Performance of a Korean masculinity in Taiwanese men’s fashionThis chapter concerns the performance of Korean masculinity; the term ‘performance’
denotes the fulfillment of a gender role and its representation in men’s fashion magazines, a
form of popular media. To think of masculinity as an embodied, social, and political domain
where Taiwanese, Korean and/or Asian masculinity might be narrated and performed is to con-
ceive of gender and sexuality as a sort of performative arena. Alluding to Judith Butler’s Gender
Trouble (1990), this chapter also attempts to undermine the presumed primacy of heteronorma-
tivity by illuminating how men’s fashion in East Asia, as an emerging site propagated by global
capitalism, operates within a specific social context that potentially challenges traditional con-
fines of gender representation but simultaneously privileges the idealization of heteronormati-
vity. By examining the codes of masculinity (Barthes 1972) emerging in the multiple personas
of Korean male celebrities featured on the cover of Taiwan’s Men’s UNO this study explores
this process within the context of the Taiwanese popular cultural environment. Additionally,
this is an important topic to examine, in part, because scholars have identified a relatively recent
reconfiguration of East Asian geopolitics, prompted by the increasingly dynamic exportation of
Japanese popular cultural texts to other Asian markets. Koichi Iwabuchi concludes that Japan’s
modern national identity is constructed in an asymmetrical totalizing triad between “Asia”, “the
West” and “Japan” (Iwabuchi 2001, 206) and the influence of Japanese popular culture in other
parts of Asia may be employed by conservative Japanese commentators to locate Japan strategi-
cally “in and above Asia” (Iwabuchi 2002a, 2002b). Thus this chapter intends to add a new global
actor to this existing area of study, explicating how the notion of Korean masculinity, as a more
recent case, is multifarious, negotiated, reconstructed, and redefined. In this context, this chapter
first introduces the larger media environment and the industrial structure of men’s fashion
magazines. Subsequently, the transformation of Korean and Asian masculinities in popular visual
codes on the magazine covers, and associated texts and photos is reviewed.
Interrogating the men’s fashion scene in the global–local nexus
It is imperative to understand the historical development of men’s fashion magazines in Taiwan
before reviewing cover appearances by Korean celebrities. Men’s UNO was launched a year after
the arrival in Taiwan of a local edition of GQ in 1997, and instantly became the largest among
the eight titles in its category (Magazine Business Association of Taipei (MBAT) 2014). The
past decade has seen some of these eight titles go out of business, while the survivors have not
necessarily thrived. For example, Esquire’s Taiwanese edition no longer carries much weight,
while Men’s Style went out of business in 2007. Against such a structural backdrop, Men’s UNO
is significant in the sense of being both the first local men’s fashion magazine, and allegedly
the largest men’s fashion publishing group in the Chinese world after having spawned Hong
Kong, Malaysia, and Mainland China editions since 2004. The brand identity of being “local”
or “Chinese” offers fertile terrain for further analysis of why other non-Chinese Asians, mostly
Koreans together with a handful of Japanese, were featured on the cover and in an accompany-
ing cover story of more than six pages.
Facing a saturated market for global fashion magazines targeting women, Condé Nast, one of
the largest global fashion publishers, quickly moved to seize the attention of fashion- conscious
male readers, then an emerging segment in Taiwan. Given the advantages enjoyed by a well-
established multinational publishing group, GQ was created with strong backing from Western
advertisers of Western fashion brands, chiefly French, Italian, and American. In contrast to GQ’s
strong advertising support, Men’s UNO followed a different route to capture another market
segment, namely younger men in their teens or twenties, many of them gay and attracted
to Japanese fashion. Although Western men’s fashion magazines amassed Taiwanese followers,