Mock Koreaboo: Appropriating Appropriation

Abstract

In the last decade, Korean pop music (K-pop) has garnered a large and passionate fanbase on the internet. One of the most notorious types of fan is the “Koreaboo”, a pejorative term used for global fans perceived as wishing they could be Korean themselves and seen as being far too invested into K-pop itself at the expense of the rest of Korean culture. This paper examines the use of Korean by fans deemed Koreaboos and the way other K-pop fans use language to criticize the Koreaboo archetype. Specifically, this paper investigates a form of speech which I am terming “mock Koreaboo”, a mock language variety (Hill 1995) created by K-pop fans for the purpose of condemning the behaviors of the Koreaboo and positioning themselves as above them. This study is concerned with the following question: why do K-pop fans use mock Koreaboo? To investigate this question, I analyze social media posts using mock Koreaboo along with discussions of the Koreaboo in general. I argue that through the use of elitist stances (Jaworski & Thurlow, 2009), K-pop fans index their disapproval of Koreaboos and their perceived fetishization of Korean culture, creating a separate indexical order (Silverstein 2003) through which to interpret Koreaboo speech. In the process, K-pop fans signal their status as global, cosmopolitan citizens while positioning Korean culture as needing to be defended from those appropriating it.