Plotting the course: artistry, celebrity and kugak in South Korea

Abstract

Within the context of the rising popularity of the Korean Wave, artists of Korean traditional music (kugak) often find themselves sidelined and struggling to gain the attention of the general population. In this article, I explore the strategies of three kugak artists who have risen to become not just stars in their field, but with a broader audience as well. Each artist highlights a different path to transcending subcultural kugak stardom: Pak Aeri’s appearance on reality TV; Kim Chunsu as a ‘kugak idol;’ and Yi Hŭimun’s eye-catching performance attire. In tracing the strategies each uses to balance popular fame and traditional artistry, I argue that although a ‘celebrity moment’ is crucial in order to attain popular stardom, sustained performance of ‘celebrity reluctance’ in engaging with popular culture remains a necessary strategy for retaining legitimacy as a traditional artist.

Cite this work

No public copy is stored for this record, so only the metadata is cited.

Stored only when both papers are in the corpus — 3 citations exist upstream.

Papers that cite the same references — the relational fallback while embeddings are still backfilling.