news: I might be interviewed by KBS for a program about foreigners who are interested in Korea (honest that's all I know!). But I dunno if it is TV or Radio. If it is TV, I need a makeover. Please help!

Here is my online version of my Master's thesis on Seo Taiji and Masculinities. The paper version should be available through university libraries in pdf format. I officially graduate from York University (Toronto) in October, 2006.

My thesis is set in South Korea from 1992 to the present. 1990s South Korea, especially urban South Korea, was a time of radical social and cultural transformation particularly for pre-teens, teens and university-aged students. This period, post-authoritarian South Korea, saw the first democratically elected civilian presidency (Kim Young Sam) in 1993 after decades of military dictatorship, and substantial political and social reforms brought about mostly during the Kim Dae Jung presidency (1998-2002). Although the 1990s did not bring as many social and political reforms that many South Koreans had hoped for and many social chances were turned back by the IMF (International Monetary Crisis) crisis of 1997-2001, it was an especially exciting and fun time for young people. This was mainly due to rapidly increased consumerism and a new popular culture industry for youth. The 1990s brought the first full-scale youth culture and marked generational changes to South Korean society. Although these changes are often over-stated, erasing variety among youth especially class and urban versus rural differences, shifting social attitudes and behaviours and cultural tastes were so noticeable this generation was quickly labeled the “New Generation” (shinsedae): “Newspapers are filled with stories about the New Generation—those born after 1970—whose values and customs seem alien and irresponsible to their elders. These youth who cut holes in new jeans, prefer pizza to rice, and don’t believe the old are necessarily wise” (Kim B., in Morelli, 2001:250); a generation who “defend their “newness” actively…are different from their parent generation who work feverishly, restrain their opinions rather than express, and who are constrained by Confucian ethics” (Joo E-w, 1994 in Lee K-h, 2002:48). These young people were either teens or in their early twenties when the subject of this thesis, Seo Taiji burst onto the scene in 1992.

At the centre of this new youth culture and generational conflict was the pop star Seo Taiji (Sô T’ae-ji) and his group Seo Taiji and Boys (Sô T’ae-ji-wa Aidûl). Taiji is often labeled the hero or president of this new youth culture (munhwa taet’ongnyông), commanded unprecedented media attention throughout the 1990s and is considered by many as the most important and influential figure for popular culture in contemporary in South Korea. In the 2000s, Seo Taiji’s activities have remained important to massive numbers of young Koreans, including many born in the 1980s, younger than shinsedae, and are still treated as major cultural events. For those unfamiliar with Seo Taiji, a fact sheet on Taiji follows this introduction.

Aim
My aim has been to focus in on themes, patterns and conceptions of masculinity in South Korea as represented by cultural products and discussion among young Koreans. Specifically my aim has been to examine how South Korean popular culture, namely Taiji’s songs and performances, deal with “being a man” using non-verbal modes of signification (primarily aspects of music but also dance and so on). Additionally, in evaluating young Koreans’ sense of Taiji, popular music and “being a man”, I have aimed to trace patterns of gender, with special attention to those of masculinity.

Audience and significance
In writing this thesis, I have borne two primary audiences in mind. Considering these audiences can help us to reflect on the significance of my aims of studying the South Korean popular music superstar Seo Taiji in terms of masculinities.[1]

One audience comprises cultural anthropologists, popular music or media scholars and ethnomusicologists with an interest in interrelationships between cultural products (music, film and so on) and gender as well as the discourses surrounding them, specifically in an Asian context. Examining Seo Taiji in terms of masculinities gives this audience a view into changes and contingencies of South Korean gender formations based on the music of one of the biggest local superstars in Asia. Seo Taiji’s music and performances as well its reception, facilitate understanding gender complexity and contradictions which have impacted the culture of younger South Koreans, since Taiji’s début in 1992. Specifically, the Taiji phenomenon allows us to gauge perceptions of young Korean masculinity, as it hovers precariously between parent culture and future possibilities.

My second audience consists of fans of Seo Taiji and Korean adults with an interest in the Taiji phenomenon and the cultural transformations brought about through youth culture in 1990s South Korea. By examining Taiji in terms of masculinities, I offer this audience a chance to re-examine the role of Taiji’s music and performance within the social and cultural transformations of 1990s South Korea. This approach offers an alternative to the usual lens of “youth” and “youth culture” which has previously been used to examine Taiji in both the Korean and English literature (Howard, 2002; Kim, 1999; Lee K-h., 2002; Morelli, 2001; Shin S-c., 1998; Yi, 1999; Young, 1999).

Scope and subject matter
My thesis explores the patterns of masculinity (namsôngsông or namjadaum) in Seo Taiji’s music and performance, in particular songs, live performances and music videos as well as fans’ communications about him, his music and performance and issues of gender.

A total of thirteen fans participated in my research but the opinions and narratives of only nine made it into my thesis, four participants dropping out along the way. My informants included South Koreans studying in or near Toronto as international or ESL students as well as two studying in Seoul. The nine range between 19 to 32 years of age, three under 25, three in their mid-upper 20s and three in their early 30s, with one female and two males fitting into each age range. In total, approximately 42 hours of interviews were conducted between December 2004 and August 2005, excluding brief casual conversations I had with Korean acquaintances and friends on my thesis topic.

In the thesis, I examine Taiji’s output in terms of not only the vocal style and timbre of his songs, but also with reference to other performance parameters such as dance, video/filming techniques and instrumentation. I have chosen songs and performances dating from the early to mid 1990s, consisting of three slow soft-pop songs and three performances of one of Taiji’s biggest hits, “Hayôga”, which is a mixture of rap, dance and rock; a music video and two live televised performances. I chose examples from the early to mid 1990s because Taiji most strongly affected South Korean society and was most visible during these years. This period was also a turning point in South Korean popular culture, in which Taiji played a major role. Combined with new youth and consumer cultures, these years confronted gender issues, with normative sexuality and gender norms seriously confronted by those in a sexuality politics movement and by young feminists/post feminists (Seo, 2001, 1996; Song, 2003; Lee S-h, 2002). I chose soft, slow songs to highlight Taiji’s androgynous voice. Also, I chose these songs because writers often focus on Taiji’s more shocking, noisy songs while neglecting his popular soft, sweet ballad influenced songs. I chose “Hayôga” and its performances because of its inventive features, exciting energy of dance and memorable music video, which communicated the newness and energy of shinsedae. Songs such as “Classroom idea” and “Comeback Home” are often the focus of studies on Taiji because of their lyrics’ social commentary [e.g. Baek S-k, 1996; Shin S-c, 1998; Morelli, 2001; Kim H.S., 1999). I hope to fill a gap in the scholarship on Seo Taiji by examining in detail songs that are not lyrically particularly exciting and as such are overlooked or dealt with only briefly in existing scholarship (e.g. Howard, 2002 & 2003).

The scope of my thesis also includes patterns of masculinity represented in other types of South Korean cultural products, notably film, and in Korean discourses on gender, collected and discussed by social and cultural anthropologists in recent years.

My conceptualization of gender, and masculinity, comes primarily from the field of study Critical Studies of Men. This approach to studying gender and men grew out of feminist address of men’s responsibility in challenging patriarchy (e.g. Snodgrass, 1977), queer scholarship (e.g. Plummer, 1981), as well as empirical studies of masculinity (e.g. Herdt, 1981) of the late 1970s and early 1980s, which stood out against feminist conceptualizations of gender that tended to promote binary conceptions of gender and a simplistic view of the “male sex role” (Connell & Messerschmidt, 2005). Critical studies of men has also been influenced by feminist writing by women of colour (e.g. Davis, 1983; hooks, 1984) who drew attention to the biases inherent in focusing on power issues simply in terms of “men” versus “women” (Connell & Messerschmidt, 2005). For my uses and many others doing masculinity studies, gender is about the social relations that people act within, but it is different from other social relations because of its relationship with bodies (Connell, 2003). Gender does not simply describe differences in bodies, although in some instances it does. The social practices of gender

…often do more than that, or less than that, or something else completely. In relation to the distinction of male from female bodies, social practices sometimes exaggerate (e.g. maternity clothes), sometimes deny (many employment practices), sometimes mythologize (computer games), sometimes complicate (‘third gender’ customs). So we cannot say that social arrangements routinely ‘express’ biological differences (Connell, 2003:10).

Gender then, is something people and society use to make sense of differences in bodies, especially reproductive differences, and is what people (collectively and individually) do to bring reproductive differences between bodies into the social and cultural domain (Connell, 2003). Gender is not something that people have, but more something that people do. This way of thinking about gender allows us to acknowledge that individuals have some choice over what gender practices they use. It allows us to focus on diversity of genders (rather than simply focusing on two “types”)—diversity among and within individuals. It also allows us to acknowledge that gender patterns are changeable, over time and over situations and locations, but that they can also be, and often are, rigidly maintained. Such a way of conceptualizing gender shares some similarities with queer theorist Judith Butler’s conception in Gender Trouble (1990). For instanced Butler emphasized that gender “should be seen as a fluid variable which shifts and changes in different contexts and at different times” (Gauntlett, 1998) and that people can, and should, do (‘play’ or ‘perform’) various genders (Butler, 1990). Butler argued that if people promoted and enacted a multiplicity of genders, then hegemonic hetero-normative gender practices and normative/suppressive conceptions of gender and sexuality could be weakened (Butler, 1990). This positive idea has influenced why I have bothered to examine Korean popular music in terms of masculine diversity—there can be optimism in pointing out the complexities and confusion of masculinity in South Korean contemporary culture.

