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Michelle Cho is a scholar whose extensive areas of interest include Contemporary Korean Cultural Studies, Culture Industries, Fandom and Celebrity Studies, and Convergence Cultures. Her academic background gives her strong credibility and authority to analyze the global phenomenon of K-pop. In her article, “3 ways that BTS and its fans are redefining liveness”, Cho (2018) examines the dynamic and complex relationship between BTS and their global fandom collectively referred to as the ARMY. The K-pop group’s unprecedented transnational success is deeply rooted in the digital labor, affective engagement, and participatory culture of its fans. The article highlights how the fandom operates not merely as passive consumers, but as a highly organized, transnational community that leverages digital media platforms to translate, promote, and propel the group’s visibility and cultural impact across borders.

Another academic article I read is “BTS for BLM: K-pop, Race, and Transcultural Fandom.” Cho (2022) argues that K-pop fan cultures have emerged as a powerful arena for public discourse and organizing against structural racism, proving that transnational fandom can be a profound resource for political solidarity. Meanwhile, Cho (2022) points out that a key factor in BTS’s crossover success in the United States is their deep engagement with Black popular culture and hip-hop music. Sharing these foundational roots with American pop culture creates a “cultural proximity” that makes their music much easier for Western audiences to accept and recognize. This inspired me to dive deeper into BTS’s early production ideals and musical works to understand how they hybridize Western pop cultural with their own cultural expression. Because Western pop culture and hip-hop music are deeply rooted in Black American culture, it is important for me to examine academic research on Black hip-hop music as well. 

This week, I completed two LinkedIn Learning courses (Learning Wix and No-Code Web Design by Jen Kramer) and met with two potential committee members to discuss my project. Professor Klotz gave me valuable guidance to expand my research. For instance, he noted that Japan also has a highly mature music market, and a female group named Perfume received strong agency backing in their efforts to expand globally. Yet, years of hard work did not yield the same global impact as K-pop groups. By comparing J-pop and K-pop, maybe I can find more reasons behind BTS’s global success. Professor Klotz recognized the research value of one of my research questions—what strategies other nations can learn from K-pop’s successful globalization to produce music and enhance a nation’s soft power. He is also curious about the practical findings and said that he is willing to share them with friends in the Japanese music industry. I also had a meeting with Professor Mueller to discuss my project and deliverables timeline. She expressed interest in my project, though she needs to review her schedule for next semester before confirming whether she will have sufficient time to guide my project. I am eagerly awaiting her response.

Cho, M. (2018, May 29). 3 ways that BTS and its fans are redefining liveness. Flow. https://www.flowjournal.org/2018/05/bts-and-its-fans/

Cho, M. (2022). BTS for BLM: K-pop, Race, and Transcultural Fandom. Celebrity Studies, 13(2), 270–279. https://doi.org/10.1080/19392397.2022.2063974

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Mapping the Research Logic and Identifing Soft Power

This week, I reflect on the motivation and the research logic of my project. This reflection helped me map out all the topics I need to cover and allowed me to refine the research questions I initially proposed. I currently have two options for the project title in mind. The first is Behind the Beat: K-pop Globalization, BTS, and Cultural Soft Power. The second is Behind the Beat: Breaking Western Dominance and Shaping a New Cultural Hegemony. The logical flow of my research is as follows:

A nation’s global influence no longer relies solely on military or economic hard power. The ability to tell its cultural story to the world is now equally important (Nye, 2008). For a long time, Western countries have dominated the global discourse. Western countries control international communication channels and leave little room for other countries to tell their own stories. In this context, South Korea emerged as a “dragon slayer” aiming to break this Western cultural hegemony. Since the late 1990s, to help rebuild South Korea’s economy after the Asian Financial Crisis and create a new global image after the Korean War (Kim, 2025), the South Korean government has introduced various policies to support the cultural industry and has launched an export-centered economic strategy. Popular music is a core part of the South Korean cultural industry. The K-pop industry studies Western pop formats and hybridizes them with Korean traditional music. This integration has led to many globalization successes, from works by Psy to BTS. In recent years, BTS is the most successful and typical representative of K-pop’s successful globalization. Therefore, it is meaningful to study how and why K-pop and BTS successfully integrate traditional culture with pop music. Based on this logic, my research will cover the following topics: soft power, the cultural industries, and Korean cultural policy. The cultural industries section will include cultural imperialism, Korean traditional culture, and Korean popular culture. I will also explore the reasons for BTS’s success. 

