Conclusion: K-hallyu: The Commodity Speaks in Kang Chul-woo’s Romantic Island, Bae Yong-joon’s A Journey in Search of Korea’s Beauty, So Ji-sub’s Road, and Choi Ji-woo’s if

This chapter explores the ubiquitous travel diaries and video travelogues by Korean Wave (hallyu) stars, including Choi Ji-woo’s if (2005), Bae Yong-joon’s A Journey in Search of Korea’s Beauty (2009), and So Ji-sub’s Road (2010). It regards this phenomenon as epitomizing the core logic of hallyu cinema, and shows how in these texts hallyu celebrities, who have themselves become global commodities, turn to travel and travel images as a way of identifying and coming to terms with the phenomenon they have engendered. By representing and selling their own experiences of tourism, these quintessential figures of hallyu enact the quintessential economic logics of hallyu in a tautological performance. Their texts self-reflexively confirm hallyu’s preoccupation with travel and its intimate connection to the logics of tourism, ultimately representing in the figure of the travelling hallyu star the voice of the commodity that speaks about its own status in transnational circuits of exchange.