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Black K-Pop: Racial Surplus and Global Consumption — Comprehensive Study Notes

Overview

  • Article: Suk-Young Kim, Black K-Pop: Racial Surplus and Global Consumption (Black K-Pop) from TDR: The Drama Review, Summer 2020
  • Central aims: critically examine the performance of blackness in the Korean pop (K-pop) industry; move beyond simple cultural appropriation binaries; analyze how racialized bodies are produced, circulated, and consumed in a global context; introduce and develop the concept of “racial surplus.”
  • Core idea: K-pop’s global success hinges on the deliberate production of racialized selves that are labor-intensive and publicly consumed, creating a surplus of race that travels digitally and physically through fans, videos, and performances.
  • Key term to track: racial surplus – an overproduction of racial variants that attach and detach bodily features of racial others in ways that are sometimes empathetic and other times exploitative or frivolous.
  • Method: close readings of music videos (and related publicity materials) of K-pop performers, with emphasis on Taeyang of BIGBANG and the video Ringa Linga (2013), and a comparative look at the dance version vs the full music video.
  • Theoretical frame: combines Marxist concepts (surplus value), performance theory, and race/gender studies to interrogate how racialized bodies are produced, circulated, and consumed in a global capitalism of media.
  • Contextual anchors: US military presence in Korea, postwar racial hierarchies, colonial legacies, and the emergence of multiracial Korea amid globalization.

Key Concepts and Definitions

  • Racial surplus
    • Definition: an overproduction of racialized selves that proliferate in media and digital archives, creating multiple versions of self that attach/detach racial features over time.
    • Distinction from “excess”: surplus is not merely more than needed; it is a volatile, reproducing form that lingers as digital specters in platforms like YouTube.
    • Consequences: can deconstruct racial purity in Korea while also reinforcing a fragmented or instrumentalized view of race; enables both cross-racial empathy and exploitation.
    • Related idea: racial surplus creates a spectrum of selfhoods, challenging the notion of a stable, homogeneous national identity.
  • Sono-racial categories (Tamara Roberts)
    • Concept: a fixed, market-driven mapping of race onto sound and musical styles, reinforcing racial identities through sonic cues (e.g., R&B, soul, hip hop).
    • Impact: helped establish how audiences “read” race in music production and consumption, influencing what counts as “white” vs. “black” in Korean pop genres.
  • Cultural appropriation discourse critiques
    • Latrell (2000) and Pham (2014) critique the one-way Western-to-non-West binary; argue that conventional appropriation discourse can reproduce white/Western dominance.
    • Kim offers an antidote: address intra-Asian/Black dynamics and the specificities of Korea as a site for triangulated racial encounters.
  • Racial dynamics in Korea: historical and geopolitical backdrop
    • Postwar multiracial shifts in Korea due to labor, marriage, tourism, and education; rising global visibility of K-pop.
    • The US military presence and the Korean War (1950–1953) as formative catalysts for racialized imaginaries and gendered encounters.
  • “Race, labor, and the body” in K-pop
    • Labor metaphor: dancers and performers as laboring bodies; “slave contracts” highlight exploitative labor conditions in the entertainment industry.
    • Blackness as labor: the body of color is central to dance and performance, while white/Asian bodies are foregrounded as sites of pleasure and consumption.
  • Theoretical anchors cited in the article
    • Marx, Karl. Theories of Surplus Value (1863) → surplus value is the value created by labor in excess of labor costs. Notation: SV = VL - W where VL is value produced by labor and W is wages.
    • Fred Moten; D. Soyini Madison on performance and labor in Black arts and politics.
    • Tricia Rose on “plantation music” – the vulnerability and exploitation in the music industry for Black artists.
    • Halifu Osumare on the transnationalization of hip hop and the movement of race through global labor and culture.
    • Sianne Ngai on “animatedness” and affect in contemporary cultural production.
    • Shannon Winnubst on “alchemically turning pain into gold” in cool/cultural capital contexts.

Historical and Geopolitical Context

  • US military presence in Korea after the Korean War (1950–1953) shaped racialized encounters and representations in Korea.
  • The neocolonial dynamic: Korean men perceived US soldiers (especially Black soldiers) as threats to masculinity; camp towns and sex work highlight gendered labor and racial tensions.
  • The cultural economy of Korea absorbed and transformed Black musical forms (jazz, R&B, hip hop) via AFKN and US military-era cultural exchange; Shin Joong-hyeon’s career exemplifies early Black-influenced Korean popular music.
  • Mechanisms of racial categorization in Korea: sono-racial cues solidified a binary and hierarchical racial order, influencing how Korean pop music differentiated “white” versus “black” sonic aesthetics.
  • The global turn of K-pop (mid-1990s onward): the rise of YouTube and social media as primary distribution channels broadened the racialized reach of K-pop beyond Korea’s borders.

