4 ms·

I was in a bookshop in Germany the other day, and saw a "Neuromancer" cover with a cool stylized photograph of Seoul, South Korea, in the background. The most p

by sho_hn 5y ago

I was in a bookshop in Germany the other day, and saw a "Neuromancer" cover with a cool stylized photograph of Seoul, South Korea, in the background. The most perfect metaphor for the West's present switch-over from Japanmania to the Korean Wave. Similarly now have the modern Korean alphabet bleed into the neon signs of Cyberpunky streets of more recent movie productions where in the past you had Japanese or Chinese writing systems. The shifting representation of Asia in Western exoticism/escapism content is fascinating to observe. Edit: Photo of the cover: https://eikehein.com/stuff/neuromancer_seoul.jpg https://eikehein.com/stuff/neuromancer_seoul.jpg

throw1234651234 5y ago
"The most perfect metaphor for the West's present switch-over from Japanmania to the Korean Wave." if this is a thing, it has been largely unnoticed. I think educated people think of SK as one of the few countries competing with US tech income (others being Australia, Japan, Singapore, and some (but very few) parts of England (London Finance), Germany (not sure on this one), and Switzerland (banking )). Other than that, Korea goes mostly unnoticed by the west.
- sho_hn 5y ago
  We're talking in a pop culture context here, where even just in 2020-2022 Korea and Korean culture/heritage has had significant soft power success in a number of markets/media: - Export of majorly successful pop music (e.g. BTS, Blackpink - those hits are often penned by Western composers however, so a bit murky on what product is flowing there) - Ditto TV (e.g. Squid Game setting TV records with a lot rooted in Korean schoolyard games) - Ditto cinema (Parasite, a story about social mobility woes in Korean society, winning all the Oscars) - Ditto gaming (PUBG, other MMOs) - Ditto literature (bestellers including "Kim Jiyoung, Born 1982", again on social issues in the country) - Ditto cosmetics exports, beauty trends ("Korean Week" in malls, say), etc. - Even some Western productions focussing specifically on Korean diaspora/ethnicity (e.g. most recently the expensive "Pachinko" on Apple TV+ (and the novel it's based on), or stuff like Kim's Convenience) I think you can definitely make a case that Korea is the Asian-country-du-jour among the Western audience (and that's before you get into, say, Latin America, which is far deeper into Korean TV content, also bleeding over into Latin minorities in the USA).
  - throw1234651234 5y ago
    That's an interesting perspective. The only thing I can relate to here is Squid Game, but it went mostly unnoticed as a "trend shift" by me, because it seems to just fit the trend of Korea having pretty good movies (Chingoo, Old Boy) for the niche audience that liked things like Japan's original Battle Royale. Also, the trends of Korea seem to very much run in parallel with the trends of Japan - overworked business people tired of working all the time with a lack of meaning. Pretty informative post, thank you.
    - sho_hn 5y ago
      Thanks! I do think there's a shift there from niche audience to much more significant mainstream attention (which can of course be fleeting, which was also kind of built into the original argument: attention moves on from time to time ...). I do recall the time when movies like "Old-boy" were favorites among the arthouse track/festival circuit-going audience as well, but those were never the headlining poster in a multiplex the way that a "Parasite" now pulls off. I lived and worked in Korea for a German tech company for a few years (since returned to