Masculinity, for my uses, refers to arrangements of social practice that dictate what it means to be a ‘man’ and how to be a ‘man’. As arrangements of practices, as opposed to static types, multiple masculinities can take shape according to the gendered environment where they are enacted (Petersen, 2003; Connell & Messerschmidt, 2005). In other words, a masculinity is understandable in relation to other masculinities (or femininities or other gender configurations) that circulate in a given time period, locale and situation. Critical studies of men have been especially successful in illustrating how masculinities, in an extraordinary number of societies and historical periods, are organized hierarchically (Connell & Messerschmidt, 2005). Furthermore, it has illustrated that individuals often strategically take up different gender patterns—some powerful and taken-for-granted, some oppositional and so on—depending on the situation that they find themselves in or in certain periods in their life (e.g. Wetherell & Edley (1999) on a wide spectrum of England men, and Taga (2003) on young urban Japanese men). As such, I have approached my analysis of masculinity in Taiji’s music and performances and my consideration of fans’ communications with sensitivity to multiple patterns of masculinity, and to the status of such patterns in relation to others in contemporary South Korean society.

My focus is specifically on masculinities of young Korean men. Although most studies of masculinities tend to still focus on men, of course examining the relationships between women and masculinities would be beneficial to understand ways of being a young Korean female. In Korean studies for instance, Kwon (2000) outlines the close relationships between highly masculinized Korean militarism and formations of Korean femininity and female culture in contemporary South Korean society. Additionally, Halberstam (1998) thoroughly addresses females enacting masculinities and in the South Korean context, Abelmann (2003) addresses this to some degree as well. My reason for focusing on young men and masculinities is primarily personal as well as practical. Practically, as a Master’s thesis, examining the masculinities of both young Korean men and women would have developed into far too long a manuscript. Personally, as the girlfriend/fiancé to a young South Korean man, I have gained invaluable incite into how masculinity plays out day-to-day in the lives of young Korean men. Having dated this young Korean for four years, lived together for an extended period—for a time with his brother living with us as well—and regularly interacting with his primarily male Korean friends and brother, my understanding of ways of being a young Korean man far exceeds that of young Korean females. Although I am knowledgeable of the latter, my high interest and knowledge of the intricacies of being a young Korean man is something that is required for my happiness and success in a serious, intercultural relationship. The scope of my thesis reflects this personal need.

Analytic Methods: Discourse Analysis
My primary method of analysis for both Taiji’s music and performance and fan communications is derived from discourse analysis, that is, a consideration of fans’ talk and Taiji’s music and performance as communicative practices that work to create and maintain meanings in society. In other words, I believe that Taiji’s music, performance and fans’ talk contribute to gender patterns and to gender changes or transformations, as is the case in contemporary South Korea. This means that I work from an idea that the music, performance and talk participate in socially constructing reality, rather than simply telling about reality (Bradby, 2003). Taiji’s music, performance and fans’ talk are part of a reflexive process where they display existing gender conventions but also change them. I came to discourse analysis through Korean Studies, and therefore am more familiar with analysis of South Korean subject matters than with the work of the ‘inventors’ of discourse analysis, Bakhtin or Foucault, for instance. The work of Korean Studies discourse analysis which I have paid most attention to is that of social anthropologist Nancy Abelmann’s work on the talk of middle aged-women in 1990s Seoul, The Melodrama of mobility: women, talk, and class in contemporary South Korea (2003). Although much South Korean cultural studies research throughout the 1990s and 2000s has been plagued by uncritical appropriation of Western theories and research questions and has paid little attention to local details and realities (Kang, 2004; Lee K-h., 2002), the application of discourse analysis to Korean studies has fared better. Writers such as Abelmann (2003) and Song (forthcoming) have been able to borrow from Foucault or Bakhtin while constructing questions based on details of contemporary South Korean reality. For example, Abelmann (2003) borrows Bakhtin’s insistence that everyday has its own language, where a word “tastes of the context and contexts in which it has lived its socially charged life” (Bakhtin, 1981:293), where the social values, meanings and conflicts of a certain time are wrapped up in its words. Following Bakhtin’s call to trace the socio-ideological process at work in language, she isolates key words in the talk of her informants and traces their usage to illustrate how these words are not only strongly gendered and classed, but reveal striking conflicts and ambivalences over how one should be a woman in 1990s South Korea. Song has drawn upon Foucault, among others, in developing her approach to discourse analysis. Specifically in her forthcoming paper “"Family Breakdown" and invisible homeless women: neo-liberal governance during the Asian Debt Crisis in South Korea 1997-2001”, she analyses “Family Breakdown” to illustrate Foucault’s idea of liberal governance and how power works through various agents and operates intimately. In-so-doing, she argues South Korean neo-liberalism is a “social ethos of economic-moral value” prevailing in the talk and activities of those in various segments of government and civilian society (Song, forthcoming:21). With its focus on micro-analysis, discourse analysis has been helpful in focusing critical Korean Studies on specifics of South Korean culture/society, rather than producing abstract and generalized studies heavily influenced by Western theory and often indistinguishable from studies of Western societies (Kang, 2004:254).

Examining the talk of fans and their responses to listening to Taiji songs with me, I focused on what conceptions of gender emerged from their communication. I looked for patterns in fans’ talk that displayed common ways of ‘knowing’ gender and of ‘knowing’ popular music and Taiji. In the case of three fans, I specifically focused on how they spoke with special attention to how and when they spoke emotionally, in order to track the emotional meaningfulness of Taiji as well as of gender patterns and issues.

Attempting discourse analysis of songs and performances was more difficult. This is primarily because there is still debate over whether music itself can be analyzed as a discourse and few scholars have tackled it as such (Bradby, 2003). A major roadblock facing those wishing to unravel music as a discursive site is the post-structuralist ambivalence about addressing whether music alone is capable of carrying social meanings without words (Shepherd, 2003). Although poststructuralist thinkers, most notably Barthes and Kristeva, place considerable weight on the importance of music’s sound in forming our understandings of our social worlds, they believe music to be “…‘prior’ to language and social awareness” and removed from ideological processes (Shepherd, 2003:115). Because of this belief, many scholars think of music as “…‘pure’ and ‘innocent’ when compared to the ‘ideological loading’ accompanying other form of symbolism” (Shepherd, 2003:115). In short, poststructuralists have fallen into the same trap as most structuralists in simply assuming linguistic meaning’s superiority over all other symbolic forms (Shepherd, 2003). Similarly in linguistics, research on speech intonation (the different pitches and inflections used in talking) has assumed intonation to be only an “…affective colouring of the word-based sense of language”, although this assumption has begun to be challenged in recent years (Daley, 1997:74). Ethnographic work in non-Western cultures done by ethnomusicologists such as Steven Feld (1990[1982]) and Anthony Seeger (1987) as well as anthropologists focusing on body-movement such as Brenda Farnell (1995), Alessandro Duranti (1992) and Adam Kendon (1980, 1983), has revealed that this linguistic superiority and divide between linguistic meaning and other symbolic forms, such as sounds or movement, is Euro-centric and simply not assumed in many of the world’s cultures (Farnell and Graham, 1998). Popular music scholars have perhaps shied away from attempting discourse analysis of the sound of music because of this Euro-centric assumption about linguistic superiority, and tend to focus on lyrical meanings or do not attempt analyzing meaning and discourse at all but instead focus on content analysis or the formal structures of the music. Even Middleton (1990) who emphasizes the importance of decoding meanings in popular music sound, has assumed a division between linguistic and paralinguistic sounds and the superiority of linguistic meanings. Bradby in her survey article on popular music and discourse analysis isolates only four scholars, Walser (1993), Brackett (1992) and Shepherd and Wicke (1997), who have attempted discourse analysis while seriously examining musical sound in popular music (Bradby, 2003).

Despite this lack of theory and suitable models, I have chosen to investigate how musical sound in South Korean popular music and performances can be ideologically meaningful and if it can indeed signify masculinities. I paid most attention to vocal sound and vocal styles, as well as the interrelationships between these and other parameters such as instrumentation, dance and video filming techniques.

Key concept: Hegemonic masculinity
I have used the concept hegemonic masculinity to facilitate my analysis of both fans’ communications and Taiji songs and performances. Hegemonic masculinity is a concept formed by R.W. Connell in the early 1980s and marked the beginning of critical studies of men. It has been used widely since the 1990s in disciplines such as communications, social anthropology and social psychology, among others (Hearn, 2004; Hanke, 1998). According to Connell, hegemonic masculinity refers to “…the configuration of gender practice which embodies the currently accepted answer to the problem of legitimacy of patriarchy, which guarantees (or is taken to guarantee) the dominant position of men and the subordination of women” (1995:77). This concept then refers to the practices of masculinity that hold the most power in retaining gender hierarchies, and patriarchy more generally. A definition put forth by Robert Hanke highlights the automatic acceptance of hegemonic masculinity: the “social ascendancy of a particular version or model of masculinity that, operating on the terrain of ‘common sense’ and conventional morality, defines ‘what it means to be a man’” (Hanke, 1990 in 1998:185). As the term implies, it is a mistake to assume that all, or even most, men’s actions, beliefs, and ways of living fall within the superior power position. Differing masculinities do not operate as discrete entities, but are part of a hierarchy of masculinities that “…is itself a source of violence, since force is used in defining and maintaining the hierarchy” (Connell, 2000: 217). In western cultures, as well as in other parts of the world, the most extreme uses of force directed against other men are gay bashing, including murder, but there are more subtle fear tactics deployed against straight men and boys (Connell, 2000 and 1998). Connell points out that, with the help of ethnographers, we must acknowledge that a great number “…of men and boys have a divided, tense, or oppositional relation to hegemonic masculinity” and those who practice masculinities that clearly go against hegemonic masculinity risk being “…abused as wimps, cowards, fags etc” (Connell 2002:217).

Connell’s concept of hegemonic masculinity has proven helpful to critical studies of men in a number of ways. It has been well suited to identifying forms of domination by men over women and other men, and “addressing what is happening beyond mere force” when the dominance of certain conceptions and practices of masculinity become taken-for-granted (Hearn, 2004:55). The concept is helpful in seeing the diversity of masculinity; it draws our attention to the hierarchical positioning of gender practices, and to “…the relevance of relations between men as well as relations between men and women for the formation of gendered identities” (Wetherell and Edley, 1999:336).

