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This article examines K-drama's potential as a postcolonial Third Space. I consider the impact of Netflix's profit-driven transculturalism on Hallyu by contrasting Netflix Korean Originals, particularly Squid Game, with K-dramas such as Liar Game. The latter belongs to an emergent mode of Korean TV that I call the "melodramatic mundane," which creates new forms of hybridized identity in the global arena. Analyzing K-dramas' Western reception alongside a comparative close reading of American, Japanese, and Korean TV shows, I examine alternative structures of feeling in K-dramas that challenge American narrative ideologies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines how creativity is regarded as a significant corporate asset to Netflix's rise as a dominant global streaming platform. Using Netflix Korea as an empirical case study, the article problematizes the institutionalization of Netflix creativity to construct the streaming platform as a peculiar cultural space for creativity and lure ethnic content creators while capitalizing on the particularities of Korean television production norms and practices. Drawing on critical media industry studies and analysis of journalistic interviews with Hwang Dong-hyuk, the creator of the global hit series Squid Game, this article examines the politics shaping Netflix creativity in terms of authorial value, labor, and intellectual property. The article moves away from a Western-centric study of creativity rooted in romanticism, inspiration, and neoliberalism to explore how creativity as a resource to Netflix shapes the interactions between the Korean television industry and the subjectivities of Korean creative laborers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

South Korean television shows are so prominent on Netflix that "K-dramas" is a default search keyword. K-drama is considered a "genre" alongside action, anime, comedy, and romance. Analyzing two Netflix K-dramas, Memories of the Alhambra and My Holo Love, this article theorizes how K-dramas adopt new media and technology both as subject and narrative devices, incorporating the pertinent characteristics of each technology into a narrative. The article also examines wearable augmented reality technology and artificial intelligence holograms as narrative devices. In the digital platform era, K-drama adopts information and communication technology as televisuality through remediation. Central to theorizing virtual technology as dramatic content is the spatiality of the relationships between the real and the virtual, diegetic, and commercial worlds. Netflix K-dramas depict current information and communication technology and simulate the complications that arise when virtual gestures replace real gestures. This research theorizes how the enmeshment of digital and physical space transforms spatial boundaries, televisuality, and screens. By doing so, it evaluates Hallyu content as a site for technological hybridity and televisual studies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the changing characteristics in defining the Koreanness of Korean popular culture in the era of the Korean Wave. Based on interviews with cultural bureaucrats and television producers, the study finds that creators emphasize universal values and transcultural characteristics in their cultural products to increase cultural exports. As the Korean Wave becomes an increasingly important agenda in policy contexts, state authorities redefine Koreanness with successful Korean content. Combined with other elements in the production and distribution of Korean cultural products that indicate the globalization of Korean cultural industries, the findings of interviews explain that the meaning of the prefix "K-" is defined by the global popularity of products and the market logic. However, considering cultural products have functioned as a means of promoting national unity and signifying the national identity, such a strategy of producing "Korean-less" content often causes controversies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Applying the concept of platform imperialism, we investigate how Netflix has altered the practices of Korean drama production and the theoretical implications of this influence in the study of the Korean Wave. Despite Netflix's positive contributions to increasing the reputation of Korean dramas, Netflix's aggressive international content strategies pose a significant challenge to the Korean media industry. Because Netflix acquires all IP rights to Netflix Korean originals and the global streaming rights to numerous Korean dramas, neither production companies nor Korean television stations gain profits commensurate with the global popularity of Korean dramas. Netflix's strategic use of the Korean Wave and the aggressive acquisition of the streaming rights of Korean dramas may ultimately work to consolidate platform imperialism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article deals with Indonesian Muslim youth engaging with Korean television dramas. This