Latest Issue

Given that Korea is one of the most ethnically, culturally, and linguistically homogeneous countries in the world, the word “foreigner” takes a unique position in the Korean context. The Korean word for “foreigner” is oe-gugin (외국인), and the literal translation of the three letters is “outside” (oe), “country” (gug), and “person” (in). The meaning “outside” is thus important in understanding the Korean interpretation of foreigners, because the definition indicates that you are a foreigner if you are not Korean. When Koreans address Korea, they say “uri nara” (우리 나라), which translates to “our” (uri) “country” (nara). Korea is a country for Koreans which is made up of Koreans. The Korean language seals this nationalist border shut by defining all non-Koreans as oe-gug-ins.

In other words, the Korean language or culture does not leave much room for other races or ethnicities to become part of the “inside” or, in other words, part of the collective “uri.” Because of this homogenous nature of Korean society, Koreans are situated at the top of the racial hierarchy. All non-Koreans are automatically grouped as foreigners, people of color, or the “other.” Shin (2013) explains, “in Korea, it is not unusual to express one’s pride and one’s feelings of cultural distinctiveness and superiority for being a rare example of an ethnically homogenous nation. The great majority of Koreans would agree that their society is defined by a unique ‘Korean’ identity—an identity based on a sense of shared bloodline and common ancestry—and feel proud of the racial purity and ethnic homogeneity of their nation” (p. 369). Thus, the most important context in analyzing oe-gug-ins in the Korean context is that there exists a clear racial hierarchy and racism within Korea, where being Korean is the default identity that predominates Western Whiteness. By “predominate,” this paper refers to how “being Korean” is the basic, fundamental, and foundational identity in the Korean context, compared to the common practice of viewing Whiteness as the base identity in Western contexts or the most other parts of the world.

This pride in being an ethnically and racially homogenous nation is produced and reproduced constantly from the production side of Korean cultural products. Fedorenko (2017) explains how “Hallyu celebrities are automatically recruited to represent their motherland, to the world and to South Korea itself [and their] transnational popularity is to be spontaneously instrumentalized for pursuing national geopolitical and economic ambitions. Transnational Hallyu celebrities are formally and informally recruited as Korea’s ‘promoters’... [and] in contrast, celebrities who lack patriotism are punished” (p. 506). Lyan (2019) even addresses the idea of “fan nationalism,” and how this gets “fueled by the increasing popularity of Korean popular culture… [and] since the 2000s, [international] fans have joined and even replaced ethnic [Korean fans] in performing nationalism beyond Korea’s borders” (p. 3765). This shows how strongly the production side of Korean cultural products hails the idea of having pride in Korea, and this belief and the set of actions that reinforce this belief even extends to international fans.

Then, the important question becomes, how does this kind of pop culture nationalism operate toward oe-gug-in celebrities in Korea? For example, Lee and Abidin (2022) look into oe-gug-in influencers on YouTube in Korea and how this kind of content “prominently features predominantly White‐presenting, non‐Korean influencers who often adopt nationalist tones to endorse the excellence of Korean culture” (p. 542). The authors highlight how “Korea’s colonial history and the resultant racial‐ethnic system are encapsulated in its unique ethnocentric nationalism, which has been a key driver in the construction and mobilization of Korean society since the 19th century” (p. 543-4). They explain that the oe-gug-ins that receive the opportunity to become a part of the collective “uri” are “those whose Otherness is visually attractive and appear to be [oe-gug-in] enough, and whose media personae are legible to Korean ethnic nationalism” (p. 555). The authors conclude that the oe-gugin celebrity ecology prioritizes White oe-gug-ins and “makes invisible the People of Color [oe-gugin] altogether[,] [and] it is this third group who are often left defenseless against racist bigotry and growing cultures of online hate in the country” (p. 555).

In line with the idea that oe-gug-ins of color are further discriminated against compared to White oe-gug-ins within Korea’s pop culture nationalism, Han (2015) points out that “since the 1990s, the Korean public has displayed a discriminatory attitude—often reported and displayed by the media—towards foreign students and workers. Portrayals and debate about the others have become part of media performance and reportage in Korea” (pp. 13-14). Additionally, racism becomes harder to detect “since a significant portion of migrants in South Korea share an Asian racial identity, racism in the country is not solely based on White/Color racial lines but is also deeply intertwined with linguistic attributes” (Ryu & Kang, 2024, p. 2).