South Korean hegemonic masculinity
The concept of hegemonic masculinity has not been as commonly used in Korean studies as it has on research on men and masculinities in the West. In her essay “The Production and subversion of hegemonic masculinity: reconfiguring gender hierarchy in contemporary South Korea”, Moon Seungsook (2002) uses the concept to draw our attention to the power processes at work in upholding certain patterns of masculinity, highlighting their automatic acceptance and drawing our attention to diversity in Korean masculinity, although this later point remains understudied. Cheng (2000) mentions the concept briefly. I find Moon’s use of the term apt, and it matches my informants’ views about the most accepted ways of being a Korean man as well as my own observations based on my daily life and my experiences as an ESL teacher near Seoul and in a small provincial city in Kyôngsangbuk-do in 2002 and 2003. Moon argues that in the contemporary South Korean context, hegemonic masculinity refers to the configuration of masculine practices played out in three key ways: participation in the mandatory military service, acting as primary or exclusive family breadwinner, and avoiding daily childcare and nurturing in the home (2002). All three of these components work together to uphold male domination over females while reinforcing and rewarding men who act-out these masculinized public, patriotic and courageous, and non-nurturing roles (Moon, 2002). The South Korean system of military conscription for males combined with the legacy of decades of military dictatorship, according to Moon (2002, 2005), Jager (2002), Cheng (2000) and Kwon (2000), work to shape and uphold the domineering position of militarized masculinity― a myriad of authoritative, reactionary, virile and heterosexist practices― in the South Korean gender hierarchy. Kwon (2000) also shows that not only does the military influence conceptions of manly-practices in daily life, but also the working structure of institutions such as the public education system and many companies and corporations. But as Connell (2000) and Hearn (2004) emphasize, hegemonic masculinity is often challenged and subject to alteration or resistance, and so in the South Korean context, some groups of younger men are now increasingly beginning to challenge hegemonic masculinity especially regarding men’s roles in the military service as well as in childcare (Moon, 2002)― something we will see in fans’ talk in Chapter 1. Despite these protests, hegemonic masculinity in South Korea remains quite tenacious as public discourses continue to reveal a largely uniform sense of masculinity: courageous and confident, authoritative and decidedly concerned with and delegated to ‘public’ spheres (Kim K.H., 2004; Moon, 2002; Finch and Kim, 2002). Also, the success of this hegemonic masculinity is inextricably tied to the success of the ‘development’ of the South Korean nation as a whole, economically as well as culturally and politically (Song, forthcoming; Kim K.H., 2004; Finch and Kim, 2002, Kim H.M., 2001; Jager, 2002; Nelson, 2000). In film, when men are depicted distanced from hegemonic masculinity or unable to attain it (common in films made or set in pre-democratic 1980s South Korea), these ‘soft’ and dependent or powerless men do not provide useful alternative role models to hegemonic masculinity (Kim, 2004; Abelmann, 2003). Instead portrayed and viewed as undesirable, they in fact reinforce hegemonic masculinity as audiences dream of heroes taking their place (Kim, 2004, Abelmann, 2003). In the present era of the Korean blockbuster, this hero, an ‘ideal’ of hegemonic masculine practice, has arrived in full force as “…splendid, aggressive, and confidently violent” (Kim K.H., 2004:232).

Against this background, I indicate how Taiji often seems strikingly different from such dominant masculinities, but is also oddly similar at times. For instance, Taiji’s pro-feminist song “Victim” or his gentle vocal style in tandem with his androgynous image, confirm alternative masculinities while the lack of female participation in his performances and music making combined with displays of masculine competition and heroics through dance, confirm hegemonic masculinity. With the concept of hegemonic masculinity and an overall conception of gender that emphasizes the diversity of masculinity, I conceive of Taiji the star and Taiji’s performance as revealing and reinforcing multiple patterns of masculinity which are not equal in the South Korean gender hierarchy. As such, although Taiji is often understood as an alternative man by fans as well as in the popular press, I consider that Taiji’s music and performance are inconsistent in their contestation of powerful Korean masculine practices and patterns. I also argue that fans speak about Taiji and popular music in ways that emphasize masculine diversity and instability.

Contribution
My focus on South Korean popular music and gender will contribute to recent scholarship on East Asian popular music and gender, from writers such as Darling-Wolf (2004a, 2004b), Fung and Curtin (2002), Yano (2003), Stanlaw (2000) and Baranovitch (2003). Alongside Heather Willoughby’s forthcoming essay “Image is everything: The marketing of femininity in South Korean popular music”, my thesis contributes a much needed South Korean case to this emerging scholarship.

The thesis also contributes to the study of South Korean masculinity. Although a fair amount of research has addressed masculinized discourses and structures in contemporary South Korean society, for example Abelmann (2003), Cheng (2000), Cho (2000), Cho (2004), Choi (1998, 2002), Jager (1996, 2002), Kim H. M. (2001), Kim & Finch (2002), Kwon (2000), Lee J. J. H (2002), Moon (2002a, 2002b) and Song (forthcoming), few studies examine popular cultural or young South Korean masculinities. With its focus on popular music, my work complements research on film, most notably Kim Kyung Hyun’s book The Remasculinization of Korean Cinema (2004) as well as Choi (2002), and research by Seungsook Moon on television (Moon, 2005). Focused on young masculinities, my research, again with Kim’s analysis of young men in films (2004), Moon’s (2005) of young soldiers on a television game show as well as Hong’s (2003) of soccer stars’ images and advertising campaigns diversifies research on South Korean gender by including more patterns of young men’s masculinities.

My focus on non-linguistic modes of signification as well as how they make sense to South Koreans brings different parameters of analysis to South Korean gender studies. The research on South Korean gender issues to date has tended to focus almost exclusively on linguistic modes of signification with a few studies focused on visual modes, such as Kim Kyung Hyun’s analysis of film or Jager’s excellent analysis of architecture and sculpture in her essay “Monumental histories: Manliness, the military, and the War Memorial” (2002). My focus on music poses new questions about gender in contemporary South Korea. My consideration of the relationship between gender and sound and their reception in the South Korean context also contributes to internationalizing the debate over popular music sound and meaning.

Organization of the thesis
My thesis two main sections, Fans’ Communications and Songs/ Performances, each with two chapters. The sections are preceded by a short vignette where I present experiences I have had in South Korea which relate to the topic of my thesis.

Chapter 1, Talking about Taiji emotionally, partially acts as a second introduction, providing those unfamiliar with Seo Taiji with a few fans’ extended accounts of Taiji and fandom. Presented as case studies, this chapter also examines the meaningfulness of how Taiji and gender are spoken about in emotional ways.

Chapter 2, Talking about Taiji, popular music and gendered meanings, examines how participants discuss these topics with attention given to how they spoke about popular music sound and gender. Patterns that emerged in fans’ talk on these issues are highlighted. It asks about the implications of the ways participants expressed their conception of gender and Taiji’s place within this.

Chapter 3, Alternative masculinity through Taiji’s soft voice, asks how Taiji’s vocal style in three slow songs from the early 1990s is meaningful in terms of masculinity. Features of Taiji’s extremely soft vocal style used in singing and in rapping are examined and analyzed in relation to powerful patterns of masculinity circulating in South Korean society.

Chapter 4, the Relationship of “Hayôga” performances to three themes of South Korean masculinity, analyses three performances of Taiji’s hit song “Hayôga” and traces themes of masculinity, fraternity, remasculinization, and competition with ‘Western’ masculinities, within them. Aspects of performance, notably new and noisy elements of the song, filming techniques of the video, hip hop style dancing, and the narrative of the music video, are examined and analyzed in conjunction with prevailing themes of masculinity.

Conclusion, presents participants’ feedback on my thesis and considers my position as a (very) partial insider on the development and shaping of this thesis.

[1] I have borrowed this way of presenting my audiences and how they impact the significances of my study from the introduction to Jesook Song’s Ph.D. dissertation, Shifting technologies: Neoliberalization of the welfare state in South Korea, 1997-2001 (2003). I have intentionally chosen to have two audiences like Song—and like in her study these two do overlap in some cases—and have tried to write my thesis in such as way that it significant to both. With the exception of articles by Maliangkay (2003 a & b), most English language articles by non-Koreans on South Korean popular music seem to be written with only a non-Korean audience in mind (e.g. Howard, 2002 & 2003; Morelli, 1997 & 2001; Willoughby, 2005) and as such are of little value or interest to a South Korean audience. Because growing numbers of South Koreans can read academic English well, non-Korean writers should consider them as potential audiences and write accordingly. This is especially important in my case, as the subject matter of my thesis, Seo Taiji, has been such a huge cultural phenomenon in South Korea that any published work on him is scrutinized by high numbers of fans (facilitated by websites such as www.seotaijireport.com) and other Koreans interested in issues of popular culture.


Seo Taiji Fact Sheet
· The group Seo Taiji and Boys (Sô T’ae-ji-wa Aidûl) was formed in Seoul in 1991 and released their first album in March 1992. The group consisted of Taiji and two male hip hop-style dancers (the Boys), Lee Juno (I Chun-o) and Yang Hyun Suk (Yang Hyôn-sôk).
· Seo Taiji and Boys released four studio albums, three live albums and a greatest hits album between 1992 and 1996. The group broke up in early 1996.
· Seo Taiji came back as a solo artist in1998 and has so far released three studio albums and two live albums. His latest album was released early 2004.
· In Seo Taiji and Boys and as a solo artist, Taiji wrote, arranged and produced virtually every song, and was either the primary producer or heavily involved in production as well as in sound engineering on all albums As well as being the main singer and rapper, Taiji also has played bass and guitar on many songs, but in performances he usually just does vocals.
· Seo Taiji and Boys albums and songs included many genres of popular music, most prominently dance, rap, soft pop, and metal influenced rock. Taiji’s solo albums are also an amalgamation of genres, most prominently new-metal, alternative rock, gangster rap, Cypress Hill style rap, emo and metallic hardcore punk.
· Taiji was one of the first South Korean artists to use rap and dance music and is often credited with popularizing these genres.
· Taiji is famous for his unconventional manoeuvres in the South Korean music industry. While the vast majority of singers and groups are dependent on and manipulated by broadcasting and entertainment companies (Yi, 1996; Macintyre, 2002), Taiji has been able to remain independent from this system, which has ended up working in his favour economically. For example, through the 1990s up to today, the popularity of singers and groups often depend on how well they are received on television pop music performance contests and on television appearances generally. In contrast, Taiji chose early on in his career not to appear on television except for a few live concert appearances. Since the early 1990s, Taiji albums have been the highest selling albums in South Korea, his new songs are downloaded and paid for at a much higher rate than other artists, and in 2003, Taiji signed on with an advertising campaign for KTF for 2.7 million dollars (USD), the largest sum a spokesperson has ever received in South Korea (Kim S-j., 2004; Seo Taiji, KTF-wa kwang'gomodel, 2003).
· Over the years, a number of Taiji and Taiji and Boys songs have been censored, either by the government or the media. For example, “Shidaeyugam” (1995) (censored by the government) and “Victim” (2004) (deemed unfit for broadcast by MBC, KBS and SBS) (Im, 2004).

