Backdoor advertising scandals, Yingyeo culture, and cancel culture among YouTube Influencers in South Korea

2021 ◽  
pp. 146144482110618
Author(s):  
Jin Lee ◽  
Crystal Abidin
Keyword(s):  
South Korea ◽  
East Asia ◽  
Digital Ethnography

In tandem with the increasing role of Influencers in culture and commerce, Influencers’ advertorial disclosures have become controversial in many countries, including South Korea. In August 2020, under the accusations by tabloids and other YouTubers, several famous Influencers were embroiled in the “backdoor advertising scandal,” wherein Influencers deftly advertise products in exchange for a significant amount of money from sponsoring companies, without any notice to followers. This article focuses on two (in)famous Influencers in the scandal: fashion stylist Han Haeyoun and mukbang-YouTuber tzuyang. By situating reactions around the scandal within broader Influencer ecologies and Korean cultures, we map out tensions between various actors, and the subsequent embroilments with online hate, call-out cultures, and misogyny. Drawing on a longitudinal digital ethnography on Influencer cultures and industry in East Asia, we highlight how the myth of “hitting the jackpot” in Korea compels people to follow, worship, and debunk Influencers within networked cultures.

scholarly journals The Steel and Shipbuilding Industries of South Korea: Rising East Asia and Globalization

2009 ◽  
pp. 167-192 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kyoung-ho Shin ◽  
Paul S. Ciccantell
Keyword(s):  
South Korea ◽  
East Asia ◽  
Raw Materials ◽  
Theoretical Models ◽  
Light Industry ◽  
Industrial Sectors ◽  
Capitalist World Economy ◽  
Rapid Ascent ◽  
World Systems Analysis

In this paper, we focus on the roles of the steel and shipbuilding industries as generative sectors in Korea’s rapid economic ascent. We argue that a world-systems analysis focusing on these generative sectors provides a more complete understanding of Korea’s rapid economic ascent than do other theoretical models. We outline the similarities between this case and those analyzed by Bunker and Ciccantell (2005, 2007) both in terms of the central role of generative sectors in raw materials and transport industries and how the creation and growth of these two industrial sectors shaped institutional patterns and the broader economic ascent of South Korea and East Asia. Even though South Korea has not and may never become a challenger for global hegemony, its rapid ascent has helped reshape East Asia and the capitalist world-economy. We use the model of generative sectors to analyze the critical industries that underlay and shaped South Korea’s ascent from a low wage, light industry base to a world leader in electronics, automobiles, and other advanced industries.

Contemporary Concerns and Challenges in East Asia: A View from India

China Report ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 57 (3) ◽  
pp. 346-363
Author(s):  
Sandip Kumar Mishra ◽  
G. Balatchandirane ◽  
Rityusha Mani Tiwary
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
South Korea ◽  
East Asia ◽  
Japanese Imperialism ◽  
The Past ◽  
Full Picture ◽  
Regional Order ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
Second Category

East Asia, historically a vibrant region, has been witnessing momentous changes in contemporary times. In the past, it has witnessed a Sinocentric regional order, the era of Japanese imperialism, the Cold War divide and the persistence of the Cold War. The region is also important because in the contests for the Indo-Pacific, the roles of China, Japan and South Korea will have a large bearing. This article deals with China, Japan and South Korea as the main actors in the region, which have their concerns and challenges in this dynamic region. Most of the time, these countries are so engrossed in their own challenges and concerns that they cannot comprehend the collective regional scenario. Looking at the region from India, a distanced but connected country, it is possible to list their particular concerns and challenges and classify them to comprehend the full picture. This article classifies their concerns and challenges into three broad categories: common, different but reconcilable and different and irreconcilable. The classification is heuristic and subjective, but it is being used to recommend that the countries of the region must try to transform and move their concerns and challenges from the third category to the second category. Furthermore, the article also delves into the place and role of India in the region, along with a few tentative recommendations for India to play a more constructive role in reaching out to these countries bilaterally and collectively. In the process, the article argues that India needs to have a coordinated regional policy.

scholarly journals The Role of Historians in the History Problem

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hiro Saito
Keyword(s):  
South Korea ◽  
East Asia ◽  
History Education ◽  
Historical Research ◽  
Education Systems ◽  
Historical Materials ◽  
Education Projects ◽  
Research And Education ◽  
Critical Reflections

Historians’ critical reflections are indispensable for reassessing the Tokyo Trial and resolving the history problem. Recently, these critical reflections have multiplied in East Asia through joint historical research and education projects. Nevertheless, historians have been unable to effectively intervene in the history problem because no adequate mechanisms are institutionalized through which their criticism of nationalism can move official and public commemorations in a more cosmopolitan direction. This situation is largely engineered by the governments of Japan, South Korea, and China that control history education through curricular guidelines and textbook inspection. The governments also maintain the education systems that force students to memorize “historical facts” for examinations instead of cultivating skills to critically evaluate historical materials and interpretations – the very skills necessary for resolving the history problem. Thus, the cosmopolitan potential of historians, to help citizens to critically reflect on their nationalist commemorations, has not been fully realized.

Diagnosing and Debunking Korean Pseudohistory

2019 ◽  
pp. 37-80
Author(s):  
Andrew Logie
Keyword(s):  
South Korea ◽  
East Asia ◽  
20Th Century ◽  
Inner Mongolia ◽  
Political Influence ◽  
The Core ◽  
Early State

In current day South Korea pseudohistory pertaining to early Korea and northern East Asia has reached epidemic proportions. Its advocates argue the early state of Chosŏn to have been an expansive empire centered on mainland geographical Manchuria. Through rationalizing interpretations of the traditional Hwan’ung- Tan’gun myth, they project back the supposed antiquity and pristine nature of this charter empire to the archaeological Hongshan Culture of the Neolithic straddling Inner Mongolia and Liaoning provinces of China. Despite these blatant spatial and temporal exaggerations, all but specialists of early Korea typically remain hesitant to explicitly label this conceptualization as “pseudohistory.” This is because advocates of ancient empire cast themselves as rationalist scholars and claim to have evidential arguments drawn from multiple textual sources and archaeology. They further wield an emotive polemic defaming the domestic academic establishment as being composed of national traitors bent only on maintaining a “colonial view of history.” The canon of counterevidence relied on by empire advocates is the accumulated product of 20th century revisionist and pseudo historiography, but to willing believers and non-experts, it can easily appear convincing and overwhelming. Combined with a postcolonial nationalist framing and situated against the ongoing historiography dispute with China, their conceptualization of a grand antiquity has gained bipartisan political influence with concrete ramifications for professional scholarship. This paper seeks to introduce and debunk the core, seemingly evidential, canon of arguments put forward by purveyors of Korean pseudohistory and to expose their polemics, situating the phenomenon in a broader diagnostic context of global pseudohistory and archaeology.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document