This means that utilizing oe-gug-ins is a common practice of the Korean media and the subtle discrimination on screen is more based on whether oe-gug-ins have familiarity with Korea such as knowing the Korean language than based on explicit differences like color. Likewise, Ryu and Kang demonstrate that “because many migrants share a racial identity with native South Koreans, language has become a potent means of racial distinction” (p. 2). Likewise, Kim (2012) points out that “racism in the global age has evolved into subtler forms, which mobilize not only race-neutral but even positive language toward ethnic minorities… [and] the Korean media’s discourse on migrants has been overwhelmingly positive” (p. 658).

As pop culture nationalism progresses, female celebrities are also subject to further scrutiny than their male counterparts because of the patriarchal expectations that society has toward them. Consequently, the burden put on female celebrities who are oe-gug-ins would be larger. For example, Ahn and Lin (2019) investigated the Taiwanese female K-pop idol Tzuyu and how she had to issue an apology to Korean, Chinese, and Taiwanese fans because she waved a Taiwanese flag. The authors point out that the Tzuyu incident “precisely captures how an idol (as a cultural commodity) is treated within the K-pop system” (p. 164) and argue that “geopolitics in the Tzuyu incident is manifested in gendered narratives, showing the uneven power relations between consumers and artists as well as between China and Taiwan, and even beyond” (p. 171).

In short, Korean media have been the major driving force in strengthening the pop culture nationalism of Korea and strengthening the Otherness of oe-gug-ins through actively portraying them in the media and imposing subtle nuances related to their foreignness. This context regarding the birth of K-pop, as well as the discourse of race and ethnicity regarding the position of foreigners in Korean society provides us with grounds to examine oe-gug-in K-pop idols, who are polysemic figures within the dynamics surrounding K-pop.

Although oe-gug-in K-pop idols are shaped into different meanings, are placed in different positions and different contexts, and are from many different countries, they are grouped under a single cultural identity as a “foreigner” in Korea and carry inherent markers of “foreignness” in the eyes of Korean media and Korean audiences. The reason why their foreignness becomes a source of entertainment, amusement, and pleasure is because it emphasizes the superiority of Korea and/or Koreanness. Koo and Koo (2022) sum up this idea well, by explaining that “[although] the surge in foreign member recruitments, establishment of overseas fandoms, and numerous world tours manifest that K-pop now identifies itself as a global music genre[,] the unique aspect about K-pop is that while it looks transnational and universal, it is in essence nationalistic and state-centric” (p. 179). In other words, because “the K-pop industry’s pursuit of transnationalism does not necessarily remove the K (Koreanness) from its cultural texts but, rather, creates a nationalized mode of cultural hybridity” (Yoon, 2023, p. 397), the Korean Wave works “as a complex form of cultural nationalism and soft power” (Kim, 2022, p. 102).

The Korean government has created many departments, ministries, and policies over the years to help support the export of Korean media texts that pioneer the Hallyu phenomenon (Sohn, 2009). The Lee government and the Park government, between 2008 to 2017, implemented many policies to directly and indirectly support Hallyu at a national level (Hong et al. , 2017). This means that K-pop has been a national project that fosters a sense of national pride and superiority of Korea for more than two decades. Scholars like Ahn (2018) also conducted a study on how Korean media systematically boost Koreanness over all other races, ethnicities, or cultures by being acolytes of this national project. Ahn examines black Amer-Asian and white Amer- Asian celebrities in Korea, as well as compares Ko- Asian children with children with a White parent in Korean reality TV shows to see which of the two is more preferred and favored by the Korean media. Her book shows that despite the Korean media preferring Whiteness over Blackness, ultimately, the Korean media frame Koreanness as the ideal that is expected to be reached by both types of mixedness.

