Younghan ChoThe articulation of East Asian pop culture needs to be accompanied by a set of empirical
questions unique to each country, each locale, each group, and each genre of pop cultures
under consideration, but framing this research as “East Asian” makes it inherently comparative
in nature. Furthermore, it is
impossible for the comparative study of all active consumption processes across differ-
ent objects and times of analysis to be undertaken by a single scholar who is able to
traverse not only national-spatial boundaries but also cultural linguistic barriers across
the whole of East Asia.
(Chua and Cho 2012, 489)Collaborative research efforts, especially inter-Asian academic efforts, are essential for the discur-
sive construction of East Asian pop culture as an object of analysis and theorization (Chua 2004).
Along with the other empirically based essays in this anthology, this study seeks to contribute to
the ongoing critical and theoretical engagement with the complexity of East Asian pop culture.
Therefore, this project aims not only at historicizing East Asian pop culture through regional
pop flows, but also at reconsidering salient aspects of modern East Asia by using pop culture as
an entry point.
america in East asian pop culture
This section briefly sketches America’s influence on Asian pop culture during the second half
of the 20th century. After World War II, America “crafted its regional strategic influence partly
through the promotion of cultural understanding of America” (Chua and Cho 2012, 485).
One aspect of this new strategic initiative was the dissemination of American popular culture
throughout the region. American pop culture was not only well received and quickly absorbed
by Asian consumers, but it was also appropriated by cultural producers in East Asia. Examples
range from Hollywood’s influence on Asian filmmaking to the impact of American rock ’n’ roll
on Asian popular music. Even today, the Americanness of East Asian pop culture is a “constant
source of public discourse in Asia, with reference to the effects of ‘Westernization’ and ‘cultural
contamination’ of the local” (Chua 2008, 74). The degrees of Americanization have varied in
different parts of the region as well as over time, but during the 1950s and 1960s it was impos-
sible not to recognize the American origins of East Asian pop cultures. Nearly every expression
of pop culture in East Asia was influenced by the aura of America as the symbol of the modern
or superior Other.
At the same time that East Asian nations were establishing their independence in the imme-
diate postwar period, American hegemony was becoming a prevalent and influential force in
the region. During the following three decades, the world was plunged into the Cold War—
although it was anything but “cold” in Asia with the Korean War in the early 1950s—and
the Vietnam War of 1958–1974. According to the prevailing Cold War logic, the struggles of
these and other Asian countries to establish political and economic sovereignty and form new
national identities were predicated on continued economic growth and resistance to Com-
munism. Under such conditions, it is no surprise that America, a colonialist superpower, was
both directly and indirectly engaged in cultural politics in East Asia, particularly through the use
of anti-communist propaganda (Chen 2001).^2
During the Cold War era, pop cultures in East Asia became contested realms in which
American interests both co-opted and clashed with national governments in the region. Ini-
tially, the region’s pop cultures were officially supported because they efficiently disseminated