Like many researchers, I began my interviewing process looking for information, in my case information on what young people think about Seo Taiji, his music and about gender issues. What was interesting in many interviews was less the information given, but more the emotion in young people’s talk about Taiji and the emotionality of their engagement with Taiji and his music. In this chapter, I chose to highlight emotion because it became impossible to minimize it over the course of my interviews with young Koreans. Additionally, emotion has tended to be overlooked in studies on Korean youth culture or popular music, as Lee Kee-hyeung points out in his survey of South Korean cultural studies research on youth culture in the 1990s and early 2000s:

Affective play and alliances formed by youth in their everyday cultural life provided key biographical and social resources for alternative forms of identities. What was missing in the dominant form of “interpretive” subculture work was properly articulated analysis of the articulations among youth’s passion for particular favored objects, icons, and texts that formed their personal—potentially political—significance, as well as their different “affective economies” (Lee, 2002: 61).

I have chosen to present three young people’s responses as case studies to examine the personal and cultural (and potentially political) significance of emotional engagements with Taiji and his music and how gender issues factor into these. The people are Yun-hûi (31), Kang-t’ae (27) and Chae-tol (19). In Yun-hûi’s talk, we see the joy and excitement that Seo Taiji brought out in so many of her generation, and how at times, these emotions rub up against her feminist concerns and a different set of emotions. In Kang-t’ae, we see how Taiji, as an example of an alternative man, figures into his emotional struggle over defining himself against hegemonic Korean masculinity. In Chae-tol’s talk, we see an unbridled enthusiasm and joy for Taiji—including Taiji’s recent pro-feminist song—which affects his initial attempts at conceiving himself differently from ‘normative’ Korean masculinity. Influenced by the discursive turn in anthropology, I approach these young people’s communication as parts of dialogical processes that constitute culture—the Taiji phenomenon and gender foregrounded here―rather than as reflections of culture (Farnell and Graham, 1998). I present case studies of three young Koreans and give quite a few pages to each in an effort to remedy the lack of qualitative research on young Koreans and popular culture available in English. Additionally I include long sections of Yun-hûi and Chae-tol’s talk and a lot of context around Kang-t’ae talk. I have done this to allow my reader to get a feeling for what each person is like and to take his or her talk and experience seriously. I also hope that my reader will remember these voices and their characters throughout the remainder of my thesis. I chose to focus on these three’s responses because they sit neatly across the age range of Seo Taiji fans. Their engagement with my research project was excellent, and at times, they gave me access to the emotional influence Taiji and his music has or had on them.



[1] For an approach to emotions, youth culture and popular music in an eastern Asian context, see Eric Ma’s (2002) ethnographic work on emotions and sub cultural politics in punk bands in post 1997 Hong Kong.


The Case Studies
Yun-hûi

Yun-hûi spoke about Taiji with multiple voices―sometimes as a fan and at other times as a young scholar and feminist―and with considerable emotion. Her multiple voices and contradictory reactions to Taiji’s music and Taiji in terms of gender, enrich the Taiji phenomenon and our understanding of it.

Yun-hûi and I met in a small graduate seminar class. She was stylish with an artsy fashion sense, pretty and intellectual. Funny and empathetic, she also presented at times as standoffish and a little stubborn when discussing ideas or issues. Her passions seemed to lie more in the alternative education and youth centre she had worked at in Seoul rather than in her graduate study in Canada. During the term of our seminar class, I felt she was at the same time interested and dismissive of my research topic for the class, masculinity and Korean ballad singers’ voices (a paper on which chapter three of this thesis was built). Because of this and the fact that I respected her a lot, I was apprehensive about interviewing her. I thought I would learn from her a ‘from above’ analysis of the Taiji phenomenon because of her tendency to intellectualize things combined with her response to my interview invitation over email that she was not a huge fan but thought Taiji was an important cultural icon to her whole generation. Because of this, I was surprised at her emotional responses to Taiji and his music and the personal significance he and his music had had for her.
During our sessions, Yun-hûi sometimes talked about Taiji, as well as youth issues, gender and other popular musicians, with exuberance, expressing personal joys and at other times a sense of urgency and passion. Her urgency and passion were most prominent when she emphasized Taiji and other performers’ integrity and socially progressive lyrics. When we discussed gender issues in depth, her voice changed again, and she spoke with intensity, at times humorously, but earnestly.

Yun-hûi’s exuberance and joy over Taiji and his music and her passion for his integrity form much of her talk in the excerpts I have chosen to include here. Excerpt 1 comes from the middle of our first interview session, an evening she and I shared chocolate cake in a café and Yun-hûi talked with few breaks, smiling a lot and laughing at her memories. Her talk swirled between her personal memories of songs and associated memories and the social messages of Taiji’s lyrics and his sincerity. A number of times she went into enthusiastic digressions on other singers and bands—Jaurim, Panic and Yi Sang Ûn—whose artistic integrity and, in her own words, “independent spirit” and progressive lyrics, she felt they shared with Taiji. In excerpt 1, Yun-hûi flew through topics and issues with an enthusiasm and joy in talking that took me by surprise. She framed songs and albums in emotional ways. She began talking about the second album―the album that first drew her into the music of Taiji and Boys―by recalling her break-up with her boyfriend and the excitement that the word “drug” had for her and her peers at the time. Her laughter indicated that their passions for Taiji’s ‘cool’ message at the time was significant emotionally yet hard to explain to me some ten years later. Yun-hûi’s enthusiastic talk in this excerpt also reflects the affective qualities of Seo Taiji and Boys performances’ newness and inventiveness. Yun-hûi’s talk a little later on in the evening (excerpt 2) reveals the affective qualities of Taiji’s integrity, as she explains why she liked and respected him because he quit then and came back with honesty.

Excerpt 1

Yh: Ah, when their second album came out, I was in the last year of high school so I was studying so serious. But, I, bought the tape because my boyfriend was really crazy about that. So I bought that. Soon after I bought that, we (with both hands gestures pushing away)…broke up. [Ah, you broke up.] Yes we broke up. So their second hit, always reminds me of the, the end of our love.
J: Of the break up, right.
Yh: Ya. So I, uh, uh. At that time I listened and listened to their hits, those songs. The first time I bought their album because of my boy-, ex-boyfriend, but, uh, after that, ah, I became…I became obsessed with it by myself and the melody, because, ah their second hit, had, uh, a new attempt, put their own message in their hits, and their message was totally different from, ah, the existing system of popular music. In the second album, there, there was one song, about the psychology of one person, ah, ah, addicted to, addicted to drugs. You know that song?
J: Which one? Ah
Yh: In Korea, the problem of drugs was not serious. But the word “drug”, ah! Just the word made teenagers crazy! (Laughs) Kind of ah, kind of ah, something cool, with, message We needed something serious, ah ah, some message in our life (laughs) so that song really appealed to me.


Excerpt 2

[This excerpt is preceded by Yun-hûi’s discussion of the song “Comeback Home”, the media frenzy around it, and how it caused some runaway kids to return home. She expressed dissatisfaction about this song and the media frenzy.]

Yh: So at that time I thought, if Seo Taiji wa Idûl do anything, it is seen as a good attempt so I didn’t like that at the time and I think, ah, I already became old enough, I changed my impression of them. So the next hit they declared they would stop their performance. I liked that. Because, at least, at first maybe they would come back and restart their performance, that ah, a kind of trick that many singers and actors use, so they didn’t come back, and that’s great. And each of them, went their own way. So, ah, after a couple years, I, I, became to realize their announcement was true, I (laughs) I liked Seo Taiji again (smiling). Because he was so frank, ah he, was enough self-confident. Many celebrities, celebrities don’t do that because they, they couldn’t risk their reputation but he did. He just, ah, got more into his music. So I, thought he knew what is important, and he can know, ah what he wants, and what he has to do. So, I liked him more and thought, ah, ah. A couple more years later, he really did come back, but I didn’t hate that he came back because it also was so natural. Maybe, ah, ah someone left their area, and he, ah, left for a long time, it is so hard to come back because he, he or she they can’t be sure of their success or not, so it was not, it wasn’t an easy decision but he did, and he, ah, came back and introduced his new attempt at performing music. And he just wanted to show his, ah, his own musical work.

In our second interview, Yun-hûi was more enthusiastic about Taiji and Boys’ songs and revealed the emotional value they had had for her when she was younger. We met in a small pub and Yun-hûi seemed especially happy and even excited, smiling a lot. I thought she must have had an especially good day, but no, she told me she had had a very frustrating day in the library reading difficult English language materials.