article employs observation and interview among 43 Indonesian Muslim youth. This study has shown that there is symbolic distancing that happens in Indonesia because of Islamic and Hallyu's interaction and negotiation. Based on symbolic distancing concept, Indonesian Muslim youth engaging with Korean TV dramas involves the localized appropriation. Indonesian young Muslims believe that it is crucial to preserve Islamic values while consuming Korean TV dramas. Images and representations of Korean TV dramas basically do not reduce their Islamic identity. Ultimately, images and representations in Korean television dramas support their Muslim identity. Indonesian Muslim youth who enjoy watching Korean television dramas learn from the scenes depicted. However, these young Muslims also negotiate or even oppose the representations which contradict with their Islamic understandings. These images and representations have been appropriated based on their Islamic values. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the twenty-first century, Korean television dramas have gained transnational popularity in a phenomenon called Hallyu. Believing that these Korean television dramas accurately portray how Korean men are in real life, some white women from North America and Europe travel to Korea as Hallyu tourists to form intimate relations with Korean men. This essay is based on the data I gathered through ethnographic field research in 2017–18, during which I interviewed and observed these Hallyu tourists. Some of my Hallyu tourist informants claimed that they traveled to Korea because they were motivated by the nonsexual depictions of Korean men in the television dramas. They viewed Korean men as the racial, ethnic, and nonsexual others who would provide them with alternatives to sex-based intimacy. I examine my Hallyu tourist informants' desires for Korean men through the theoretical frameworks of nonsexuality and racialized erotics. I argue that some of my informants' erotic desires for nonsexual Korean men reinforce Orientalist stereotypes about Korean men's sexuality. By examining the racial and sexual politics of some white female tourists' erotic desires for nonsexual Korean men, I demonstrate the indivisibility of nonsexuality from race. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study investigates the nonverbal behaviors used in two interconnected relational practices in Korean: "doing deference" towards status superiors and "performing intimacy" towards status equals. We extracted 154 interactions from Korean televised dramas that represented these two relational practices, and annotated the data for various nonverbal behaviors, including body position and orientation, facial expressions, manual gestures, and touching. Our analyses showed that the protagonists in the dramas altered their nonverbal behavior between the two relational practices according to all of the categories that we annotated. Doing deference featured erect but constrained body positions, direct bodily orientation towards the status superior, and suppression of gestures and touching. These behaviors display decreased animatedness and freedom, as well as increased effort, and increased submissiveness. In contrast, performing intimacy displayed more relaxed and reciprocal body positioning, as well as frequent gestures and touching behaviors. The results call into question analyses of politeness phenomena that solely focus on verbal elements in previous descriptions of Korean deference. Ultimately, our results demonstrate the need for more multimodal studies in politeness research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay discusses how the 2016 South Korean television drama Descendants of the Sun attempts to distance the representation of the soldier from the necropolitical. Although various filming techniques and intradiegetic elements attempt to disengage the soldier figure from historical representations that continually emphasize the right to kill, Descendants ultimately demonstrates that the discourse of world peace itself is inherently violent. By promoting global humanitarianism, Descendants fails to provide a critical lens through which viewers can reflect on participation in a cosmopolitan ethos that depends on the continual renewal of neo-imperial relationships. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the transnational circulation of Korean TV dramas in Latin America. It argues that the popularity of Korean TV dramas in Latin America has to do with how they offer a lived experience of social class struggles as an essential fabric of modernity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article explores Korean popular cinema and television in the early 21st-century. Particular focus is given to the growth of the consumption and critical reception of Korean popular culture since the early 2000s, known as the Korean Wave. Various films and television series are discussed including "The Admiral: Roaring Currents," from Kim Han-min, "Ode to My Father," from Yoon Je-kyoon and "The Last Princess," from Heo Jin-ho.

