Korean TV Serials in the English-Language Diaspora: TranslatingDifference Online and Making It Racial

Brian Hu

The Velvet Light Trap, Number 66, Fall 2010, pp. 36-49 (Article)

Published by University of Texas PressDOI: 10.1353/vlt.2010.0007

For additional information about this article

Access Provided by Nanyang Technological Univ at 06/13/11 1:22AM GMT

http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/vlt/summary/v066/66.hu.html

36 Korean TV Serials

n an online discussion forum for the Korean television serial Love Story in Harvard (SBS, 2004–05), one fan joined in a raucous de-nunciation of the poor English spoken by

the program’s lead actors, all three of whom play law or medical students at Harvard University: “I cringe at the sound of every english word they try so hard to pronounce. it’s like taking your fingernails and run-ning it across the blackboard. jeez . . . they just do not take into consideration of the viewers outside korea. Have some sympathy for the US audience !! pls !!!”1 Of course, the program, produced by Korean television network SBS, was never intended for the U.S. audience but rather for the domestic Korean market as well as those in the East and Southeast Asian regions. But with the ease of online piracy and the international reach of Asian diasporas, the “Korean wave” (or hallyu in Korean) spreading throughout Asia has become a cross-regional phenomenon, attracting fans from all continents even before legal distribution channels have been established. As the quote above suggests, this underground network of fans has a lot invested in these television serials. The anxiety over poor English is more than a cry for realism; it is an elaboration of an Asian American identity separate from Asia and sensitive to the stigma of linguistic inau-thenticity as a population deemed perpetually “foreign” by mainstream America.2 The quote also articulates a sentiment common to many pirate communities in the Asian diaspora: the powerlessness of nonrecognition as a consumer market. The problem is that overseas Asians around the world don’t have a voice in the Asian media because they are not included in the target audience. These online communities are alternative spaces in which complaints are lodged and identities are worked through with—or in spite of—other members of the diaspora around the world.

I

Korean TV Serials in the English-Language Diaspora:

Translating Difference Online and Making It Racial

brIan hu

The Velvet Light Trap, Number 66, Fall 2010 ©2010 by the University of Texas Press, P.O. Box 7819, Austin, TX 78713-7819

However, first I must acknowledge that these self-conscious elaborations of identity are a rarity in online fan communities like D-Addicts, Soompi, and Asian Fa-natics. While the forums for Love Story in Harvard are full of attacks on the program’s poor accents (which makes sense, given that these Web sites are frequented by English speakers), very few of the fans connect their disappoint-ment with representation to any political or panethnic agency.3 Fans on these Web sites come from different parts of the globe and thus interpret the dramas (and bad ac-cents) through different cultural contexts and desires that may or may not be related to progressive identity politics. What we observe instead are postings that demonstrate a considerable overflow of emotional investment in Korean television serials. Emotion, not politics, is perhaps a more suitable category through which to explore the forums’ fan activity, which ranges from complaints about the use of language, to confessions of sexual attraction to stars, to yearnings for an online store selling the jewelry seen in the television program. This does not mean that racial discourse is absent but rather that race and panethnic af-filiations undergird an emotional rather than a political investment in fandom. One can observe the (un)conscious workings of race and ethnicity in the emotion-laden practice of translation—an essential means of maintaining and informing fans in forums where not all users under-stand all Asian languages. The collective act of translation mobilizes resources from around the world in order to sustain the emotional investment necessary for fandom in the absence of traditional advertising and publicity. In this article I explore the ways fan communities for Love Story in Harvard on the Web sites D-Addicts, Soompi, and Asian Fanatics exemplify what I call affective translation communities. First, I define this term and how it emerges out of the medium specificity of the online forum. I then show how these fan communities bring

Brian Hu 37

to the ground the various ways in which the global pro-liferation of media texts and their official and unofficial discourses activate multiple transnational sites of affective engagement along lines of gossip, fashion, sexuality, and especially race. As an international network of English-reading fans, mostly of Asian descent, these communities ask that we look beyond the much-discussed phenomenon of cross-ethnic reception within the Asian region and consider the kinds of questions of race more frequently observed in postcolonial and Asian American studies.4 Doing so allows us to understand not only how these fan communities trace the emergence of race affect within an online Asian diaspora through displays of emotional jubilation but also how such racial identities come into conflict with mainstream distribution strategies in Western media capitals that depend on occluding race from the affective translation community. I have chosen to examine the fan community surround-ing Love Story in Harvard because the drama’s peculiar inter-section of language, nationality, and race makes it especially conducive to global discussion online. The sixteen-episode serial drama follows the romantic adventures of two male Korean law students who fall in love with the same female medical student while the three attend Harvard University. The two law students face discrimination from their Cau-casian law professor but, through their perseverance and academic ingenuity, graduate to become highly successful lawyers in the United States and in Korea. The two main conflicts in the series involve the two competing lawyers battling racist/neocolonialist powers by flexing their legal know-how. With victory in the courts comes the satisfac-tion of upholding justice as well as the love of the woman they both desire. That Harvard University is the setting for the TV serial is not surprising given the context of cosmopolitan desire in Korean popular culture. Romantic Korean TV dramas frequently take place in foreign locales, as with Lovers in Paris, Lovers in Prague, and the transnational production Love of the Aegean Sea. However, Harvard in particular has special resonance in Korean culture. The Korea Times has described a local “Harvard phenomenon,” where Harvard is put on a pedestal as the ideal university by Korean parents. How-to books such as Everyone Can Do It, 9 Points for Studying 10 Points for Determination, and Korean Native Mother’s Harvard University Project are best sellers in Korea and contribute to the fever for anything “Harvard,” of which Love Story in Harvard is certainly a part (Park, “Harvard”).

The serial is also an ideal example of Korean televi-sion dramas’ global reach because of its incredible success throughout Asia, especially in Taiwan. Much has been writ-ten about the Korean television industry’s plans to expand its market penetration internationally, with an emphasis on Asia (see, e.g., “KBS in Bid”), and Love Story in Harvard is exemplary of its success. As a result of (or, more accurately, in spite of) these expansionist plans, for English-speaking fans around the world, Soompi, D-Addicts, and Asian Fanatics are the pri-mary fan communities for Korean and other Asian televi-sion dramas. While the great majority of active users on Soompi are from the United States, the discussion thread for Love Story in Harvard alone has postings by fans from Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand, Canada, Singapore, Nepal, Taiwan, the Philippines, and Japan as well as the United States (all self-reported).5 These Web sites are organized by TV program title, each with its own discussion thread, and also by general-interest categories. The California-based Soompi, for instance, includes sections for discussions about college life, relationships, cars, technology, music, movies, and fan fiction. D-Addicts’ specialty is its database of torrent files, which enable peer-to-peer downloading/uploading of pirated TV dramas. Members of both Soompi and Asian Fanatics refer to the D-Addicts forums when “newbie” users request video clips and subtitle files, and it is due to this distribution of fan labor that users are encouraged to simultaneously participate in all three fan communities. I call these fan sites affective translation communities, and I explain this term in the following sections.

