Seo Taiji 1992-2004: South Korean popular music and masculinity (my master's thesis) © Janet Hilts 2006 - please note: this is not the final version of my thesis.

[ch. 1] conclusion

Published 금요일, 3월 17, 2006 by 쟈넷 | E-mail this post

These case studies present emotional engagements with Taiji and his music and the role of gender issues within these. Although simply three young Koreans' talking, these narratives are highly significant for how they provide us with “ . . . access into the history-in-the making―how the person constructs one’s own (and society’s) cultural future in the here-and-now setting” (Skinner, Valsiner and Holland, 2001).

In Yun-hûi, we see that her joy and excitement in listening to many Taiji songs and reminiscing about her years as a younger fan seems at odds with her passion and seriousness in discussing gender issues. As Yun-hûi challenges and re-formulates gender systems in South Korea she also, differently, simply enjoys Seo Taiji’s music. Yun-hûi’s different voices that convey passionate critique of gendered South Korean society and Taiji’s ambivalent position in this help to illustrate the unstable or irregular relationship between Korean popular music and gender politics in contemporary South Korea.

In Kang-t’ae and Chae-tôl’s communication, Taiji’s role in the reformulation of gender in Korea is much clearer and firmer, perhaps because these fans are male and can use Taiji as a role model more easily, or perhaps because their understanding of gender issues is less sophisticated than Yun-hûi’s is. With Kang-t’ae and Chae-tôl’s talk, they form themselves differently from ‘normative’ ways of being a Korean man and simultaneously re-work gender patterns in such a way that hegemonic Korean masculinity looses some of its tenacity. By talking, both give us access to Korean masculinity in flux, and indicate their passions for Taiji has played no small role in this instability.

In the next chapter, the other participants in my study will join these three in the discussion of Korean popular music, Taiji and gender issues, however their opinions will illustrate more general themes than Yun-hûi, Kang-tae and Chae-tôl’s more detailed narratives have. Certainly, more ethnographic research that investigates the relationships between popular music stars and gender in fan’s detailed narratives is needed for a more complete understanding of popular music’s role in gender change and stability in contemporary South Korea. The next chapter provides a preliminary investigation that examines this role concerning the sound of popular music as well as Taiji.

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[ch. 1] conclusion

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