Based on questionnaire responses from a purposive sample of 400 Jordanian young viewers, this study attempts to examine reality perceptions of the events portrayals on Korean TV drama among them, and to explore how they relate to this drama such as realism perceptions, utility, and identity. The results revealed that viewers' gender has a significant impact on their intensity of Korean TV drama viewing, their perception of its reality and their attitudes towards it. Our findings also indicated that intensity of this drama viewing influences the attitudes towards it; however, there is no significant effect for this intensity on perceived reality rate of this drama. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The current study investigates tourists’ discourse regarding authenticity in the postmodern tourism context by employing the intertwined concepts of authenticity and gaze to examineLaw of the Jungle, a Korean reality travel program. Findings from our thematic content analysis of data suggest that the program provides viewers with a dual structure through which to view and negotiate the tourism setting of the show, and that the authenticity of the program is perceived from three main perspectives: objective, subjective, and postmodernist. Findings are contextualized within extant literature on authenticity, orientalism, the tourist gaze, and the second gaze. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This study attempts to develop a drama consumption model in the context of film tourism and empirically test it using the mainland Chinese audience of Korean television dramas (K-dramas). Celebrity and dramatized characters strongly influenced the emotional involvement and referential reflection of this audience, whereas the effects of filming location and backdrops were relatively weak in this respect. It is worth noting that the perceived values of K-dramas did not have a direct effect on behavioral intention to visit film tourism locations. Rather, they are expected to lead to film tourism through a process of psychological and emotional involvement with the dramas. Further studies can beneficially apply this model to measure media value, audience involvement, and intention in different social and geographical settings. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This study examines the complex, multidirectional process of media transnationalization and online fandom within the new media environment, focusing on the transnational media flows from the East to the West. Based on an online ethnography examining the fan culture surrounding Korean television drama (K-drama) in the West, this study explores the appeal of K-drama to Western fans and its impact on fans’ identities and worldviews. The analysis suggests that scholars should take a closer look at transnational media fandom as a key site for identity creation and embrace of pop cosmopolitanism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

More and more Ghanaians are watching Korean TV dramas. These are not just ordinary Ghanaians because they are from a particular socioeconomic bracket; they have a certain level of education, access to screen devices and Internet, accumulated previous experience of watching other foreign screen products and, most importantly, a peer network with those who can afford these items. Drawing from qualitative work and focus-group interviews, the article argues that Korean TV dramas are spread efficiently by taking advantage of those contributing components within the privileged network, but they remain within the network due to the lack of those necessary components outside the bracket. The recipients find Korean media products attractive because they are fresh, funny, socially decent, different, yet close to them vis-à-vis Hollywood and Nollywood. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the article, I discuss new forms of mobility allowed by digital practices, i. e. digital mobilities consisting in visiting geographical places from and through a screen. This discussion is based on my online ethnographic research on international fans of South Korean television series, K-Dramas. The international fandom of K-Dramas, and in a larger sense, South Korean pop cultural products - exemplified by the success of South Korean rapper Psy's "Gangnam Style" in 2012 -, is a continually growing global phenomenon that has been observed from the end of the 2000s on; a fandom that is mainly constituted through the Internet. However, instead of discussing already thoroughly researched "classic" participatory digital activities of television series fans, as blogging or writing fan fiction, I will focus on still overseen forms of mobility practices engendered by the watching of K-Dramas. My research shows that international fans of K-Dramas are highly mobile - but as much digitally as actually. They do not only travel physically to Korea to visit film locations. They also engage in digital mobilities to Korea through the mediation of desktop web mapping services like Google Maps and their South Korean equivalents, Daum and Naver. This screen screen tourism - as I call it -, then, differs in many ways from screen tourism how it is discussed in previous research on media. In describing and discussing these forms of digital mobility, special attention will be given to two dimensions: (1) the techniques fans use to find film locations, and (2) fans' "ethno-mapping," i. e. the methods they have created to map out film locations online. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The study examines Korea’s unique television production systems and TV drama production strategies in the context of Korean dramas’ rising international trade along the line with its new governmental act to television industry. In 2006 the government passed a new cultural act specifically to promote TV content production, as an amendment of the Media and Cultural Industry Act. This act specified that media content production could exclusively perform using a special purpose company (SPC) system as a limited periodic firm, upon registration for creating media content only. The transnational Korean dramas using SPC programming grow the dramas’ export value in both production and distribution sectors, in light of divergent transnational media flows. Korea’s dual production system takes advantages of the government’s SPC policy, which simultaneously affects the TV content distribution sectors over the domestic outlets that excel international flows of K-dramas. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Korea has recently emerged as one of the top tourism destinations in the world, and a catalyst of its rapidly developing tourism industry is Korean drama. Studies on Korean tourism, which focus on sociocultural and gender-related issues, as well as audience behaviors, have been conducted in the Asian region. However, these studies have been geographically limited to monoethnic countries only. As one of the countries contributing to Korea's inbound tourism, Malaysia experienced a significant increase of tourists visiting Korea. Hence, this study aims to identify the motivation segmentation and overall satisfaction level among Malaysian tourists visiting Korea. Specifically, the study aims to identify the influence of Korean drama in their overall experience. A questionnaire-based survey of these tourists was conducted in Seoul City, and cluster analysis was applied to derive motivation segmentation from the collected data. Afterwards, a characteristic comparison was accomplished between drama- and non-drama-watching tourists. Finally, the overall satisfaction of tourists was determined. Results showed three types of motivation segmentation and revealed characteristic differences between the drama- and non-drama-watching tourists. Furthermore, these segmented motivations manifested significant differences in terms of overall satisfaction. In general, Malaysian tourists perceived Korea as a place for family and social bonding, as well as for relaxation and cultural exploration. Interestingly, Korean drama did not influence the overall tourist satisfaction, although it serves as a cultural platform through which tourists gained familiarity with the destination prior to the trip. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Can the concept of co-evolution help to analyse and explain the dynamics of creative industries? This article tackles the question by investigating the film and TV cluster in Seoul, South Korea. The analysis of the 35 semi-structured interviews confirms the dynamics of the film and TV industries in Korea. First, Hallyu began with the export of Korean TV drama series across East Asia. The state deregulation and neo-liberal reforms during the 1990s in Korea boosted an explosion of the export of the Korean film and TV industry. Second, the core of the film and TV production is concentrated within Seoul, while dispersion of those industries occurred in Gyeong-gi province. Third, from an institutional perspective, tensions between the central government and the film and TV industry can be observed, which have been intensifying since 2006. This paper concludes that particularly co-evolution could potentially be an important concept to explain and analyse dynamics in creative industries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An essay is presented on the prevalent use of amnesiac of incognizant ghost themes in Korean television (TV) dramas and how it could be used to identify the social issues of contemporary South Korea. Topics include a description of the dramas "Arang and the Magistrate" and "Soul," an analysis of the narrative used in Korean ghost stories as retold, and how the spectral incognizance script functions in both dramas.

The majority of academic literature on Hallyu, or the Korean Wave, focuses on its acceptance in the geographically and culturally proximate societies in Asia and the economically wealthy markets of North America. Very little attention has been given to other regions such as Africa, South America and the Middle East. Thus, looking at the Israeli case study allows us to examine how Korean culture is being accepted in non-Asian, non-western and non-English contexts. The most salient characteristic of Hallyu fans in Israel is that the majority of them have never been to Korea. They experience Korean culture mostly through Korean TV dramas, and fandom itself becomes a cultural journey between the known and the unknown. This journey resembles the practice of pilgrimage, e.g. an emotional exploration of new places accompanied by a deep sense of fulfilment. Korean culture is perceived as an exotic and distant 'other'. At the same time, this 'other' is domesticated by local fan communities and serves as a means to connect one's own identity with Hallyu's 'promised land'. Based on media and discourse analysis, an online survey and interviews with Israeli fans, this article examines the popularity of the Korean Wave in Israel and its impact on Korea's image among fans. The article also explores the inner world created among fans of the Korean world, the formation of a fan community and their fictional 'Hallyu Land'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores the question of the roles that cultural proximity and diversity play in the positive acceptance of Korean popular culture products, specifically Korean TV drama, by foreign audiences. In the first part, I focus on defining what is cultural proximity and diversity, what a TV drama is, and what I mean by the term “cultural aspect”. These cultural aspects as seek-n in the chosen TV drama “Winter Sonata” are then specifically defined in the case of culturally close audience (Japanese viewers) and viewers in culturally distant regions (international audience). Regarding Japan and Korea, I focus on what makes these two countries culturally close, what is the connection between “Winter Sonata” and Japanese TV drama, in what sense is Japanese audience specific, and how was “Winter Sonata” accepted in East Asian re- gions. Next, I compare these findings with the acceptance of this drama by Western audience. Drawing on several cultural theories (e.g. Wallerstein's and Straubhaar's theory on cultural flows, Walker's ideas on cultural proximity of the individual), this research uses commentaries on on-line fans' forums as the main primary source, together with secondary literature review on this subject. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The modern ideology of romantic love is a prominent theme in Korean television dramas (K-dramas). In this paper, I focus on one particular drama, Autumn in My Heart (2000), and the real life love stories of young Korean women. By examining the moral discourses of love within the drama in conjunction with the personal experiences of my informants (echoing the ways my own informants spoke of their love stories in the context of the dramas), I argue that the melodramatic form that emerges from such a study exposes a certain ambivalent attitude to the ideal of modern romantic love. My informants and the narrative plot of the drama in question articulate an embodied moral discourse that conceives of illness as a moral consequence of romantic love with a consequent detachment of the individual from the moral community of kin. