Edited by Azizi Powell
This pancocojams post presents an excerpt of two online articles about South Koreans' cultural appropriation of elements of African American culture. A reprint of an abstract for a 2019 Harvard University thesis on the same topic is also included in this post.
The content of this post is presented for socio-cultural purposes.
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Thanks to all those who are quoted in this post.
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Click https://pancocojams.blogspot.com/2021/08/selected-comments-from-2019-reddit.html for the closely related pancocojams post entitled "Selected Comments From The 2019 Reddit Discussion Thread "Blackpink is also appropriating Black Culture but no one calls them out for it." "
These posts are part of an ongoing pancocojams series about "blaccent". Click the "blaccent" tag below for more pancocojams posts on this topic. **** EXCERPT #1 From https://popcrush.com/k-pop-scandals-international-blackface-racist/ 7 Times K-Pop's Cultural Appropriation Went Way Too Far Pop Crush Staff, March 6, 2018 "The K-pop industry is no stranger to cultural appropriation.
Whether it's embedded in the music itself (which is often steeped in rap and "urban" music genres) or the sartorial style—dreads, braids, hoop earrings and hip-hop posturing are popular among South Korean acts—there's no denying that the K-pop scene has seen its fair share of problematic moments and scandals. (And to be fair, so has the Western pop scene.)
But taking fashion cues from black hip-hop artists is nothing compared to the more insidious side K-pop, including some artists' insensitive, offense and downright racist behavior—from one Red Velvet member's over-the-top impersonation of a black woman to straight-up blackface.
Below, check out seven times K-pop idols went too far."...
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This article includes photographs.
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Excerpt #2
From https://i-d.vice.com/en_uk/article/mbme4v/appropriation-or-appreciation-unpacking-south-koreas-fascination-with-black-culture appropriation or appreciation? unpacking south korea's fascination with black culture
By Kati Chitrakorn, 23 August 2019
Is Seoul’s love for the hip-hop aesthetic more fetishistic than inclusive?
"…. South Korea is one of the most homogeneous countries in the world. According to World Atlas, ethnic Koreans constitute for 96 percent of the population, affording locals few opportunities to interact with other nationalities without going abroad. The country also remains fiercely nationalistic — something that can be traced back to the Japanese occupation in World War II — which has left many with certain attitudes towards those they consider “outsiders.”
“Korea hasn’t really had a multicultural multi-ethnic history up until very recently. For a long time, it’s been known as the ‘hermit kingdom,’” says Jainnie Cho, a The New York Times editor who hails from Seoul. “It’s still quite a closed-off society, even though there is now a sizeable expat community and many migrant workers from other parts of Asia.”
But despite being historically insular, South Korean society is also increasingly influenced by black American culture. Some of South Korea’s biggest pop stars have been incorporating elements of African-American culture into their look and sound.
CL, the leader of YG Entertainment’s girl group 2NE1, appeared wearing grills and gold chains in her 2013 single “Baddest Female”. In 2015, she enlisted the help of the New Zealand-based ReQuest dance crew for another solo release “Hello Bitches.” While none of the women from ReQuest who appeared in CL’s video were black, that didn’t preclude the tanned skin, cornrows and twerking. In 2016, Big Bang's Taeyang used an app to merge his face with Kanye West’s and wished his fans a "happy monkey new year." The group had previously come under fire when fellow band member G-Dragon posted a photo of himself in blackface which many believed was a reference to Trayvon Martin, whose murder was one of the events that catalysed the Black Lives Movement in 2013.
“I didn’t realise how much Koreans liked hip-hop or Black-American pop culture until I moved here,” says model Taylor M. Rivers, who moved to South Korea almost three years ago and has since walked for brands like D-Antidote, Greedilous and Charm’s at Seoul Fashion Week.
“Koreans are wearing dreadlocks or Afro-style hair, and are listening to [musicians] like Earth, Wind & Fire or Kanye West,” adds Hyun-Min.
The appropriation of black culture by young South Koreans can be partly traced back to the country’s wildly popular breakdance scene. Originally founded in the 70s, breakdance was big among black youth in New York’s Bronx. B-boys and b-girls were influenced by everything from James Brown to Brazilian capoeira and gymnastics. Breakdancing may be mostly a thing of the past in America, but it’s a different story in South Korea, where b-boys and b-girls are a big part of youth culture. In the 2007 documentary Planet B-Boy, director Benson Lee credited a visiting Korean-American hip-hop promoter named John Jay Chon with spawning the b-boy explosion in Seoul. And it’s become even more prevalent now.