As many studies like Ahn’s suggest, even though global audiences have the power and autonomy to freely interact with and appropriate K-pop at their pleasure, K-pop in the Korean context is often framed and viewed as a source of national pride because it is both an economic and political capital that helps elevate that power and status of Korea in the global context. What this means is that even though Korea may not be a dominant power in the Western-centered global pop market, and no matter how little Koreanness matters to the global audiences who are freely enjoying K-pop, K-pop has the power to oppress, marginalize, or exploit its participants to reinforce this national project that it is part of.

Shin (2013) illustrates, “there appears to exist no inherent contradiction between nationalism and globalization [in Korea]... because globalization can be appropriated for national interests and can intensify, rather than weaken, national consciousness” (p. 384). Cho (2022) explains, “South Koreans still tend to associate modernity with the West, which is a legacy of the nation’s colonial history. Persisting with this projection outwards of the modern is a strong anti-colonial nationalist tendency that is often expressed as ethno-nationalist chauvinism” (pp. 274-275). In other words, as Korea’s ethno-nationalist chauvinism becomes mixed with the results of globalization, such as the development of globally popular Korean cultural products like K-pop, K-pop gains the power to punish anyone who goes against the national project and continues to reinforce the status quo. Thus, the colonial experiences of oe-gug-in K-pop idols are created because of the strong power that Koreanness as an ideology, a belief, or a national project working in tandem with the Korean media has over the production and consumption of K-pop.

To transcend the limitations of looking at K-pop in a Korean context and properly look into the identity of oe-gug-in K-pop idols in a global context, I take from the ideas of Stuart Hall. Hall et al. (2021) argues, “instead of thinking of identity as an already accomplished fact… we should think, instead, of identity as a ‘production,’ which is never complete, always in process, and always constituted within, not outside, representation” (p. 257). He also describes that cultural identity can be seen from two points of views, the first is thought of in terms of “one, shared culture, a sort of collective ‘one true self ’” (p. 258) and the second is seen as a “matter of ‘becoming’ as well as ‘being’” (p. 260). Hall points out that the second description of cultural identity is what allows us to “properly understand the traumatic character of ‘the colonial experience’” (p. 260) as well as the workings of the inner compulsion or internalization of “otherness” by marginalized bodies themselves. I believe that the first description of cultural identity is the dominant point of view towards oe-gug-in K-pop idols in Korea at the moment, and the second description is more appropriate in understanding the wide range of meanings and identities that these idols are constructed into.

If we understand cultural identity as a matter of becoming and being, its meaning is never complete and always changes. If meaning is constantly postponed, it means that there is space and openness to make discussions. It is this very space that lies the opportunity to combine and deconstruct different meanings to examine the cultural identity of oe-gug-in K-pop idols. This paper thus utilizes Hall’s idea to transcend the Korean context, situate K-pop in a global context, and properly understand the cultural identity of oe-gug-in K-pop idols and to better understand the global dynamics of K-pop occurring at a transnational scale.

Furthermore, this paper ultimately argues that because oe-gug-in K-pop idols are framed and structured by the Korean media to inherently carry foreignness as an identity marker, they are not just simply foreigners or immigrants but subjects of a K-pop diaspora. Paul Gilroy (1994) mentions that “the diaspora idea invites us to move into the contested spaces between the poles that we identify roughly as the local and the global. It encourages us to proceed in ways that do not privilege the modern nation-state and its institutional order over the sub-national and supra-national networks and patterns of power,

communication, and conflict that they work to discipline, regulate, and govern” (p. 211). In other words, the diaspora idea will be helpful in properly understanding both K-pop and K-pop idols, as both can no longer be considered a local, national, and ethnic text that is bound to Korea or Koreanness.

