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7 - K-Pop Idols

Media Commodities, Affective Laborers, and Cultural Capitalists

from Part IV - The Making of Idols

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 March 2023

Suk-Young Kim
Affiliation:
University of California, Los Angeles
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Summary

K-pop agencies, or “entertainment companies,” are often described as “idol factories” or “boot camps” in which teenagers are selected to become K-pop idols, trained to acquire a set of skills and manners, evaluated regularly, and forced to conform regarding their looks, behavior, and relationships. The companies must acquire management skills for unexpected situations, such as idols’ dating scandals. In this chapter, the K-pop industry is seen not as a standardized culture built upon a Fordist business model of mass production but as a critical site where diverse social relations are created, negotiated, and contested. The industry sees the idol body as a profitable media text that is manageable, predictable, and available to any general audience. Nonetheless, the idol retains some degree of human agency. In an industry in which an idol body with agency become a volatile product through mediated presentations and representations, how do the companies produce idols at the most complete level? How do the idols cope with their multiple roles and the expectations placed upon them as producers, laborers, and commodities of intimacy? This chapter investigates the methods by which entertainment companies produce idols as incomplete commodities and intimate laborers through surveillance and regulation.

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Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2023

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  • K-Pop Idols
  • Edited by Suk-Young Kim, University of California, Los Angeles
  • Book: The Cambridge Companion to K-Pop
  • Online publication: 02 March 2023
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108938075.012
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  • K-Pop Idols
  • Edited by Suk-Young Kim, University of California, Los Angeles
  • Book: The Cambridge Companion to K-Pop
  • Online publication: 02 March 2023
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108938075.012
Available formats
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Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

  • K-Pop Idols
  • Edited by Suk-Young Kim, University of California, Los Angeles
  • Book: The Cambridge Companion to K-Pop
  • Online publication: 02 March 2023
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108938075.012
Available formats
×