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Cinema billboards are like most forms of print advertising: they aim to attract the target consumer by announcing a product’s existence, emphasizing its uniqueness, and providing basic information on its value. Their purpose is to sell a product that will not offer any immediate benefit in dealing with the toils of everyday life but an enjoyable reprieve from them instead. At the same time, as with fads and fashion, they also promise a marker of positive social distinction to the many consumers wishing to remain informed on the latest developments in a particular area of popular culture.1 But despite the importance of making people believe that the product is something they ought not to miss out on, providing more than basic information is no option: the appeal of the product must be instantaneous. A degree of sensationalism, suspense, or the promise of something not shown elsewhere is therefore crucial to the success of movie billboards and related marketing media.2 Another critical factor these days is the use of digital technology to target consumers at any place and time. But while posters could build momentum by way of the careful distribution of particular information over time or appear virtually everywhere for a limited period, in the past painted cinema billboards tied the experience of a movie to a particular cinema, relying on their shape, size, and content for maximum impact.

The study of Hallyu is steadily broadening, in terms of both subject matter and the theoretical frameworks applied. Considering the large number of people involved in the production and consumption of related products around the world, edited volumes can play an important role in bringing together the divergent objectives and experiences. The Korean Wave: Evolution, Fandom, and Transnationality is a collection of studies aimed at exactly that: providing new perspectives on Hallyu as a field of enquiry, with a particular focus on the transnational nature of related developments.

K-pop’s talent factories and the popularity of televised pop music auditions have placed Korea’s contemporary auditioning processes in the spotlight. But under what conditions did auditions take place in the past, and on the basis of what criteria? This study investigates the ways in which aspiring pop music talents auditioned in the 1950s, when many of Korea’s veteran pop music celebrities were first discovered. A site of transcultural negotiation and compromise, the auditions organized during and after the Korean War by the Eighth United States Army in Korea were part of an operation that sought to meet a wide range of criteria for music entertainment. Like those applied by Korean talent factories today, those criteria comprised far more than mere musical talent.

Hallyu has set new criteria for the presentation of male and female pop idols across a significant part of the Northeast and Southeast Asian region. The Korean entertainment companies that create and promote K-pop acts pay careful attention to the positioning of their stars, both on the competitive music scene in the region vis-à-vis similar acts, and within their own formations. Boy bands and girl groups have proven to be the most successful K-pop formula. It appears that in order to maximize their commercial potential, agencies eschew deviating from an established set of expectations that comprise synchronized dance routines, a mixture of contemporary R & B, rap and hip-hop with a heavy beat, good looks, and the latest fashion, as well as high-quality music videos and conservative lyrics that suit the predominantly teenage fan base. Many have either noted or criticized the homogeneity of K-pop acts’ look and sound, but the uniformity in presentation is no new phenomenon and was first introduced to Korea in the 1910s. What is more, this standard helped generate US$177 million worth of exports in 2011, and is a major factor in the expansion of K-pop’s overseas fanbase today. The various production agencies closely monitor their ever-diversifying markets and will do what they can to avoid jeopardizing their multi-million-dollar investments. It is partly due to the constant repositioning of existing acts and careful positioning of new ones that apart from a number of anti-Hallyu incidents and campaigns, there are few noticeable signs of K-pop fatigue as yet.

Since the late 19th century, the number of foreign settlers in Koreaincreased fast. The photographs they took and collected bear witness notonly to the daily life of Koreans at the time, but also to the visitors’ ownbackgrounds. They reveal their status as outsiders, who used photographyas a form of visual documentation for the organization that fundedtheir travel, and in part to make up for a feeling of exclusion by imaginingthe home or peer audience. This study examines whether photographicrecords of foreign encounters shed light on the notion of cosmopolitanism. It argues that cosmopolitanism associates an imaginary globalrealm where people actively play down national, local conditions in pursuitof symbolic capital, which, ironically, is likely to have the highestvalue back home. It concludes that while the collections of photos byKorea’s early settlers comprised elements of conformity, much like themajority of travel diaries today, their physicality made them more personaland thus more convincing potential symbols of cosmopolitanism.