A. Communities

Affective translation communities are “communities” because they encourage and manage fan-to-fan interac-tion, provide a common space for intercultural contact, and archive collected reactions, images, sounds, and news important to fellow fans. For many, the most attractive feature of these communities is the shared technical knowledge for downloading and playing video files and for installing subtitle playback codecs. “Newbies” aren’t ignored as outsiders but are embraced as fellow fans trying to gain access to a product inaccessible through official outlets. Technical knowledge is also shared between ex-perienced and inexperienced users in order to encourage greater fan participation. For instance, new users are taught how to post pictures on the Web site so fans can share

38 Korean TV Serials

information from their own cultural locations. The com-munity is also a space in which fans from around the world are able to compare media markets. A user in Singapore, for instance, compares broadcast schedules in his/her home market with those in Taiwan or the United States. Another instance of cross-territory market comparison is the shar-ing of information about DVD versions around the world to ascertain which versions are multiregion, which have English subtitles, and which have good picture quality. Similar to DVD comparisons, “Series recommendations” sections (e.g., in Asian Fanatics) serve as consumer guides for a transnational fan community outside the sphere of traditional print, TV, or online publicity.

B. Translation

By “translation” I refer to the encoding, decoding, and reencoding of texts across cultures. Linguistic translation is central to this process. Subtitle files are made by fan site members themselves and are timed to play with the pirated video files circulating among D-Addicts members. Users also translate into English newspaper and magazine articles found around the world. Also translated are lyrics for songs heard throughout the series. Most importantly, translation is intimately tied to the logic of community. I call these groups “translation communities” because there is an understanding that users from around the world contribute their individual linguistic knowledge for the greater good of the collective. The work of translation itself is indicative of the group’s collective emotional investment. Subtitles include short messages from fan subtitlers to other fans in the forums. In one episode, for instance, the subtitler angrily throws in a side comment, calling one of the characters a “bastard,” telling the other fans what he or she thinks of the character’s actions. And at the end of the final episode of the series, the subtitler writes, “Hope you enjoyed this as much as I did!” In addition, at the end of most episodes are credits to the subtitler and the subtitle timer, both of whom are members of the D-Addicts forum and frequently interact with other fans, usually to let others know when new subtitles will be available and to respond to praise from others in the community. Episodes also of-ten end with the disclaimer “NOT FOR SELL!! DONT BY THIS ON E-BAY,” followed by “FREE FANSUBS AT WWW.D-ADDICTS.COM.” The implication is that the translation work of the subtitlers is by and for other members of the forum (a community open to all fans)

but explicitly not for those attempting to profit from or purchase them in a semilegitimate marketplace. Another function of this disclaimer is to protect the community from potential copyright litigation; by stamping the trans-lations as “not for sale,” the subtitles are deemed works of fan translation and not commodities for trade.6

However, translations on these sites are not only lin-guistic but pictorial as well. Even more frequent than text translations are pictures scanned from books, DVD covers, CD booklets, advertisements, magazines, and newspapers from around the world, which are provided for fellow fans who cannot otherwise access such materials. The fans then “translate” this material into pictorial forms useful to the greater community. Nancy K. Bayn has written on the importance of language in giving significance to a com-munity, especially online, where geographical markers of a common culture are deemphasized (22–23). Kim Hyun Mee has shown how Korean TV serials are localized by language and sensibility when transported to Taiwan; Kelly Fu Su Yin and Kai Khiun Liew make a similar case for the more complex, culturally hybrid market in Sin-gapore, where Korean dramas are imported as “Chinese.” But the “import” and “localization” of Korean dramas in cyberforums is even more abstract given the culturally heterogeneous and unstable makeup of their users and given that these global forums exist across national borders and are exemplary of what Arjun Appadurai calls “deter-ritorialized” spaces maintained by global flows of media and ethnic groups (11). What, then, is the “culture” into which Japanese, Chinese, and Korean texts are translated? Obviously, the verbal language it uses is English, but is there a pictorial “language” as well? To answer this we need an understanding of the pictorial rhetoric of subcultural communication on these discussion forums. In many ways users of these sites—particularly those on Soompi—“speak” in images. These images become a common language and communicate with a clarity and emotional salience within a community where not every-one’s first language is English. Larissa Hjorth has written extensively on the individualization of media technologies via various forms of iconography, such as hanging dolls on cell phones, appropriating beloved characters like Hello Kitty, the use of smileys in online and mobile messaging, and so on. Hjorth argues that throughout the Asian region (and beginning in Japan) the dominant mode of pictorially “humanizing” digital technologies is “cuteness” (kawaii). I would add that this “techno-cute” is appropriated beyond

Brian Hu 39

regional borders and into the communities where Asian popular culture is consumed and translated. Cuteness not only “warms” a cold technology like personal computers, as Hjorth has shown, but it also creates intimacy across linguistic and national borders. For instance, online post-ings are typically full of “cute” images from TV dramas or of celebrities—stars recognizable to users regardless of geographic location. Each member has a personal icon, and an accepted convention on Soompi is to use the picture of a TV actor to represent the member (figure 1). Most users also opt to include banner signatures at the bottom of their postings. Banners are posted image files (often animated) that include pictures of TV scenes or TV celebrities as well as text related to the picture, often a loving ode to a favorite star (“Loving Kim Rae Won,” reads one such ban-ner in the Love Story in Harvard thread). Some users with

Photoshop skills opt to make their own banners, while others appropriate banners made by other users. Regard-less, the photos used to make the banners typically come from images posted in the discussion forums; thus images scanned from magazines or captured from the TV program become “translated” into the language of personalization in the message boards. Image manipulation by fans can also be seen in “celebration” images used to commemorate fan community milestones. In the Soompi forums discus-sion threads for each TV series are separated into pages of twenty posts. For every ten pages of discussion, members create “celebration banners” to commemorate their collec-tive achievement (figure 1). As with the signature banners, the celebration banners are made by members who down-load image files previously posted in the forums to create a new graphic for the purpose of the fan community.

Figure 1. A celebration banner made from pictures posted elsewhere in the thread. The member (Middy) has also used an actor’s picture as his/her personal icon.

