Korean Popular Culture: Selling of Place

Pop City examines how Korean television dramas and K-pop music are used to promote urban and rural places in South Korea. Youjeong Oh builds on the phenomenon of Korean pop culture and argues that the marketing of places through pop culture mediates political decentralization and the globalization of Korean popular culture. By analyzing the process of culture-featured place marketing, Pop City shows that urban spaces are marketed like TV dramas and pop idols, focusing on spectacular images rather than physical and cultural qualities. Oh demonstrates how the commercial, image-focused, and consumer-driven nature of popular culture shapes the commodification of urban space, ultimately leading to the domination of urban space by capital in more sophisticated and fetishized ways.

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