Berlin), working on-site with customers, and since about 2018/19 there's a very significant uptick in other people showing an interest and asking me questions about the experience. This often takes the form of "my teenage daughter is a BTS fan and learning Korean" and things like that. Korea and Japan have a lot of shared history and have deeply affected one another, and in particular the business culture and the economic structure of Korea are heavily informed by Japanese influence, yes. - On a completely separate note, re interesting depictions of fantasy-Asia in a Western popculture/punk context: The headlining novel of the biopunk subgenre, Bacigalupi's "The Windup Girl", is set in a future Bangkok. I've never been to Thailand and can't comment on how ham-fisted or not this may be, but it was also an interesting step away from the Japanese culture-dominated vibes of speculative fiction pre-2000.
      - throw1234651234 5y ago
        I will check it out, thanks again!
      - Psyladine 5y ago
- Psyladine 5y ago
  Japanophiles in the 80s were excessive. Scifi from the era has these undertones (Running Man, in 1986, has a bunch of execs being served sushi in post-apocalyptic california, by a geisha). Rising Sun in 1990 personified this fear that Japan would eclipse the US in tech, economy and culture, before they imploded with what we "now" consider an inevitable result of overheated economy. Try flying through Minnesota, Wisconsin, the automaker capital states. Airports full of now-yellowed directions in Japanese for the consideration of what was frequent visitations by their competitors. It was a no-brainer to bet on Japanese tech in next generation...even Gibson's dated "5MB of hot hitachi RAM" was far-sighted when he wrote it...just not far enough.
  - pmoriarty 5y ago
    Blade Runner (filmed in 1981) has a famous scene in a street-side noodle joint where the characters speak a mishmash of Japanese and other languages. Another famous scene features a geisha on a giant computerized billboard. Blade Runner was based on a Philip K Dick book from 1968. Neuromancer is pretty obviously influenced by these.
    - krapp 5y ago
      William Gibson actually saw Blade Runner before he finished his final draft for Neuromancer. He almost didn't publish it because he was afraid people would think he was ripping off the movie.
  - batman-farts 5y ago
    Another interesting contemporary work by a writer who’s still relevant is James Fallows’ “Looking at the Sun.” A solid attempt at sense-making the late 80s economic situation vis-a-vis Japan for the American middle management class, contrasting their institutions with ours… but China is just kind of a shadow in the background of the whole thing.
- BTCOG 5y ago
  The West (specifically in my experience, the United States) have been buying up everything tech and auto South Korean for pushing over a decade now at this point. Kia and Hyundai automobiles are now running against the Japanese cars here. Samsung and LG electronics are highly popular, as the Japanese versions were a decade or three prior. It's now more Samsung, LG, etc here in the US than it is Sony, for example. Also in agreement with a poster above how the Korean cinema is just now taking off since around 2019. Prior to the movie Parasite, I can't even think of a popular South Korean film taking root here but most have seen Parasite and quite a few were into Squid Game. This is a relatively new thing.
  - pmoriarty 5y ago
    "Also in agreement with a poster above how the Korean cinema is just now taking off since around 2019." Oldboy, which was made in 2003, was a pretty popular South Korean film... though nowhere near as popular as Parasite.