At first glance, however, oe-gug-in K-pop idols might not seem to fit into the traditional types of diaspora related to exile, genocide, famine, slavery, or war that many are familiar with. James Clifford (1994), although he does agree with the attempts of many other diaspora scholars like Safran on trying to “focus attention on defining diaspora” (p. 306), argues that “we should be wary of constructing our working definition of a term like diaspora by recourse to an ‘ideal type’” (p. 306). He stresses that “the transnational connections linking diasporas need not be articulated primarily through a real or symbolic homeland” and that “a shared, ongoing history of displacement, suffering, adaptation, or resistance may be as important as the projection of a specific origin” (p. 306). Karim (2006), while mapping the different mediascapes of diaspora, also addresses how there are different manifestations of diasporas and how “all diasporas do not have homeland myths at the centre of their consciousness” (p. 2). Reis (2004), like Karim, also makes a distinction between the classical diasporas based on violence and force and the diasporas of the contemporary world that are more complex: “Whereas classical diasporas are to a large extent directly associated with exile, as is the case of the Jews, the Palestinians, the Africans, and the Armenians, dispersal to overseas territories need not imply a decisive break with the homeland nor is the uprooting of the diasporic group considered permanent in relation to contemporary diaspora” (p. 47).

Many other scholars have similarly argued that “notions of diaspora have to be flexible enough to move beyond ‘bounded’ and ‘unbounded’ paradigms” (Mavroudi, 2007, p. 476), and how the diaspora perspective is still a valuable and relevant theory to look at dispersion, displacement, and migration compared to other theories that address global movements like the transnationalism theory. For instance, Tabar (2020) argues that “the transnational lens does not privilege the sending state, and ultimately results in an erroneous conceptualization of the processes occurring within the contested diasporic field, in which the sending state necessarily retains greater significance and power to influence/legitimize contested diasporic capital” (p. 468) and how this works in vice versa as transnationalism puts more emphasis on the receiving state. Ang (1993) also demonstrates, “since diasporas are fundamentally and inevitably transnational in their scope, always linking the local and the global, the here and the there, past and present, they have the potential to unsettle static, essentialist and totalitarian conceptions of “national culture” or “national identity” which are firmly rooted in geography and history” (p. 13).

Ang (1993) further argues that the goal is not to position diaspora identifications as intrinsically oppressive, but rather to highlight that “this very identification with an imagined ‘where you’re from’ is also often a sign of, and surrender to, a condition of actual marginalization in the place ‘where you’re at’” (p. 12). In other words, being fixated on keywords like “homeland” or “return” or continuing to make the distinction between “where you’re from” and “where you’re at” does not benefit the process of trying to understand the lived experiences of diasporic identities. Similarly, Tambiah (2002) mentions that “both voluntary migrants and displaced refugees who make transnational passages and are relocated in other countries may be labeled as forming diaspora communities, and the dynamics and patterns of their involvement in transnational experiences and interactions” (p. 164) should be the focus of diaspora research.

Likewise, Bhatia and Ram (2009) “call for a shift from conceptualizing acculturation and immigrant identity as an individual process to a more broad, contextual, and political phenomenon” (p. 141) and bring in the concept of diaspora to study immigrant identities. Wofford (2016) further explains that “it was only in the latter part of the twentieth century that diaspora was expanded as a theoretical frame to describe not only communities dispersed through violence, as with the Jewish and African diasporas, but also communities, cultures, individuals, and even art objects spread globally under the conditions of late capitalism” (p. 74).

Hua (2005) also demonstrates an understanding that “diaspora is one of the most debated terms today, particularly within scholarly discussions on migration, displacement, identity, community, global movements, and cultural politics (p. 191). This paper is in line with scholars like Hua who disrupt traditional notions regarding diaspora and believe that “diasporic theory can help to explain the movements of modernity and postmodernity, from the late colonial period to the era of decolonization and into the twenty-first century” (Hua, 2005, p. 193). This paper also takes in the ideas of scholars like Reis who further argue that “diasporization and globalization can thus be considered as coeval processes, with globalization having the most impact on the contemporary phase” (Reis, 2004, p. 47).

These scholars, who talk about diaspora in the age of globalization, late capitalism, and neoliberalism, help us understand that the concept of diaspora—despite its origins coming from more fixated notions of displacement, migration, and dispersion that result from explicit and violent outside forces like war—is still relevant. Just like Ang’s (1993) idea that “we need to emphasize the irreducible specificity of diverse and heterogeneous diasporic identifications” (p. 14), in the age when people, commodities, data, information, and ideologies travel on a transnational scale, we need to acknowledge that there is a spectrum of diasporic identifications. Thus, despite the seemingly voluntary nature of these transnational movements, the conditions of globalization create a hyperconnected environment where these movements and flows are not genuinely voluntary.