[…]
Yet, there is still a disconnect between what Koreans see as paying tribute to hip-hop culture and what the rest of the world sees as as at best tacky, and at worst as cultural appropriation. Observers have taken to western forums like Quora and Korean fan sites like Allkpop to question this, starting threads such as “Why do Asians keep stealing African-American culture?” and “Why are black people facing racism in K-pop?”
South Korea has historically been a country where racism is rife: celebrities have appeared in blackface make-up on national television, while BTS’ Jiimin used the word “ kkamdoongie (깜둥이)”, a derogatory term for black people, in a YouTube video. The racial slur “ heughyeong (흑형),” meaning “black brother”, is common these days, especially for younger generations, because many Koreans feel that it has no negative connotations.
Others however believe that such behaviour is fetishistic rather than inclusive. “People stare at you, they want to take pictures with you like an animal, taxis pass you up. I have friends who have told me that people have randomly touched their skin or hair,” says Jason Waller, who goes by ‘Pinnacle the Hustler’ and works as a club owner and rapper.
Waller moved to Seoul from Cincinnati, Ohio just over a decade ago and found himself being “treated differently” because of the colour of his skin. But he also says being black in Korea has worked in his favour sometimes. “Many Koreans like black culture. I’m pretty sure I get booked as a DJ a lot because I’m black, which in their minds, adds authenticity to the atmosphere,” he laughs.
“It has been controversial,” says Laranzo Dacres. Laranzo, who goes by Ranzo, is the creator behind popular YouTube series The Black Experience, in which he documents what it’s like living as a black person in Asia (the most popular episode received 1.9 million views). While Ranzo is based in Tokyo, participants in his videos have included those living in China and South Korea. He says he’s not keen on the idea of “individuals who are not within the black community [combining] desired elements of black culture into their own style.”
“One of the main reasons for this is that elements of black culture have routinely been commodified by other groups with a complete disregard for black people,” Ranzo says. “There are those who love black culture, but not so much the black people behind the culture. I say this because in Korea, there have been instances where black people are turned away from clubs, yet the irony is that the songs of black hip-hop artists are playing inside these very places.”
In the same way that clubs playing black music don’t always allow black people in them, “There are fashion brands that emulate black styles without having a single black model in their lookbooks or runways,” Taylor says of the Korean fashion industry. “I don’t mind that people appreciate black American culture. But when people want to simply take or copy aspects of it without acknowledging the people who created it, that makes me uncomfortable.”
Ranzo notes it’s not dissimilar from the “b-style” youth subculture that took hold of Japan a decade ago, which prompted devotees to braid their hair, dress in “urban” fashion, wear coloured contact lens to lighten their eyes and routinely darken their skin at tanning salons – a departure from the traditional norms of beauty in Asia, where women are expected to have fair, porcelain-like skin, long glossy hair and large round eyes.
“People all over the world – not just Asia – may like the way we walk, talk, act, sing or dance. But when it comes to our struggles, they want nothing to do with that,” Jason says.”…
EXCERPT #3
From https://www.tucmag.net/music/does-black-culture-influence-k-pop/
Does Black Culture Influence K-Pop? by Deja Heard, January 12, 2021
K-Pop artists RAIN and JYP recently were in the hot seat on social media after many people noticed their familiar choreography they displed in their music video o Switch to Me. The dance break in the music video was very similar to Bobby Brown’s choreography in his music video for Every Little Step. When you say similar, you might as well say they studied each of Brown’s moves very closely.
Both JYP and RAIN issued an apology for the obvious similarities between the two music videos, but as they were on the hot seat, many people on social media pointed out other highly black culturally influenced things in the K-Pop industry. South Korean singer Hyolyn released a music video for her single Dally, which people on Twitter speculated that the singer stole popular R&B singer Tinashe’s whole style.
Alongside the similarities in choreography and style between many black artists and K-Pop idols, the K-Pop industry does have a huge history of cultural appropriation, with many of the stars wearing locs, braids, and other black hairstyles. Some artists even were caught in blackface before they hit the spotlight of the K-Pop industry. In 2018 Pop Crush wrote an article listing many K-Pop idols who took cultural appropriation to a new level, from wearing braids, mimicking black stereotypes, to even wearing blackface. Some of those idols on that list consisted of Yuri from the girl group Girls Generation, Gikwang of Beast, and many others.