40 Korean TV Serials

C. Affective

Finally, by “affective” I am referring to the emotional invest-ment that fans in the community hold in these translated textual materials as well as the emotional pleasure result-ing from the process of collecting, translating, sharing, and viewing these materials in a community space. Pierre Lévy has provocatively summarized “collective intelligence,” which is the cyber-community’s aggregated knowledge, with the statement: “No one knows everything, everyone knows something, all knowledge resides in humanity” (13–14). In describing online fan communities, Henry Jenkins has adopted Lévy’s idea of “knowledge com-munities” to discuss the pooling together of knowledge surrounding the TV show Survivor and the multimedia franchise for The Matrix (26–29, 95). However, Jenkins limits his application of Lévy’s concept to instances of group problem solving; for example, the Survivor “spoilers” combine individual knowledge to predict the show’s win-ner, while the Matrix online communities merge each user’s consumer experiences to piece together the franchise’s elaborate cross-platform narrative. Lévy warns, however, that the “knowledge” he refers to “can’t be reduced to so-called rational discourse. There are body-thoughts, affect-thoughts, percept-thoughts, sign-thoughts, concept-thoughts, gestural-thoughts, machine-thoughts, world-thoughts” (139). The affective translation communities for Korean television serials do very little problem solving but instead gain from the collective affect felt through the translation of textual discourses. Where I differ from Lévy is on the idea of “thought.” Lévy, like Jenkins, sees online communities as utopic spaces of social transformation and political awareness. The use of the word “thought” in “body-thoughts” and “affect-thoughts” emphasizes the reflexivity of online knowledge necessary for political agency. However, Lévy and Jenkins overemphasize the revolutionary potential of “thought” and deemphasize the emotional high—the affective motivation—of problem solving. Similarly, as my examples to follow show, self-conscious affect-“thought” is only one portion of the total affective experience of Korean TV serial culture in these online communities. The importance of the affective over the rational is evidenced by the collective direction taken by the Soompi forum after all previous posts were erased following a server crash. Love Story in Harvard originally aired in Korea from November 2004 to January 2005. In mid-2005 the

more than seven hundred posts in Soompi’s Love Story in Harvard thread disappeared, and fans encouraged each other to recompile the most precious items from the old thread. On 5 October 2005, one day after the thread was reopened, one member posted the following message:

Its a pity that we’ve lost all those beautiful memories (posts) on the old thread ~~ [emoticon] I pray hard that smart soompi board-master can retrieve the great LSIH oldies . . . . . . . . . anyway . . . for the love of the drama & the lovely couple, let us Harvarders try our best to bring back all those data, info, links, & pics & all onto here ~~~ [. . .] I’m sure WE CAN DO IT ~~~~ like striving-spirited ‘Hyun Woo’ + the helping angel ‘Soon In’ ~~ [heart] [heart] FIGHTING FIGHTING ~~~ DEAR ALL HARVARDERS ~~~~~ <333 [smiley face].7

Here the user is summoning the fighting spirit of the drama’s two lead lovers to rebuild the site back to its previous glory. This user asks that the group bring back “data, info, links, & pics,” suggesting the demand for a wealth of knowledge. However, as my examples to follow show, such data and info take the form of translated “af-fective” discourse rather than useful or interesting trivia and knowledge. As Bayn argues, informative practices in online forums rarely remain purely informational and are typically coded through interpretation, which helps to cor-ral empathy within the community (91–94). In addition, immediately after the 5 October post are others by users requesting banner signatures (“i hope someone would post all the cute GIFs here again . . . i just love those!!!”) and links to music videos and the original soundtrack, suggesting that the most important items to restore are those of emotional rather than strictly knowledge value (to the extent that “cuteness” and music are desired for their emotional qualities). Immediately after the thread’s reopening the affec-tive pleasure of “reliving memories” became central to the purpose of the forum. One member writes: “I have some pictures to be shared with you guys. It brings back memories when I first found this thread.” 8 While this fan uses the word “memories” to refer to memories of the lost discussion thread, it becomes clear that these are also memories of the show itself, since the pictures themselves retell the story of the TV serial. As a free-standing sixteen-episode narrative, Love Story in Harvard is what scholars have called a “closed serial.” Robert C. Allen writes that, unlike “open serials,” closed serials “offer viewers an opportunity after closure to look back upon the completed text and impose upon it some kind of moral or ideological order”

Brian Hu 41

(23). Since most users of these forums download and view the serial outside of any broadcast schedule (and those who watch the show on TV do so at different times of the year, depending on the country they live in), many of the users of the forum have already seen the entire series and participate in order to relive the pleasures of the original serial. Allen emphasizes the sorting-through of the serial’s moral and ideological implications; the members of the Soompi forums do bring moral and ideological elements under review, but much more frequent is the renarrativiza-tion of the serial’s romantic elements. This reliving occurs in three primary ways. First, members literally retell the narrative through synopses and dialogue extracts. In addition to the ban-ners, music videos, and music files, episode synopses were rerequested the day after the thread’s reopening. And indeed they soon followed, as did dialogue extracts. Both synopses and dialogue extracts are organized by episode (the most convenient organization but also a way to allow fans to only read about episodes they have already seen). Each episode synopsis is approximately a paragraph long and gives comprehensive details about the plot. Dialogue extracts are, like subtitles, English translations of the original Korean dialogue, presented to fellow fans for review. In the spirit of the translation community the translators of the dialogue extracts directly copy-and-paste the English lines

from the subtitle files; or they may translate more indirectly, for instance, by translating into English based on Chinese translations of the Korean dialogue found elsewhere on the Internet. The dialogue extracts don’t include all lines spoken in each episode but typically include those central to the main conflict and romance.9

Second, members relive the serial through screen captures taken from the original series. Again, the screen captures are organized in the order of the narrative and are separated by episode (figure 2). There are also shorter pictorial reenactments of specific scenes in the serial, especially the key scenes of the central romance (figure 3).10 The forum also has links to official and fan-produced music videos, which include clips from throughout the series. One type of video is organized by episode: musical recaps relive favorite scenes in individual episodes. Third, members relive the serial through its music. The original soundtrack album provides an ideal way to re- experience the narrative, since the musical themes on the soundtrack are laid out roughly in the order they appear in the serial. The first song on the soundtrack is, naturally, the theme music that opens each episode. There are about a half-dozen instrumental themes present in each episode, and they are sprinkled throughout the soundtrack album.

Figure 2. Screen captures of highlights from episode 4.

Figure 3. Screen captures of a favorite scene.