Although oe-gug-in K-pop idols do not seem to show a visible desire to return to their homeland or not showing any form of resistance, I believe that they undergo the colonial experience of displacement, suffering, and forced adaptation for literal and metaphorical survival as an idol. Oe-gug-in K-pop idols are expected to perform paradoxical and complex tasks that exploit their foreignness and are directly linked to survival. These tasks include and are not limited to: Economically and politically benefitting the Korean government and the Korean music industry, displaying their foreignness–which is their unique “charm” or characteristic compared to Korean idols–as a spectacle, displaying Koreanness, emphasizing their desire for assimilation and acceptance to Korean audiences, while at the same time also targeting the tastes and needs of global markets and audiences that do not relate to Koreanness.

Avtar Brah (1997) points out that the migrations of the 21st century “are taking place in all directions” and that “some regions previously thought of as areas of emigration are now considered as areas of immigration” (p. 175). The K-pop industry has created a new division of labor in the entertainment sector, thanks to the increase in the number of global audiences that enjoy K-pop. K-pop corporations are recruiting “trainees” from all over the world, and this new kind of labor is what lures young children and teens to be part of a K-pop diaspora and voluntarily but not truly voluntarily migrate to Korea. Moving to Korea and training to become an idol at a young age is currently the only way for non-Koreans to become a K-pop idol. This “entertainment labor” that the K-pop industry requires forces children and teens to give up everything else in their lives and contracts them as “trainees” placed under the care of entertainment corporations. These trainees, in turn, must practice for years without the guarantee of a debut. Such unbalanced power relations, displacement, and the expectation to perform a fixed set of tasks, behaviors, and identities as a K-pop idol show the colonial and exploitative experiences that oe-gugin K-pop idols have to go through even before their career truly starts.

This long stream of colonial experiences mixed with the long history of the Korean media promoting pop culture nationalism and utilizing foreigners as a spectacle is what makes oe-gugin idols subjects of the K-pop diaspora. This not-truly-voluntary migration mixed with the Korean media’s systematic oppression towards oe-gug-ins is what oe-gug-in idols share with other strands of diasporas in the world. I further take from Brah (1997) and his suggestion that “the concept of diaspora should be understood in terms of historically contingent ‘genealogies’... as an ensemble of investigative technologies that historicise trajectories of different diasporas, and analyze their relationality across fields of social relations, subjectivity and identity” (p. 177). I believe that this is the context that oe-gug-in idols should be placed within.

Utilizing the diaspora idea to understand oegug- in K-pop idols will also be helpful in trying to answer some broader questions regarding mediarelated diasporas: How does the media create displacements of people and colonize or exploit displaced bodies? How do the audiences react to or interact with such displacements and displaced bodies? Can the displaced bodies be properly represented or heard? Investigating the similarities these idols share with other strands of diasporas will help us locate what types and sources of power affect the production and interpretation of contemporary media-related diasporas. Thus, I argue that the diaspora idea is an efficient framework to help examine different colonial subjects and their colonial experiences created in the transnational media environment of today.

Diaspora is not a bygone or irrelevant idea. It is an efficient framework for understanding the multiple identities and positions that specific groups of people who are marginalized, oppressed, and displaced by the media have. For example, one of the goals of this paper is to uncover the misunderstandings, totalization, and marginalization that oe-gug-in idols are often subject to by utilizing the diaspora idea. However, this is not to say that theories of diaspora can explain every identity that is global, hybrid, polysemic, or multi-positional. Clifford (1994) also argues that “it is important to resist the tendency of diasporic identities to slide into equivalence with disaggregated, positional, performed identities in general” (p. 324).

