The Structure of the Appeal of Korean Wave Texts

In this paper, texts from the first and second Korean Waves are content-analyzed in order to better understand the nature of their popularity. The text of the first wave is represented by eight Korean television serials popular in the recipient countries of the first Korean Wave, while the text of the second is the ten K-pop music videos most viewed on YouTube. The results show that the structures of appeal of the texts of the two phases are quite distinct from one another. The appeal of the first wave texts is based on symbolic pleasure, but that of the second lies on the imaginary. Korean television serials reflect Korean society and their global fans partake in and share Korean fantasies and dreams. K-pop is of the Lacanian imaginary and excludes the social; it may be its aspiration to avoid the symbolic and indulge in the imaginary plenitude that appeals to global fans of K-pop.