42 Korean TV Serials

Some themes are specific to the first half of the serial (namely, the “Campus themes” played during the scenes at Harvard) and thus are placed in the first half of the album. In the forum there are links to a pirated version of the album as well as translated lyrics. Further highlighting the importance of the communities’ specific form of col-lective translation is the fact that in addition to the music files and the lyrics there are Romanized lyrics—Korean lyrics written with English characters so that non-Korean speakers can sing the songs phonetically, reliving the music (and the TV drama) in a way specific to the logic of the affective translation community. Music files, lyrics, and Romanizations are also available for songs not available on the soundtrack, including diegetic songs romantically sung by the characters to each other.11

These three modes of “reliving” a TV romance show the diverse ways in which fans utilize the medium specificity of the Internet forum (text, image, file) to resurrect and replay repeatedly the emotional highs of the drama serial. But what specific kinds of affective pleasures are gained from these modes of translated replay and intercultural sharing? One is the pleasure of gossip. On 27 October 2005 one Soompi member hinted at why he or she has rewatched the serial so many times:

After watching umpteen times of “Love Story in Harvard” DVDs . . . I am still totally engrossed and smitten by the lovely couple. If only . . . if only . . . . I wish . . . ^-^ . . . I wish . . . KRW & KTH would really go dating . . . *sighing* It would be romantic and my most ultimate dream wish come true. Back to reality, I just keep my pinkies crossed and pray real hard that in future they will get a chance to act as a couple again.12

For this member, rewatching the serial means extending the romance between the actor Kim Rae Won (KRW) and actress Kim Tae Hee (KTH) beyond the confines of the original viewing. Watching and rewatching the DVD compensates for the fact that the actors do not get together in real life, nor do they reteam for another TV serial. This suggests the relationship between rewatching the serial (literally or in pictorial/synoptic form in the forums) and gossip culture, an important way in which affect is translated in the online fan communities. On the forums the KRW/KTH romance is the main topic of delibera-tion, and fans do investigative work in gossip magazines to solve the puzzle of whether the two are a couple in real life. Indeed, most of the magazine articles from around the world scanned for the fan community are gossip related or provide behind-the-scenes looks at the performers on

location or at press conferences publicizing the production. Gossip news gets “translated” into the culture of fan com-munity via translations of news articles, scans/manipulation of pictures, and links to video clips. Second, replay allows users to relive the fashions worn on the show. Under many of the pictures from the char-acters’ campus days are comments admiring the “preppy look” sported by the Harvard students. One post translates news from a Korean newspaper about the Armani jeans worn by Kim Rae Won in the show.13 Meanwhile, one Los Angeles–based member was lucky enough to sneak around on-set during the filming and later shared with the forum that actress Kim Tae Hee’s costumes had Forever 21 labels and thus could be available at area stores and online.14 Fans also expressed interest in purchasing the couple’s rings and cross pendants displayed prominently throughout the serial as major plot devices. One fan posted an image file of a Korean advertisement for rings and pendants as well as where they are available for purchase. This posting is fol-lowed by several more discussing the price of the jewelry and lamenting the fact that the pendants are unavailable to consumers like themselves who live outside of Korea.15 Fashion has a geocultural dimension in these discussions. In what country one can buy these fashions draws atten-tion to inequalities of international product distribution. Meanwhile, the issue of cross-cultural fashion is also raised in Soompi’s marketplace section, where “fobby” clothes are sold to American—especially Asian American—consumers who otherwise cannot access these styles through main-stream channels.16

Third, translated materials replay the serial’s sexual content. The most frequently posted scene reenactments are of the key kissing scenes in the serial—particularly the first make-out session in the bathroom and the midnight “touchdown” kiss outside of the dorms. A recurring topic of discussion is how graphic the “touching” (hand hold-ing, kissing, hugging, sexual intercourse) is in the serial, at least compared with other Korean dramas. One posting includes animated GIFs of the lovers’ caresses. “I really LOve the way Hyun woo hugs her from behind,” says the description. This is followed by another posting by the same user. “LOVE this scene, its sooo sweettttt that Soo In wraps her arms round Hyun Woo’s neck” is followed by an animated GIF of Soon In, in bed, seductively putting her arms around Hyun-woo.17 The screen captures are thus “translated” into moving-image articulations of the text’s sexual pleasure. Finally, fans also fixate overwhelm-

Brian Hu 43

ingly on the serial’s sex scene. TV broadcasts of Love Story in Harvard in certain countries (including Malaysia and Singapore) did not include this scene, and therefore screen captures (animated and still) from the Taiwanese DVD are posted over and over and are discussed and deemed “hot” and “slow” by the giddy fans, enacting Michel Foucault’s observation that the repression of sexuality becomes an incitement to “speak” sex in unanticipated ways (23–24; see also Williams).18 In this case the censored love scene gets played and replayed, captured and looped, discussed and celebrated through technologies of the online forum, the animated GIF, and the screen capture. Lastly, and most integral to my discussion of diasporic identities in the online forums, is the way in which the replaying of the serial allows racial minorities in the fo-rums to discuss the serial’s depiction of race across national boundaries and to articulate the emotional ties between Asia and Asian America and between cultural texts and their international reception. Racial discourse more generally is an important part of these fan forums. The Soompi forums include a “Members 411” page where fans create their own subcommunities based on race and ethnicity; there is an “Official Hmong Thread,” a “Soompi Black Members Thread,” and an “Official Mixed Ethnicity Thread,” among others. A curious fan ritual in this forum is the “guessing game,” where mixed-race fans post pic-tures of themselves while other fans guess what their racial ethnic backgrounds are. Thus race is an ever-present topic of interest and deliberation. As I mention in the introduction, race consciousness by Asian Americans in these forums often takes the form of anxiety over authenticity. Sensitivity toward being labeled the “perpetual foreigner” by the mainstream media makes depictions of Asian Americans as poor English speakers all the more offensive. More than one fan admitted to having “cringed” and/or stopped watching the serial after hearing the bad accents.19 One user writes: “Lee Chong Jin’s english was atrocious for someone who supposedly grew up in the US. [. . .] I kept on thinking there’s no way I’m believing that he’s a Korean Lawyer who was brought up in the US. It made me want to hit the forward button lol.”20 A distinc-tion is made here between a Korean international student (who could potentially have bad English) and a Korean American raised in the United States, and it is to the latter’s representation that the fan is objecting. A similar criticism is made of the fact that students accepted by Harvard ought to speak better English.21 Implicit in these statements is the fact

that there’s a disjuncture between the Korean pop cultural imagination of Harvard as imagined Korean paradise and the Asian American knowledge of Harvard as a lived reality where Asian Americans and non–Asian Americans have very real, and often heated, contact. The contrasting of the imagined Harvard and the lived experience of American campus life is also evidenced in forum discussions of ac-cents heard in classrooms.22 Some defenders of the “bad” accents write that listening to the Korean actors struggle over their lines is not unlike listening to university teach-ing assistants trying to lead class discussions despite their imperfect English. The forums also provide a space for fans to discuss imagined versus real instances of racial prejudice in the university setting. One user poses an apt question for the rest of the D-Addicts community:

did anyone notice the parts in episode one that just seemed—really racist. . . . how at the party that old guy was talking, “All you Asians are majoring in medicine or law.” >.< and when [. . .] Kim Rae Won’s roomate and fellow Korean told Kim Rae Won, something like, you better watch out, if you’re Asian, you better pull your weight around here. o.O; I’m wonder-ing if whoever wrote this actually thinks Americans are that racist? or . . . oblivious, or what. I just thought it was kind of awkward.23