Thus, I finally take from Lisa Lowe’s emphases of heterogeneity, hybridity, and multiplicity to properly analyze oe-gug-in K-pop idols as subjects of diaspora. I take from her focus on heterogeneity to “indicate the existence of differences and differential relationships within a bounded category” (Lowe, 1996, p. 67) of being grouped as an oe-gug-in in Korea. I take from her attention on hybridity to argue that inserting oegug- in members in a K-pop idol group by the Korean popular music industry is a byproduct of “the histories of uneven and unsynthetic power relations” (p. 67). Lastly, I take from her notion of multiplicity to assert that even though oe-gugin K-pop idols are considered to have constructed a single cultural identity, “subjects located within social relations are determined by several different axes of power” (p. 67) and they possess the grounds to be analyzed as having multitudes of meanings that are never fixed.

This paper focuses on a Korean television program called Knowing Brothers (아는 형님) by the Korean broadcasting network JTBC and more specifically a video uploaded on the program’s official YouTube channel. This video (JTBC Voyage, 2023) is a compilation of the guest appearances of famous oe-gug-in K-pop idols who are female. By conducting a close textual analysis of this video, this paper argues that oe-gug-in K-pop idols are subjects of a K-pop diaspora and analyzes the colonial experiences that oe-gug-in K-pop idols undergo in a Korean television program. With an emphasis on gender and race, this paper examines how “othered” or “foreign” identities in K-pop are exploited as a spectacle by the Korean media. By looking at this specifically curated video, this paper aims to provide a spotlight on oe-gug-in K-pop idols who reside in the margins of the research on the Hallyu phenomenon.

The show Knowing Bros is set in a high school classroom where the cast members are acting as “the bros” who know everything about this school. All the cast members are male celebrities who are established MCs (master of ceremonies; emcee), singers, athletes, and comedians in Korea. Their ages are between the late thirties and fifties. Each week, guest celebrities come to class posing as students visiting from another school. The cast members ask frank questions and pick on the guests to answer these questions honestly or comically. These interactions look almost as if the cast members are bullies. However, the show positions them as rowdy “bros” who look tough on the outside but are actually warm-hearted. In other words, the whole premise of the show is to comically bully the guests to talk and provide entertainment. The interesting point is that every week, we can easily witness the “bros” sometimes backing down or sometimes being constantly intimidating depending on the personality, status, or age of the different guest celebrities. Thus, this compilation video could be an effective example to showcase how K-pop idols, especially female idols who are oe-gug-ins are framed and interpreted by the Korean media.

This compilation video is the curated bits and pieces of the famous oe-gug-in female idols that appeared on Knowing Brothers from many different episodes across different years. The reason behind using the word “curated” to describe the compilation video is that the broadcasting company JTBC itself compiled the bits and pieces into a convenient edited collection to be uploaded on the program’s official YouTube channel to be efficiently consumed by audiences. The fact that this compilation video even exists shows providing entertainment by promoting nationalism is a common practice of the Korean media. This also shows how utilizing foreignness to promote nationalism is a subtle but effective method that makes both parties in the production side of Korean cultural products—both the media industries and the government—happy by bringing in a good number of views and mostly positive reactions from the amused audiences.

This video features four female K-pop idol groups. LE SSERAFIM, IVE, (G)I-DLE, and BLACKPINK. LE SSERAFIM has two Korean members, two Japanese members, and one Korean-American member. IVE has 5 Korean members and one Japanese member. (G)I-DLE has two Korean members, one Chinese member, one Taiwanese member, and one Thai member. BLACKPINK has two Korean members, one Korean-New Zealander member, and one Thai member. These groups are all called da-guk-jeok (다국적) idol groups by the Korean media, which means that they are “multinational” idol groups where the members have different nationalities. The video also positions them as a multinational idol group and highlights the foreignness they bear.

The title of the video and the thumbnail image emphasize how the program aims to highlight the female idols’ foreignness as a source of entertainment. The title of the video is “ ‘인사 안하면 기분 나빠’ 최소 편집자보다 한국어 잘함ㅋㅋ 여자아이돌 외국멤 보다보니 어느새 K-패치 완성★” which translates to “‘I get mad when I don’t get a respectful bow’ These idols speak better Korean than the editor lol. K-Patch completed while watching these oe-gug-female idol members★” The sentence written in pink and yellow on the thumbnail image of the video (see Figure 1) is “K-여돌 외국 멤버 찐 한국인 모먼트 50분” which translates to “K-Female Idol Oe-gug-in Members’ Real Korean Moment 50 Minutes.” The logo placed at the top right corner of the frame as the video plays is “한국인 특징 흡수한 K-여돌 50분” which translates to “K-Female Idols Who Absorbed the Characteristics of Koreans 50 Minutes.” All three sentences used to describe the contents of the video and give hints to the audiences about what to expect from it imply that the foreignness of the oe-gug-in idols in this group is what creates the spectacle.

