Younghan Choencouraged scholars to seriously grapple with the new configurations of East Asian pop culture
vis-à-vis American influence. Chua comments, “the emergent reality of an East Asian pop cul-
ture is juxtaposed against the presence of Hollywood and other media cultures” (2008, 89). As
such, it is still worthwhile to examine to what extent American pop culture is still influencing
the burgeoning growth and flows of East Asian pop cultures that in recent decades have become
part of the globalization of mass entertainment.
The strengthening of regional pop cultures in East Asia can be observed in terms of both
production and consumption. The Asian economic crisis of the late 1990s “has not stopped
intra-flows but has instead furthered the interaction and intra-flows among Asian nations”
(Iwabuchi, Muecke, and Thomas 2004, 1). With regional trends being expedited by advance-
ments in transportation and telecommunications technologies, East Asian audiences can almost
instantly consume a wide variety of regional cultural products (Hu 2005). Notable regional
flows include the extensive pan-Asian popularity of Hong Kong films from the late 1980s to
the mid-1990s, Japanese pop culture in the 1990s, and South Korean pop culture, dubbed the
Korean Wave, in the first decade of the 2000s.
The 1980s were the heyday of the Hong Kong film industry. Hong Kong films, particularly
noir films, gained popularity not only from pan-Asian audiences but also fans on the other
continents. Gina Marchetti and Tan See Kam attribute the global acclaim of Hong Kong noir
films to the filmmakers, commenting that the vision of Hong Kong noir films “comes from
postmodern Asia, not postwar America” (2007, 7).^5 However, the success of the Hong Kong film
industry “was tinged over with anxiety about the fact that Great Britain had agreed to relinquish
sovereignty over the city to the People’s Republic of China in 1997” (Curtin 2013, 254). While
the golden days of the Hong Kong film industry slowly waned as audiences in overseas markets
did not develop affection for most films produced in the decade following the handover (ibid.),
Hong Kong cinema still continues to exert its influence and demand its due respect.
Japanese pop culture in the form of animation, television drama, and J-pop dominated pan-
Asian cultural circulation and consumption in the 1990s. Japanese cultural hegemony in East
Asia was a result of both its economic prowess and the growing involvement of Asian countries
in the global capitalist economy (Ching 1994). This spread of Japanese popular culture went
hand in hand with the globalization of Japanese brands in durable goods (e.g. Sony’s Walkman),
non-durable goods (fast-moving consumer goods), and cosmetics (Oyama 2009). Shinji Oyama
suggests that the pan-Asian advertising of Japanese brands was the visible sign of the emergence
of a regional commonality or sensibility, which was shaped mainly by Japanese media content
(ibid.). The wide popularity of Japanese pop culture in the 1990s “precipitates (asymmetric) con-
nections between people in Japan and those in modernized (or rapidly modernizing) ‘Asia’ ...
through popular cultural forms” (Iwabuchi 2002, 18).^6
From the late 1990s, South Korean pop products had begun to draw significant regional
audiences, a phenomenon referred to as the Korean Wave, or Hallyu in Korean. TV soap operas
or melodramas led the expansion of the Korean Wave in Asia: Winter Sonata (2002) was a sensa-
tion among Japanese audiences and Jewel in the Palace (2003) made “the greatest impact on all the
ethnic-Chinese locations in East Asia” (Chua and Iwabuchi 2008, p. 5). Later, the development
of digital media forms has played a primary role in expanding “digital Hallyu,” in particular,
“YouTube is a driving force of K-pop today” (Kim 2013, 8). John Lie suggests that “K-pop
exemplifies middle class, urban and suburban values” and K-pop performers “exemplify a sort
of pop perfectionism: catchy tunes, good singing, attractive bodies, cool clothes, mesmerizing
movements in a non-threatening, pleasant package” (2012, 356). The Korean Wave is not only
another (export) brand that is orchestrated with much support from the Korean government,
transnational corporations, and pop-nationalism among South Koreans (Joo 2011; Lie 2012),^7