TY  - JOUR
T1  - Korea vs. K-dramaland: The Culturalization of K-Dramas by International Fans
AU  - Schulze, Marion 
JO  - Academia Koreana
PY  - 2013
DA  - 2013/1/1
DO  - 10.18399/acta.2013.16.2.004
KW  - Korean television dramas
KW  - international fandom
KW  - culture making
KW  - virtual ethnography
AB  - South Korean television dramas, K-Dramas, initiated the Korean Wave, Hallyu, in the late 1990s. Nowadays, a global viewership gathers online to stream K-Dramas live, watch them with subtitles, and discuss them on specialized blogs and message boards. However, most research still concentrates on East Asia as the main realm of K-Dramas’ diffusion, and online communities that watch K-Dramas on the Internet have rarely been considered. Furthermore, most researchers analyze K-Dramas as products inscribed by “Korean culture” or “society,” an approach that relies on an under-standing of “cultures” and “societies” as discrete, homogenous, locally bounded entities.
Expanding upon the nascent online audience research on K-Dramas, I propose in this article a shift of perspective by focusing on how international fans themselves account for K-Dramas (or elements thereof) as socially and culturally “Korean” or operate a rupture with such a culturalist viewpoint.