earticle

영어

Indonesia’s embrace of foreign popular music began during the colonial era, with recordings of jazz and similar forms imported from Europe and the U.S. In recent decades, as Indonesians developed an indigenous popular music industry, other foreign influences have entered the popular music scene in Indonesia. Most prominent among these recently is Korean pop (“K-pop”)—which swept into Korea suddenly in the early 2000s along with a flood of Korean TV dramas. Few Indonesians could have named a Korean pop star in the 1990s, but by 2005 Korean dramas occupied primetime slots on several major TV networks and legal and pirated CDs of Rain, Se7en, and earlier stars (S.E.S., H.O.T., Shinhwa) were sold widely. BoA, born in Korea but producing CDs in Japan, was more closely associated with J-Pop, but came to be known as another KPop star. How and why did these stars from Korea gain the attention and the fandom of Indonesians? The sudden surge in awareness of Korea due to TV dramas is part of the picture, but fanrelated print media and, above all, social media have contributed in a spectacular fashion. Based on field work in Indonesia in 2005, 2008, 2010, 2013, and 2016, and extensive exploration of internet sources, I trace the contours of K-pop fandom in Indonesia, assessing the methods of distribution, the factors articulated by Kpop fans as contributing to their involvement with and enjoyment of K-pop music and its key figures. I consider the ways in which Indonesians are constructing notions of “Koreanness” in their interaction with Korean popular culture and the reasons underlying its appeal in relation to other popular musics transmitted transnationally. I conclude by considering whether the “Korean Wave” in Indonesia represents a new Asian cosmopolitanism more than an interest in “Korea” per se, as is claimed by the Korean media, and comment on the recent decline in K-pop fandom in Indonesia.