Again, fans question whether the scriptwriters in Korea are actually qualified to write about the world of Asian Americans. In this instance the posting solicited another emotional response:

i believe that americans are racist! if they don’t say to your face or do anything it’s always out there . . . =( . . . and sometimes teachers behave in a racist way towards asian students too . . . well . . . i’ve seen it happen . . . . not as harsh as what the professor did in Love Story in Harvard . . . but yea . . . maybe the writers are just trying to depict what challenges the characters might face in a different environment away from home.24

A similar conversation arose in the Asian Fanatics forum:

I think they are doing a fairly good job representing America. At times, Americans are much worse than what John Ford did to Kim Hyung-woo [. . .] at the beginning, (Kim Hyung-woo takes a sick John Ford to the hospital, but the next morning, Kim Hyung-woo wakes up to find that John had walked out on him. He is almost late for class and barely receives a thanks). We sometimes are too self centered here because of the way we are brought up. So, way to go!25

The “we” that the fan refers to remains ambiguous because his/her ethnicity is not made explicit. However, it’s most

44 Korean TV Serials

likely that the “we” here refers to “we Americans” (of whatever ethnicity), and if so, it seems to be the case that a Korean TV drama with otherwise “poor” representations of life in America has called attention to an American’s own racial biases. But there’s nothing necessarily progres-sive or transformative about the racial discourse on these forums. On the Soompi forum one user raised a similar question about the show’s representation of race but was brushed aside with only cold indifference from the other members.26 On diasporic formations online scholar Emily Noelle Ignacio writes: “It has been my experience that what starts out as a ‘cultural’ newsgroup can swiftly turn into a place where socio-political issues are discussed and debated, especially because social classes, processes, and tactics affect various races, nations, social classes, and genders differently” (182). Ignacio would see my Asian Fanatics examples as evidence of the way online forums engender debate and political consciousness, but she ne-glects the enduring problems of rejection and the silent disavowal of topics deemed irrelevant or uncomfortable to the “cultural newsgroup,” as was the case on the Soompi forum. However, while racial issues aren’t always debated or worked through with the depth or rationality that Ignacio argues they should, they do become an important site for emotional expression. For instance, discussions of race are often in the context of other, softer “affective” pleasures, such as the Asian beauty of Kim Rae Won or the general “cuteness” of the show overall.

Territorial Distribution and Affective Translation Communities

These traces of an emergent racial identity, be they articu-lated or suppressed, expressed through “softer” pleasures as gossip, fashion, or sexuality, become a troubling presence for distribution companies in North America trying to bring Korean serials out of the diaspora ghetto and into the mainstream. The challenge is precisely how to assimilate grassroots fervor and overseas fan activity—the affective translation communities—while containing one of the communities’ most salient nodes of emotional investment: racial identity. The importance of these affective translation communi-ties in maintaining and building the fan base for Korean TV serials around the world is evident in the strategies adopted by upstart DVD distributors looking to expand into the mainstream. The biggest official importer of Ko-

rean TV serials in the United States is the California-based YA Entertainment, a DVD distributor founded in 2003 that has since released about seventy serials in DVD box sets. (Love Story in Harvard is suspiciously not one of the seventy, for reasons that should become clear later.) Each Region 1 set features newly translated English subtitles, lists for about US $99.99, and is available on Amazon.com and YesAsia.com and in some Best Buy, Barnes and Noble, and Borders stores. YA Entertainment is the brainchild of founder and president Tom Larsen, who in an interview says that he was introduced to Korean television serials when taking a Korean-language class in college. He adds that since he, a white American, became hooked on the serials, he took a gamble that others like him in the United States would too (Chung). Promoting expensive box sets of Korean TV serials that have no visibility in the mainstream U.S. media pre-sented a challenge for YA Entertainment, and it is clear from the way the company is positioning itself before online fan communities that creating its own modified affective translation community is a major priority. Since 2006 the company has been releasing online newsletters to fans with links to other Web sites on Korean dramas. (Suspiciously absent are Soompi, D-Addicts, and Asian Fanatics, which, despite having the most comprehen-sive information, are probably not listed because they promote piracy and because they take affective pleasure in community-based, grassroots translation.)27 The YA Entertainment Web site also sponsors fan fiction and other essay contests (prompt: “What impact have Korean dramas had in your life?”), which encourages a participa-tory affective engagement with TV texts and the DVD distributor. YA Entertainment also has its own Facebook group and YouTube channel, the latter of which archives behind-the-scenes video clips from TV serials that the company owns the rights to. These clips are typically English-subtitled versions of featurettes that originally aired in Korea. Finally, YA Entertainment helps distribute the monthly magazine ASTA TV, which the company touted in its 2006 press kit as the “first English-language K-Drama magazine.” However, I would argue that this appropriation of the technologies of affective translation communities makes two significant alterations. First, it takes the power of translation away from the amateur fan. Second, it neutralizes racial discourses that are ever present in Soompi, D-Addicts, and Asian Fanatics in favor of a safe—and marketable—appeal to “universal” values.

Brian Hu 45

In the Korean drama fan sites the collective process of translation (be it linguistic or pictorial) is central to the affective appeal of fandom. Through its DVDs, Web site, and magazine YA Entertainment delivers the end-product of translation but takes the power to translate away from the fans. YouTube clips and Facebook videos come pre-subtitled, while the articles, advertisements, and photos in the magazine ASTA TV are prepackaged and predigested for a mainstream American reader. The same goes for the subtitles made specifically for YA Entertainment’s DVDs. In my subtitle examples in the previous section I showed how amateur translators use subtitles to provide commentary or give messages to fellow fans. However, the subtitles on YA Entertainment’s DVDs emphasize professionalism and grammatical clarity rather than impulsive community plea-sure. YA Entertainment president Tom Larsen reiterated this emphasis in an interview. When asked about his highest pri-ority in producing DVDs, he responded, “Translation and subtitling are the most important part of the production process. If the packaging and the drama are great, but the English subtitles are terrible, people will feel like they have wasted their money. We focus on producing high-quality subtitles geared for native English speakers” (Chung 33). This may indeed be the case for attracting uninitiated audi-ences, but for fans, amateur subtitling practices make the entire community (even the nontranslators) participants in the subtitling process. In addition, amateur subtitling is frequently playful in its attitude toward translation. Less important than precise word-for-word accuracy is an over-the-top emotional engagement with words and cultures. For instance, during an argument in the climax of episode six of Love Story in Harvard the fan subtitles translate one burst of verbal anger as “You douche bagging asswipe.” The emotions are translated, and we’re led to understand that whatever the original Korean words were, they are loaded with rage and perhaps some profanity. But the ridiculous-ness (and creativity) of the phrase “douche bagging ass-wipe” calls attention to and respects the cultural differences between Korean and English by completely disrespecting the possibility that phrases can in fact be translated word-for-word. Building on Mikhail Bakhtin, Robert Stam has argued that the impossibility of one-to-one translation in subtitles lends foreign films their polyglossia, allowing for a “mutual illumination” between the spoken and subtitled languages (76). Abé Markus Nornes takes this natural ef-fect of subtitling one step further, calling for a strategic “abusive subtitling” that is common in fan communities,