Case Study: Taeyang’s Ringa Linga (2013) – The Racial Surplus in Action

  • Song and video structure
    • Ringa Linga (2013) features a dance performance video and a full music video released within days of each other.
    • Dance performance video (dance version): Taeyang and a crew of dancers of color perform hard-edged hip hop choreography in a Venice, CA–like studio setting; Taeyang sports platinum blonde braids and a dark skin tone impression through lighting and styling.
    • Full music video (music video version): opens with Taeyang’s silhouette against a blue industrial landscape; then shifts to a cooler interior with Taeyang in black designer wear and equally striking platinum blond hair; culminates in a multi-racial, face-painted celebration featuring people of various races.
  • Visual rhetoric and racial ambiguity
    • Dance version foregrounds labor and corporeal discipline of racialized bodies (black/brown dancers) with Taeyang as the leader; his platinum braids signal racial ambiguity and a deliberate blurring of lines between Blackness and whiteness.
    • Music video emphasizes a stark contrast between the dark laboring bodies in the dance version and the white/Asian bodies in the celebratory scene; Taeyang acts as mediator between these two registers.
  • Labor and capital in the music industry
    • The dance version foregrounds labor as visible practice: choreographers (e.g., Parris Goebel, Samoan descent) and dancers’ physical labor are central to the spectacle.
    • Behind-the-scenes materials reveal Taeyang’s intention to “create a scene where people of all backgrounds and races could come together and enjoy themselves as one” (BIGBANG Making Of, 2013).
    • The production of racial variants serves the marketplace: black labor is the ground on which multiracial celebration is built; white/Asian bodies are positioned as consumers and beneficiaries of the spectacle.
  • The politics of gender and Korean masculinity
    • Taeyang’s muscular physique and leadership role counters historical emasculation of Korean masculinity tied to Japanese colonial rule and American occupation.
    • The performance acts as a re-inscription of a “rebuilt” Korean masculinity that draws on Black male signifiers while being marketed for broad global appeal.
  • The paradox of racial surplus in Ringa Linga
    • Dance version vs music video version reveal different layers of racial production:
    • Dance version foregrounds labor, Black and Brown bodies, and choreographic precision.
    • Music video version foregrounds utopian multiracial celebration and a whitened aesthetic through lighting, costume, and framing.
    • Taeyang’s role as both apprentice and master dancer demonstrates the shift from labor to consumer-ready spectacle; the choreography serves as the engine of racial fantasy but relies on dark labor as its substrate.
  • The broader significance of the Taeyang case
    • Demonstrates how K-pop can produce a “racial surplus” that circulates globally: it enables fans to imagine affective ties to idols while maintaining a distance from the actual bodies performing labor.
    • Highlights the tension between embracing multicultural fantasies and reproducing racial hierarchies and exploitative labor structures.
  • Critical references within the Taeyang analysis
    • Snoop Dogg and Snoop’s 2014 Instagram post with a Korean fan wearing blackface as a provocative starting point for debates about authenticity, coolness, and racism in transnational pop culture.
    • The article links Taeyang’s experience to broader debates about cultural exchange, appropriation, and resistance through black culture in Asia.
    • The behind-the-scenes (making-of) statements reveal artist intent toward unity and cross-racial engagement, yet the public-facing product still scripts a racial hierarchy through visual juxtaposition.

Theoretical and Analytical Implications

  • Racial surplus as a framework for understanding global media ecosystems
    • Surplus is not simply a byproduct but a constitutive feature of late capitalism in the entertainment industry; it produces value through the repetition, mutation, and circulation of racialized bodies.
    • The digital archive (YouTube, social media) ensures that surplus labor persists, recurs, and evolves, creating a continuously reactivated racial repertoire.
  • Labor vs. consumption dynamics
    • The body of color performs labor in the creation of value; white/Asian bodies are positioned as consumers and recipients of the cultural surplus.
    • The term "slave contracts" foregrounds the exploitative labor regime in K-pop, linking the economics of pop stardom to historical patterns of racialized labor exploitation.
    • The contrast between the visible labor in the dance version and the consumer-oriented beauty of the music video underscores the asymmetry in capital flows and recognition.
  • Ethical and political dimensions
    • Ambiguities: racial surplus can foster cross-racial empathy and coalition-building but can also entrench exoticization, commodification, and racial hierarchies.
    • The article argues for nuanced, intra-Asian and cross-racial analyses beyond Western-centric appropriation debates.
  • Intersections with broader debates in Black Studies and performance theory
    • Moten and Madison emphasize performance as a site of reproduction and political possibility; the racial surplus concept extends these claims to the transpacific K-pop context.
    • Sianne Ngai’s concept of “animatedness” helps explain how Taeyang’s body embodies vitality in ways that can verge on mechanization when scaled to mass media.
    • Osumare’s transnational framework illuminates how hip hop’s global spread is recontextualized in K-pop through local articulations and labor structures.