by sho_hn 5y ago

throw1234651234 5y ago

"The most perfect metaphor for the West's present switch-over from Japanmania to the Korean Wave." if this is a thing, it has been largely unnoticed. I think educated people think of SK as one of the few countries competing with US tech income (others being Australia, Japan, Singapore, and some (but very few) parts of England (London Finance), Germany (not sure on this one), and Switzerland (banking )). Other than that, Korea goes mostly unnoticed by the west.

sho_hn 5y ago
We're talking in a pop culture context here, where even just in 2020-2022 Korea and Korean culture/heritage has had significant soft power success in a number of markets/media: - Export of majorly successful pop music (e.g. BTS, Blackpink - those hits are often penned by Western composers however, so a bit murky on what product is flowing there) - Ditto TV (e.g. Squid Game setting TV records with a lot rooted in Korean schoolyard games) - Ditto cinema (Parasite, a story about social mobility woes in Korean society, winning all the Oscars) - Ditto gaming (PUBG, other MMOs) - Ditto literature (bestellers including "Kim Jiyoung, Born 1982", again on social issues in the country) - Ditto cosmetics exports, beauty trends ("Korean Week" in malls, say), etc. - Even some Western productions focussing specifically on Korean diaspora/ethnicity (e.g. most recently the expensive "Pachinko" on Apple TV+ (and the novel it's based on), or stuff like Kim's Convenience) I think you can definitely make a case that Korea is the Asian-country-du-jour among the Western audience (and that's before you get into, say, Latin America, which is far deeper into Korean TV content, also bleeding over into Latin minorities in the USA).
- throw1234651234 5y ago
  That's an interesting perspective. The only thing I can relate to here is Squid Game, but it went mostly unnoticed as a "trend shift" by me, because it seems to just fit the trend of Korea having pretty good movies (Chingoo, Old Boy) for the niche audience that liked things like Japan's original Battle Royale. Also, the trends of Korea seem to very much run in parallel with the trends of Japan - overworked business people tired of working all the time with a lack of meaning. Pretty informative post, thank you.
  - sho_hn 5y ago
    Thanks! I do think there's a shift there from niche audience to much more significant mainstream attention (which can of course be fleeting, which was also kind of built into the original argument: attention moves on from time to time ...). I do recall the time when movies like "Old-boy" were favorites among the arthouse track/festival circuit-going audience as well, but those were never the headlining poster in a multiplex the way that a "Parasite" now pulls off. I lived and worked in Korea for a German tech company for a few years (since returned to Berlin), working on-site with customers, and since about 2018/19 there's a very significant uptick in other people showing an interest and asking me questions about the experience. This often takes the form of "my teenage daughter is a BTS fan and learning Korean" and things like that. Korea and Japan have a lot of shared history and have deeply affected one another, and in particular the business culture and the economic structure of Korea are heavily informed by Japanese influence, yes. - On a completely separate note, re interesting depictions of fantasy-Asia in a Western popculture/punk context: The headlining novel of the biopunk subgenre, Bacigalupi's "The Windup Girl", is set in a future Bangkok. I've never been to Thailand and can't comment on how ham-fisted or not this may be, but it was also an interesting step away from the Japanese culture-dominated vibes of speculative fiction pre-2000.
    - throw1234651234 5y ago
      I will check it out, thanks again!
    - Psyladine 5y ago
Psyladine 5y ago
Japanophiles in the 80s were excessive. Scifi from the era has these undertones (Running Man, in 1986, has a bunch of execs being served sushi in post-apocalyptic california, by a geisha). Rising Sun in 1990 personified this fear that Japan would eclipse the US in tech, economy and culture, before they imploded with what we "now" consider an inevitable result of overheated economy. Try flying through Minnesota, Wisconsin, the automaker capital states. Airports full of now-yellowed directions in Japanese for the consideration of what was frequent visitations by their competitors. It was a no-brainer to bet on Japanese tech in next generation...even Gibson's dated "5MB of hot hitachi RAM" was far-sighted when he wrote it...just not far enough.
- pmoriarty 5y ago
  Blade Runner (filmed in 1981) has a famous scene in a street-side noodle joint where the characters speak a mishmash of Japanese and other languages. Another famous scene features a geisha on a giant computerized billboard. Blade Runner was based on a Philip K Dick book from 1968. Neuromancer is pretty obviously influenced by these.
  - krapp 5y ago
    William Gibson actually saw Blade Runner before he finished his final draft for Neuromancer. He almost didn't publish it because he was afraid people would think he was ripping off the movie.
- batman-farts 5y ago
  Another interesting contemporary work by a writer who’s still relevant is James Fallows’ “Looking at the Sun.” A solid attempt at sense-making the late 80s economic situation vis-a-vis Japan for the American middle management class, contrasting their institutions with ours… but China is just kind of a shadow in the background of the whole thing.
BTCOG 5y ago
The West (specifically in my experience, the United States) have been buying up everything tech and auto South Korean for pushing over a decade now at this point. Kia and Hyundai automobiles are now running against the Japanese cars here. Samsung and LG electronics are highly popular, as the Japanese versions were a decade or three prior. It's now more Samsung, LG, etc here in the US than it is Sony, for example. Also in agreement with a poster above how the Korean cinema is just now taking off since around 2019. Prior to the movie Parasite, I can't even think of a popular South Korean film taking root here but most have seen Parasite and quite a few were into Squid Game. This is a relatively new thing.
- pmoriarty 5y ago
  "Also in agreement with a poster above how the Korean cinema is just now taking off since around 2019." Oldboy, which was made in 2003, was a pretty popular South Korean film... though nowhere near as popular as Parasite.