Between Love and Hate: The New Korean Wave, Japanese Female Fans, and Anti-Korean Sentiment in Japan

Despite the enormous success in Japan of Korean popular culture, including TV dramas and K-pop, over the past few decades, anti-Korean sentiment in the country has become increasingly visible and intense. In this article, we examine how young Japanese female fans of Korean popular culture engage with the Korean Wave discourse while also engaging with―or, rather, disengaging from―anti-Korean movements and hate speech. Whereas previous scholarship on the Korean Wave has emphasized the power of active fans' agency, this paper investigates how the fans who passionately and self-reflexively consume Korean popular culture understand and react to the growing anti-Korean sentiment in Japan. Through in-depth interviews with 15 of these fans in their 20s and 30s, we show how they have navigated the discursive space between appreciation for Korean culture and anti-Koreanism in Japan.

Abstract licence: CC BY-NC-ND

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