As the South Korean government invests ever more heavily in its soft power, categories such as pop music, television dramas, and Korean cuisine—rebranded as K-pop, Kdramas, and K-food, respectively—become tools for furthering South Korean interests abroad, as well as for changing national identity at home. Although South Korea continues to be known as a land of excessive “education fever,” where children and teenagers go through a grueling school system in order to win acceptance at a handful of top universities, the growing pop industry gives hope to some children and parents that success may be found through other avenues. Elsewhere I have explored negotiations between parents and children over academics, artistic pursuits, and fandom activities; in this article I specifically examine discourse around the nostalgia-laden television dramas in the Answer Me franchise (which introduced South Korea’s first mass pop fandom era in Answer Me, 1997, and then reached back to 1994 and 1988 in subsequent series) and connections between the nostalgic pop fandom worlds presented on-screen and current K-pop desires and anxieties in South Korea. Drawing on interviews with mothers and daughters, analysis of media reports, and readings of the media texts in question, I argue that mothers and daughters utilize nostalgic media (Kdramas) and future-oriented media (K-pop) in the everyday to understand one another’s affective worlds, and to forge mother-daughter bonds. Evolving Korean screen cultures are shifting understandings of leisure, filial and maternal subjectivity, and productive citizenship in South Korea.
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ABSTRACT SOUTH KOREAN FANDOM: POPULAR MUSIC AND TELEVISION FANDOM AND THE ANXIOUS MOTHER-DAUGHTER DYAD ANSWER ME, 1968? CONCLUSION REFERENCES
한국연구원은 1970년 5월 한국 민속의 각 분야에 걸친 자료의 수집과 학술적 연구를 목적으로 '한국민속연구소'로 출발하였다. 그 후 1973년 5월 연구 분야를 확대하며 민속뿐만 아니라 한국학 전반에 걸친 연구를 위해 '한국학연구소'로 개편하였고, 다시 1989년 3월 한국의 국제적 위상의 부상과 함께 한국학 연구의 중요성이 높아짐에 따라 '한국학연구원'으로 확대, 개편하였다. 한국학연구원은 한국학 전반에 걸친 연구를 통해 지역과 민족문화 발전에 기여하며 한국학의 세계화를 위해서 학술활동을 강화하고 나아가 내·외국인에 대한 한국문화 교육을 담당하고자 한다.