Culture Study Podcast - What's Behind All The BIG KOREAN POP CULTURE ENERGY

00:00:00.000 Hey everyone! So Melody and I have just a few more recordings left before the end of the year,

00:00:05.060 so help us go out with a bang and submit your questions. We have one episode that is about

00:00:10.080 all of the questions that you get and the conversations you have when people find out

00:00:15.480 that you don't have kids or don't want kids or have no plans to have kids. And the other episode

00:00:22.280 is about the sociology of names. So what do specific names and general trends and names

00:00:27.860 say about our culture in this moment.

00:00:30.420 That one's going to be amazing.

00:00:32.520 Also, we need to freshen our collection

00:00:34.240 of potential Ask and Anything questions.

00:00:36.680 This is a tricky time of year,

00:00:38.020 as you'll hear in today's Ask and Anything.

00:00:40.580 So I know you have some quandaries you want to share

00:00:42.680 and get advice on.

00:00:44.220 So you can submit all of those questions

00:00:46.100 at tinyurl.com slash culturestudypod

00:00:49.660 or look in the show notes for a link.

00:00:51.660 Can't wait to hear from you.

00:00:57.860 This is the Culture Study Podcast, and I'm Anne Helen Peterson.

00:01:02.600 I'm Amy Choi, and I am a writer and editor.

00:01:06.360 I live in New York City, far away from Anne, but I'm so excited to be here.

00:01:11.220 And I am the co-founder and editorial director and the host of The Mashup Americans.

00:01:16.060 Can you tell us a little bit about what The Mashup Americans has covered?

00:01:19.940 Because I think it's like such a fantastic concept.

00:01:22.820 Yes, thank you.

00:01:24.340 So we started in 2013 and the Mashup Americans, you know, today we would say it is an independent media company and a creative studio and all of our storytelling, whether it is original work, our podcast, our newsletter, our essays and pieces on our website, or work that we make for clients with our studio, whether that is working with Reese Witherspoon and Hello Sunshine or Peloton or HBO and Netflix is all about telling American stories and having conversations.

00:01:54.340 that really frame any topic that we're kind of tackling through the lens of what it means

00:02:01.480 to be American today, looking at hyphen identities, immigrant culture, and really trying to, in

00:02:08.320 all of our work, center storytelling and on marginalized voices that typically are not

00:02:15.340 and remain still in 2025, not central to the American conversation, and are really the

00:02:21.980 voices leading the future.

00:02:24.340 And this new season of The Mashup of Americans is called Big Korean Energy.

00:02:28.820 Big Korean Energy. 0.99

00:02:30.020 You got to say Big Korean Energy.

00:02:32.320 And also, I love that it gets abbreviated as BKE.

00:02:35.980 You're like, does this have BKE?

00:02:37.620 Does this have BKE?

00:02:38.940 Like one of my favorite segments of each episode is at the end where you just take seemingly random things like Michael Jordan.

00:02:46.700 Like, does Michael Jordan have Big Korean Energy?

00:02:48.600 Huge.

00:02:49.500 Yes.

00:02:50.440 Whereas, like, I mean, it's so funny.

00:02:53.500 And good.

00:02:54.340 So tell me about the season.

00:02:56.400 I've listened to all of it.

00:02:57.920 All of it that is out.

00:02:59.220 Thank you.

00:02:59.880 Well, it was, first of all, I think a lot of our original content.

00:03:04.000 And so Big Korean Energy was an idea born from Rebecca and I.

00:03:08.000 And she, my co-host, business partner, work wife, you know, I'm a Taurus and her husband

00:03:13.260 is a Taurus.

00:03:13.900 And she's like, I just married to you.

00:03:15.060 I'm a Taurus.

00:03:15.460 Oh, this is, everything's making sense.

00:03:18.360 I like things to be in order and to sort out the world. 0.55

00:03:22.440 And I would say one of the kind of impetuses of BKE and looking at what this cultural wave meant was born of that, like, trying to make sense as a very elder millennial.

00:03:39.440 Like, I was born in 1979.

00:03:41.460 I'm the first person in my family to be born in the U.S.

00:03:43.700 Everybody else is from Korea.

00:03:45.600 I grew up in the Midwest and didn't really, we didn't have, like, a huge Korean community.

00:03:51.500 Like I had my family that was there because my parents were kind of like the anchor immigrants of both sides of their family.

00:03:58.740 So I had a lot of first cousins that were in Chicago, but we weren't part of a church community.

00:04:03.840 So the larger kind of anchor in Korean community then was very much the church.

00:04:09.440 And it wasn't like growing up in LA or New York where there were Korean people everywhere.

00:04:13.820 so I always kind of and it turns out like in in doing this season of the podcast that a lot of 0.95

00:04:20.900 people felt that no matter where they grew up but that Korean people were always like

00:04:26.660 the classic question that you got growing up in the 80s even in the 90s was are you Chinese or 0.98

00:04:32.480 Japanese be like no we're Korean what's that like literally what is that and then jump 20 years to 0.67

00:04:40.200 where it feels like the world is saturated anywhere you look with Korean-ness. And Rebecca 0.96

00:04:48.560 and I, whose job it is, it's very similar to yours, is to study and look and think about culture and

00:04:54.780 what it means and to like make meaning through cultural shifts and political shifts through our

00:04:59.280 storytelling. We were like, this is, this is very big energy, big Korean energy. And then, yeah,

00:05:06.440 yeah so it i think it just it was born of that idea and really thinking about what are some

00:05:12.800 tentpole both like cultural areas as whether it's like music or fashion but also ways of being like

00:05:21.460 a fandom that were very much being driven by korean influence and thinking you know okay so

00:05:27.900 if this is happening and this was really kind of encapsulated i think even you know we'd had this

00:05:34.620 idea maybe in 2023 and it has since only grown bigger right like this summer when we were

00:05:40.320 recording was like and you hear it in the podcast where everybody's talking about k-pop demon hunters

00:05:44.760 everybody is thinking about this we just we're not talking it's the beginning of november

00:05:49.400 and everywhere you looked on halloween was huntrix and saja boys and characters from

00:05:56.320 demon hunters so it's just has continued to kind of snowball and our like kind of seat from where

00:06:05.860 we were looking at all of this was why like why now and also can we just all take a beat and be 0.93

00:06:13.660 like what the fuck is happening and right no and it's so interesting and like one time when I was 0.74

00:06:20.080 asking for questions for this someone dm'd me and was like you know this is a great opportunity to 0.98

00:06:25.520 talk about soft power and how soft power works and I think that this like we can really connect

00:06:31.060 this to Korean soft power obviously and even like I mean I'm thinking back in like the late 80s and

00:06:38.620 early 90s like that was when there was a lot more very vivid Japanese soft power happening

00:06:45.520 but the way and we'll get into this as we go through the episode like I think that Japan 0.82

00:06:51.940 was framed as like this incredible threat to the United States. So there was this oppositionality

00:06:57.960 and that's directed at China now. What is it about the way that big Korean energy has become

00:07:05.320 so present in American culture that makes it not something that needs to be like isolated and

00:07:11.840 rejected, right? Something to be scared of. Totally, totally. So that like, we should talk