Figure 1.  Compilation Video of Oe-gug-in Female Idols in Knowing Bros

Note. This is a thumbnail image of the compilation video of oe-gug-in female idols that appeared on Knowing Bros.

The title of the video written in Korean and the abbreviated title written in pink and yellow on the image indicate how Korean media frame and interpret oe-gug-in female idols.

This paper analyzes that the program situates oegug- in female idols in three different positions that highlight, extract, and exploit their foreignness. These three positions, in turn, create three different sources of humor and entertainment. First of all, the program infantilizes the oe-gugin female idols, which belittles their voices as young and naive. This, in turn, positions them as subalterns, in the words of Gayatri Spivak, and creates unequal interpersonal relationships and unbalanced social relations between them and the program’s cast members who are established celebrities with longer careers. This unequal social dynamic creates humor as the cast coerces and intimidates the idols based on age, rank, and status, and further silences them. Secondly, the program exoticizes and fetishizes the culture or country that the idols are from. The connotations of exoticization and fetishization can be seen in the content of the questions that the cast asks the idols, which becomes the source of entertainment to the audiences. Lastly, the program ultimately positions the idols as “the other” as opposed to “Korean” K-pop idols. Both the cast and the audiences expect the idols to react to the exoticizing and fetishizing questions in a way that displays their gratitude towards the Koreanness they gained over the years. The idols’ reactions center around the desire to be accepted into the borders of Koreanness, and this is what becomes a source of pleasure for audiences.

To sum up, this paper argues that oe-gug-in K-pop idols are subjects of a K-pop diaspora by examining the colonial experiences that oegug- in female K-pop idols undergo in Korean media. This paper looks at the television program Knowing Brothers and the compilation video of the oe-gug-in female idols that appeared on the program to show that Korean media utilize three subtle strategies of discrimination that position Koreanness as the superior identity or an ideal that should be reached and consequently frame oe-gug-ins as having a singular cultural identity of a “foreigner.” This paper emphasizes that oegug- in idols who are female go through double or triple marginalization based on their race, gender, age, career length, status or rank by examining the social relationships shown on the screen with other Korean celebrities on Knowing Brothers, the questions being asked to them by these Korean celebrities, and the idols’ answers or reactions to the said questions.

Moreover, the obsession with these idols’ foreignness seen in the program helps show the contradictory identity politics in Korean media and how oe-gug-in idols are victims of such identity politics. That is, oe-gug-in idols must display foreignness but at the same time are responsible for displaying proficiency in Koreanness. To successfully achieve this contradictory status, Korean media manufacture the foreignness of oe-gug-ins into a spectacle that generates humor, entertainment, and a sense of racial and cultural superiority to Korean audiences. This colonizing and exploitative manufacturing process imposes a certain set of tasks, identities, and behaviors onto oe-gugin idols that prioritize Koreanness over other characteristics, ideologies, or beliefs. As a result, female idols are infantilized, silenced, exoticized, and fetishized.

All of this feeds back into the loop of K-pop being a national project that celebrates Koreanness, which, in turn, strengthens the continuous cycle that reinforces the ideology that having a Korean nationality or identifying with Korea is a necessity that provides the authenticity of being a K-pop idol. Additionally, the hard workings of the Korean media continue to naturalize the idea that there is an “us” and “them” dichotomy where foreigners can never be one of us. However, this is not to say that the Korean media and the K-pop industry have no agency and are blind acolytes of the Korean government. In fact, what makes the idea of the K-pop diaspora controversial is the view that Korean cultural products have been pioneering the global market dominated by Western cultural products, showing potential for non-Western culture to become influential and provide a healthy alternative to global audiences. What is ironic is that Korean culture can also be subject to the same kind of infantilization, fetishization, and othering through what Lee and Cho (2021) describe as transnational cultural intermediaries performing banal Orientalism, an example of which is Western YouTubers living in Korea creating videos that translate Korea to the rest of the world in stereotypical and problematic ways.

