CedarBough T. Saeji

CedarBough T. Saeji — Featured Speaker @ KOTESOL 2024

 Featured Session

Dressing Up in the Korean Past: Hanbok Wearing as Play Informed by Popular Culture

Wearing hanbok is one of the easiest participatory activities related to tradition for both Korean people and non-Korean residents and travelers. Although briefly renting colorful clothing for a photograph is not an unusual tourist activity, it has become particularly ubiquitous among young foreign tourists to Korea. How should we understand this phenomenon? In this paper, I analyze how hanbok in dramas and on pop music stars is encouraging and building the desire to experience hanbok for these audiences, to the point that taking photographs in hanbok has become an essential part of a trip to Korea for many foreign fans. I argue that people who rent a hanbok to visit a touristic spot are creating citational links with the Korean past/tradition and with media texts, and embodying those links through the practice of wearing the clothing and commemorating the experience in photos. Whereas images of the hanbok in Korean music videos often present a flattened and limited view of Korea, this practice imbues the image of the hanbok with complexity, playfulness, and contextual sensitivity. Ironically, the creative use of hanbok by stars and the desire for hanbok among contemporary cosmopolitan youth have exerted pressure on the clothing, leading to dramatic shifts in its stylistic elements and impacting the aesthetics both of hanbok in media contexts and tourist rental hanbok. To explore this phenomenon, I discuss the attitudes towards hanbok shown in a survey of over 900 K-pop fans, analyze the showcasing of hanbok within K-pop contexts (both in the appearances of stars connected to traditional holidays and in performances where stars wear hanbok), and discuss interview data from hanbok-clad foreign tourists. 

 Invited Second Session

K-Pop as a Teaching Tool 

K-pop is an excellent tool for reaching undergraduates. In 2016, I taught the first class anywhere in the world dedicated to K-pop at the University of British Columbia, and have continued to refine this teaching area. In this presentation, I will discuss how and why I use Korean pop culture, especially K-pop, in the classroom. The lessons and exercises I describe will not require you to be highly versed in K-pop, or to know the music better than your students, but can introduce larger topics while providing a platform for discussion. In the classroom, K-pop, as a media text, provides an excellent platform for introducing exercises and assignments related to media literacy, such as how to identify media framing. K-pop as a cultural expression naturally leads to conversations about Korean culture and society, for example, mandatory male military service. And K-pop as part of broader transnational pop culture allows for examination of important concepts such as gender norms, celebrity, fandom, and the contemporary transformation of music into a visualized medium. Most of all, because students of all ages have strong opinions about pop culture content, structuring class around pop culture allows students to express their own passions – inciting students to devote time and energy to your lessons. 

 Biosketch

CedarBough T. Saeji, PhD, is an assistant professor in Korean and East Asian Studies in the Department of Global Studies, Pusan National University. Saeji has previously held positions at Indiana University, the University of British Columbia, Korea University, and Hankuk University of Foreign Studies. A scholar of Korean performance who approaches issues from gender to cultural policy through examining everything from traditional mask dance dramas to the latest K-pop hits, Saeji's most recent publications are "Building a K-Community: Idol Stars Challenging Foreign Fans to Learn Korean Traditions" in Acta Koreana and "Embodying K-Pop Hits Through Cover Dance Practices" in the edited volume Cambridge Companion to K-Pop. A book on invented tradition in Korea that Saeji co-edited was released in February 2022. A solo-authored monograph on Korean mask dance dramas and cultural policy in Korea is under review. Saeji tweets @TheKpopProf.

Select Sites
CedarBough T. Saeji: Academia.edu.
CedarBough T. Saeji: Invented Traditions in North and South Korea [Book].
CedarBough T. Saeji Interview in The English Connection.

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