00:07:17.240 about that but we should first we should get to the questions okay so um just to tell listeners

00:07:23.240 a little bit of the organization of this episode it's similar to an episode that we did a while

00:07:28.100 back on the irishification of pop culture which was really fascinating so we're going to start

00:07:33.440 with some listeners theories on where this took off then we'll get to some specific trends in

00:07:39.380 their origins and then in the end we're going to talk about what this all means for koreans and

00:07:44.240 for non-koreans understanding of the two nations and soft power etc etc sound good sounds great

00:07:49.640 great okay i hope i have responses and answers i know i think you're going to because you know

00:07:55.740 there this first question is actually teeing you up for like the conversation of episode one

00:08:01.500 of big korean energy so let's kick things off with this theory from young so i think that the

00:08:06.580 single biggest contributor to what you're calling big korean energy is parasite even more than bts 0.80

00:08:12.860 The explosion of K-pop was a long way coming, and even when it happened, 1.00

00:08:16.780 K-pop was still for cringy teenage girls. But Parasite, and his Oscars victory as a

00:08:21.820 non-English auteur film, gave Korean media a certain legitimacy and respect in the Western gaze,

00:08:27.340 which now seems very eager to attribute excellence to even some quite mid pieces of Korean media.

00:08:33.340 This attitude seems to carry over to other industries as well,

00:08:36.540 such as when skincare brands try to give their face masks legitimacy by slapping some Korean 1.00

00:08:41.340 on them although I can always tell when they're not actually made by Koreans because of the ugly 0.94

00:08:45.820 fonts that they use. But all this is at odds with the broader way that Asia as a whole is imagined 0.99

00:08:51.340 in the techno-orientalist West. Cheap and shoddy products, replaceable labor, and individuals.

00:08:57.900 The kinds of quote-unquote excellence that is permitted to us also draws a line at the 0.96

00:09:01.740 two familiar notions of yellow peril. How do we make sense of the way that Korea has come to be 0.95

00:09:07.100 portrayed despite or because of the modern constructions of asia i'm also very curious

00:09:13.020 about the way that big korean energy seems to contrast with xenophobia oh my god so i love

00:09:18.360 our listeners such a good question there's so much there there's so much there um how should

00:09:25.980 we xenophobia we should say first is anti-chinese sentiment right so so yeah so i think there's a

00:09:32.360 couple of things there that we can that I would feel helpful for me to kind of like piecemeal out

00:09:38.680 so yeah there's like a deep Chinese bent to this question so the idea of like xenophobia

00:09:45.220 specifically a fear of Chinese Chinese culture China like taking over the world and as a

00:09:51.580 American person and as a Korean person like people should be thinking about China a lot 0.98

00:09:56.620 because China is the biggest and baddest girly of them all and I say baddest is like a compliment 1.00

00:10:00.740 right like right there's so much to learn from this ancient culture that is massive and powerful 0.99

00:10:05.700 and governs how the world works now right like yes and i think that so that's one thing is that

00:10:11.960 thinking about it through like how does korea stand when there is like a deep fear specifically

00:10:17.120 of china and then there's the techno orientalist piece which is like asia is actually just like

00:10:24.340 blade runner right that like this is what that it's like you go and a lot of people say that

00:10:29.920 And I say that too, there's a way of being like Rebecca's dad, for example, who is Rebecca

00:10:37.960 and her family, my proud Korean adjacents, right?

00:10:40.820 That he was on a business trip to Seoul, I don't know, maybe five or six years ago.

00:10:45.740 And he was like, is this the future?

00:10:48.040 Which it actually does feel like that.

00:10:50.760 And that's not, I would not say that that's an Orientalist way of being.

00:10:54.660 That's a way of being when you are accustomed to American exceptionalism and you have been

00:10:58.900 told that everything in America is the best way that it should be. And then you go to fucking 0.99

00:11:03.600 Seoul and you take the subway and you're like, this maybe is a techno-orientalist future that 0.99

00:11:08.920 we all want, right? Things are often better there in a way that seem very future-seeking because

00:11:17.160 we simply don't have them here. And I would argue that a lot of that is because we in America grow

00:11:23.560 up with this principle of like exceptionalism that simply is not true in many many ways right

00:11:29.580 but like also americans don't have the opportunity to travel and we don't prioritize that so things

00:11:35.060 that are different and better seem like they must be part of some utopian or dystopian future

00:11:39.560 yeah and i do think that's also you see that in representations like whether it's on screen or

00:11:46.640 like i don't know just like the stock imagery of seoul or singapore right or tokyo and it just like

00:11:54.040 it that vibrates right it's like shiny and glittery and right organized and there's so

00:12:00.760 many people and for many people who i would say most americans of any stripe being surrounded by

00:12:14.040 in these examples like east asian faces is not something that you are ever that that's just

00:12:19.440 simply not an experience that you ever have i mean frankly for most people right like when i took my

00:12:24.360 kids to korea last year it was the first time they ever had other than when we're with explicitly

00:12:30.920 like with family or doing a korean thing so there's there's a lot of like different dimensions

00:12:36.440 i think just in that question the core question of like how do we make sense of the korean surge

00:12:43.880 within all of those other elements i think i think there's a couple of things first you know

00:12:50.940 like the broader question is who who is that meaning making for right like when we say how

00:12:55.440 do we make sense of it is it as white americans is that korean americans are we thinking of trying

00:13:01.000 to make meaning for it for like our own personal identity and understanding of self and our

00:13:05.760 understanding of our culture and having a relationship to that or is about like how

00:13:10.220 korea sits in relationship to all these other east asian powers and in their relationship to

00:13:15.980 america right so there's like multiple dimensions to that some of which i'm better equipped to speak

00:13:21.580 about than to others but i do think that thinking about okay so there's the piece of the question

00:13:26.260 that was like now it seems like the korean halo of soft power is being taken by western or american

00:13:33.660 capitalism to uh sell their own products right it's kind of being like usurped in some way

00:13:39.480 and to that i'm like this is what happens in capitalism like to me that is less about like

00:13:45.780 a concern of loss of culture or of appropriation or of like really deep meaning making to be done 0.96

00:13:53.420 there other than the fact that like korean shit sells and so of course other companies are going 0.97

00:13:58.940 to mimic that like that seems like a basic rule of capitalism it's like when barbie was a huge 0.98

00:14:05.900 success then every hollywood studio was like let's make movies about toys like they're taking the

00:14:10.980 wrong lesson but but it's the same principle right yes yes what do you think about this argument

00:14:17.920 about the legitimization of korean artistry yeah vis-a-vis this win because i think that that like

00:14:26.740 This is something you talk about in the first episode with Phil, like how that is a moment and how a lot of this stuff, like Parasite's an exception, but how there's other components of Korean culture that have become super popular in the United States that back in Korea are just like, this is just like whatever television.