She especially enjoyed listening to songs together and even complemented me on using this interviewing method. Her joy in listening to songs and talking about her memories and opinions were something of a happy surprise for both of us. When we listened to the song “Hwansang sok ûi kûdae” from the first Seo Taiji and Boys album (1992), Yun-hûi punctuated her quickly moving talk with emphasized words, singing, animated movements, plenty of smiling and short phrases such as “It was all so cool” and “Think about this!” expressing her joy and exuberance for Taiji and Boys, even over ten years after she had originally experienced them (see excerpt 3). Her reaction to “Hayôga”, another song she chose to listen to with me, was just as enthusiastic and she drew on her personal emotional experience of the song she had mentioned to me in the previous interview. Yun-hûi preceded her talk in excerpt 4 by rapping along to the first minute and ten seconds of “Hayôga”. She enjoyed this, not showing off, just having a good time remembering the rap exactly, moving her body to the beat as she sat in her chair. Yun-hûi’s enthusiasm and joy in her comments and reactions to songs was interspersed with moments where she took a step back to provide me with information on the Taiji phenomenon and youth culture in the 1990s-- the shift toward a more superficial or light youth culture throughout the 1990s for example. At these moments her talk was calmer but still engaged and as she progressed through an explanation, she often ended up expressing another enthusiastic personal account or memory of Seo Taiji and Boys from when she was younger. Although these two voices differed, Yun-hûi’s voice in our third interview session was often strikingly different from her joyous personal accounts of Taiji and Boys’ music.

Excerpt 3

Yh: This was during high school. I remember the melody was so cool. The way, ah, for Seo Taiji to sing, was so different, he sang with rapping, it was the first attempt in the mainstream. Ya. It was all so cool. All the boys and girls imitated that way! Like this (She mimics a rapper, with hand gestures and smiles afterward and laughs). Ahhh! And their message was so philosophical. […] (She tries to translate a few lines of the lyrics into English as she listens). Very cool rhythm and melody, they mix very philosophical lyrics. So, ah, ah, there is no way Seo Taiji wasn’t cool. They, yes. So. Think about this! Many Korean songs just say, (she starts singing, “I love you” etc in Korean) all singers sing, have songs about love and similar things, but one day, three boys appear and sing, ah totally different kinds of things, and their melody and rhythm lyrics were totally different, and that was not just great but very cool.

Excerpt 4

J: You will probably remember forever right?
Yh: Ya! (Laughs) It’s so surprising! We laugh. She continues to move her body to the beat and she shows lots of energy) It’s a sort of love song, but but different. So, ah, it’s yes. Last time I told, when this album came out, ah I had just broken-up with my boyfriend and, you know every teenager or even older people, think their love is special. But this song is, appropriate for my special love because it is was so special (laughs) special love song. (She laughs a little) … This part (the guitar solo) I’m always touched by it. Yes this melody, it’s a little bit similar to rock, hmm, very ah, ah ah similar, like Western music but, he used t’aep’yŏngso, and it’s an an amazing mixture (smiles).

In our third session when we focused on gender issues generally and specifically on popular music and Taiji, Yun-hûi spoke with intensity for two and a half hours. Earlier comments she had made—that Taiji was genderless and his unisexual characteristics rendered gender issues and Taiji’s music a non-issue, or that gender issues in popular music are essentially superficial and as such not so interesting—had left me mistakenly thinking she would rush through my questions. Yun-hûi’s talk was informed by her feminist concerns, which I had been aware of from her atypical demeanour and fashion sense, her knowledgeable comments in the course we took together and from certain personal stands she took in her daily life, for example refusing to use the term “oppa” when calling older male friends or classmates on the grounds that it renders women childlike. Although she was funny at times and we laughed about things as the evening went along, Yun-hûi’s voice was earnest and serious, lacking the cynicism, sarcasm and flippancy I am used to hearing from post-feminist or even feminist women of her generation from Canada. Furthermore, Yun-hûi’s comments at the end of our session confirmed my sense during the interview that she had been talking with a lot of emotion and had some apprehension experiencing this and showing this to me.

Yun-hûi’s talk in the third interview was firm at times and at others ambivalent or ambiguous. She explained her definition of masculinity and the characteristics she looks for in a boyfriend with certainty (see excerpts 5 and 6). She spoke of gender and music, most importantly rock and rap, with some ambivalence. In some ways, her comments during this session contradicted her reactions to songs we had listened to earlier and to her joy in discussing Taiji as a social icon (see excerpt 7). The most striking contradiction was how she spoke about rap and rock performed by males with a negative sentiment, and yet these two aspects of “Hayôga”—guitar solo, rapping and so on—had provided her with considerable joy in our previous meeting. Her joy while listening to the song seemed to contradict the fact that she spoke critically of the strong beat in rap and rock music as manly and as expressing strength, specifically masculine strength. But her criticism was not entirely so simplistic. Like early feminist punk rockers in England and the Riot Grrrl bands (O’Meara, 2003; Leonard, 1997), Yun-hûi wished that this beat were hers and not simply belonging to guys. As a result, she expressed some hesitation about liking rock or rap performed by males, even Taiji.

Excerpt 5

Yh: I always think about that (masculinity). Masculinity is a question of, ah, power, ah men’s power and desire for power. Based on their own confirmation of self. [oh ok] That’s my definition, so that’s why I think of the concept of masculinity not only as characteristics of some men such as manly voice or muscular body and uh, uh… But also as ah, ah…yes! Even in softness of guys, I think there is masculinity. There are many questions. For example, I read your term paper, and I, I questioned that, whether the male ballad singers’ voice, ah, ah, question of softness, if they are free from masculinity. In my : perspective, I don’t think so. Because … especially in lyrics, there are also the philosophy of love, from guy’s, and ah, some, ah, characteristics, characters of men in situations—love or …and actually because this society is, this society is ahh, patriarchal, so all guys cannot break free from masculinity. Because masculinity has meant men’s, ah, a mandate for being a man. But of course I have want to have some masculinity of my own. So that’s why I think masculinity is the confirmation or desire about power.

Excerpt 6
J: So, this question, what kind of guys do you like?
Yh: Silent!
J: What? Talented?
Yh: Silent.
J: Mute? (Jokingly)
Yh: Ya, mute! […] Silent and … silent and ah, he has, he has something he can concentrate on. Especially I prefer something, artistic work but I don’t want poor artistic, because I would be stuck with supporting that kind of boyfriend. I don’t want that anymore! They have to take care of themselves, and I take care of … myself. And we can, we can, ah, give and take. No one-way street, or one-way street, I don’t want that[…] Especially I can’t stand guys, ah, who are not even my boyfriend, who, ah, talk about, talk about feminism or gender issues, uh, very firm in their perspective. [Oh ya]. Um they had better be silent about that kind of issues and they should try to support the people who, who ah, who really have a problem, that’s women. So silent is, uh … [or listening] Ya. It is a good attitude especially for a guy. J: Ya being a really good listener and a learner is very important for me.
Yh: Otherwise I can’t hear any love from my boyfriend. […] How about your boyfriend? Silent?
J: Oh he’s not silent, but he is a very good, ah. He’s a very good listener and he likes to learn from other people. [Ah! That’s] […] He is very very good at listening and learning from other people so I like, I like that about him and I always tell him that. [Right] When he, sometimes he doesn’t understand why I like him, because he still has, his family is very traditional and [oh] ya so he still thinks that, that I should like somebody who is, really, really gonna make lots of money or (we laugh) you know (we laugh) so! Or somebody who knows a lot, right? Or somebody who, but I like people who like to learn.
Yh: me too!

Excerpt 7
Yh: I don’t want to categorize instrument or styles of songs as manly or masculinity, but ah, that’s true. [Oh!] For example I don’t feel the, ah rap songs. [Rap?] yes rap. I always feel rap is so manly. [Ok]. Think about this, in the case of women, we don’t speak in that kind of style. We talk about more interactively [ah!] but there, there they speak one way, in one direction and the beat is very strong […].
J: Hayŏga. I don’t know about this song. I have confused opinions, or no opinions at all.
(We are listening together over headphones)
Yh: Yes this kind of beat is ah, considered manly.
J: Considered manly by you or by other people?
Yh: By others including me
J: Including you. Even though you don’t like, you feel uncomfortable to categorize
Yh: No! [Oh!] But the difference is ah, even though this ah, was categorized manly in the past, the difference in my uh, generation, don’t want to ah, fall in love with guys who make this kind of beat [oh ok]. We said we want to, uh, make this, uh kind of beat by ourselves. Yes. I wanted and still Yh: want this kind of beat to be mine, not by, not be my boyfriends. […]

(We are listening to the song “Victim” release 2004. Yun-hûi listens carefully without much expression or movement. She doesn’t seem to enjoy it).
J: This is the same as the one before (“Tank”), or a little bit different?
Yh: Little bit different. But I … I found I, uh, I consider rock band music ah, ah, manly. [Ok]. Usually, usually, so I, I’m missing Courtney Love. I miss Courtney Love, because, she is, uh, she leads a rock band. Actually if I, ah, listened, participated in concert uh, of, a female band, I really become crazy, because [Crazy good, or crazy bad?] Good! [Oh ok] but, ah…
J: But only for a female rock group.
Yh: Not only female but prefer female.
J: Ok. So you don’t like this because
Yh: Because it’s violent and it’s too strong. I don’t want men to express, uh, strength. [Ah] I don’t like that. I want them to keep silent and, ah, not expressing strength. [Right]. Because even though they don’t express their strength they are strong enough because this society is based on, ah, patriarchy, so they need to be silent and calm until both genders become equal.

In some ways Yun-hûi’s divergent voices resemble those discussed by Susan Fast in her book In the houses of the Holy: Led Zeppelin and the power of rock music (2001). Fast comments on the discrepancies between her colleagues’ reactions, most notably feminist scholars, and that of fans to Led Zeppelin and gender issues. Fast points out how her colleagues for the most part could not enjoy or understand how others could enjoy Led Zeppelin, citing the band’s alleged machismo and misogyny. As a result, Fast’s colleagues overlooked the fluidity of gender construction in Led Zeppelin and the role that affect and emotion in their performances and fan reception had in enriching gender constructions. Fast, herself both scholar and a fan, found herself having to justify her fandom but in the end was successful in combining these aspects of herself into her analysis of Led Zeppelin. For Yun-hûi, the discrepancies Fast points out—fan versus feminist scholars’ perspectives—form much of her talk and reactions to Taiji’s music. However, Yun-hûi’s feminist attitude irregularly forms her experience of Taiji and his music, leaving her comments seeming disjointed or at times contradictory.

