STUDIES ON KOREAN POPULAR CULTURE IS PUBLISHED
Korea was known to Turkish popular culture long before the global "Korean Wave" with the "Sending Troops to Korea". In 1950, Turkey had participated in the Korean War with approximately 15,000 soldiers alongside the US to join NATO against the growing threat of Soviet Russia. The Korean Wave, which refers to South Korean popular culture becoming a global phenomenon, was born in Far Asia in the early 2000s and began to spread all over the world. Supported by the dizzying development of new communication technologies in the last decade, Hallyu has become a founding phenomenon of both cultural diplomacy and cultural industry under the leadership of the South Korean state. As a cultural industry and cultural diplomacy tool, the Korean Wave has enabled Korean TV series, movies, pop music (K-Pop), digital games, fashion, cosmetics (K-Beauty) and culinary culture, in short, Korean popular culture to circulate globally and gain new markets and followers. The study of the Korean Wave first developed through studies of Korean TV dramas, followed by studies of K-pop. Similar to the global trend, Korean Wave studies in Turkey started to increase in the 2010s. The Korean Wave has created a wealth of research areas that encompass all of the contextual objects of study in culture and communication studies such as industry, contents and audiences, and cultural policies. It can be said that this richness requires interdisciplinarity and even multidisciplinarity. The book titled as Studies on Korean Popular Culture (2024), edited by Prof.Dr. Mutlu Binark, Dr.Alptekin Keskin, Asso.Prof.Dr. Engin Sarı and Prof.Dr.Hatice Köröğlu Türközü, contains this disciplinary richness of the field of cultural studies. There are 9 original chapters in the collection that examine the Korean Wave phenomenon with the contribution of different disciplines. Following the preface, which includes a general evaluation of the Korean Wave phenomenon and a general introduction to the compilation, the first article in the book is titled "Evaluation of the Korean Wave Literature in Turkey" by Dr.Alptekin Keskin, Prof.Dr. Mutlu Binark and Research Assistant Demet Fırat. The second study titled "A Review on K-Literature in the Context of the Korean Wave (Hallyu) in Turkey" is written by Hatice Köroğlu Türközü. The third article is writen by Dr.Ahmet Akalın is on Korean Culture Center and its role in cultural diplomacy. The fourth study of the compilation deals with the role of K-pop in cultural diplomacy is written by dr. Keskin.. In the fifth chapter, Assis.Prof.Dr.Eun-Kyung Jeong and Research Asistant Türkay Türkan Ünlü examine literary works translated from Korean into Turkish. Then Asso.Prof.Dr. İpek A. Çelik Rappas analyzes K-Pop themed Youth Music magazines. The next section, written by Pof.Dr. Göksel Türközü and Sudenur Parıltı focuses on the K-beauty industry. In the next section,Asso.Prof. Dr. Engin Sarı analyzes K-Dramas and Korean drama adaptations produced and broadcast in Turkey from the perspective of intercultural communication. In the last article, our graduate student, from Dept.of Radio Tv.and Cinema, Hacettepe Univerisy Graduate School of Social Sciences, Aybüke Doğan discusses the creative music city of Daegu. Studies in Korean Popular Culture examines the contemporary global Korean pop culture, which has been called the Korean Wave or Hallyu, by drawing on different theoretical approaches and disciplines. The cultural contexts covered in the book range from TV dramas to pop music, from beauty industry to youth magazines, from literature to creative culture industry cities. The book is an important resource for those who want to look at the Korean Wave from an empirically rich and theoretically multidisciplinary perspective. This edited book was supported by the Core University Program for Korean Studies through the Ministry of Education of the Republic of the Republic of Korea Korean Studies Promotion Service of the Academy of Korean Studies (AKS-2019-OLU-2250002).
Imprint Information: Binark, M., Keskin, A., Sarı, E. and Köroğlu Türközü, H. (Eds.) (2024) Studies on Korean Popular Culture. Kayseri: Identity. ISBN:978-625-8051-65-0 (In Turkish)