00:14:45.880 yeah we spoke at length about this and phil you the angry asian man a incredible journalist and

00:14:53.920 friend and community builder and organizer um phil you jenny yang and joanna lee they coined this 0.98

00:15:00.080 term rep sweats like this was years ago right this idea that like when you see another asian

00:15:05.240 person anywhere out there in the world who has some sort of shine on them or spotlight and you

00:15:10.180 immediately are like are they gonna embarrass us us all of us right all billions of us that are

00:15:16.480 sitting here and the thing the reason i bring up rep sweats in relationship to parasite we actually 0.64

00:15:21.820 did uh with that episode a timeline of kind of big moments of koreans on the global stage and

00:15:29.860 it was there was like the 1988 olympics there was the 2002 world cup um kim yuna winning the gold

00:15:36.460 metal uh for figure skating parasite then like um you know there's a couple of different moments

00:15:43.160 with like bts or k-pop that kind of shine and there's lots of other you know like smaller ones

00:15:48.340 those are a lot of the big tentpole ones that come out and i think there is a complexity like

00:15:54.500 a two truths about parasite for example which is bong joon ho famously was like who cares about

00:16:00.840 the oscars they're just like a regional award show i know right and that is like a beautiful

00:16:06.940 statement from a man who was very confident in his skill and his talent and his uh status as

00:16:12.920 like a global auteur right he's just like it's just the oscars like it's whatever and also it's

00:16:19.400 like a uh it is a sense of arrival or validation from a global stage now i think kind of like what

00:16:27.880 we often think about at mashup and we joke about a lot is like and this gets to the rep sweats also 0.83

00:16:35.040 is that what a fucking joy what an arrival of real power it is to be allowed to be mediocre 0.94

00:16:43.320 like we talk in america all the time and are very proud of like black excellence queer excellence 0.98

00:16:51.440 like you want something to to like we were just earlier before we started to recording

00:16:57.600 talking about Zoram Amdani and his incredible campaign which was entirely run by women you

00:17:03.320 know and like all of these things like women are so excellent Asian excellence Korean excellence

00:17:08.920 that is all true and should be celebrated and actually the real victory comes when like you 0.89

00:17:15.860 don't have to be fucking excellent to be dignified and appreciated as a human being and as a culture 0.83

00:17:21.200 so i really fucking applaud when people are like this drama on netflix is so amazing i have you 0.97

00:17:29.500 watched it yet i'm like no i i didn't like that one or like i think that actor's kind of mid like 0.92

00:17:35.760 i don't right you know like and that what a pleasure like what a gift to be like here's

00:17:41.980 actually a whole array of things and that it turns out like i'm like a coastal elite like i love

00:17:49.200 premium television or whatever and it turns out all the most popular shows in america the ones

00:17:54.940 that are most watched regularly are things that like i have never actually watched ever because

00:17:59.360 halfway stuff is actually what feeds most people and so when like uh somebody's like well can

00:18:07.960 anybody ever possibly watch all like the 500 billion dollars worth of content that netflix

00:18:13.320 has invested in in korean language television probably not is it all good no but like does it

00:18:19.240 all have to be excellent to be validated in any way it shouldn't have to be right like

00:18:24.520 not every movie gets a an academy award and they shouldn't have to so like i i actually think that

00:18:31.440 like celebrating the fact that mediocre product can exist in the world or mid-tier if we're

00:18:41.160 talking about beauty and how you know like accessible whatever like that that actually

00:18:45.960 means that a celebration of koreanness or an acceptance or an understanding that korean

00:18:52.260 products just simply exist in the world and they're an option and you can buy them

00:18:55.540 is more exemplary of the power than not yes no that that absolutely makes sense like the fact 0.72

00:19:04.020 that it's not just parasite it's parasite plus squid game plus k-pop demon hunters plus all of

00:19:10.620 k-pop which is a whole like breadth of music right like k-pop is not one band exactly you know like

00:19:18.100 there's so much out there and i think that there's something i love uh trixie mattel and i love

00:19:24.220 trixie and katya they are my like soothing every monday like trixie puts out a youtube video for

00:19:31.220 free and that's like my my my get over my sunday scaries because i know like that video will be

00:19:36.220 coming and i adore it and she's always like i'm like the wayne gretzky of drag like if you don't

00:19:43.800 know anything about drag you probably know my name right i literally and when she said that i was like

00:19:49.780 i do know a few other drag queens but do i literally know a name of a single other hockey

00:19:56.300 player in the universe absolutely not and i think that that's like what a lot of people think about

00:20:03.700 korean culture they're like k-pop is uh blackpink or bts right and stop and then they're like what

00:20:10.440 are these two groups doing and what's the big deal that'd be like ah justin timberlake is pop music

00:20:17.300 you know like american pop music like correct i hope and there's i hope not and also like

00:20:23.580 but that's i think the way that that um it's a way of doing exactly like the work

00:20:32.560 of kind of xenophobia,

00:20:36.020 xenophobia, techno-orientalism

00:20:38.620 does for it,

00:20:39.680 like, it's doing it for you,

00:20:41.140 being like, okay, well, Korean,

00:20:42.300 this is this thing.

00:20:43.000 Yeah.

00:20:44.160 And it's this one type of thing,

00:20:46.500 and it's this product

00:20:47.740 or this cultural movement

00:20:49.940 or this piece of art

00:20:51.320 that has been widely regarded

00:20:53.980 and acclaimed within

00:20:55.980 a white Western audience,

00:20:57.420 and so therefore,

00:20:58.760 that's what it is.

00:21:00.260 And we're saying,

00:21:01.600 no yeah like that those may be groundbreaking things because ground always has to be broken

00:21:07.460 here and again this is all meaning making that's happening for americans right that's what we're

00:21:13.380 talking about this surge of big korean energy as we like in korea there's no such thing as big

00:21:18.080 korean energy right or there's no k-beauty it's just and there's no k-beauty there's no you know

00:21:23.500 like it's just it just is yeah yeah i'll just say like i love the pairing too of like in terms of

00:21:30.740 all the different versions and understandings of how life can be. If you look at Parasite

00:21:37.380 in contrast, that would say past lives. What a vivid contrast. Yeah.

00:21:46.220 The Culture Study Podcast is sponsored by ZocDoc. Maybe you have an appointment that you're

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00:23:55.960 Today's episode is sponsored by Graza. Melody, did you get your Graza holiday gift bag?

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00:24:03.320 No.

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00:26:07.960 So we want to talk specifically a little bit about Korean beauty products.

00:26:12.280 So this question comes from Christina.

00:26:14.860 Where did the sudden explosion of K-beauty products come from?

00:26:18.440 It feels like they showed up on the scene a couple of years ago and were immediately

00:26:21.760 everywhere.

00:26:22.420 personally i love that some of the ingredients are not fda approved fda hasn't approved a new

00:26:29.420 sunscreen active ingredient in over 20 years but are k-beauty products really better safer or

00:26:35.260 healthier than u.s products and so many of the products seem focused on whitening and lightening

00:26:40.480 skin is this just a racist beauty standards repackaged okay so how do you feel about this

00:26:47.300 Well, my short answer is no.

00:26:48.800 I don't think it's just a racist repackaging of Western beauty standards.

00:26:53.700 I would say it does feel like K-beauty just exploded into Western markets. 0.64

00:26:59.380 Again, K-beauty is only marketed as K-beauty when it's not in Korea. 0.75

00:27:03.460 Right. 0.96

00:27:03.960 So that's one thing.

00:27:05.020 The first kind of, there have been ultra premium and luxury Korean beauty products

00:27:13.180 in international markets for decades.