Some may suggest that this disjointedness and contradiction show that Yun-hûi has not worked out her thoughts fully and that this is a personal and private flaw in her understanding of Taiji and rock or rap music generally. However, this judgment would minimize the value of emotions, often mixed, in experiencing Taiji and his music. This judgment would also minimize the value of examining Yun-hûi’s talk as constituting not only aspects of her self, but of her culture as well.

As anthropologists Brenda Farnell and Laura R. Graham (1998) explain in their survey of discourse centred approaches in anthropology, it is important to consider that people’s communication does not simply tell about reality, but participates in socially constructing it. This type of anthropology, which has influenced my research, considers language as social action (Farnell and Graham, 1998). Theoretically, discourse analysis in anthropology abandons psychological determinism (of Freud for instance) and sociological determinism (of Durkheim, for instance) and instead views persons “…as causally empowered embodied agents with unique powers and capacities for making meaning…” (Farnell and Graham, 1998:414). Anthropologists who do discourse analysis often find it useful to draw upon Bakhtin’s ideas on language (for example Skinner, Valsiner and Holland’s work on Nepali adolescents (2001) or Abelmann’s work on middle-aged, urban South Korean women (2003). Bakhtin’s (1981) emphasis on the dynamic, intertexual and multi-voiced tendencies of language is highly applicable to anthropology because it is conducive to thinking about everyday conversations and communication, and their relationships to society. As a result, much anthropological discourse analysis pays attention to the heterogeneous and dynamic aspects of people’s communication (Farnell and Graham, 1998). For instance what Bakhtin referred to as the dialogic nature of language (1981), his idea that an individual occurrence of language is always in response to another occurrence of language—from the speaker’s past discussion with a friend, from the speaker’s different manners of speaking, or from the media and so on—have proven useful in discourse centred approaches in anthropology (Farnell and Graham, 1998). With Bakhtin’s dialogic view of language, occurrences of an individual’s communication are actively created by the individual, but are also always in dialogue, interacting with other voices and shaping social worlds. For example Skinner, Valsiner and Holland in “Discerning the dialogical self: a theoretical and methological examination of a Nepali adolescent’s narrative” (2001), analyse the multiple voices used by a Nepali teen as he discusses himself, critiques his society, and plans for its change. This teen incorporates multiple voices into his conversation with the researcher: his own voices as a student, as low caste member and as future successful man, and numerous characterizations of different social classes in dialogue with him in the past and present and then reconstructed differently in his future (Skinner et al, 2001). Skinner, Valsiner and Holland (2001) utilize Bahktin’s concepts of dialogic language to illustrate how the teen’s communication simultaneously acts to reshape his identity and works to transform the meanings of social status in his community. Influenced by these approaches to analyzing conversation, I noticed Yun-hûi’s different voices, including their different emotions. I noticed that at times, Yun-hûi spoke and listened to songs as a young scholar and feminist with seriousness, criticalness and intensity, that she talked as a fan with a lighter voice expressing her joyous personal accounts of Taiji, other performers and popular culture, that she listened to songs and reacted to them with bright, happy energy and remarks. Taking a step back from the three interviews we had, I realized her different voices seemed in dispute with one another (in dialogue). Importantly, I do not consider her dispute private and isolated. Instead, as with the women’s communication in anthropologist Nancy Abelmann’s book The Melodrama of Mobility: Women, Talk, and Class in Contemporary South Korea (2003), we must take into account “…that language does not represent a reality out there, but rather that it fashions the world (such that it looks, however, always already made)” (Abelmann, 2003: 13). Yun-hûi’s talk then, especially its contradictory voices, should be taken seriously.

Yun-hûi’s various views and ways of expressing them are rich, not flawed, and reveal how Seo Taiji was so important to her and her generation. At the same time, her communication reveals that as a male performer using rock and rap, Taiji contradicts some of her feminist ideals and wishes. These sides of Yun-hûi’s talk reveal the intricacies of the Taiji phenomenon and the difficulty (perhaps futility) of neatly defining it, in terms of gender for example.

Yun-hûi’s responses caused me to reconsider the purpose of my research project. At the very end of our final interview session, her comments made me think carefully about emotions in experiencing Taiji and the awkwardness of using feminist analysis to understand popular music songs. Quickly after she had finished her final argument, we exchanged the following words:

Yh: … I think I, I think I say something too, ah too ah… educational?
Lectural?
J: Ah, too intellectual, too scholarly?
Yh: No no.
J: What do you mean?
Yh: Educational?
J: Oh you mean trying to teach people?
Yh: Ya! [Oh!] So that’s why I don’t like talking about feminism anymore.
J: You feel like you are lecturing people
Yh: Yes, right. Uncomfortable
J: Yes I know that feeling… that’s ok, I don’t think you’re lecturing me.
Yh: (Laughs a little).

By having her discuss her feminist concerns and popular music, I made her feel uncomfortable in her seriousness and passion and in showing these to me. In a way, by speaking with such passion, she exposed herself to me perhaps more than she had planned to. Perhaps by showing the depth of her concerns, she felt uncomfortable because had returned to lecturing or talking at people about gender, patriarchy and so on ―literally at me but also and more importantly an imagined audience of young South Koreans who in her words “Are just interested in being sexy.” Her seriousness, although meaningful and valid, did not seem to be what informed her most meaningful experiences of Taiji. The value of Taiji and his music seemed to lie more in the joy and excitement she experienced in our earlier sessions than in this last session. Despite this observation, we should acknowledge that all of her talk and responses—some voices oppositional or in struggle and others speaking of her lighter engagement with her culture―combine to reveal her complexity. Furthermore, her excitement and joy and then apprehension, discomfort and seriousness when listening to Taiji’s songs with gender in mind in turn contribute to her culture itself.

I will begin the case study of Kang-t’ae with some of Anthony Fung and Michael Curtin’s concluding remarks on the Chinese popular music star Faye Wong. Wong is a contemporary of Taiji who is similar to him in terms of her atypical maneuvers in the music industry, high degrees of financial and critical success, and presenting an androgynous image:

In the political economy of music, Faye [Wong] challenges, distorts and transforms the prevailing market logic, and by that twisting, she further commodifies her image and her music while at the same time enhancing her cultural capital. The largely unintended outcome of her insistent efforts to craft an image at odds with institutional and cultural conventions is that Faye's ambitions seem to resonate with fans who are negotiating tensions between their own public personae and the traditional expectations of women in Chinese societies…[The richness of the Faye phenomenon furthermore] engenders multiple appropriations of Faye, which also open possibilities for other movements, such as queer and masculine struggles (Chow, 1998) (Curtin, and Fung, 2002: 286).

Almost word for word, with a few obvious substitutions, these remarks could have been written about Seo Taiji. In Kang-t’ae’s talk about Taiji and in his own personal struggles, I have seen first hand how Taiji’s efforts to craft an alternative image at odds with prevailing Korean music industry standards and conventional ways of being a young Korean male, have resonated with fans in the same way that Faye has. Because Kang-t’ae has been negotiating tensions between how he wants to be a man, including how to show this publicly, and conventional expectations of being a man in South Korean society, Taiji has resonated especially well for him. Again and again, Taiji worked into Kang-t’ae’s talk in highly gendered and emotional ways.

Kang t’ae is my boyfriend and he lived with me in Toronto when I was researching and writing this thesis. Because of this, my methods of collecting his stories and opinions were more varied than for the other informants in my study. Although I also conducted semi-structured and unstructured interviews with him, the most telling instances of his opinions on Taiji and on masculinity came from his talk in daily life. Whenever he brought up Taiji, I would run off, usually within seconds, into another room to make notes. The examples I include in this chapter are from such instances and although they were not recorded and as such are not word-for-word records, I am confident they come very close and capture his sentiment.

As indicated in the vignette preceding this chapter, Kang-t’ae introduced me to Taiji by hesitantly but joyfully offering me a Seo Taiji CD he had copied off his computer. Perhaps this innocent gesture marked the beginning of our friendship. In our apartment in Toronto, Kang-t’ae often listened to Taiji’s music on his computer where the mp3 files most often in his player jumped back and forth from different albums, from the first to the latest. Often Kang-t’ae played his Taiji songs when he was more hyper than usual, loudly singing and yelling along, often putting on norebang-style performances full of rock star antics for me, the audience. Although Taiji’s music provided him with considerable entertainment, joy and energy, Taiji and his music meant a lot more than this to Kang-t’ae. The depth of his affinity for Taiji was largely a private matter. On the outside, his fandom did not seem remarkable. However, in times of high emotion, self-searching and difficulty, he called upon Taiji as a role model, specifically as an alternative way to be.

Over the past year, Taiji’s role as a hero or a guide for Kang-t’ae has become more apparent. This past year, he has also spoken about him in unmistakably gendered terms. The nine months during which I attempted to capture Kang-t’ae’s fandom for my thesis, was an extremely positive time for him. His “Toronto life” was a chance he took to, in his own words, “up-grade myself” and was importantly a time where he re-examined how he wanted to be, and how he could be best. The impetus for this came from experiencing an education system that he liked for the first time, becoming good friends with an intellectual and well-read young Korean man (his hyông), my family’s influence and myself. Another impetus for his search for self came in his decision to marry me, a foreigner. This pushed him further to evaluate himself, his role as a man, and importantly his role and identity as a Korean man. This decision shook things up considerably and required him to carefully consider what he wanted to be like as a man and how he wanted to live and why, so he could confidently begin the arduous task of gaining his family’s acceptance of his choice in wife, lifestyle, beliefs and so on.

