• The Journal of Art Theory & Practice
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• no.6
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• pp.27-50
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• 2008

This thesis examines contemporary Chinese painting after the Cultural Revolution(1966~76), focusing upon so-called "Chinese Pop art", which I termed as "Socialist Pop art". I considered the art of this period within the broader context of social changes especially after the Tienanmen incident of 1989. After the Cultural Revolution during which idolization of Chairman Mao was at its peak, one of the major changes in communist China was that an anti-Mao wave was generated in almost every social class. For example, novels that revealed the hardships during the Cultural Revolution were published. Posters that openly criticized the Maoism were also produced and displayed on the walls, and demand for democracy spurred widespread activist movements among young generations. These broad social changes were also reflected in art. A variety of art movements were introduced from the West to China, and after a period of experimentation with the new imported styles, artists began to apply the new artistic idiom to their works in order to visualize their own social and political realities they lived in. It was a shift from earlier Socialist Realism to a new expression either directly or indirectly, "Socialist Pop", an amalgam of Socialist Realism and Pop art tradition. After the 1989 crackdown of Tienanmen Square protest, when communist government quelled with brutal measures the students, workers, and ordinary people who rose for democracy, greater urge to protest the Deng Xiaoping regime emerged. This time coincided with the gradual emergence of art using Pop art vocabulary to satirize the social reality, the Socialist Pop art, along with many other art forms all with avant-garde spirit. One of the most frequent subjects of Chinese Pop art was visual images of Chairman Mao and his Cultural Revolution, and new China that was saturated with capitalism, which tainted the Chinese way of life with a Western way of consumerism and commercialism. The reason for the popularity of Mao's image was spurred by the "Mao Craze" in the early 1990's. People suddenly began to fall in a kind of nostalgia for the past, and once again, Mao Zedong was idolized as an entity who can heal the problems of modern China who had been marching towards their ultimate destination, the economic development. But this time Chairman Mao was no more an idol but just a popular, commercial product. He is no more an object of worship of almost religious nature but he has become an iconography symbolizing the complex nature of present Chinese society. During this process of depicting the social reality, Chinese artists are making the authority and sanctity of Maoism ineffective. Dealing with this new trend of contemporary Chinese art in view of "Socialist Pop art" two manners of re-creating Pop art can be illustrated: one that incorporates the propaganda posters of the Cultural Revolution; the other borrows from Chinese traditional popular imagery or mass media, such as photos taken during Mao era. What is worth mentioning is that these posters and photos of the Cultural Revolution can be identified as 'popular' media, as they were directed to educate the popular mass, thus combination of this ingenuous pop media with Western Pop art can be fully justified as a genre unique to China. Through this genre, we can discover a new chapter of the Chinese contemporary painting and its society, as their Pop art can be considered as self-portraits true to their present appearances.

• The Research Journal of the Costume Culture
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• v.23 no.4
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• pp.581-594
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• 2015

The emergence of pop art in the 1960s exerted a profound impact on integrating art into the real lives of the general public, which continues in the current area of culture of post-industrial society. Thus, this study aims to attempt the popularization and modernization of Korean images by applying the concept of pop art to the development of a national symbolic image. This study utilized Mugunghwa, Taegeukgi, and the Great Seal, which are national symbolic images that establish the identity of Korea through differentiation, universality, and visual formativeness. It then proceeded with the development of neo-pop art motives and patterns using national symbolic images from the standpoint of symbolism, mix-match, and repetitiveness from among the characteristics of neo-pop art. This study carried out pattern design by departmentalizing each characteristic according to the standpoint of neo-pop art through scribbles composed of the following: Signs, pictograms, and childlike characters; drawing simplification for symbolism; a mix of the East and the West; a mix of subfashion and subculture for mix-match; the repetition of lines, characters, and icons; and the exaggeration and grotesqueness of characters and icons for repetitiveness. This study is expected to serve as momentum for raising the cultural value of Korea and for the development of a pattern design capable of achieving worldwide competitiveness through the combination of the permanence and continuity of national symbols with the popular universality of pop art.