00:27:15.680 Yes.

00:27:15.780 it becoming available in sephora is like something that happened in a 2010s ish but like even before

00:27:22.060 that uh korean beauty brands and formulations of korean new technologies like the original cc

00:27:29.720 creams were all korean and then like maybelline made a cc cream in like 2005 or something i'm

00:27:35.300 kind of just making that stat up right but like but it was like yeah yeah so it was a korean 1.00

00:27:41.440 technology for cc cream which now nobody really buy now like koreans are on literally they're

00:27:47.780 like on ee cream you know so it's like it's all changing but um so it it's in the mass market of

00:27:55.300 beauty it has been like a 25 year growth but in international markets generally korean premium

00:28:02.940 products have been out forever right and they're owned by the same huge luxury conglomerates that

00:28:09.100 own all beauty and fashion all around the world right there there's no exception to that i will

00:28:13.260 say there is certainly a segment of any i think a beauty marketplace and skincare marketplace that

00:28:22.760 is focused on brightening and like um lightening up melasma or sunspots or freckles yeah so that's

00:28:31.940 the thing often in asian cultures and in asian marketing those are branded as whitening or

00:28:39.960 lightening they're not i'm not like nobody's literally trying to become white right no this

00:28:45.040 is this is such an important point because like my friend just started using a skin bleach that

00:28:51.200 is to deal with her melasma right like it's like that's specifically what it's for but if you saw

00:28:56.680 that marketed and it was market like and i think white people are especially like sensitive they're

00:29:02.080 like this is a upholding racist beauty standards so like you know what i mean like it's concern

00:29:08.180 trolling yeah from like white culture yeah yeah that everybody wants to be white yeah

00:29:16.980 you know and i'm like i i i don't i don't know that that's true for like the billions of people

00:29:25.180 in the world that aren't white i do think there is undeniably colorism in korean culture yeah 0.55

00:29:31.100 right the way that there is colorism in virtually every culture in this god forsaken little planet 0.93

00:29:37.500 that we live on right so there certainly is like oh to be fair to be pale like in india there's a

00:29:45.040 terrible and legendary product called fair and lovely like you know and so that exists certainly 0.91

00:29:52.460 the idea of having porcelain skin again exists in every culture and also exists in whiteness

00:29:58.340 right right to be celebrated for having a perfect porcelain complexion that is not unique and so i

00:30:04.980 don't believe that this is about carrying on racist standards a lot of it is about labeling

00:30:09.380 a lot of it is marketing a lot of it is what you define what like whitening or brightening is right

00:30:15.240 for your skin and i would also then just caution or gently suggest that when coming up against this

00:30:24.400 and being like well why would korean people want to look whiter or why are korean that it's not

00:30:29.160 actually about centering white people uh-huh yeah or a white beauty standard and there's a lot that

00:30:35.660 people will say i think you know it's almost like for me growing up as a child of like the 80s in

00:30:41.680 the midwest um like my kind of immediate beauty role models or standards was always about like

00:30:49.840 like the heroine chic of it all and the like there will always be elements of me personally

00:30:56.880 as a 46 year old woman in america as a minority that is like wouldn't it be nice if i did have

00:31:04.700 like rounder and wider eyes or like what would it be like to to to be more kind of archetypally

00:31:12.240 standardly beautiful in an american way and i think now as a grown person is that like i've

00:31:19.640 evolved and grown beauty standards have evolved and grown and how i perceive what korean standards

00:31:26.340 of beauty are because every culture has them is that they're trying to meet their own for better

00:31:30.400 for worse right and all of those things are always shifting so it's a matter of of like kind of

00:31:36.100 de-centering yourself in that and just being able to be like oh this is a beautiful product that

00:31:41.100 feels good or works or whatever to the idea that like are they actually better or safer like the

00:31:45.880 FDA is an antiquated and currently deeply broken and basically non-existent system and it's true

00:31:52.720 like they have not approved new ingredients that have been approved in the EU across Asia kind of

00:31:58.820 the standards for safety and health and ingredient testing are significantly higher in Korea than they

00:32:06.440 are in the U.S. So I always feel very, very safe and good buying the products. And we talk about

00:32:11.800 this. One of our guests in the season is Joanne Lee Molinaro, also known as the Korean Vegan.

00:32:17.720 I love that episode. Yeah. She's so great. She's so brilliant. She's your friend. She's like,

00:32:23.840 I know. She's my friend from high school. It's so fun. Also, it's very funny. If you see us

00:32:29.560 together, we're like, we're sisters. And also I'm almost, I'm 5'7". And like Chesty, like she's

00:32:37.960 maybe five feet. Like we're just two different archetypes of Korean people. And it's like,

00:32:42.860 it's a good, but like, you know, we talked a lot for her. So much of about is all of her work is

00:32:50.100 about sourcing food and ingredients and kind of getting back into nature with what we're putting

00:32:54.640 in our bodies and what we're putting on our faces and there's always been a philosophy in Korean

00:32:59.480 culture that beauty comes from the inside as well so like thinking about ingredients on your face

00:33:04.600 that are we play a great game with our food or face is that like is something meant for your

00:33:10.620 face beauty or for like your inside beauty and in Korean culture those are very intertwined which

00:33:15.360 just to me speak to like kind of how I want to manage my health and my body. Totally. Okay. Next

00:33:21.900 up, this is, we have a lot of readers in our community. And I think that this speaks to

00:33:26.420 something that I have also experienced over the last decade. So this comes, this question comes

00:33:31.160 from Julie. My book club comprised of highly educated white and Latina women in the Midwest 0.97

00:33:37.180 has taken a crash course slash seminar in the past two years on Korean women and the Korean

00:33:44.400 diaspora, all through very mainstream popular books like Flashlight, Pachinko, The Island of

00:33:52.580 the Sea Women, etc. This was not intentional, but we've loved it. How did this happen that this is

00:33:58.660 a topic publishers care about right now? I love that. I know, right? I love that question. I love

00:34:05.980 that it's happening. I love that she's like me and my white and Latina friends. I love everything

00:34:10.540 about it I just know that a lot of people who read a certain like subset of literary fiction

00:34:18.540 in their book clubs or on their own whatever like know a lot more about the Japanese occupation of

00:34:25.120 Korea than they did 10 years ago like it's just yeah there is a lot more knowledge it's heavy on

00:34:33.560 the mind and like you know it reminds me actually of like I read I don't know it's probably like

00:34:39.700 five or six years ago, I read Say Nothing by Patrick Raddenkief. And I had taken actual

00:34:46.600 seminars on Irish literature, so I knew a lot about The Troubles. But having just read Say

00:34:51.660 Nothing, then I could read Milkman, which had just won the Booker Prize, which is like a stream

00:34:57.420 of consciousness about a novel about a certain time in the early 80s during The Troubles, and

00:35:02.360 everything puzzle pieced together in a way that was incredibly effective and enriched both texts.

00:35:09.700 And I think like I just read Flashlight and having read Pachinko and Island of Sea Women, I was like, oh, I know some things about this.

00:35:18.980 It's so great.

