each other to be accepting of their own appearance.

Negative[edit]
Stalker fans, a.k.a. sasaeng fans, are considered to have become overly obsessed with a public figure and engaged in behavior that constitutes an invasion of privacy. Stalker fans may disguise themselves as a stage hand or manager to approach the star, or pretend to be reporters in order to gain entry to a press conference. Many fans use the Internet and social media to find and track the location of their idols, resulting in Korean fan culture developing a bad reputation. Sasaeng fans have gone to extreme lengths to attain a sense of closeness with their favorite idols, causing upheaval within the K-pop fandom regarding the consequences of parasocial relationships. As a result of sasaeng's presence on social media, a preconception about K-pop fans is established, with the misunderstanding that the entire fandom displays the same stalker behaviors that sasaengs do.