From the core research question, I am exploring three sub-questions. The first is how South Korean cultural policy drives the global dissemination of K-pop to enhance the nation’s soft power. The second is how the music production and concert visual design of BTS’s album Arirang integrate traditional culture to resonate with a global audience. The third is what strategies other nations can learn from K-pop and BTS’s successful globalization to enhance their cultural soft power. Finally, as K-pop rapidly expands, I will raise a concern about whether the “dragon slayer” is becoming the new dragon, questioning whether K-pop’s standardized and commercialized cultural exports are shaping a new cultural hegemony.

After identifying my core research topics, I began to review literature on soft power. Joseph Nye was the first scholar to introduce this concept in 1990 at the end of the Cold War. Nye originally used this concept to explain the comprehensive advantage of the United States in both hard and soft power. At that time, scholars considered American soft power the most effective force driving the collapse of the Soviet Union. In 2004, Nye published “Soft Power: The Means to Success in World Politics” to emphasize its crucial role in international relations. In his 2006 article “Think Again: Soft Power,” he argued that soft power effectively solves international cooperation issues. He also specifically discussed East Asian countries and pointed out their long histories and rich cultural heritage. Nye predicted that East Asian soft power would grow significantly alongside their economic rise. In 2011, he further expanded on these ideas in the book “The Future of Power”. Soft power was defined as the ability to influence others to achieve desired outcomes (Nye & Goldsmith, 2011). Based on this framework, my project defines soft power as a force that relies on attraction to shape others’ preferences. It is an appealing power formed when an actor uses agenda-setting and persuasion to gain target audiences’ recognition. The primary resources of a nation’s soft power include its culture, political values, and foreign policies. Among these, culture serves as a fundamental and vital source of soft power. Therefore, it is valuable to investigate K-pop’s globalization strategies by analyzing how they integrate traditional culture into music production and stage visual designs.

Kim, N. J. (2025). Exporting Culture, Building a Nation: South Korea’s Use of Pop Culture as a Soft Power Tool. CMC Senior Theses. 4003.

Nye, J. S. (2008). Public Diplomacy and Soft Power. The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 616(1), 94-109. https://doi.org/10.1177/0002716207311699

Nye, J. S., & Goldsmith, J. L. (2011). The future of power. Bulletin of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, 64(3), 45-52. https://www.jstor.org/stable/41149419

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I read the article “Unveiling the success factors of BTS: a mixed-methods approach“. The literature review was the biggest takeaway for my project from this article. The literature review clearly outlines pop culture, K-pop groups, and their globalization processes, which provides reference materials for my work. Although published in 2021—before BTS members’ mandatory military service—the study has meaningful and inspiring findings. The study explores the key success factors behind the sustained global popularity of BTS. By using a mixed-methods approach that combines text mining of social media data and in-depth interviews with fans and entertainment industry experts, the authors identified ten critical success factors. These factors include an active global fandom, SNS (social network service) communication, fans’ loyalty, empathy through music, storytelling and worldview, performance quality, music video quality, early overseas expansion, efforts for self-development, and teamwork among members (Lee et al., 2021). These factors provide a valuable reference because my project aims to explore strategies for the global spread of music and the enhancement of a nation’s soft power. However, as I noted, this article was published in 2021, and the global music market is constantly changing. I hope I can build upon this research to analyze and develop up-to-date strategies that reflect the current reality of the global music industry.

This week, I have been refining my “Training Modules List”. Since I plan to present my research as an interactive website, I need to learn various new skills. In addition to LinkedIn Learning courses, I found that many YouTube tutorials on website building and data visualization are also useful. For example, I found the YouTube channel of “The Pudding,” a digital publication that successfully combines multimedia into a unified website. The channel offers several concise, practical tutorials demonstrating how to recreate bubble charts, animated stacked bar charts, and other graphics without code (The Pudding, 2025). In addition, I’ve sent invitation emails to potential committee members and scheduled a meeting with the potential committee chair for next week.

