In recent years, cultural production has taken an unprecedented and important role in trade and in discussions of national power in East Asia. In particular, the Korean Wave (hallyu), either “in a spray of radio waves or satellite signals” or “in torrents of digital information running through pipes lying on the ocean floor,” emerges as one high-profile example of the power of transnational media flows (p. v). Growing out of a workshop held at Monash University in 2006, Complicated Currents seizes this exciting moment of transnational media movements in East Asia and tries to understand the meaning, impact, and legacies of such movements.
The complexity of popular cultural flows cuts across all chapters in this volume. Case studies include flows from Korea to Japan and China, Japan to Korea, China to Korea, Korea to the United States, and Japan to the United States.
The first section (Chapters 1–5),...