Methodological Notes

  • Close reading of music videos and publicity materials as primary data for analyzing racial performance.
  • Situating analysis within a historical frame (US military presence, Korea’s postwar development, and discourses of race and gender).
  • Integrating theoretical texts from Marxist theory, performance studies, and racialized aesthetics to interpret visual culture.

Key Takeaways and Thematic Threads

  • Racial surplus offers a lens to understand how K-pop negotiates race in a global marketplace: it is both a mechanism of inclusion and a site of ongoing racial labor and hierarchy.
  • Taeyang’s Ringa Linga illustrates how a single artist can orchestrate competing racial signifiers to create a hybridized, marketable image that resonates across cultures while masking power inequalities.
  • The analysis highlights the need for critical, nuanced discussions of race in non-Western contexts, recognizing local histories, colonial legacies, and transnational media flows.
  • The study invites ongoing questions about how fans experience affective attachments to idols, given that those attachments are mediated through staged racial performances and industrial labor.

Notable Terminology and Phrases to Remember

  • Racial surplus: the overproduction of racialized selves in media and digital archives.
  • Sono-racial categories: music-sound mappings that cue racial identities via sonic cues.
  • Plantation music: Rose’s concept describing exploitation and vulnerability in Black musical labor within capitalist structures.
  • Alchemically turning pain into gold: Winnubst’s phrase describing the allure of ‘cool’ and resistance in racialized performance.
  • Slave contracts: the labor-exploitation frame used in K-pop to describe long-term, binding deals with entertainment companies.

Selected References (Key Works Cited in the Article)

  • Marx, Karl. 1863; Theories of Surplus Value. (Notation used in the article: 1863, 1951 edition details)
  • Moten, Fred. 2003. In the Break: The Aesthetics of the Black Radical Tradition.
  • Madison, D. Soyini. 2014. Foreword in Black Performance Theory.
  • Rose, Tricia. 1994. Black Noise: Rap Music and Black Culture in Contemporary America.
  • Latrell, Craig. 2000. After Appropriation.
  • Osumare, Halifu. 2007. The Africanist Aesthetic in Global Hip-Hop.
  • Ngai, Sianne. 2005. Ugly Feelings.
  • Winnubst, Shannon. 2015. Way Too Cool: Selling Out Race and Ethics.
  • Roberts, Tamara. 2016. Resounding Afro Asia: Interracial Music and the Politics of Collaboration.
  • Pham, Minh-Ha T. 2014. Fashion’s Cultural-Appropriation Debate: Pointless.
  • Latrell, Craig. 2000. After Appropriation.
  • Wu references (Snoop Dogg, Snoop’s 2014 Instagram) and related online discussions as contemporary case material.

Quick Glance Glossary

  • Racial surplus: overproduction of racialized selves in media; persistent digital artifacts that shape perception and opportunity.
  • Sono-racial categories: sonic-based racial signifiers; how genres cue race.
  • Plantation music: exploitation dynamic in the music industry; labor under capitalism.
  • Slave contract: long-term, exploitative terms of labor in K-pop industry.
  • Alchemically turning pain into gold: the transformation of suffering into value and appeal in cultural products.
  • Alchemical mécanisms of globalization: how labor and spectacle are packaged for global audiences.

Connections to Broader Themes in the Field

  • Globalization of Black culture and its localized adaptations in Asia.
  • The politics of representation, labor, and capital in popular music.
  • The ethics of cultural exchange versus cultural exploitation in transnational media industries.
  • The role of media technologies (YouTube, social media) in expanding and complicating racialized performances.

Final Reflections

  • The Black K-Pop framework reveals how global consumption of pop culture negotiates race through labor, aesthetics, and digital reproduction.
  • It underscores the importance of analyzing both production (labor, contracts, choreography) and reception (fan communities, cross-racial attachments) to grasp the full impact of racialized performance in contemporary pop
  • It invites ongoing, nuanced inquiry into how to foster coalitional potential while challenging exploitative structures within globalized entertainment.