• The Journal of the Korea Contents Association
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• v.6 no.5
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• pp.96-103
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• 2006

'Kitsch', having emerged after the Industrial Revolution in the 19th century, has been playing a role of interconnecting pop culture with high level culture, now claiming new aesthetic values in a variety of pop cultures of our industrialized modern society and holding its position as a cultural phenomenon. In the realm of fashion which is very much attached to everyday life, kitsch has also been expressing new forms of beauty through the liberation from and destruction of the fixed ideas. This study addresses the issues as to how we obtain the basic understanding of kitsch and shows how it was expressed in the fashion of the actors starring in the recently released Korean comedy movies.

• Cartoon and Animation Studies
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• s.34
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• pp.129-165
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• 2014

K-pop performances are in the center of the contemporary popular arts and cultural industry, and implicitly reveal the way that our society views the body and the time-space. This paper explores the motif of automaton in the K-pop idol group ShiNee's stage performance of 'Everybody' and the song's music video. At the same time, the paper relates the motif with the automaton of the digital era-that is, the sense of time-space in digital animations. The motif of the automaton has its origins in the mythical forms related to the animation, and is related to the human desire to create humanlike forms. Also, this motif is closely linked to the aesthetical meaning of the animation, being played in different variations since the beginning of the animation. This paper explores the tradition of automaton motif in culture and the arts, and look into the cases in which the history of the relationship between the media and body performance harboring the automaton motif has been displayed in 19th century ballet or modern body expressional arts. In addition, this paper will compare and analyze representative contemporary works that reveal digital viewpoint and the choreography of 'Everybody', and compare other works that stand in similar aesthetic tradition, investigating the influence of digital animation reflected in the K-pop idol and its aesthetic and social undertones.

• Journal of Digital Convergence
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• v.19 no.7
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• pp.87-94
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• 2021

The purpose of this study is to categorize tourists according to the types of Korean popular culture as travel motives and to explore their characteristics and behavior in the tourism-related decision-making process. A sample of 12,914 leisure tourists from the 2018 foreign tourist survey data was analyzed using MNL and ANOVA. The popular cultural tourists were categorized into K-food, K-fashion, and K-pop groups. They showed a higher percentage of female tourists, social media usage in the tourism information search, and visits from countries geographically close to Korea. K-pop tourists did not hesitate to choose Korea as the destination and visited Korea the most frequently. They showed the highest satisfaction, revisit intention and recommendation intention, suggesting loyalty and growth potential.

• International Journal of Advanced Culture Technology
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• v.10 no.4
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• pp.268-276
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• 2022

This study examined whether K-pop dance is qualified as an academic subject and how university students perceive K-pop dance as a liberal art subject. The survey was conducted with 138 students. Among the total of 138, 40 participants were male, and 53 participants were female. Fourteen(14) participants had experience with K-pop classes, and 124 participants did not have any experience with K-pop dance classes. According to the study, K-pop is a form of Korean culture that adds unique cultural and social characteristics to Koreans. It is in the cultural and art education category. In addition, K-pop dance is a socio-cultural phenomenon characterized by dance. However, K-pop dance is not qualified as an academic subject because it lacks theoretical foundations. The survey result also revealed that the students did not perceive that K-pop dance had personal, aesthetic, social, or educational value. They did not want to take a class if K-pop dance is offered as an academic subject in liberal art class. When analyzing the data by gender and experiences with dance classes, there was a difference based on gender in the two questions. In the case of females, they responded to having fun and joy from K-pop dance, while male respondents did not. Regarding the learners' interest in Kpop dance class, female respondents were more optimistic about the learner interest than male respondents. In conclusion, K-pop dance is a sociocultural phenomenon, and many informal online courses are created daily, spreading everywhere. However, the status of K-pop dance as an academic area is not set up yet.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Clothing and Textiles
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• v.28 no.5
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• pp.570-581
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• 2004