.As the K-Pop genre continues to dominate around the world, soon many black artists, stylists, choreographers will get their rightfully earned props for helping influence the K-pop industry. As many would like to ignore the impact black culture has had in the industry, it’s important to know that a huge amount of dance moves, fashion styles, hairstyles, etc. you’ll see K-Pop artists use or wear comes from black culture."
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A REPRINT OF THESIS ABSTRACT
From https://dash.harvard.edu/handle/1/42004187
"04.18.19 - Gardner ALM Thesis.docx (8.657Mb)
Author: Gardner, Hyniea
Citation
Gardner, Hyniea. 2019. The Impact of African-American Musicianship on South Korean Popular Music: Adoption, Appropriation, Hybridization, Integration, or Other?. Master's thesis, Harvard Extension School.
Abstract
In 2016 the Korea Creative Content Agency (KOCCA) reported that the Korean music industry saw an overseas revenue of ₩5.3 trillion ($4.7 billion) in concert tickets, streaming music, compact discs (CDs), and related services and merchandise such as fan meetings and purchases of music artist apparel and accessories (Kim 2017 and Erudite Risk Business Intelligence 2017). Korean popular music (K-Pop) is a billion-dollar industry. Known for its energetic beats, synchronized choreography, and a sound that can be an amalgamation of electronica, blues, hip-hop, rock, and R&B all mixed together to create something that fans argue is “uniquely K-Pop.” However, further examination reveals that producers and songwriters – both Korean and the American and European specialists contracted by agencies – tend to base the foundation of the K-Pop sound in hip-hop and R&B, which has strong ties to African-American musical traditions.
This thesis explores the degree in which African-American music has influenced South Korean popular music; specifically, Korean R&B and hip-hop. It studies South Korean artists and their adoption, appropriation, and/or “genre incorporation” of traditionally and/or nominally identified aspects of colloquially termed and grouped “Black music” into their own musical styles. The term Black music is inclusive of sounds attributed to African-American artists as well as artists from across the African Diaspora.
As art forms, music, especially hip-hop and R&B are “‘vehicle[s] for global youth affiliation and tool[s] for reworking local identity all over the world’; and, as universally recognized popular genre[s], also draw our attention to local specificities” (Um 2013: 52). When South Korean artists incorporate musical genres with roots and traditional or universal recognition as being part of another culture’s art form, questions of the Korean artist’s authenticity within the genre may arise, as well as if these artists give proper attribution. This thesis investigates the sources of inspiration of Korean music practitioners, defined as (but not limited to) artists, writers, choreographers, producers, etc. as well as the awareness of the general public (i.e. Korean community) of the cultural roots and implications of Korean hip-hop and R&B. It explores whether the Korean music industry is building collective communities in hip-hop and R&B cultures or if these genres are primarily being commodified for financial gain.
The overall conclusion of this research is that both of the above are true: segments of the Korean music industry are building collective communities within hip-hop and R&B, while the bulk of the industry appropriates Black hip-hop and R&B culture for profit. Some artists, producers, fans, etc. do their due diligence in learning about the history of these music forms within the U.S. and aim to create music that is a fusion of Korean and African-American sounds that is respectful of Black culture while also highlighting the “Koreanness” of these genres. Such efforts exemplify the idea of cultural hybridization, understood to have “a cultural focus and emphasize cultural interplay where ‘traces of other cultures exist in every culture’ [and the idea of culture is linked to] ‘the mobilization of group identities’ allowing for a wide range of identity conceptions” (Hare and Baker 2017: 2-3).
Conversely, a vast majority continue to remain heavily dependent on what I have termed Black constructs of genres – how African-American artists have cultivated and exemplified hip-hop and R&B – which impacts the claims of originality, integration, and creation of a “local, traditional [music] culture” (Jin 2016: 130) made by Korean artists. By relying on these constructs, the effectiveness of showing the “Koreanness” of the hip-hop and R&B performed is diluted and incidents of appropriation – willful or accidental – and the exemplification of racial stereotypes of the Black community and Black culture continue. There are several avenues noted in this research that the Korean music industry can take to divorce itself of this over-dependence and to have greater agency over the style, sound, and development of its music that is culturally appreciative, respectful, and truly – “uniquely K-Pop.”….
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