where translators deliberately avoid traditional subtitling’s “erasure of difference,” seeking instead “to intensify the interaction between the reader and the foreign” (29). For Nornes, YA Entertainment’s “professional” subtitling would be a step backward, an approach to subtitling that disavows the possibility of cultural difference and neglects the active engagement between text and reader. In other words, by easing linguistic comprehension, YA Entertain-ment minimizes cultural difference—precisely the kind of cultural consciousness the diasporic online communities joyfully indulged in and heightened. This professional approach to subtitling is a response to decades of grammatically incorrect, syntactically incoher-ent translations coming to the United States from Japan and especially Hong Kong. While scholars like Nornes argue for an “abusive subtitling” for fans in a subculture, YA Entertainment sees no value for creative translation, since its objective is to aim for a broader American audience, and “poor grammar” comes off as an unwelcome residue of the programs’ unassimilable Asianness. By aiming for the mainstream consumer, YA Entertainment not only sacrifices the fan-centric subtitles of the affective transla-tion community but also avoids the race discourses central to the primarily Asian diasporic online fan base of Korean TV serials. Throughout YA Entertainment’s promotional materials there is a self-conscious de-Asianization of the audience for these television programs. In a press release entitled “Korean TV Dramas Surprisingly Embraced by U.S. Audiences” the company goes to great lengths to show that the audience for Korean dramas in the United States is not Korean and to suggest that it is the non-Korean population that is driving “the rising mainstream appeal of Korean dramas.” The company provides statistics: according to a study, 91.1 percent of viewers in the United States are “non-Koreans,” 29 percent are Japanese, and over 20 percent are Caucasian.28 Regardless of the veracity of these numbers, it is notable that neglected from the demographic categories are the 42 percent non-Korean, non-Japanese, non-Caucasian viewers who make up nearly half of U.S.-based Korean drama viewers; given the ethnic makeup of the Soompi, D-Addicts, and Asian Fanatics forums, it is quite clear that this 42 percent is probably made up of non-Korean and non-Japanese Asian American viewers, especially those of Chinese descent. YA Entertainment’s statistics also don’t mention that as much as 8.9 percent of the audience is of Korean descent, a striking number, given that Korean Americans only make up 0.38 percent of the

46 Korean TV Serials

U.S. population. To further emphasize the importance of Korean dramas to Asian American communities, Japanese Americans only make up 0.28 percent of the population, while they make up 29 percent of the total viewers. Further manipulation of statistics by YA Entertainment is evident in the press release’s interpretation of viewers’ age distribution. The statistics say that “more than 60% of respondents are over the age of 40,” which the company editorializes as: “Korean dramas garner a loyal following among America’s ‘baby boomers.’” Neglected are the adult Asian immigrants who watch Korean dramas for cultural reasons and who don’t necessarily fit into the mainstream “American baby boomers” consumer category YA Entertainment is sug-gesting makes up the core audience. YA Entertainment’s press kit also includes news articles and testimonials that attempt to argue that the appeal of Korean TV dramas in the United States is primarily for the mainstream, non-Asian audience. Included in the press kit is an Associated Press article that includes a picture of an African American fan holding up a poster of a Korean TV star. Also in the press kit is a 2005 article from the Honolulu Star Bulletin, in which Larsen is quoted as saying: “In 2003, I realized that the TV dramas were a great way to share their culture with the rest of the U.S. . . . Through our research, we figured there was enough of a fan base to make it work, and not just Korean expatriates.” The article goes on to say that Larsen was surprised that Korean “expatriates weren’t much of an influence on the dramas’ popularity here.” In a 2005 press release included in the same press kit Larsen says: “Most of the people watching our Korean TV drama DVDs are not of Korean descent. American audiences are increasingly drawn to the powerful and emotional storylines, family values and cliffhangers that are truly refreshing and addictive.” Larsen is simultaneously deem-phasizing the Korean American (and, implicitly, the Asian American) viewer while emphasizing Korean TV dramas’ “universal” values of emotional storylines and family. This tendency is also seen in the “Customer Testimonials” page of the press kit as well as the “Get Hooked” section of YA Entertainment’s Web site. One fan e-mail posted on the site reads: “Korean Dramas are addicting!!! I have thoroughly enjoyed every one I have seen and I’m not even Asian.” Another reads: “Bless you in your efforts in continuing to draw us non-Koreans into the treasured Korean culture.” Another one criticizes the amount of graphic violence and sexual content in American television to celebrate the “innocent” nature of Korean dramas and then adds: “It

reminded me of the kind of TV I watched as a kid. I also liked learning about another culture. The more I watched the more I grew to appreciate the Korean people.” Another: “I believe the reasons we have enjoyed dramas such as these is that they demonstrate true family values and a real sense of pride in their positions in life. This is something that lacks in many US dramas.” And another: “I just want to share that English subtitled Korean dramas have brought a renewed interest to family values. . . . Watching a variety of (subtitled) TV drama genres enhances my appreciation of South Korea where my father, an American soldier, fought to bring freedom to the country.”29 On the same Web page YA Entertainment synthesizes the testimonials into a list of the top seven reasons why Korean TV dramas are “so ADDICTING”: (1) a purity in their depiction of love, friendship, tragedy, loyalty, respect, and general fam-ily values, (2) romantic stories of people beating the odds, (3) relatively little violence and sex, (4) cliffhangers, (5) a sense of closure after the series is over, (6) the beauty of the Korean actors and actresses, and (7) “beautiful (and unforgettable) musical scores.” John Caldwell has written that the American TV industry—of which YA Entertainment is tangentially a part—deploys what he calls “low theory,” a critical “offi-cial” discourse aiming “to constrain meanings and navigate pleasures for viewers and consumers of electronic culture.” As Caldwell goes on to show, low theory not only man-ages possible meanings but serves to “theoretically” justify the industry’s economic practices, for instance, conglom-eration (105, 124). In its press kit and on its Web site YA Entertainment can be said to be “theorizing” the appeal of its own products in order to manage interpretation and “navigate pleasures.” The company uses liberal discourses of cross-cultural understanding and conservative discourses of universal moral values to categorize and advertise the appeal of Korean TV dramas for mainstream America. The company does this by emphasizing some races (white, black) and deemphasizing others (Asian) that impede on the programs’ liberal and conservative appeal. Asians and Asian Americans are thus alienated from products they consider their own. The most obvious emotional pleasure that these dramas afford—a feeling of familiarity (what Ien Ang calls their “cultural intimacy”) for Asian American viewers, who are regularly misrepresented and underrep-resented by the mainstream media—is actively erased in favor of universal values that appeal to the broadest possible audience.