Over the past six months, much of Kang-t’ae’s self-searching centred on what in essence is a critique of hegemonic Korean masculinity. In his communication, Kang-t’ae regularly positioned himself as an outsider or an alternative person, much as he viewed Taiji. As time went on he began to articulate more precisely how he viewed himself in opposition to hegemonic Korean masculinity. This critique was evident when he spoke about the following issues. Kang-t’ae expressed anger and frustration over the military conscription system, speaking about how it forms unthinking, reactionary men. He expressed concerns regarding the traditional role of the first son in “taking care of” the extended family and criticized the injustice of the burden this puts on women married to first sons such as his mother, as well as concern, worry and dissatisfaction over his role in the first son position in the future. Kang-t’ae often strongly criticized, in his words, “authoritative fathers”, i.e. fathers who order other members of their family around and do not seriously converse with or listen to children or wives. He expressed frustration and anger over his father playing this role, and when we watched and discussed the authoritative (or abusive) fathers in the South Korean movies Classic (2001) and Once Upon a Time in High School (2005), he reacted with phrases such as ‘I really hate fathers like that’. Concerning child rearing and imagining being a father, he often spoke about wanting to take my open-minded, accommodating, creative father as a model, and even at times fantasized about being a house-husband for a time, although fully aware of the impossibility of doing this if we were to live in Korea as parents with young children. Excerpts 1 and 2 exhibit aspects of Kang-t’ae’s critique of hegemonic masculinity. In both these excerpts Kang-t’ae’s talk not only positions himself against authoritative men, most often men who act in Korean hegemonic masculine ways, but reveals how he is aware and deeply concerned about how he appears to other Koreans.

Excerpt 1
After an evening class at his university, Kang-t’ae came home and began chatting, by typing, over msn messenger with his “Rich Uncle”, the term we used to refer to his only middle class and university or college educated relative. His uncle was living for the year in the United States and had been chatting with Kang-t’ae a few times earlier to arrange a sight seeing trip up to Canada. Kang-t’ae didn’t know his uncle very well. There was a lot at stake in communicating well with this uncle. First Kang-t’ae thought his uncle would like me, and as a result of Rich Uncle’s high status in the family—being educated, middleclass and so on—this would help me to be accepted by his family. Secondly, Kang-t’ae was very proud of becoming much more educated and intellectually curious while in Canada—he had been enthusiastically reading up on international and domestic issues on a daily basis for example. It was important to him to show Rich Uncle how he had improved himself. Because his Rich Uncle was educated and had traveled to other countries, Kang-t’ae had presumed that Rich Uncle would be more open-minded than his other relatives, but he had been mistaken. During their chatting this particular evening, Kang-t’ae started swearing loudly and started hitting the computer table with his fist. This behaviour was extremely unusual for him. After the chatting, I needed to know why he had been so angry. He said he was upset that his uncle had stereotyped him as ignorant and incompetent. He said he was very angry and hurt that his uncle would say such things and think of him in such a stereotypical way.

Kt: 'My uncle knows this much (shows a cm with his fingers) about me and then stereotypes this much (shows wide distance with outstretched arms) about me.'

(Kang-t’ae continued angrily expressing how his family members think there is only one good way for a man to live, a sentiment he had expressed a number of times before).

Kt: ‘(My relatives think/say) “If someone does this, he is good and will have a successful life.” For example, “a man should be able to drink well/a lot” [I said ‘yes but your father doesn't drink much’] Yes but the other family members... (They say/think) “A man has to be extroverted and talkative to be successful.” I'm not extroverted! More than before, but not really. They should... why can't they know that each person has good points, their own individual way to be, their own characteristics! I am more introverted, I'm sensitive and emotional, this can be good. Why do they not understand that individual characteristics are important? I am more educated then them! They are not educated. Why do they judge me?!'

He was very angry and frustrated and had some tears in his eyes after speaking this last line and quickly left the room I was in. The next day he said he had also been upset about school, which had made him extra upset. But at that time, his anger, frustration and sadness was heartfelt and serious.


Excerpt 2
One evening after our dinner, Kang-t’ae started talking about his cousin (a male cousin a little younger than him with whom he is very close). He seemed frustrated and a little annoyed and disappointed. A few days earlier, he had talked and argued with his cousin late into the night at our apartment over beer and some tequila―like many Korean men, they communicate best while drinking. At this point in the year, the two were not getting along so well, partly because the three of us living together in a one-bedroom apartment was proving too stressful. This evening Kang-t’ae, like he had at other times, criticized his cousin in gendered terms saying he a was “a little macho” (negative connotation)―not listening, not thinking critically, not being flexible, just reacting and getting angry. Kang-t’ae was talking about his cousin when all of a sudden he brought up Seo Taiji:

Kt: ‘Seo Taiji is like me. He appears very weak but in fact he is very strong. I am like that. It makes me angry when people…my relatives [your uncle?] yes and others, say I am weak. But I am not. For example they think that arm wrestling shows strength. But I can run further, longer than many people. Endurance is strength. In fact women are stronger than men. Auschwitz—women lasted longer than men, endurance and more fat. We [men] are just muscle and bone. It annoys me that Sûng-mo (his cousin) doesn’t agree with me about that [that women can be stronger than men]. He doesn’t listen. I am like Taiji. Independent spirit and care about different issues…since I came to Canada. Also we care about the innocence of childhood. I also had a pure mind in childhood, like him. I didn’t know about how awful society is. I wasn’t critical. Now I think society is shit. So much shit.’

[He ended this topic by briefly mentioning how the public libraries in Korea are, in his mind, terrible and his plan to try to get his university in Seoul to open its reading rooms to the public, so that all people—old, poor etc--can have access to reading books].

Kang-t’ae revealed this concern most tellingly in his anger directed at his uncle’s stereotyping of him, an anger combined with frustration at being typecast as a certain type of man because he comes from an essentially poor and uneducated family. Abelmann (2002) paid close attention to the prevalence of this type of talk among the women in her study and how this acted in forming how they conceive of themselves. Abelmann writes "...it is apparent that all of the women in this book are keenly aware of the ways in which they can be seen as one type or another. Most important here is that "one type or another" refers not generally to one type of person, but specifically to one type of gendered person, one type of "woman" (2002: 242). In such as way, the struggles in Kang-t’ae’s talk reveal similar concerns but over another type of gendered person, a type of man. This is especially evident in example 1 where his struggles were expressed as much in his angry upset voice, pacing, and arm waving as in his choice of words. Lines such as ‘[my relatives think] “A man has to be extroverted and talkative to be successful” indicate that he conceives that his relatives think a man, as one specific type of gendered person and not simply one type of person, needs to act a certain way. Kang-t’ae’s emotion in both excerpts attests that this struggle is not merely an intellectual one, but something with which he is deeply engaged and which matters considerably to him.

It is significant that Kang-t’ae brought Taiji into his talk at times, such as in excerpt 2, when he was seriously and emotionally talking out his gender struggle. One way we can consider this as significant is by noticing that Kang-t’ae’s talk in this excerpt, as well as excerpt 1, is a good example of what Bakhtin called dialogic talk (Bakhtin, 1981) and shares striking similarities with the teenaged boy’s talk whom Skinner, Valsiner and Holland (2001) analyse using some of Bakhtin’s ideas on language. Like this Nepali teen in Skinner, Valsiner and Holland’s work, Kang-t’ae’s discussion of himself is highly social, dynamic and multi-voiced, integrating characters that represent aspects of society he would like to change. Both the Nepali teen and Kang-t’ae’s talking clearly reveal different social languages (also referred to sociolects in Bakhtin-influenced work), the language of certain social groups (Skinner et al, 2001). Because social groups are not equal in terms of power or authority, Bakhtin argues that

[t]he voice of one group may be authoritative and hegemonic, supporting other voices, but in any society, there are counter-hegemonic voices that threaten to weaken and subvert more authoritative ones… For Bakhtin, then, language is “heteroglossic,” comprised of a combination of social languages, some of which are engaged in opposition and struggle (Bakhtin, 1981 in Skinner et al, 2001).

Kang-t’ae and the teen in Skinner, Valsiner and Holland (2001) incorporate voices which are authoritative and hegemonic into their talk―the teen incorporates voices of men of upper castes who look down on him, and Kang-t’ae incorporates voices of men who speak for normative South Korean masculinity and look down at many of Kang-t’ae’s traits. Both the teen and Kang-t’ae use reported speech to engage in dialogue, quite clearly, with these authoritative voices and attempt, in their own ways, to speak against them in their efforts to define themselves.

Specifically, in Kang-t’ae’s case in excerpt 2, much of his talk arises out of a recent conversation he had had earlier with his cousin, and here he continues this dialogue but from his own perspective. Although I am his immediate audience in both examples, Kang-t’ae answers his cousin, and his other unnamed male relatives as well, and answers in his own way, insisting that he is strong despite differing from conventional expectations of manliness. Furthermore, Kang-t’ae incorporates Seo Taiji into his answer to the question of strength and manliness. In a way, Kang-t’ae sets things up so that the conflict or dialogue has two sides or two types of voices: himself and Seo Taiji versus his cousin and his unnamed male relatives. Although these two sides shift in other instances of his talk, sometimes his cousin would be on the Seo Taiji side with him, at this point in his talk such as division is present. Just as the women in Abelmann’s (2003) book conceive of themselves in contrast to other types of women and the teen in Skinner, Valsiner and Holland (2001) defines his present and future self in contrast to morally corrupt men of high caste, Kang-t’ae here, as well as in excerpt 2, conceives of himself with Seo Taiji as alternative men in opposition to more conventional types of men. Instead of being alone in dialogue against his cousin and other male relatives’ conceptions of strength, Kang-t’ae speaks of Taiji being like him, and vice versa, sharing an “independent spirit”, appearing weak but in fact being strong, being critical of society and so on. As such, Kang-t’ae has the backing of his hero to help him define himself. In these few sentences, Kang-t’ae positions himself with Taiji and situates both of them into his larger ongoing struggle over defining himself as a man against authoritative notions of masculinity and into his critique of society.

