• Review of Culture and Economy
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• v.20 no.1
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• pp.21-50
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• 2017

The rise of Hallyu (Korean Wave) has generated a treasury of historiographic and cultural inquiries into the phenomenal success of South Korea's media entertainment industry. Whereas the majority of such studies focus on TV dramas and popular music, there is a medium, or rather a hybrid sub-genre within the medium category of short films, that must be reexamined and thus appreciated as the archetypal predecessor of popular Hallyu contents: music videos. The rapidly changing social, political, and economic climate in the mid- to late 1990s called for content that would grasp the attention of a younger, increasingly mobile population with diversified interests and routines that no longer guaranteed fixed-time viewership. Meanwhile, the advent of cable TV channels and high-speed internet service ensured greater temporal and infrastructural accessibility. The media entertainment industry's response to the new opportunities and challenges arising from these sudden growths in the scale, range, connectivity, and mobility of consumer demographics was synergetic cross-sector collaboration in the form of dramatized blockbuster music videos, which combined two popular and lucrative genres: trendy dramas and ballad music. In this essay, by relocating Hallyu's archetypal medium/genre, I claim that increasing upward and sideways mobility across sectors not only inspired new production but also reconfigured the very concept, form, and impact of media-driven cultural imaginary in South Korea.