Brian Hu 47

YA Entertainment has distributed some of the big-gest titles in Korean TV dramas: Dae Jang Geum (Jewel in the Palace), Sandglass, My Lovely Sam-soon, Palace, Lovers in Prague, Stairway to Heaven, Full House, Jumong, Winter Sonata. That Love Story in Harvard is not one of them is surprising, given its enormous pan-Asian success, but it is not surprising, given YA Entertainment’s strategy to con-ceal contact between Korea and the United States, which disrupts the fantasy of word-for-word translatability and universal values. The serial’s depiction of Americans as racist doesn’t help either, and the members of the affective translation communities have picked this up. In response to the white characters’ blatant racism one user writes: “they wouldn’t air this on the US because it would offend.”30 While discussions of racism only make up one part of the fan discourse on Love Story in Harvard, there is an active effort to highlight it when appropriate to the logic of the show’s affective pleasures. In a key scene in the series law student Hyun-woo stands up against his racist professor by bringing up antidiscrimination laws in the United States. On the soundtrack we hear the actor erroneously say in English, “First of all, he needs to prove that he’s a member of group which is being protected.” In an attempt to cor-rect the actor’s poor recitation of English the fan subtitles change the line to “First of all, he needs to prove that, he’s a member of a group that’s being persecuted.” Later in his monologue the actor says in typically incoherent English that an employer can be found guilty of discrimination if he has “committed hostile action and also found substitute persons from outside the group.” The subtitles change this line to “committed hostile action and also found substitutes to work from outside this racial group.” The new subtitles are only marginally more comprehensible, but the addition of the word “racial,” like the correction of “persecuted” for “protected” in my previous example, shows the fans actively clarifying the drama’s angry denunciation of racial persecution in the United States. Perhaps the translator is simply making Hyun-woo, the drama’s hero, more impres-sive as a leading man and making the emotions of the scene more fluidly integrated into the drama of the narrative. However, the poor English and the stereotyped depiction of Caucasian characters do provide an opportunity for the fan community to translate based on a heroic identity politics. Making it “racial” gives the TV serial more emo-tional valence, with racial honor being one part. Whether YA Entertainment would have kept “race” in the subtitles is unlikely, given the strategic disavowal of racial conflict

on its Web site and publicity materials. That the company has chosen not to distribute Love Story in Harvard in the United States at all forecloses the need for speculation, and the drama will remain underground in the affective translation communities.

Notes

1. “Love Story in Harvard (SBS, 2004/5),” online posting, 9 Dec. 2004, D-Addicts Forum, 13 Mar. 2007, http://d-addicts.com/forum/viewtopic_9783_30.htm. In this article I include the original spelling and grammar without the convention “[sic]” for postings found in the discussion boards. 2. In this case I have assumed the fan to be Asian American based on his/her user name: mrkentchu. 3. Yen Le Espiritu has famously described the development of panethnic affiliations among Asian American communities. My use of “panethnic” extends Espiritu’s conception of panethnicity to a scattered English-speaking Asian diaspora around the world. 4. A particularly cogent case has been made for conceptualizing an “Asian region” surrounding the production and reception practices of Korean and Japanese pop culture (see Berry et al.). 5. In the “where are YOU from?” section of the site “US—west coast” has 5,000+ replies, “US—east coast” has 4,000+, “US—south” has 1,300, and “US—Midwest and mountain states” has 1,500, giving the United States total well over 10,000 replies. Australia is second with 5,900, and Canada is third with 5,600. Southeast Asia has 2,800, and East Asia has 2,300 (numbers gathered in Mar. 2007). These numbers do not reflect the total number of users from each country/region (which is much harder to track), but they do give a rough comparison of where the most active Soompi users live. 6. For a discussion of the legality of fansubs and the role of their communities in mediating cultural and commodity flows between Japan and the United States, see Leonard. 7. “[DRAMA 2004] Love Story in Harvard,” online posting, 5 Oct. 2005, Soompi Forum, 13 Mar. 2007, http://www.soompi.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=507&st=20. 8. “[DRAMA 2004] Love Story in Harvard,” online posting, 5 Oct. 2005, Soompi Forum, 13 Mar. 2007, http://www.soompi.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=507&st=20. 9. “[DRAMA 2004] Love Story in Harvard,” online posting, 9 Oct. 2005, Soompi Forum, 13 Mar. 2007, http://www.soompi.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=507&st=120. 10. “[DRAMA 2004] Love Story in Harvard,” online posting, 8 Oct. 2005, Soompi Forum, 13 Mar. 2007, http://www.soompi.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=507&st=100. 11. “[DRAMA 2004] Love Story in Harvard,” online posting, 3 Dec. 2005, Soompi Forum, 13 Mar. 2007, http://www.soompi.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=507&st=940. 12. “[DRAMA 2004] Love Story in Harvard,” online posting, 27 Oct. 2005, Soompi Forum, 13 Mar. 2007, http://www.soompi.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=507&st=460. 13. “[DRAMA 2004] Love Story in Harvard,” online posting, 18 Nov. 2005, Soompi Forum, 13 Mar. 2007, http://www.soompi.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=507&st=740.

