Korean Popular Culture

(3 Credit Hours) · Undergraduate

Korean popular culture permeates transnational mediascapes as evidenced by the virality of films such as Parasite and K-Pop Demon Hunters and the international success of writers such as Han Kang. We are witnessing the ongoing global popularization of Korean culture and its widespread circulation to the public in Korea and around the world. This course will examine Korean popular culture through film, literature, television, and streaming media with a focus on how popular culture shapes the human experience as well as our global geopolitical realities. We will think about Korean popular culture in creative ways that include a variety of forms and explore scholarship from an array of fields such as cultural studies, cinema and media studies, and performance studies that debate history, reception, identity, and soft power among other topics. All course materials will be in English and no knowledge of Korean is required. This course fulfills the literature and culture requirement for the Korean minor.