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K-POP IDOLS: Popular Culture and the Emergence of the Korean Music Industry. By Dal YongJin and Hark Joon Lee. Lanham; Boulder; New York; London: Lexington Books, 2019. x, 205 pp. (B&Wphotos) US$90.00, cloth. ISBN 978-1-4985-8825-6.
This book offers the reader two parts, with the first presenting a theoretical view of the K-pop system, and the second consisting of a journalist's "participant observation" (6) of the K-pop girl group Nine Muses between March 2010 and February 2011. Though this original structure, the author suggests the major characteristics of the book are a combination of "theory with industry and musical aesthetics" (8).
Chapter 1 presents an introductory overview of the book, and chapter 2 discusses the role of entertainment agencies in the K-pop industry, a significant factor in the global success of K-pop. The entertainment agencies have focused on two major areas, production and cultural hybridization, to fulfill the globalization and/or transnationalization of K-pop (31). The entertainment agencies have utilized the in-house "overall structural and systematic star-making system" (4) to train idol trainees in singing, dancing, foreign languages, manners, etc., all with the aim of producing idol groups that can perform for and attract not only domestic but also international audiences. Although there are some human rights issues, such as coercion by the agencies and unfair contracts between the agencies and trainees in the in-house system, the author insists that agencies have played a crucial role in making K-pop a global success (23). The agencies have worked with global musicians to...