48 Korean TV Serials

14. “[DRAMA 2004] Love Story in Harvard,” online posting, 3 Jan. 2006, Soompi Forum, 13 Mar. 2007, http://www.soompi.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=507&st=1280. 15. “[DRAMA 2004] Love Story in Harvard,” online posting, 16 Oct. 2005, Soompi Forum, 13 Mar. 2007, http://www.soompi.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=507&st=260. 16. “F.O.B.” is a word created by Asian Americans to describe newly arrived (“fresh-off-boat”) Asians. Originally a derogatory term meant to insult new immigrants for their un-American fashions, accents, and customs, the term has acquired a positive connotation among the Asian Americans who watch Asian television serials and listen to Asian pop music. The popular “fobby” fashions tend to be dictated by Asian popular media such as Korean TV dramas, and small retailers are quick to exploit the Soompi and Asian Fanatics forums to target consumers hungry for the K-drama look. Jung-sun Park has noted the importance of Asian TV fashions on the taste cultures of young first- and second-generation Korean Americans. She argues that such patterns represent an immigrant yearning for “home.” 17. “[DRAMA 2004] Love Story in Harvard,” online posting, 10 Oct. 2005, Soompi Forum, 13 Mar. 2007, http://www.soompi.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=507&st=140. 18. “[DRAMA 2004] Love Story in Harvard,” online posting, 20 Oct. 2005, Soompi Forum, 13 Mar. 2007, http://www.soompi.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=507&st=340. 19. “[DRAMA 2004] Love Story in Harvard,” online posting, 12 Oct. 2005, Soompi Forum, 13 Mar. 2007, http://www.soompi.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=507&st=180; “Love Story in Harvard,” online posting, 3 Sept. 2005, Asian Fanatics Forum, http://asianfanatics .net/forum/index.php?showtopic=308744&st=100. 20. “Love Story in Harvard,” online posting, 23 Dec. 2005, Asian Fanatics Forum, 13 Mar. 2007, http://asianfanatics.net/forum/index .php?showtopic=308744&st=200. 21. “Love Story in Harvard,” online posting, 28 Aug. 2005, Asian Fanatics Forum, 13 Mar. 2007, http://asianfanatics.net/forum/index .php?showtopic=308744&st=50. 22. “Love Story in Harvard (SBS, 2004/5),” online posting, 9 Dec. 2004, D-Addicts Forum, 13 Mar. 2007, http://d-addicts.com/forum/viewtopic_9783_30.htm. 23. “Love Story in Harvard (SBS, 2004/5),” online posting, 9 Dec. 2004, D-Addicts Forum, 13 Mar. 2007, http://d-addicts.com/forum/viewtopic_9783_45.htm. 24. “Love Story in Harvard (SBS, 2004/5),” online posting, 16 Dec. 2004, D-Addicts Forum, 13 Mar. 2007, http://d-addicts.com/forum/viewtopic_9783_60.htm. 25. “Love Story in Harvard,” online posting, 26 Jan. 2005, Asian Fanatics Forum, 13 Mar. 2007, http://asianfanatics.net/forum/index .php?showtopic=308744&st=0. 26. “[DRAMA 2004] Love Story in Harvard,” online posting, 22 Jan. 2006, Soompi Forum, 13 Mar. 2007, http://www.soompi.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=507&st=1460. 27. For a discussion of the legal ramifications of online community translation, as well as efforts to supersede such works with “official” translations, see Muscar. 28. From the 2006 YA Entertainment press kit. These statistics are also included in trade journal articles (see Spielvogel). 29. YA Entertainment press kit, 2006, and “Get Hooked,” YA Entertainment Web site, 13 Mar. 2007, http://www.yaentertainment .com/getHooked.html.

30. “Love Story in Harvard (SBS, 2004/5),” online posting, 10 Dec. 2004, D-Addicts Forum, 13 Mar. 2007, http://d-addicts.com/forum/viewtopic_9783_45.htm.

Works Cited

Allen, Robert C. Introduction to To Be Continued . . . : Soap Operas around the World. Ed. Robert C. Allen. London: Routledge, 1995. 1–26.

Ang, Ien. “The Cultural Intimacy of TV Drama.” Feeling Asian Modernities: Transnational Consumption of Japanese TV Dramas. Ed. Koichi Iwabuchi. Hong Kong: Hong Kong UP, 2004. 303–09.

Appadurai, Arjun. “Disjuncture and Difference in the Global Cul-tural Economy.” Public Culture 2.2 (1990): 1–24.

Bayn, Nancy K. Tune In, Log On: Soaps, Fandom, and Online Com-munities. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 2000.

Berry, Chris, et al., eds. Cultural Studies and Cultural Industries in Northeast Asia: What a Difference a Region Makes. Hong Kong: Hong Kong UP, 2009.

Caldwell, John T. “Critical Industrial Practice: Branding, Repurpos-ing, and the Migratory Patterns of Industrial Texts.” Television & New Media 7.2 (2006): 99–134.

Chung, Laura. “Bringing the Korean Wave to North America.” ASTA TV, Sept. 2006, 32.

Espiritu, Yen Le. Asian American Panethnicity: Bridging Institutions and Identities. Philadelphia: Temple UP, 1993.

Foucault, Michel. The History of Sexuality: An Introduction. New York: Random House, 1978.

Fu Su Yin, Kelly, and Kai Khiun Liew. “Hallyu in Singapore: Korean Cosmopolitanism or the Consumption of Chineseness?” Korean Journal 45.4 (2005): 206–32.

Hjorth, Larissa. “Odours of Mobility: Mobile Phones and Japanese Cute Culture in the Asia-Pacific.” Journal of Intercultural Studies 26.1–2 (2005): 39–55.

Ignacio, Emily Noelle. “E-scaping Boundaries: Bridging Cyberspace and Diaspora Studies through Nethnography.” Critical Cybercul-ture Studies. Ed. David Silver and Adrienne Massanari. New York: New York UP, 2006. 181–93.

Jenkins, Henry. Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Col-lide. New York: New York UP, 2006.

“KBS in Bid to Expand Global Commercial, Residential Markets.” Television Asia 13.6 (2006), accessed via LexisNexis.

Kim Hyun Mee. “Korean TV Dramas in Taiwan: With an Em-phasis on the Localization Process.” Korea Journal 45.4 (2005): 183–205.

Leonard, Sean. “Progress against the Law: Anime and Fandom, and the Key to the Globalization of Culture.” International Journal of Cultural Studies 8.3 (2005): 281–305.

Lévy, Pierre. Collective Intelligence: Mankind’s Emerging World in Cyber-space. New York: Plenum Trade, 1997.

Muscar, Jaime E. “A Winner Is Who? Fair Use and the Online Dis-tribution of Manga and Video Game Fan Translations.” Vanderbilt Journal of Entertainment and Technology Law 9.1 (2006): 223–54. Web. 12 Feb. 2010. http://law.vanderbilt.edu/publications/journal-entertainment-technology-law/archive/download .aspx?id=1694.

Brian Hu 49

Nornes, Abé Markus. “For an Abusive Subtitling.” Film Quarterly 52.3 (1999): 17–34.

Park, Chung-a. “Harvard Gets High Marks in Pop Culture.” Korea Times, 7 Dec. 2004. Web. 13 Mar. 2007. http://times.hankooki .com/lpage/200412/kt2004120717052710160.htm.

Park, Jung-sun. “Korean American Youths’ Consumption of Kore-an and Japanese TV Dramas and Its Implications.” Feeling Asian

Modernities: Transnational Consumption of Japanese TV Dramas. Ed. Koichi Iwabuchi. Hong Kong: Hong Kong UP, 2004. 275–300.

Spielvogel, Cindy. “Korean Dramas Appeal to YA.” Video Business, 21 Aug. 2006, 33.

Stam, Robert. Subversive Pleasures: Bakhtin, Cultural Criticism, and Film. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins UP, 1989.

Williams, Linda. Screening Sex. Durham, NC: Duke UP, 2008.