In short, the colonizing and exploitative aspects of K-pop should not be underestimated despite Korea’s peripheral status in the overall Westerncentered world. Additionally, the lived experiences of oe-gug-in idols should not be extrapolated solely from their media representations and portrayals. Oe-gug-in idols should not be viewed as simple victims. The agency of these idols should not be neglected nor should the wide range and diversity of their lived experiences be undervalued. The goal of this paper is to acknowledge oe-gug-in K-pop idols as subjects of a K-pop diaspora to reveal the exploitative and colonizing aspects of K-pop, as well as pinpoint the double and triple layers of marginalization that female idols of color are subject to by the Korean media based on race and gender. Thus, this paper utilizes the diaspora framework in the hopes of challenging the dominant idea that the cultural identity of oegug- in idols is singular and fixed as a “foreigner,” and suggesting that their identity is complex, never fixed, and always changing. In other words, utilizing the diaspora framework would make it possible for us to reveal the structure as well as the faults of the K-pop diaspora and gain a deeper understanding of how the cultural identities of K-pop idols are constructed by the producers of Korean pop culture, be it the media industry, the government, or the larger ideological systems that these broader structures operate within. Furthermore, critically examining the connections that the K-pop diaspora shares with other mediarelated diasporas could help uncover the obscure networks of power that create such displacements in the contemporary digital media environment.

Blunt (2007) mentions how “particular landscapes play a central part in mobilizing diasporic identities and attachments” (p. 690). For oe-gug-in K-pop idols, it is the contemporary Korean media landscape mixed with Korea’s ethno-nationalist chauvinism in the age of globalization that makes them become a part of the K-pop diaspora and mobilizes them to have a polysemic cultural identity, or, in other words, construct diasporic identities where meaning is never complete and always in production.

This study suggests that the way that oe-gug-in female idols and their foreignness are emphasized in Korean media shows how K-pop still remains a national project no matter how little Korea or Koreanness matters to global audiences who are freely interacting with K-pop. This paper further argues that the Korean media are gatekeepers of this national project that try to keep out oegug- in idols and other “foreign” identities while celebrating Koreanness. However, there is still much more left to investigate. One limitation of this paper is that since the textual analysis was conducted on a 48-minute video that compiled the bits and pieces of oe-gug-in female idols’ appearances on the program, it was difficult to conduct a more detailed scene-by-scene or word-by-word textual analysis on more oe-gug-in female idols across multiple episodes or multiple seasons. Thus, future studies might benefit from conducting a comparative analysis with other Korean television programs featuring more oegug- in idols.

Moreover, future studies on the K-pop diaspora could explore audiences’ relationships with Korean K-pop idols and compare them with the relationships they have with oe-gug-in K-pop idols. Gender could be further explored, such as looking into male oe-gug-in idols or comparing male and female oe-gug-in idols to reveal the specific ways in which gender plays a role while Korean media manufacture foreignness into a spectacle. Lastly, oe-gug-in celebrities other than K-pop idols, like actors or influencers that are famous in Korea could be investigated to reveal deeper histories regarding race in Korean media. In other words, the actual lived experiences of different oe-gugin idols should be explored through interviews or oral histories to examine how pop culture nationalism affects them in real life and the formation of their identity in their own words. This could help navigate the different goals, motivations, and desires associated with the larger Hallyu phenomenon.

In short, future research on the K-pop diaspora should aim to show that understanding oe-gug-in K-pop idols would help us understand the dark side of K-pop. If Korea or Koreanness is not the most significant element that affects how global audiences interact and build relationships with, and grow to like or dislike K-pop, there is all the more reason to challenge, resist, and confront the paradox of K-pop: refusing to transcend the single element that remains local and national– the nationality of the idols–while aiming for the global and the transnational.