Upon meeting Chae-tol for the first time, I knew he was different. I suspected this simply because he was a Taiji fan, actually a mania [1], at the young age of 19. Before meeting him, I had already interviewed Yun-hûi twice and in some way, she had influenced my thinking about Koreans of Chae-tol’s generation. She did not have a very positive view of the generation younger than hers, often typecasting them as superficial and “anti-PC”―uninterested in social issues such as feminist issues, or gender identity issues, or pretty much anything she felt was important. In Chae-tol I found a teen much more similar to Yun-hûi than the picture of Korean youths she presented, and I was pleasantly surprised. In fact, I liked Chae-tol very much almost right away, and during our first interview together secretly wished I were ten years younger so we could perhaps become friends.

In Chae-tol’s talk, we see an unbridled but intelligent enthusiasm and joy for Taiji and his music. He was also very enthusiastic and happy talking about the social issues Taiji has tackled over the years, even gender issues. We also see how Taiji has been a guide for Chae-tol since he was very young, and as Chae-tol has gotten older, his passion for Taiji’s alternative or progressive image and ideas has informed how he has conceived of himself.

I met with Chae-tol in person twice, in a coffee shop when he was on March Break (he was attending high school in a town in eastern Ontario). Chae-tol was very passionate and highly articulate about Taiji and his relationship to him as a star and to his music. Chae-tol had given a lot of thought about why he liked Taiji and what aspects of Taiji he should emulate in himself. Chae-tol was not so much interested in being cool, as we might assume a younger fan of a pop superstar might be, as in carefully considering how Taiji might help him find a better way to live and how he could learn from Taiji. (Of course, being a Taiji mania was also a lot of fun). Like Kang-t’ae, Chae-tol’s talk also shows that he conceives of himself as an alternative or different person, much like he viewed Taiji.

Excerpt 1 shows how Chae-tol began his talking about Taiji with me on the first day we met. He jumped right in to tell me his story of being on TV impersonating Seo Taiji when he was in grade one. This story is intriguing because it literally and metaphorically shows how from a very young age, Chae-tol has conceived of himself in relation to Taiji. His enthusiasm and joy recalling this experience bubbled to the surface. Because I knew as soon as I had met him he was very similar to me—reserved and a little shy—I knew this enthusiasm was special, not something he would dish out about something he might soon forget or that did not really matter a lot to him. For this reason, I began to pay close attention to Chae-tol’s joy and enthusiasm in his communication. This continued as he talked and at the end of excerpt 1, we can see how his enthusiasm almost overwhelmed him as he tried to communicate to me everything he felt. In excerpt 2, and mid way through excerpt 1, Chae-tol speaks about how early on he began to conceive of himself as a little different from his peers and that continuing to like Taiji set him apart.

Excerpt #1

Ct: (When I was) seven, Seo Taiji was very popular for entire Korea. Basically in all sections. I, actually, was on TV [Oh!]. (He laughs, smiling) I did a … what’s it called . . . Celebrity, what’s it called [I dunno]. Cover performance?
J: Oh you mean you were on TV acting like Seo Taiji?
Ct: Yes! (He smiles a lot). My mom bought me the same clothing, and taught me how to dance exactly the same way so I was on TV for that. And (laughs) it was really exciting. (Smiling). All of my albums, my father bought me. [Oh!] Ya. And, every time he got a new album, after he went to work, he brought me the album. That cycle, he (Taiji) was hiding and then come, back, hiding and then come back [right]…Ya. So for my second album, all of my cousins and my friends also liked Seo Taiji so, but 3rd album was kind of a changing point, my friends kind of didn’t like the rock parts, and the topics that he dealt with in this album were kind of heavy for grade 2-3 students (laughs, big smile) but I still liked it. And the 4th album was the biggest shock, shock for me. First his appearance had changed, longer hair, with weird sunglasses I didn’t realize it was him when I first saw him on the comeback home show. [Ah]. It was the Come Back Home album it was the first time that I heard (laughs, big smile) gangster music. Yes, it was very so (looks amazed. Shaking his head a bit) … Yes.
J: When were you on television?
Ct: When I was 7. First album. (Big smile, laughing)
J: So your parents liked him.
Ct: Yes. My parents actually totally supported me and even went farther, like Seo Taiji mania, ya. So. …
J: Your parents would have been in their 30s?
Ct: Ya. And. There are too many things to tell you !! (Laughs, big smile).
J: Yes (smile).
Ct: it’s like 13, 14 years of experiences and [I know!][…] Ya that’s ah… (thinking carefully). There are too many aspects, ah, too many stories, to many, ah, ideas, that I have about his music! (Big smile).

Excerpt #2

Ct: There are a few reasons (why I like him so much) but the reasons have been changed. First he was just shocking and interesting. Second was, he was just really popular, with his second album, he was really popular so [with everybody] yes with everybody, so it was more like follow the masses. [Right]. And third album, people started to leave, him. I was more like, more like intrigued. I dunno. I dunno why but, at the age of 10, I was thinking about the problem of the Korean education system (big smile, we laugh together). I dunno, with his music, somehow he taught me, through his music those issues are important. (Smiles). So I started to think about the reunification of North and South Korea, and other problems, ya. And, after that, I also liked, his marketing strategy, not only his music. He is really skilled at, when to come on strong, and, … when to pull back. Maybe also that’s why I want to go into business. [Oh!]
J: So through his songs, even at a young age, you became interested in social issues, from his songs.
Ct: Yes…
J: What kind of marketing do you want to do. Do you want to work in the entertainment field, or not marketing, but business?
Ct: I’m not sure now but I’m more interested in like, media and entertainment, advertising, stuff like that.

Like Kang-t’ae, he communicated that Taiji was central to how be began to conceive of himself as a critical, thinking person, one way that he felt he differed from his peers. When Chae-tol talked about becoming concerned and interested in social and political issues (the Korean education system, Korean unification and other issues) his eyes were shining. Although he did not talk with his hands much and generally sat still, his alert posture, almost constant eye contact and smiling indicated his energy and enthusiasm. In fact, Chae-tol expressed to me that his critique of the Korean education system, which he first began to think about after hearing Taiji’s song “Kyoshil Idea” (“Classroom Idea”) (1994), was so passionate that he successfully convinced his parents to let him come to Canada to attend high school. This example, among others such as striving to be a perfectionist (excerpt 3) or his interest in studying innovative marketing strategy, indicate how Chae-tol conceives of Taiji as a type of guide whom he has tried to emulate in an alternative way. It is important that gender issues, specifically feminist influenced ideas, work into how Taiji has influenced Chae-tol’s conception of himself. Chae-tol’s enthusiasm, joy and intensity coloured even his communication about gender issues. When Chae-tol spoke about the song “Victim” (2004) he resonated considerable energy and excitement (see excerpt 4). In fact, I was a bit taken aback by his articulateness and confidence. This, plus the fact that he brought up the topic all on his own, indicated to me that he had given the song “Victim” and its introduction tract “Nothing” considerable thought and the issue in the song (discrimination against females in Korean society) was something that interested him and that he was knowledgeable about. In addition, during out first meeting, Chae-tol had expressed some dissatisfaction over his father’s gender discrimination against his sister, whom his father would not let come to Canada to attend high school because she was a girl.

Excerpt #3

We are listening to the album Live Wire (2004)

Ct: Number 9 and 12 connect really well. [Number 9 and number 12 connect really well?] Yes. When we play them, they are exactly the same way. He builds them bit by bit. How can I say? When I work, I try to do, I try to, this type of art, or something I’m working on. [Ya]. Even though I’m doing a little homework, I try be perfect on my work. So he makes sure all of his songs are perfect. He’s a perfectionist [Yes]. And I try to follow that characteristic of Seo Taiji, perfectionist. Everything I make I want to make it very good quality. I don’t really have any relationship with other manias. In Canada. I am more solitary, as I also was before (smiles, I laugh a little). But after ah, his website was built, I did many mania activities. Now I am doing ah, ah, developing a Seo Taiji copy band [oh, cover band]. Yes, cover band. So that’s what I’m going to do this summer.

Excerpt 4

We are listening to the Live Wire album (2004) again

Ct: Victim is about more like gender issues. (Laughs points to track 3, “Nothing”) this one is interesting, it’s a bridge [this one like an introduction to “Victim”]. Yes. Interview some people on the street. And it’s about a Korean man. He is a Korean man (the man talking). He says… he says, “what about, ah, women’s rights in Korea, they already have lots of rights.” But on the next track, he Seo Taiji kind of counter argues [ah] the, that they don’t have, enough rights. Right? [Uhuh] (Talking very excited and interested in this, bright eyes, looking right at me). So ah… I don’t know for your essay are you looking at this kind of gender issues, discrimination?
J: For one part [yes] I am. I am looking at this song (I point to Victim) [ya]. But I am also interested in the music, the sound of the music, and issues of gender, not just the lyrics. [Yes]. Like, style and sound, and the sounds of voices. [Yes].
Ct: It is really hard to get what he is saying in it … the lyrics are not, ah straight [yes]. Even for Korean people we have to think about it, interpret.

Chae-tol’s talk shows us that like Kang-t’ae, his prescription to hegemonic ‘normative’ masculinity is destabilized. Chae-tol’s apprehension about normative South Korean masculinity is linked to his passions and joy in emulating Taiji and his excitement to learn from Taiji’s progressive songs, such as “Victim” or “Classroom idea.” Perhaps by emulating Taiji so closely and so passionately, Chae-tol cannot but subscribe to an alternative masculinity. This is because Taiji himself is positioned as an alternative man, partly through his pro-feminist song “Victim” and partly from his asexual and androgynous image and his lack of participation in military conscription and marriage/normative family life upon which South Korean hegemonic masculinity depends. Ultimately, Chae-tol’s excitement, passions and joy for Taiji help him to envision other ways for Korean society and even for himself to be. Being a fan of Seo Taiji has helped Chae-tol to form himself as a Korean who acknowledges and is concerned about gender discrimination.

[1] The term mania is a Korean-English term that refers to a Seo Taiji fan who is a very serious fan, perhaps active in organized fan activities.