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Even though many African and Asian countries share a common history of European colonialism and thus a model of economic development shaped within the aegis of center-periphery analysis, many Asian countries have been able to ride through the burden of center-periphery economics and built more successful political economies than most African countries. This state of affairs has often led many African analysts to point to Asian success stories like China and South Korea for comparative analysis and often see these Asian countries as models of socio-economic and socio-cultural success to emulate. In particular, Africans in the Diaspora, especially Africans in China, tend to compare very frequently the socio-economic and socio-cultural conditions of their host countries with those of their source countries. This paper outlines and discusses how a group of Africans living in Hong Kong and other parts of Asia see Korea and Korean culture through the prism of Korean television dramas, which constitute a popular cultural phenomenon among Hong Kong/Asian youths. Through qualitative and quantitative survey methods, participant-observation, and questionnaire surveys, the paper reports on how African community members of Hong Kong and others think of Koreans. We show that Africans draw a lot of comparisons between Korean and African ways of conceptualizing the world. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay examines the multiple force fields within which South Korean films and teleserials circulate in Northeastern India.1It looks at the complex imbrications of infrastructure, the political tensions between the region and the nation, pirate modes of cultural reproduction, dissemination, and reception to re-negotiate the larger terrains of identity, national culture, and modernity. The argument is built-up through an analysis of the socio-political world of film viewers, engagement with film theory, theories on globalization, and writings on cultural travel and access in non-Western contexts. It examines the forms of “localization” and appropriation of South Korean popular culture by emphasizing the materiality of media, the role of diverse socio-political agents, digital technology, and the dense networks of circulation. While refraining from textual analysis, the study draws attention to how the imageries of modern life offered by films and teleserials are accessed in “debased” and dubbed forms that often distort authorial intent. Such modes of engagement engendered by piracy and non-legal media distribution and reception introduces certain “aesthetics” that have a bearing on the consumption of media. Thus the narrative of access—in fits and starts—to a world of consumerism exemplified by the Korean Wave is also a narrative of the various modernities that exist within Asia. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

South Korean television dramas, K-Dramas, initiated the Korean Wave, Hallyu, in the late 1990s. Nowadays, a global viewership gathers online to stream K-Dramas live, watch them with subtitles, and discuss them on specialized blogs and message boards. However, most research still concentrates on East Asia as the main realm of K Dramas' diffusion, and online communities that watch K-Dramas on the Internet have rarely been considered. Furthermore, most researchers analyze K-Dramas as products inscribed by "Korean culture" or "society," an approach that relies on an understanding of "cultures" and "societies" as discrete, homogenous, locally bounded entities. Expanding upon the nascent online audience research on K-Dramas, I propose in this article a shift of perspective by focusing on how international fans themselves account for K-Dramas (or elements thereof) as socially and culturally "Korean" or operate a rupture with such a culturalist viewpoint. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This cultivation study examined the effects of South Korean soap operas on Vietnamese female audiences. It also assessed cultivation effects in combination with the theory of reasoned action. Based on a survey of 439 female viewers, it explicated the link between South Korean soap opera consumption and the emergent phenomenon of transnational marriages involving Vietnamese women and South Korean men. Cultivation effects were confirmed in an international setting. Results also have important real-world implications. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Honorifics have traditionally been analyzed as markers of 'deference' and have been connected with positive values such as 'respect', 'dignity' and 'elegance'. However, in this paper, I demonstrate that these readings only apply to normative and stereotypical patterns of honorifics use. When applied in other contexts, where their use is not normally expected, honorifics take on different social meanings, including sarcasm. Through the analysis of Korean television dramas, I show that sarcastic applications of honorifics may be applied both for 'mock' impoliteness and 'genuine' face-threatening impoliteness. Although these sarcastic usages occur most frequently between intimates (i.e., where the use of honorifics is marked), there also exist devices for being sarcastic towards adult strangers (even though in such contexts honorifics may be considered unmarked and normative). Crucially, my examples demonstrate that honorifics may communicate sarcasm in and of themselves. This sarcastic meaning is strongest when honorifics are applied in ways that remains 'relevant'; in other words, when they make reference to knowledge or social norms shared by the community of practice. The findings confirm once and for all that honorifics are not 'deferential' in an absolute sense. More broadly, the paper clarifies the position of sarcasm and irony within impoliteness theory. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the reactions of members of the Korean diaspora to digital television serials made in Korea. The author comments on discussions in online forums about Korean television program such as "Love Story in Harvard" that feature English-speaking characters. He suggests that Korean television broadcasting companies fail to recognize members of the Korean diaspora, particularly in the U.S., as a legitimate consumer market. He explores the social aspects for Korean Americans of online communities on fan discussion web sites such as D-Addicts, Soompi, and Asian Fanatics.