00:35:20.140 And I do think that that, you know, you said in your first episode and you said earlier in this episode that, like, there is this feeling that, like, in America, a lot of at least white Americans or people who aren't Asian American would, like, there just wasn't a visibility of Korean-ness.

00:35:37.920 And now I think there's just a lot more awareness of history.

00:35:41.480 Does that feel right or does that feel like a surface level observation?

00:35:46.400 I think it feels right.

00:35:48.520 And then there's a combination of factors, right?

00:35:50.740 So similar to Parasite or Squid Game or similar to, you know,

00:35:57.740 I would say Hyung-min Sun being like, no, Korean athletes are really athletes.

00:36:02.040 Yeah. 0.99

00:36:02.360 Like they can play in Europe, right?

00:36:03.960 Or just like there's a groundbreakingness. 0.99

00:36:06.780 And I think we did, first of all, Min Jin Lee is a fucking goddess. 0.99

00:36:14.020 She is. 0.99

00:36:14.380 And so any opportunity that I have to talk about her and her goddess-like qualities is wonderful.

00:36:21.520 But she, Susan Choi, these are American women that are writing, right?

00:36:26.980 So we're not talking about Korean writers in translation who are also making a splash.

00:36:33.780 Like Han Kang just won the Nobel Prize last year.

00:36:36.560 And I think, you know, we asked, we had many writers on the series, R.O. Kwan, we have had Min Jin as a guest on the Mashup Americans in the past. And it's interesting, we asked everybody to name kind of their big Korean energy reads. And almost everybody, all of the younger writers, even like 10 years younger, are naming Min Jin.

00:37:01.940 Yeah. A lot of them are naming Susan Choi, the author of Flashlight. I have not read Isle of

00:37:09.240 Sea Women, but that is written by a white Chinese woman. Yeah. You know, about Korean culture.

00:37:16.780 And I think there's a way in which like the it's not quite the Overton window. Like things did

00:37:24.540 shift a little, but it's also like publishers are doing the same thing that movie producers are

00:37:28.440 doing right they're like oh there was a hit or like the incendiaries came out and won all these

00:37:33.820 awards and R.O. Kwan is a genius so maybe we can also have another Korean American writer who writes

00:37:39.740 about sex and religion and can get kind of in it and then there's a challenge also when there's also

00:37:45.400 like oh but we already had our R.O. Kwan right so like all of that is all happening all at once

00:37:49.920 and part of that is just like industry pressure and the book publishers being like just brave

00:37:56.000 enough to like being like i'm gonna let this one extraordinary talent through the door yeah and now

00:38:00.980 we've done one so like that's good enough and i mean i think the overton window point is good

00:38:06.140 though because it also i think alongside the popularity of these books i just i remember a

00:38:12.560 couple years ago there was this book that was super popular with culture study readers i read it

00:38:17.020 it's called i think kim ji young born 1982 oh it's a book that was um written by a korean woman

00:38:24.300 about her life in korea and about how stifling it was but i think a lot of people were like

00:38:28.540 oh i'll read this yeah and it was in translation so and it offers a different window too and i

00:38:35.420 think like a darker window right until like what contemporary korean culture is like for women in

00:38:40.900 particular and thinking too about like yeah so so i think it i mean like how did it happen it

00:38:47.660 happened the same way that all this other stuff happened which is that there was one

00:38:51.340 yeah that paved the way and then the industry and popular appetite all of those things kind of come

00:38:57.660 up paired with fucking excellence yeah that then you're like oh there's so many right like

00:39:03.620 one thing that i want to say that is feels really important to emphasize is that and we talk about 0.95

00:39:09.320 this in the pod i think we'll get this um you know deeper into this conversation is that none of this

00:39:14.260 is is by accident right the korean government yes for generations essentially since the recovery

00:39:20.940 since they had democracy which by the way most people don't know that happened like in the late

00:39:26.960 80s yeah very recent very recent all of this is very new but one of the big pushes was to say

00:39:33.260 we are going to push culture around the world because we are a tiny nation like

00:39:40.220 to put in the context of the xenophobia that we were talking about earlier like if you look at a 0.62

00:39:45.180 map of asia like abroad it's almost impossible to find korea because it just looks like a baby

00:39:51.280 toe coming off of china honestly like this is a tiny little place coming off of china yeah

00:39:56.720 and so like all of this stuff that has like that people call the hollywood wave like this korean

00:40:05.780 wave it came from deep deep deep investments in korean soft power the same time that korea was 0.94

00:40:13.320 putting deep deep deep investments in simply rebuilding the country after fucking war 0.69

00:40:18.680 occupation and a military junta you know so like all of this was happening at once it was it's 0.89

00:40:25.300 almost like being able to watch a modern culture build itself and luckily for all of us is that

00:40:33.940 the culture was good the pro the output was good the art is good the food is good everything is

00:40:40.760 delicious and wonderful and you want to take it in and so when all of these things both the

00:40:45.080 intentionality the government investment meeting a hungry american market that is changing and again

00:40:52.880 we're talking about all this from an american context and from an american seat people around

00:40:57.760 the world receive this very differently and koreans in korea receive this all very differently

00:41:01.720 is um you're going to get something that seems like a magical opening overnight of like all

00:41:07.460 of these authors and the discovery is so beautiful to watch and i want everybody to know that i think

00:41:15.040 a lot of people would say that and somehow be skeptical that therefore this art or this power

00:41:21.940 is not i'm using air quotes for our listeners is not real because it was in part engineered

00:41:28.040 by the government what do we think anything is and this all reminds me of like the production

00:41:34.740 of so much hollywood content television radio like throughout the course of the post-world

00:41:43.020 war ii period that was sent all over the world with a very specific purpose in mind and part

00:41:49.100 of it was very explicitly tied to the cold war but some of it was just like ideological like

00:41:55.040 exportation like triumph of democracy and like i don't know america is good like those sorts of

00:42:04.160 ideas were very real marketing campaign i don't know i don't know i don't know if we lived up to 0.75

00:42:08.780 our promise on that one i feel like paris i lived up to its fucking promise yeah i mean the point

00:42:14.300 here is that like soft power is not new in any way and it has been wielded in so many different 0.71

00:42:20.500 ways by so many different countries and sometimes for good and sometimes for yeah and i do think

00:42:26.660 that you know we get into this in the bk series but that there's a reason why the investment in

00:42:34.120 soft power is so important right there's a reason why koreans deep in our soul feel the need to like

00:42:42.080 have public excellence and that is about being a colonized nation that is about being a nation

00:42:51.160 in war with an occupying american military like that it is about staking a claim in the world

00:43:00.120 stage and the world stage as we know is at its core a theater in which you need to be an actor

00:43:08.660 that has all the lines right or a lot of the lines or at least a part to play and I think that that

00:43:13.840 is what the build and the push was about in the 80s when this started and it has just snowballed

00:43:20.280 and snowballed and I think like anything this is now where we're seeing a moment where it is

00:43:27.780 happening at a level of cultural saturation that like people who are unexpected and have

00:43:34.180 or aren't looking for it that it's arriving on their doorstep and they're having a discovery

00:43:40.200 of it and now feeling like everything in Sephora is Korean everything in my book club is suddenly

00:43:45.120 Korean I maybe don't have any Korean friends but what is happening and why is my child dressed up