The purpose of this study is to analyze the acceptance and interpretation of pop musician's image in the Korean youth subculture, Fan Costume play(Fancos). Fancos subculture took the most active attitude to accepts of the pop musician's image and therefore was assumed to have various and differential acceptance aspects. The ethnographic method was used in order to approach more closely from their point of view. The cultural activity of Fancos subculture was imitation and reappearance of pop musician's appearance. Actually Fancos is a kind of fan-culture which idolized Korean pop music star. The acceptance of musician's appearance in Fancos is found out in two aspects. One is passive acceptance aspects that inforces conformity of star fashion and follows servilely ideal body image which promoted by cultural industry. The other is unique acceptance aspects that Fancos members interpret the musician's image in their own way. Those members experience pleasure through their own meaning. And homology of their appearance makes a distinction between of themselves from other youth and intensifies their group identity. As above analyzed, Fancos subculture has differential acceptance of pop music star's image comparing to other youth and even their stylistic appearance reflects not only their fandom but also their own meaning. Consequently, pop musician's image as a popular cultural text is accepted not equal to all populace but dissimilar along with contexts and trails of the acceptance group.

• Journal of the Korean Applied Science and Technology
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• v.37 no.4
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• pp.733-743
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• 2020

The purpose of this study is to explore the perception of K-pop dance and Taekwondo performances in Movement culture using semantic network analysis. The research subjects were selected from 105 students from K University in Daejeon. The method of selecting the research subject was a snowball sampling method among non-probability sampling methods, and a mobile Google questionnaire was used as the research tool. The results are as follows. First, it was found that the concepts of 'globalization', 'culture', and 'celebrity' in K-pop dance are the main cognitive concepts calculated more than 20 times. Second, as a result of analyzing the meaning network of K-pop dance recognition, it was found that the concepts of 'culture', 'popularity', and 'famous' are the main concepts of k-pop dance recognition. Third, the Taekwondo performance can be confirmed that the concepts of 'good', 'Korea', and 'temperance' are the main concepts calculated more than 20 times. Fourth, as a result of analyzing the meaning network of Taekwondo performance recognition, it was found that the concepts of 'movement', 'Korea', and 'good' are the main concepts of Taekwondo performance recognition.

• The Journal of the Korea Contents Association
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• v.19 no.9
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• pp.221-232
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• 2019

The uniqueness of the K-Pop 'idol' culture, which is a key area of its success, can be found not only through the acceptance of diverse cultures and the strengthening of the performance capacity, but also by the effective utilization of new technological environment. As a result, the Korean idol system, which is distinguished from the Japanese idol system, is established. And these systems are evolving with new technological environments. This paper examines the process of evolution of the Korean idol system that adapts to the technical environment through the case of the idol girl group 'IZ*ONE'. 'IZ*ONE' not only achieved rapid success by actively utilizing SNS and new media and producing interactive narratives, but also establishing stable expansion and homogeneity of fandom through interactive rituals. By comparing the evolution and achievement of such a system with the Japanese idol system, we will be able to present the factors of K-Pop success more clearly.

• International Journal of Advanced Culture Technology
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• v.10 no.3
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• pp.352-359
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• 2022

The study examined a sentiment analysis based on Tweeter messages between contemporary pop musicians and classical music composers. Musicians of each genre were carefully selected for the sentiment analysis. Many opinion messages on Tweets that users have discussed were collected, and the messages were evaluated by using Naïve Bayes Classifier. The results demonstrated that users showed high positive sentiments for the two different genres. However, on average, the positive sentiment values for classical music composers are higher than for contemporary pop musicians. In addition, the rankings of the highest positive sentiments among contemporary pop musicians and classical music composers did not coincide with the popularity of the two different genres of musicians. This study will contribute to the study of future sentimental analysis between music and musicians.