In this paper messages from viewers of the popular Korean historical TV drama — Dae Jang Geum (Da Chang Jin) — in a Hong Kong web-based discussion forum are analyzed to see how some Hong Kong viewers construct their Chinese cultural identities through discursive moves of positioning (Harrè and van Langenhove, 1999). Different subject positions are adopted by these forum discussion participants to draw, maintain, and shift the boundary between “self” and “other” in different storylines projected in their messages. In asserting their Chinese cultural identities they also seem to be engaged in discursive construction of cultural others (e.g. Japanese, Koreans). We problematize these constructions as double-edged in their possible consequences: while they seem to cultivate a sense of Chinese cultural solidarity (albeit only temporarily), they also show the danger of constructing a hegemonic Sino-centric discourse of Great China culturalism. The cultural identification patterns of these Hong Kong viewers also seem to be unstable, ambivalent and contradictory, perhaps reflecting Hong Kong people’s general sense of ambivalence and fluidity in their negotiation of cultural identities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines a popular cultural phenomenon originating in Korea which has assumed significance across Asia and beyond. This 'Korean wave' or Hallyu includes the circulation and consumption of Korean popular television dramas. An exploratory case study approach is presented to provide insights on the relationships between this phenomenon and patterns of tourism in Korea related to the wider concept of screen-tourism. The paper addresses the relative lack of attention to television programming within the film tourism literature, particularly in non-Western and non-English language settings. Some common assumptions in the film tourism literature are challenged here, including: the inter-changeability of large-screen films and programmes produced for the television; and the inter-cultural circulation of film and television programmes as catalysts for tourism. Our findings illustrate that the inter-cultural circulation of Hallyu television dramas, particularly in neighbouring countries in Asia, may be interpreted in relation to theories of cultural proximity. A need to understand the complex patterns and political economy of distribution, circulation and reception of television programmes is also identified. The paper argues for more research that links visitor flows with television audience research and which recognizes the organizational infrastructures that allow media productions to go beyond circulation in domestic TV markets. Professional expertise and networks, transnational business relationships, ownership and national media regulatory regimes are highlighted, as is the extent to which media professionals and organizations connect with the domestic and international tourism sector. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While 'windowing' as a vehicle for intertemporal price discrimination has been the traditional distribution strategy for TV programs, new digital technologies are calling for new distribution methods. In this study, we examine the changing distribution patterns for TV dramas in Korea. Analysis of primetime dramas that were aired on terrestrial broadcasting networks (KBS, MBC, SBS) in Korea during 2004-2006 shows that the temporally linear sequence of windowing is being replaced by a strategy of (near) simultaneous distribution across all available channels. However, focusing on cable channels and Internet video-on-demand, this study finds that the influence of a program's performance during its first run on a broadcast network on its performance in other channels is as strong as ever in this simultaneous diffusion pattern of distribution. We also find that programs with lower audience homogeneity do better in any medium. The qualities of popular TV programs as we have known them do not seem to have changed drastically. However, it seems that audiences have fragmented into cable or video-on-demand (VOD) subgroups with viewers choosing a medium based on its accessibility or their familiarity with it. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The gendered nature of modernity in the European Enlightenment tradition has naturalized and institutionalized an essentialist, binary system of masculinity and femininity. A similarly hierarchicalized, binary system of gender role relationships also underlies the Confucianist social order in East Asian cultural traditions. Our recent study of some educated, Chinese, heterosexual men's consumption of Korean TV dramas in the late/post-industrial (but not post-capitalist) society of Hong Kong, however, shows that while the binary gender boundaries are increasingly being destabilized and crossed over in their everyday lived experiences, these boundaries are also simultaneously being nostalgically hung onto by some of the men in their pleasurable consumption of Korean dramas. The implications of their consumption practices are discussed in terms of the dilemmas faced by some Hong Kong men when they are confronted with the increasing destabilization of the gender role boundaries and how they use Korean dramas to negotiate new gender relations in modern day Hong Kong society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]