Trans–East Asia as methodregion fewer than 20 percent of the population has access to the Internet. Although the deve-
lopment of digital communication technologies such as the Internet and (pirated) DVDs enables
people to consume a greater variety of cultural products from a greater variety of places in the
world, there is still a tremendous number of people who cannot enjoy them due to economic
restraints. Another important issue is the sort of popular culture that trans–East Asian consump-
tion encourages to circulate. Digital communication technologies have blurred the boundaries
between producer and consumer, diversified cultural expressions, and facilitated cross-border
connections, including those among marginalized people and activists. Yet, put bluntly, East
Asian popular culture connections have been advanced in a market-oriented, corporate-driven
manner and an inter-Asian “mass culture channel,” in which nationally dominant popular cul-
tures are mutually promoted and consumed, has been loosely institutionalized. The kinds of
media texts that the media and culture industries in East Asia promote and circulate throughout
the region are for the most part commercially and ideologically hegemonic ones and thus tend
to neglect socioculturally marginalized voices within the nation. Researchers need to examine
what kinds of mutual understanding are being promoted, through which media texts, and with
whose voices and then consider what issues are not being well attended to in the newly deve-
loped mediated connectivity in East Asia.
The study of East Asian popular culture flow and connection has tended to be more con-
cerned with the self-reflexive audience consumption of popular culture or fans’ creative engage-
ment with media texts. Critical examination of the representations of marginalized voices
in works of popular culture that are circulated and shared within East Asia is an area that is
largely underexplored.^1 Although many critical studies have dealt with media representations
and expressions of queer culture, migrant culture, race, ethnicity, region, class, and diaspora in
national contexts, studies on trans–East Asian popular culture connection have not sufficiently
attended to whether and how these hitherto marginalized voices have been crossing borders.
More than ever, researchers of trans–East Asian popular culture are required to critically exam-
ine whether works of transnationally circulating popular culture represent cultural differences,
inequality, and marginalization within the nation, and how, if at all, they are received in other
parts of East Asia.
The intersection of migrants and diaspora and popular culture consumption is another area in
the study of East Asian popular culture connection that requires further examination. This type
of research does not just deal with the mundane practices of Asian migrants and the Asian dias-
pora in Asia but also the experiences of those in non-Asian countries. As Youna Kim discussed in
Chapter 5, this is a significant issue and some important research has examined the transnational
consumption of Asian popular culture by Asian migrants/diaspora in Euro- American contexts
(e.g. Kim 2008; Park 2004). Yet, these works tend to be relatively small in number and are often
sidelined in the study of East Asian popular culture, which accounts for the current unsatisfac-
tory analysis of the link between human mobility and popular culture mobility. Further investi-
gation into the implications of the trans–East Asian cultural connection for Asian migrants living
in East Asia and other regions is vital, not least because such study problematizes and transcends
a closed conception of “East Asia” as a region. A trans–East Asian perspective would in turn offer
fresh insight into issues of diasporic consumption and the construction of the entangled sense of
multiple belonging in the age of digital media communication.
No less critical is the growing sense of aversion generated by or in association with East
Asian popular culture connectivity. Especially pressing is the analysis of how historical and
political issues, such as territorial disputes between Japan, China, and South Korea, can cast a
shadow over the circulation of East Asian popular cultures, as pointed out by Chua Beng Huat’s
and Rumi Sakamoto’s chapters. Caught up in vicious cycles of (cyber)nationalism, such as that