00:43:49.680 as Rumi this is a great setup to our next question so we're going to continue this conversation

00:43:54.640 in our conversation about k-pop demon hunters so we're going to read the first question from

00:44:01.280 natalie and then i'm going to summarize another question that we got afterwards okay i'm curious

00:44:06.100 how koreans view the sudden global fascination with k-pop demon hunters k-pop has been popular

00:44:11.380 for years but this definitely seems like a new level of mainstream attention and among people

00:44:15.940 who aren't necessarily familiar with k-pop more broadly i swear half the halloween costumes i saw

00:44:20.700 this year were inspired by the movie how is this trend perceived among koreans especially in terms

00:44:25.480 of authenticity cultural representation and how connected or not it feels to actual k-pop or

00:44:30.200 korean culture and then the second question we got and we got a couple variations on this was

00:44:34.900 whether it's okay to dress up as characters from k-pop demon hunters if you are not asian like is

00:44:44.260 it yellow face and one of the question askers was like i'm particularly sensitive to this because

00:44:49.680 like my kid is half Chinese and I just think about it and also that there have been a lot

00:44:57.100 of conversations about like Scarlett Johansson playing an Asian character on screen and like

00:45:02.240 we decided it wasn't a good thing so let's start with what do Koreans think about the 0.96

00:45:08.040 current obsession with K-pop demon hunters and I love the fact like it really the obsession 0.95

00:45:13.040 really runs through this the season of big Korean energy and how it just keeps coming 1.00

00:45:19.040 back you're like oh my god this series is actually just about shame like it's so so korean

00:45:25.060 yeah so okay can you give us some some thoughts on this just generally yes so i don't have you

00:45:35.400 know all the koreans in korea like every korea and i do think you know and i we want to preface

00:45:42.780 this all by saying like you know rebecca and i are observers of american culture much as you are

00:45:47.700 i am korean american and i also don't live in korea i have lived my 46 years in the u.s with

00:45:54.560 a few years popping back and forth like maybe a cumulative of one year living my life in korea

00:45:59.600 um i will say for most things like parasite like squid game like k-pop demon hunters even like bts 0.76

00:46:06.720 they're popular to some koreans and popular to not and most korean people are like that 0.88

00:46:11.760 like that's the thing like you're like oh okay or or just like oh that's crazy i haven't watched

00:46:19.340 that yet yeah and in a recent like media consumption survey on international audiences

00:46:26.580 like korean consumers generally consume it's like 80 of their content is korean like they're not 0.87

00:46:33.240 watching a ton of shit in translation they're watching for as biased korean content right

00:46:38.060 k-pop demon hunters is an explicitly korean diaspora film k-pop demon hunters was written 0.98

00:46:47.040 by a diaspora korean woman who grew up in canada maggie king who went back to korea like every

00:46:53.700 summer and so it and her writing partner is a white dude and so looking at the way that

00:47:01.200 k-pop demon hunters resonates around the world right and it's not just with korean diaspora

00:47:07.860 people like it it was we my husband is colombian and we were traveling in colombia this summer with

00:47:13.300 our family and like our little colombian niece watched k-pop demon hunters with spanish subtitles

00:47:21.980 with my kids you know like it was a global phenomenon but it it is a look an outsider's

00:47:30.200 look in some way into uh korean fandom and korean culture like an inside outside point of view yes

00:47:35.980 Which is all to say that it's a very nuanced and complicated look at what it means to, like, observe and enjoy Korean culture, much more so than, like, what Korean people may make, like, a satire that they would make about their own culture.

00:47:51.860 Yeah.

00:47:52.460 So I think that's an important distinction to make, because this was not a Korean film, right? 0.98

00:47:59.220 This was a diaspora Korean film, and it's fucking genius. 0.96

00:48:05.980 Now to the question of the Halloween-ness of it all, right? 0.97

00:48:09.940 And I understand, particularly for somebody who is raising a Chinese kid,

00:48:15.560 I would wonder whether or not the person, the culture study reader

00:48:19.140 who wrote the question is like the Chinese part of the equation or not,

00:48:23.760 is that like there's a way in which we have been taught

00:48:27.400 that any sort of anything akin to like the dirty word of appropriation

00:48:35.320 is so dangerous and bad bad bad right now i think that there's a lot more nuance than that black 0.84

00:48:40.020 face is bad yellow face is bad like we know this right i would guess i would hope and pray that 0.89

00:48:47.020 90 95 i really hope it's a hundred percent of children in particular who are dressed up as 0.81

00:48:55.480 rumi or mira or one of the saja boys they're not like taping their eyes to look more asian

00:49:01.160 they're not wearing some form of like asian makeup right the like a yellow face the way 0.86

00:49:08.560 that traditionally like blackface or um minstrelia was done like this is not the same thing people

00:49:15.060 dressing as a fictional character because they identify with this character is very different

00:49:21.860 than like say what i grew up with when somebody would dress up as a chinese person right or like

00:49:27.520 a china man and would somehow have like a straw rice hat and tape their eyelids and like just like

00:49:34.440 like it is minstrelsy in those situations right exactly so i don't see that there i think there 0.99

00:49:40.660 is nuance there and i also think of uh you know and this is a messy one because a nobody wants to

00:49:46.000 be the one representative person that is gonna like speak for a monolith but one of the questions

00:49:52.000 i think one could ask themselves is like is a korean person offended by this and not one korean

00:50:00.240 person i know is offended by the millions of people dressed as rumi i will say that the

00:50:04.440 hundreds of costumes that i saw like online and just like running around the island that sort of

00:50:10.600 thing it was all about like the wig and the persona do you know what i mean like yeah or

00:50:16.040 like being a pop star yeah totally or being a superhero right like these are all the things

00:50:22.340 that like like people painting the patterns or you know it's really about the ponytail yeah it's

00:50:28.520 about the braid it's totally about the ponytail did you see that robin arzon from um peloton

00:50:34.840 even wore it she had the costume for like a it might have been for halloween or it might have

00:50:40.080 been like a specific k-pop demon hunters ride she loves so good that's very good yeah and i also

00:50:47.880 think that like that film tells a really authentic story about korean culture and about some of the

00:50:58.780 deep deep themes that are also tied into everything else about this need for excellence this need for

00:51:05.420 perfection because that's rooted in kind of a generational trauma that korean culture is

00:51:11.600 recovering from and so that's also part of it and it feels like it it feels very um how do you say

00:51:20.340 you know like taking the getting just like uh throwing the baby out with the bath water

00:51:25.340 no i thought more like more like incepting it's like sending like this like big deep message

00:51:33.120 under the cover of k-pop yeah yeah yeah yeah no no i thought you were talking about like if you

00:51:37.900 reject like oh your kid can't wear this costume oh yeah you'd be throwing the baby out with the

00:51:42.420 bath water i do like this just reminds me i think sometimes we've come up with ways of reacting to

00:51:48.620 something that were created for a time when we had to react really forcefully because the

00:51:58.360 performances like something like blackface or yellowface like it was so egregious that you

00:52:02.180 had to be like no this is just wrong right yeah yeah and so now that we're past that point except

00:52:07.980 republicans or conservative conservatives are doing this like very purposefully just to like