This chapter shows how Korean dramas in Latin America have piqued cultural interest in Korea as a whole, and paved the way for the influx of K-pop. It explains that Japanese popular cultures have been a powerful intermediary for the "chemistry" between K-pop and Latin American youth. The chapter explores a conceptual discussion on how K-pop gets acclimatised to Latin American cultural milieus. Korean dramas have continued to attract young and middle-aged female audiences in Latin America. The K-pop industry, too, has long been a "tenant" in the cluttered edifice of Korean dramas. While sound effects are rarely engaged in dramas, an excessive dosage of background and theme songs tend to saturate the whole stretch of a programme's running time. K-pop cover dance was later repurposed into a bridgehead to expand the global foothold of K-pop by Korean broadcasting networks hand in hand with para-state bureaus.

Japan had engaged Asian pop culture in the 1990s, including Hong Kong films and pop stars. One of the most popular female singers in the early 1990s, Kang Suji, had a relatively long-term career in Japan as a tarento during her residency in Japan from 1995 to 2000. Hallyu came to Japan in the wake of the spectacularly popular television drama Winter Sonata, first aired in Japan in 2003. Tohoshinki achieved huge success within the Japanese male idol market, rivalling such groups as Arashi, which is the product of Johnny's Entertainment, the powerful male idol factory dominant in Japan since the 1960s. With the successful career developments by Tohoshinki and KARA within the Japanese aidoru pop market, other leading male and female K-pop idol bands, such as SHINee, After School, 2NE1, and Girls' Generation, all soon released singles and albums in Japan. The potential for viral dissemination via social media seemed to give unprecedented strength to the K-pop boom.

Since 1962, when it enacted the Cultural Properties Preservation Law, the South Korean government has made considerable efforts to preserve the Korean heritage. Among the many aspects it has funded and promoted are the performance and teaching of traditional music. Over the years, the system has often been criticized, mostly in regard to its selection of specific traditions or people, but in recent decades it has faced a new challenge. A small but growing number of Christians have begun to renounce aspects of traditional music that they consider to be superstitious. Although at first most of those involved were outside the traditional music scene, in recent years even a number of senior musicians have begun to express their dislike of the superstitious aspects of their art. In this study I discuss the history of the intolerance and examine its potential implications for the authenticity of traditional music.

This chapter considers the effects of cultural policy in Okinawa, Japan's southernmost prefecture, as an example of a region-led approach to cultural heritage within the framework of national law. It presents case studies of the implementation of local and national cultural policy and considers some of these social and political meanings and objectives. Cultural property designations have had a number of direct effects on the way in which Okinawa is culturally and politically imagined at local, national and international levels. Internationally, UNESCO's 2008 representative list of intangible cultural heritage includes the Chinese guqin and the Armenian duduk amongst other instruments, and the organization has produced a number of publications related to instruments. During the years of political separation, the use of cultural property legislation was frequently aimed at maintaining links between Okinawa and Japan, such as the 1956 visit of Okinawan musicians to Tokyo, or the designations of Okinawan performing arts by mainland Japanese regional governments.

Researchers in Korean studies looking into the popular entertainment industries during the colonial period have historically focused on cultural nationalism or economic prowess. Studies of music from this period that are not primarily concerned with aspects of resistance or censorship have come out only in the last few years, and so it is only recently that the popularity of the many new forms of entertainment among Koreans at the time has come to be recognized. In this article I describe the interaction of Koreans and Japanese in these industries from the time of their inception around the turn of the nineteenth century, and relate how politics on the one hand, and the influence of technology on the other, changed both the sound and concept of recorded Korean music until the late 1930s. In doing so, I focus on recordings of traditional music and refute the idea that the Japanese tried to indiscriminately manipulate them from the outset.