For this week's Korea Blog, Colin Marshall dives into recent documentation of Korea's pop culture phenomena.
K-Pop Evolution: A Youtube Original Docuseries Traces the Origins of Korea’s Prime Cultural Export
The Korea Blog
Dispatches on the literature, cinema, current events, and daily life of Korea from the LARB’s man in Seoul Colin Marshall and others.
You can follow Colin Marshall at blog.colinmarshall.org, on Twitter @colinmarshall, or on Facebook @ColinMarshallEssayist.
The Grandma from Minari Was a Grindhouse Femme Fatale: Kim Ki-young’s The Insect Woman (1972)
"In the Korean entertainment industry, quite unlike the American one, appearing in commercials is the surest sign of having made it."
The Selling of South Korea: Youjeong Oh’s Pop City Reveals How K-Pop and K-Drama Have Transformed their Homeland
Colin Marshall writes on how Korean media has changed to meet the world's gaze.
You Can Check in Any Time You Want, But You Can Never Leave: The First Korean “Comfort Woman” Novel, Kim Soom’s One Left
Colin Marshall finds Kim Soom's novel at odds with recent "shoddy scholarship" on the topic of how voluntarily Korean women were sent to comfort stations.
From Seoul to the Stars: The Journey of Indie Synth-Electro-K-Pop Queen Neon Bunny
Colin Marshall writes on the K-pop phenom Neon Bunny (야광토끼) and her place in the Korean popular culture firmament.
We Live in a Building-Turned-Society: The Vertiginously Satirical Sci-Fi of Bae Myung-Hoon’s Tower
Colin Marshall discusses a recent entrant in the world of Korean science fiction by Bae Myung-Hoon.
Hotels of Pyongyang: A New Photo Book Showcases the Magnificent Kitsch of North Korean Hospitality
"Living in South Korea, my own fascination with the land north of the border has drifted less toward moral outrage than apathy."
