In Hegemonic Mimicry, Kyung Hyun Kim considers the recent global success of Korean popular culture-the Korean wave of pop music, cinema, and television, which is also known as hallyu-from a transnational and transcultural perspective. Using the concept of mimicry to think through hallyu's adaptation of American sensibilities and genres, he shows how the commercialization of Korean popular culture has upended the familiar dynamic of major-to-minor cultural influence, enabling hallyu to become a dominant global cultural phenomenon. At the same time, its worldwide popularity has rendered its Koreanness opaque. Kim argues that Korean cultural subjectivity over the past two decades is one steeped in ethnic rather than national identity. Explaining how South Korea leaped over the linguistic and cultural walls surrounding a supposedly "minor" culture to achieve global ascendance, Kim positions K-pop, Korean cinema and television serials, and even electronics as transformative acts of reappropriation that have created a hegemonic global ethnic identity.

Preface: Writing Pop Culture in the Time of Pandemic  ix
Introduction: Of Mimicry and Miguk  1
1. Short History of K-Pop, K-Cinema, and K-Television  35
2. The Souls of Korean Folk in the Era of Hip-Hop  85
3. Dividuated Cinema: Temporality and Body in the Overwired Age  118
4. Running Man: The Korean Television Variety Program and Affect Confucianism  140
5. The Virtual Feast: Mukbang, Con-Man Comedy, and the Post-Traumatic Family in Extreme Job (2019) and Parasite (2019)  164
6. Korean Meme-icry: Samsung and K-Pop 195
7. Reading Muhan Dojon through the Madangg¿k  220
Notes  237
Bibliography  273
Index  289

Kyung Hyun Kim is Professor in East Asian Studies at the University of California, Irvine, author of Virtual Hallyu: Korean Cinema of the Global Era and The Remasculinization of Korean Cinema, and coeditor of The Korean Popular Culture Reader, all also published by Duke University Press.