KOREA FOUNDATION

1. Please briefly introduce yourself.

I am an associate dance professor at San Diego State University (SDSU) in California. I earned a Ph.D. in performance studies at the University of Texas-Austin, where I was a Fulbright scholar. While working on my doctorate, Professor Youjeong Oh, who was supported at the time by the KF, offered me a lot of guidance as a member of my thesis jury. After graduation, I taught at Hamilton College in New York as a visiting assistant professor. This year, I became the first Korean in North America to get a tenured professor position in dance theory thanks to an offer from SDSU.

2. Your book, K-pop Dance: Fandoming Yourself on Social Media, was published this July in the US and topped Amazon’s New Books rankings in the popular dance and communications category shortly afterwards. How would you describe the response to your book?

The book has had a great response from academic circles inside and outside Korea as well as Hallyu-related fandoms. For about a month after its publication, I received requests for copies from CNN and NPR. I was interviewed by the K-pop content production team of Paramount+ and sat for interviews with Korean media outlets, including SBS, Arirang TV, Kukmin Ilbo, The JoongAng Ilbo, The Korea Herald, Money Today, and Financial News. I am now negotiating translation rights for it with publishers in Japan and China.

3. How did you become interested in K-pop dance? Was there something that drove you to write the book?

As seen in dance rituals in cave paintings from the Stone Age, dance has always been an integral part of human history. K-pop dance is one of many genres that was naturally produced by the development of human culture and history. Historically, popular and “purely artistic” dances, like ballet, contemporary, and Korean classical dance performed on stage, have evolved alongside one another without clear distinction, thereby having an unforced, natural influence on each other. Dance is human bodily movement; individuals belonging to diverse communities in their societies give and take influences, the experiences of which are reflected in artistic creations. While studying in North America, I realized more keenly that K-pop dance is a popular dance that represents 21st-century Korea. Ultimately, this encouraged me to choose it as an academic subject by applying the North American theory of popular dance to the purely artistic dance theory that I studied.

4. Your book argues that K-pop dance forms a genre of contemporary dance. How so?

From the perspective of educational direction and style, K-pop dance can be called a popular dance as well as a modern or contemporary dance. “Modern dance” can refer to a historical genre from a specific time as well as the artistic tendency of pursuing freedom and an experimental spirit. Contemporary dance refers to dance that evolves with the present times and is created by people in the current era. The definition and scope of modern and contemporary dance continue to develop and expand globally. It’s not difficult to find the influence of popular dances, like hip-hop, in artistic dance performances or vice versa: traces of classical music and artistic dances in popular musicals. K-pop is a genre born in Korea and the offspring of the efforts of many artists, dancers, choreographers, and performer trainees around the world who have studied diverse genres of contemporary dance, including modern. I would like to stress that K-pop often demonstrates the experimental spirit of modern dance. In the case of BTS, as I mentioned in my book, a European modern dance group took part in one of its performances. Many of the Korean and foreign choreographers and dancers involved in K-pop choreography have studied both popular and modern dance.

5. How has K-pop dance evolved?

K-pop dance evolved from 1980 through 2020 in various ways. To put it simply, the synchronized style of choreography for dancers at broadcast stations in the 1980s resulted in a division between group dance and solo dancers. The 2000s saw the emergence of “model” physical characteristics and perfectly-synchronized group dances. The 2020s have seen choreographic styles begin to highlight the dancers’ upper bodies, faces, and individual charms in a way that meets the demands of social media.

6. What is it that is so special about K-pop dance fandom?

Dance fandom has always been part of the history of performing arts. Unlike objects on display at museums, dance thrives only when people perform it. K-pop dance is special in that, as a major force of the social media era, it has a transnational influence that also goes beyond racial, gender, and regional boundaries. K-pop dance also invites attention to the potential for political activism. It’s something everyone wants to copy and can do—a quality that is an effective driving force for its fans.

7. What are your plans for K-pop dance research?

As the researcher who established K-pop dance studies by publishing the first book on it in North America, I want to do detailed follow-up research on the characteristics of choreographers and artists. I plan to interview many more K-pop dancers and document and theoretically establish their stories and experiences. As an educator, I want to make K-pop dance a universal academic subject. A long time has passed since hip-hop entered the college curriculum and discourse of cultural, historical, and artistic theories. K-pop dance has a lot of potential as a popular dance representing a racial minority in North America. My liberal arts class started with 18 students in 2018; with the addition of K-pop and various other dances, it now has over 300. This winter, I will be giving a book talk on K-pop dance to students at New York University at the invitation of a performance studies professor. Next year, I will teach a K-pop dance class at CSU Summer Arts for the first time in the history of California State University’s international program. For this unprecedented class, I will be inviting K-pop dancers and choreographers as guest artists through K-pop agencies and entertainment companies that are based in Los Angeles and Seoul. Next fall, SDSU will become the first North American university to launch a three-credit K-pop dance class on liberal arts and dance theory for majors.