Myoung-Sun Song, Assistant Professor in the Department of American Culture at Sogang University will give a job talk titled, "Hanguk Hip Hop: Global Rap in South Korea," on Friday, Dec. 13th, at 12 p.m., in Lucy Ellis Lounge - 1080 Foreign Languages Building.
Abstract: This presentation explores the meaning of hip hop in South Korea by outlining the local, global, and (trans)national flows of musical and cultural exchanges. How did Hanguk hip hop—Korean hip hop—develop over the last two decades as a musical, cultural, and artistic entity? How is hip hop understood within the historical, sociocultural, and economic matrices of Korean society? How is hip hop represented in Korean media and popular culture? Ethnographic methods including fieldwork research and life timeline interviews with fifty three influential hip hop artists are utilized to answer these questions. In this research, Korean hip hop is examined through the notion of buran—personal, as well as, societal anxiety or uncertainty—and how it manifests in the dimensions of space and place, economy, cultural production, and gender. Ultimately, I argue that buran serves as a metaphoric state of Hanguk hip hop in that it is continuously evolving within the conditions of contemporary Korean society.
Dr. Song is the 3rd of three candidates for the Assistant Professor in Modern Korean Culture and Society position within the Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures.