References:

Lee, S. H., Choi, S., & Kim, H. W. (2021). Unveiling the success factors of BTS: A mixed-methods approach. Internet Research, 31(5), 1518–1540. https://doi.org/10.1108/INTR-12-2019-0507

The Pudding. (2025, January 30). How to recreate our charts without code—bubble chart [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J4WuZxvMnVI

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I reviewed an interactive website called The Pudding. It is a digital publication that combines analytical text, dynamic data charts, audio, and video into a unified space. A multimedia website breaks away from the limits of traditional and linear academic papers. Projects in The Pudding are inspiring. They show that a website format can make research both academically rigorous and engaging. Growing Up With K-pop (Kim et al., 2026) is the most relevant reference product for my project. Not only does its topic closely relate to my research, but it also shows how text, charts, music, and other multimedia elements can be thoughtfully integrated into a webpage to tell a story. I like this project’s modern, neon color style and how it uses lines to connect different parts of the page. These lines guide viewers through the content and encourage them to continue reading. Meanwhile, as users scroll down, the icon in the upper-right corner also changes. These little design details make the project feel polished. I can use similar visual guidance elements in my project to encourage viewers to follow my narrative and to present the content in a clear, logical way.

To create a similar project, my main practical focus this semester will be learning website setup and web design. However, learning the technical steps is not enough. I also need to master the underlying logic of digital structuring. I need to figure out how to turn academic research into clear website sections. For example, I need to figure out a clear and interactive way to present the origins and development of the Korean folk song Arirang. I also need to choose the best way to display audiovisual examples, such as the traditional cultural elements in BTS’s album ARIRANG. Overall, the web design must support a clear narrative and prevent the audience from feeling overwhelmed by too much information. This is what I hope to achieve in my project.

References：

Kim, M., Lee, E., & Ralph, C. (2026, May). Growing up with K-pop. The Pudding. Retrieved September 11, 2026, from https://pudding.cool/2026/05/kpop-generations/

The Pudding. (n.d.). The Pudding. Retrieved September 10, 2026, from https://pudding.cool/

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I read the academic article “A Study on ‘Arirang’: A Korean Folk Song That Is Being Accepted Worldwide”. According to some researchers, Arirang is a national song that marks the beginning of Korean culture. It is a song loved not only by Koreans but also by audiences worldwide. My project focuses on the successful global dissemination of K-pop and Korean traditions, with a specific analysis of BTS’s latest album ARIRANG. Therefore, it is essential for me to research the historical origins of Arirang and its development both in Korea and abroad. This article is helpful and inspiring for my project.

The article points out that the dedicated efforts of artists like BTS to spread Korean traditional culture abroad have contributed to the globalization of Arirang. However, the “specificity” of Korean culture embedded in Arirang possesses a “universality,” which makes people from different countries accept and enjoy it. This combination of cultural uniqueness and universal theme allows the song to transcend different backgrounds, touching on shared human emotions regarding love, sorrow, and community solidarity.

During this week, I also participated in two Production Foundations Workshops organized by Klein College: Field Production and Narrative and Commercial Production. These workshops equipped me with the knowledge needed to properly reserve and use professional equipment.

References:

Kim, K. H., & Chung, J. K. (2023). A study on ‘Arirang’: A Korean folk song that is being accepted worldwide. European Journal of Science and Theology, 19(1), 77-91. https://www.ejst.tuiasi.ro/Files/98/7_Kim%20&%20Chung.pdf

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Initial Ideas about MA Project

I hope my MA project can be an interactive and multimedia website. My project investigates how South Korean cultural policy has shaped the global dissemination of K-Wave and K-Pop, while thinking about the future development of music globalization. I will examine the globalization of K-Pop music through the case study of BTS, a seven-member South Korean group that debuted in 2013. A website is the best form for my project. It allows the integration of historical timelines, textual analysis, and multimedia elements like images, charts, video, and audio. This format enables me to distill complex academic theories into accessible visualizations. Furthermore, a website can show my skills in research, data integration, and multimedia production, which will be significant for finding a job in the communication or music industry in the future.

I reviewed two distinguished MA projects: Celina Ehrlich’s (2025) The Shockwave: A Horror Hosting Experience and Zey Engin’s (2026) A Byte to Remember. Ehrlich’s (2025) project inspired me a lot because she built an impressive website to present her work. She clearly displayed her research process, findings, and documentary in one cohesive space. I believe that this website can serve as a professional portfolio that shows her multimedia production skills. Seeing this confirmed my decision to present my project as a website. Additionally, Ehrlich’s speech noted the value of using specific strategies to build credibility and connections within a fandom. Because I am a fan of BTS, I can easily connect with other fans for interviews and research.

References:

Ehrlich, C. (2025), The Shockwave: A horror hosting experience by Celina “Mausolena” Carra. Blogger. https://shockwavedoc.blogspot.com/p/landing-page.html

Engin, Z. (2026, May), 2026 Klein College Masters Showcase [Video], Temple TV, https://templetv.net/shows/university-specials/2026-klein-college-masters-showcase/

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