00:52:13.500 be like i'm owning the libs by like wearing blackface or whatever um i think that we now

00:52:19.580 are at the second level of questioning yeah i just i think that right now we're in a place

00:52:24.260 that we can have that there's like a little bit of room and permission for nuance yeah you know

00:52:30.060 like if you're lucky enough to be invited to a wedding a friend's wedding in india it turns out

00:52:35.940 any indian friend's wedding because anything that involves indianness at all becomes indian 0.91

00:52:41.360 is that like you wear the fucking sorry if you're invited to you do it yeah and whatever like 0.95

00:52:47.600 preconceived notion you may have had about being like it feels inappropriate or wrong to wear this 0.97

00:52:51.780 but you are now being invited in by a family and by a culture to do this that is what i think is

00:52:58.180 actually maybe to get back to the earlier question about how you know is how does korea or like

00:53:06.300 understanding what korean culture and the korean government did differently maybe than you know

00:53:11.560 the the fear that was generated by japanese soft power or the fear that is generated by chinese

00:53:16.060 soft and hard every kind of power is that korean culture invites international ideas in

00:53:27.480 and i think that there's a way in which uh there's a lot of different interpretations of that there's

00:53:33.660 a lot of meaning making that can come from that some of which is like this is very calculated this

00:53:37.300 is very tactical or is this going to actually erase authentic korean culture but i actually

00:53:41.960 think it's like a global way of living and creating culture day by day that is very very modern

00:53:47.600 and actually allows for incorporation of new ideas and less fearfulness like wouldn't it be great if

00:53:55.580 America did that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, that's a really good point. And also, fantastic job

00:53:59.980 bringing my point from before that was just dangling out there. Thank you for bringing it

00:54:05.300 back. I can tell you're a podcaster. The Culture Study Podcast is sponsored by Mosh. Melody,

00:54:18.660 you have a Mosh story to share. Yeah, I have a new use case for Mosh bars. I have discovered 1.00

00:54:25.100 that when I'm traveling, it is so hard for me to get out of the hotel room in the morning

00:54:30.480 to either go get the free breakfast or like go searching for breakfast. Because I just feel I'm

00:54:36.100 like, I'm too weak. I'm too sleepy. I need to drink coffee, but I can't do it on an empty stomach.

00:54:41.780 And my last work trip, I brought some mosh bars with me. And I ate them in my hotel bed. And they

00:54:48.500 were a perfect way to start the day and to give me the little boost I needed to go foraging for

00:54:53.620 the rest of my meals. Well, and this will help prevent scenarios like the one that you told me

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00:58:12.760 For our last question, don't worry, it's a really hard one. It's going to close us out,

00:58:17.840 and it comes from Gemma. I'd love to hear your thoughts on if and how the Korean wave affects 0.98

00:58:23.100 the American perception of North Korea. I'm Jen Z, and I grew up with Kim Jong-un memes and the

00:58:28.120 interview, and also with Gangnam Style, influencing how my classmates understood me being Korean.

00:58:34.180 Almost all of Korean culture's rise in the U.S. is very South Korean hyper-capitalist,

00:58:39.040 K-dramas, K-pop, skincare, except for maybe food like kimchi or gochujang. The Peninsula's 0.92

00:58:45.180 division is recent enough that my grandmother was born in North Korea before it was North Korea,

00:58:49.520 But the cultures and language are now so divided that reunification is disappearing as an option if the Korean conflict ever ends.

00:58:57.460 What does it mean for us as Americans to grow our understanding of Korean culture when it's defined by only one of the two Koreas?

00:59:05.260 Oh, that's so good. 0.87

00:59:07.460 I know, right?

00:59:09.220 Also, like, really painful. That's a big one.

00:59:11.680 So we talk about this a lot in this season of BKE on Mashup Americans.

00:59:16.780 And one thing that first, just for context, for culture study listeners, is just to remember, like, there was no North Korea before 1953.

00:59:26.620 This is an entity that was created by America, Russia, and China.

00:59:33.620 It's like a colonial input onto the peninsula. 0.90

00:59:38.740 So I am not Gen Z, though you couldn't tell from my voice. 0.67

00:59:43.800 I was born in 1979 and my father was born in Pyongyang.

00:59:47.960 Like I personally, part of my growth and kind of my consciousness raising as a Korean American

00:59:52.640 person has been to understand that like North and South Korea is an American colonial and

00:59:59.320 imperial construct, right?

01:00:00.980 Like this is not something that existed before.

01:00:04.880 And so like her grandmother was born in North Korea.

01:00:08.260 My father was born in North Korea.

01:00:10.480 He was born in Pyongyang.

01:00:11.540 he and his family refugied south and then stayed on a refugee camp on one of the islands um there's

01:00:18.440 korea is scattered the peninsula is just like dotted with tiny little islands everywhere

01:00:22.480 and then eventually his family settled in busan which is a southern coastal like fishing city

01:00:27.880 now it's like a major metropolitan but he called it like a fishing city back in the 40s and my

01:00:33.880 mother grew up in kind of the central part of what is now south korea so the idea of a north and south

01:00:40.580 is very very new it's very very american and it was also like i completely can relate to those

01:00:50.240 stereotypes because i think there was a long time because of what it meant to be korean

01:00:55.360 maybe less so in her generation but in mine is that like when my family came here a lot of the

01:01:01.480 things that like my dad in particular i think faced was like like really explicitly needing

01:01:08.540 to tell people that he wasn't Vietnamese

01:01:10.200 because the Vietnam War was so unpopular, right?

01:01:13.060 Like in the 70s.

01:01:14.220 And like that was kind of the hangover

01:01:15.780 and the image of Asia that was in existence

01:01:18.820 like when I was a kid.

01:01:20.920 That said, I think it's really important

01:01:23.800 for a Korean question asker in this context

01:01:28.620 to think about whether or not

01:01:30.980 is she trying to understand what it means

01:01:33.300 to be Korean for her

01:01:35.480 or what it means for her

01:01:37.960 to have other people look at her and being perceived as korean because to me the existence 0.97

01:01:44.700 of north korea the fucking absolute tragedy of the split in this country to divide north and south 0.94

01:01:52.400 and now the deep deep and what is coming becoming like a politically impossible divide to cross 0.94

01:02:04.280 right is is reunification and i think to me that tragedy and that split is representative of kind

01:02:16.280 of all of the forces that we have been talking about right like imperial and colonial forces

01:02:20.600 in korea that have created this need for south korea to become this like powerhouse right and

01:02:26.000 also in some ways the opportunity that it took and it had to rebuild itself entirely after the war

01:02:32.540 and so to me like the tragedy and understanding the split the absolute horror that the split has

01:02:42.060 made and the rip in families and culture and the fact that like most america like what she's

01:02:47.680 referencing at least are humiliating jokes about korean culture yeah i grew up at a different time

01:02:53.880 but like in my 20s was like it was a time when every meme was like kim i don't know if you guys

01:03:00.220 remember this but it was kim jong-un looking at things yeah it would just be him looking at

01:03:05.460 things right and it was like like his haircut and his clothes and him being fat and not looking like

01:03:11.720 a military war hero or whatever you know like that whole thing um was a joke gangnam style is

