Gender Roles In S-Korean Pop Music

I mentioned in a previously that I’ve been reading an interesting blog. The Grand Narrative is a blog on Korean Sociology through gender, advertising and popular culture. I came across this blog through music. A friend of mine. One of the better dj’s here in Iceland. A guy who’s both mixed better and produced some of the sweetest sounds I’ve heard in my life. Once said that "music is a universal language". There’s a lot of truth in that. So at some point some months ago. I was on YouTube looking for stuff to watch and listen to. Because YouTube isn’t just for great videos, it’s also a great source of music you can’t find anywhere else. I don’t know if you’ve noticed this. But if you register on YouTube, it will recommend stuff for you to watch. For some reason, on this particular day it recommended that I watch some South Korean music.

At that point in time I knew nothing about S-Korean music at all. My main musical taste is electronic dance music. House and techno and that sort of stuff is the soundtrack of my life and S-Korea isn’t exactly famous for producing it. As it turned out this was a promotion by one of the largest music publishers in S-Korea. A firm called SM-Entertainment which was promoting their most popular act Girls Generation. You might be familiar with the concept of girls groups. But this was taking it to a whole new level. Here they had 9 girls in a single group. The song wasn’t bad, but didn’t strike me as all that great, even if the girls where easy on the eyes and I sort of watched the video and thought to myself. “Interesting to see the girl group concept in an Asian version”. What surprised me a bit afterwards, was the fact that the song stuck in my head. If you’re interested here’s the video to the song.

This was my first introduction to the Korean music marketing machine. I have have an interest in music related things and one of the things I can appreciate is a well written pop song. There’s a formula behind it. It’s the length of the old time 7 inch single. Somewhere around 3-4 minutes long. It contains a hook that for some reason sticks in your head. This song did. So that got me interested in discovering more S-Korean pop music. Which turned out to be an adventure in discovering a thriving music industry that is apparently quite successful in Asia and starting to get more attention further afield. Something that is known as the Korean wave. From an Icelandic viewpoint. The pop stuff looked quite similar to many of the pop groups being promoted here. What I didn’t know. Until I started reading the Grand Narrative. Was that S-Korean society is quite different from ours. For one thing it’s based on the Confucian societal ideal. Which is quite different from ours. There’s also a disparity in the status of the sexes. Something we here find a bit strange. But the one similarity I found striking. There’s a strong streak in S-Korean society about keeping it homogenous. A feeling of cultural identity that apparently leads people there to respond to foreigners comments and criticism of S-Korean society by saying that they don’t understand what’s special about S-Korea. Which reminds me of our viewpoint. That Iceland is in some way unique. In my view there’s actually a very strong streak of xenophobia and racism here. A sense that seems to be shared by a large part of the Icelandic population. That evil foreigners are plotting to exploit us. Which to me seems somewhat farfetched. So with that in mind, what made S-Korean popular music interesting is that it didn’t seem that different from what I’d seen before from artist in N-America or Europe.

It wasn’t until I started reading The Grand Narrative that I realized that actually there’s quite a bit more to it. As I mentioned before the status of the genders is quite different from what we take for granted here. The rise of the Korean girls groups, of which there are now quite a few popular examples. Might actually be a reflection of a change in the gender roles within Korean society. That these gender roles would be best described as traditional might be an understatement. For example the wage disparity between men and women in S-Korea is the highest in all of the OECD countries and on average women in S-Korea only earn 60% of what men do. That there are quite strict societal norms concerning the relations between the sexes, which result in women being ill informed about family planning and women having to suffer all sorts of inequalities in the workplace. That S-Korea has one of the lowest birthrates around and that due to the emphasis on outward appearance it’s common for most of these pop group members to have undergone some sort of plastic surgery. That while some of these groups use strong sexual under (and over) tones in their visual imagery, this is not a subject that Korean males feel comfortable about discussing. The author of The Grand Narrative has speculated on what level those involved in these pop groups are actually aware of how their image is being used for marketing purposes. Because, and I find this interesting, there’s a fine line between empowerment and exploitation when it comes to pop groups. It seems like these groups may represent the vanguard of a growing female empowerment in S-Korea. But it could just as well be argued that the women who form these groups are simply being exploited. This would get far to long if I get into that discussion and The Grand Narrative does a far better analysis. So if you find this interesting I would head over there and read more.

World Cup Fever

We're in the grips of World Cup fever here right now. Which might seem a tad strange. As Iceland doesn't even have a team playing in South Africa. Not that there's a chance we'll ever field a team in the World Cup. After all we're in Europe. I've always found our participation in global sports events somewhat. Interesting.

The Icelandic Olympic motto is "It's more important to participate, than to win" - sort of tells you all you need to know about our sports capabilities. Still, we managed to win a medal in a team sport in Beijing. You might say that it was one of the few things we've had to cheer about these last couple of years. But when it comes to football. We don't have much of a chance. Not at least as far as our mens team is concerned. Our women are doing fairly well. But being in the European league it's hardly likely we'll ever see our team advance. Having seen them playing, I'm not optimistic it's going to happen in my lifetime.

Now this doesn't diminish our interest in the South African event though.
There's been massive advertising campaigns here. There are World Cup related offers. On everything from TV's to fast food. There are dedicated shows on TV which analyze every game. Down into the minute details. Live broadcasts of the games. I've even discovered how I can watch it all live online. But since we don't have a team playing. We can just pick our own favorite from all the teams that are playing. We always like it if one of our Nordic friends are playing. This year we only have the Danish team in the competition. So we certainly hope to see them advance. For me it was more a matter of picking a team at random. So I decided to go with South Korea.

Not that I really knew much about the South Korean team. It's just that I've been reading a really interesting blog about South Korea these last few weeks. The Grand Narrative. I'll write more about it and a few other blogs I've been reading these last few months later. But it seems like in this World Cup the lesser known teams are the ones that are surprising the commentators. Not that I pretend to be a football expert. But the fun thing about these big global events. Is to get into the spirit. To allow yourself to be swept up in the euphoria of the event. So I'm enjoying the event. That's the whole point isn't it?

Dusted

Today as I went to attend my nephews birthday I had to start out dusting off my car. Not because I hadn't driven it in awhile, but because we're still dealing with the after effects of our latest volcano eruption. Friday we had a taste of what some people have to live with constantly, as the dust pollution index here rose above the 50 level mark (50 being the health limit) and went over 300 for a period of time during the day (200 being the level when flights are grounded). Closer to the volcano things were even worse.

This pollution has a natural cause. Which just goes to show that "all natural" isn't a guarantee that it's good for you. As people around the world are aware we had volcano eruption here in Iceland. It shut down air traffic across Europe and stranded people all over the world. The reason was the fine ash produced by the volcano. Because it was so fine, the wind would carry it all over. Not all of it was blown out to sea. We've got tons of the stuff on the ground. When the wind blows from the east, our usually blue sky now might turn a shade of brown.

Friday was particularly bad. My friends in Hong Kong will known what I'm talking about. In March this year one of the worst dust storms in history made the air in Hong Kong turn a particularly nasty shade. Residents of Beijing are accustomed to dust storms turning the air orange. Apparently this dust reaches Korea and Japan fairly regularly. So what's happening here isn't that unusual. But for us here in Iceland. This is unusual. I've never experienced anything like it before. You could literally taste the ash. People with respiratory problems were warned to stay in doors. Dust masks sold out in the pharmacies. I kept my windows closed. Now we just need a good rain to keep this out of the air.