01:03:18.300 different like sai is actually like a cultural genius that like created a satire of himself

01:03:24.200 when he did that and it took the world by storm it was received differently in america who they

01:03:29.220 didn't have enough cultural context to understand that it was a satire right they just thought he 0.96

01:03:33.800 was this foolish kind of chubby korean man making jokes of himself right so i i it's in some ways

01:03:40.500 challenging for me to relate to this question because i i try not to trouble myself or really 0.94

01:03:45.220 care about what white america's perception of me as a korean person because of their understanding

01:03:50.740 of north korea is it deeply concerns me what the korean american diaspora understands about

01:03:57.280 themselves and what they hope for for their own identity building here in the u.s and what they

01:04:02.500 whatever relationship they have to like an ancestral home or a cultural home and that

01:04:08.880 their understanding of what has happened in korea is not about north and south korea being so

01:04:15.160 different or having two such different cultures which they have right it's like twins that are

01:04:20.180 separated at birth right but one but one has been disappeared right like and that's the the really

01:04:25.480 sad thing that's the tragedy it's not like oh well like this country was divided and now like

01:04:32.380 this like we have a visible representation of what it's like in one country and one in another 0.85

01:04:38.500 like north koreans can't represent themselves right because of the way that like the media 0.66

01:04:44.940 works and like the way any sort of visibility works like it's just been like submerged yeah

01:04:51.420 and i think that that's actually something like what you see playing out at a lot of different

01:04:56.600 you know it comes and goes as like a kind of a political topic in korea yeah but that the idea

01:05:01.680 that right now you know and this this is like an undercurrent is that they're so far apart right

01:05:08.060 economically resource wise health wise like language wise that like you know why should 0.98

01:05:15.280 south korea take in all these refugees like what a drain it'll be on the economy what a drain it'll 1.00

01:05:21.400 be on all of our resources that we have built and that are ours now like does that sound fucking 0.99

01:05:28.080 familiar to you you know like and i i think that that's the thing that gets played out again and

01:05:33.740 again you see it's not a uniquely american thing it's not a uniquely korean thing but like how do

01:05:38.080 we kind of broadly think about how we got to this moment and who it is we are like quote letting in 0.92

01:05:45.060 or needing to help when we open up our doors and it's just fucking us in korea it's like a kind of

01:05:52.460 an easier example because they're literally the same people that have been divided and separated 0.65

01:05:57.220 and you can see what economic and political forces have done to two different populations

01:06:02.920 of people that are actually one yes but that is also what's happening at our borders that's also

01:06:09.300 what's happening like why brexit fucking happened you know and it's this idea that like we cannot

01:06:15.640 help each other because it's it we're it's just too scarce like we did this it's ours now and we

01:06:21.380 can't afford to help anybody else yeah and so i think like diving into those questions i know

01:06:29.140 personally has helped me care much less what anybody might perceive of me as a Korean person

01:06:39.360 because North Korea is often made as either like a nuclear nightmare or a joke right and I'm like

01:06:46.920 well you can think that I'm I'm returning to the the very end of this question which Gemma asks

01:06:51.880 what does it mean for us as Americans to grow our understanding of Korean culture when it is

01:06:56.280 defined by only one of the koreas and like you answered that just a second ago when you said

01:07:01.940 like oh this is happening here too yeah right like that's part of what it means to to look at

01:07:08.840 that understanding is to see the ways in which it reflect that the cultural tensions the way that

01:07:14.480 the discourse works around this like the the exporting of one culture and then invisibilizing

01:07:19.300 of another like it's also happening here yeah yeah and i just think that you know the the

01:07:26.260 this is kind of the core principle of the mashup americans and i think what we hope gets to the

01:07:31.400 nuance of things and we hope pushes our kind of conversations past you can't do this because

01:07:39.580 it's yellow face right or like this is clearly cultural appropriation or this is a right way

01:07:44.920 of looking at korea and if you brighten your skin then it's racist right like and i'm not saying

01:07:49.980 that those questions are wrong or bad it's that i think that we can push them forward because

01:07:54.320 the porousness if we can both like deeply understand appreciate and reflect back another

01:08:00.620 culture we the more you realize you're like oh we're all doing this right right no and even just 0.95

01:08:08.080 like the idea too i love like you were talking in one episode about how many korean producers

01:08:14.900 were in a document oh my god it was really stressful which honorific to use but like

01:08:20.800 for me as a person who's not Korean listening in having other Korean people talk to one another

01:08:27.220 and share different perspectives from like and this is what it was like growing up with a strong

01:08:30.820 church background and this is what it was like growing up with thick hair and this is what it

01:08:35.180 was like growing up with thin hair which like duh people are different you know but just like

01:08:39.920 pounding that home again and again like that is an incredibly valuable experience for anyone

01:08:45.520 and I just I love this show so much and we're going to direct people to go over and listen

01:08:52.120 each episode is a perfect length for like cooking dinner going on a dog walk they're amazing

01:08:58.300 thank you so I feel very seen and validated right now good Amy since I teed you up first of all

01:09:09.060 thank you for answering these very complex questions you're an all-star you're welcome

01:09:13.260 Where can people find you and Mashup Americans on the internet if they want to find more?

01:09:18.020 You can find our website is themashupamericans.com.

01:09:21.440 It is getting a little makeover right now.

01:09:24.020 So new stuff to come.

01:09:25.800 Our podcast is available wherever you get your podcasts.

01:09:29.040 It's called the Mashup Americans.

01:09:30.680 We've been in this podcast land since 2015.

01:09:33.620 So there's a lot of episodes that are all kind of like this.

01:09:37.240 We also have a, dare I say it, a sub stack.

01:09:42.700 You're going to love to play Substack on the pod.

01:09:45.840 We welcome all newsletters.

01:09:47.920 We, you know, come back to Patreon.

01:09:50.140 It's good.

01:09:50.660 It's good over there.

01:09:51.440 Well, after you've paid for Anne's Patreon, then you can also go back to Substack.

01:09:57.100 And we have a weekly newsletter that comes out on Saturdays.

01:10:00.180 It's kind of news from around the world with this lens.

01:10:04.780 We also have a section of our newsletter that we called Terrible, No Good, Very Bad News

01:10:10.960 that we're trying not to be depressed but we do want to be informed so that's at the bottom of

01:10:16.100 our newsletter and the rest is kind of like deep rich delicious mashy conversations and articles

01:10:23.220 that we're sourcing and then um it could not be a weirder time to be doing narrative change work

01:10:30.960 that focuses on the richness and beauty of like what it means to be american today when um maybe

01:10:39.320 it's illegal to be us right now but we're still doing it and we feel like it's the most important

01:10:45.840 thing that we can be doing so we're so excited that we got to be with you today on culture study

01:10:51.280 and i hope that culture study readers and listeners have fun with their bke thank you again

01:10:56.820 this has been a pleasure thank you

01:10:59.140 thanks for listening to the culture study podcast today paid subscribers got an ask

01:11:07.600 and anything conversation about why being with family at the holidays always feels like a lot

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Culture Study Podcast - December 10, 2025

What's Behind All The BIG KOREAN POP CULTURE ENERGY

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