Political capital and stardom in China: the transnational persona of Choo Ja-hyun

ABSTRACT

Since July 2016, in response to South Korea’s announcement of its deployment of the American anti-missile system THAAD, China has barred the showing of Korean media content and the performance of Korean stars in China. While the retaliatory measure was domestically backed by the rising tide of anti-Korean nationalism, among the Korean celebrities who disappeared from the Chinese screens overnight, the Chinese public exceptionally sympathised with the Korean actress Choo Ja-hyun [Chu Jahyeon]. This article investigates what made Choo special, focusing on how she presents herself as a foreigner who ‘genuinely loves China’. It adapts Pierre Bourdieu’s capital theory to argue that this persona enabled Choo to accumulate personal political capital from the Chinese audience and, thus, mitigate, though not overcome the Chinese government’s de facto ban. This case study of Choo Ja-hyun will contribute to the growing body of scholarship on the crisscrossing of stardom and politics in China by offering a transnational perspective and bringing attention to individual stars’ agency to navigate within China’s state-market complex.

KEYWORDS:

• Transnational stardom
• political capital
• China
• South Korea
• nationalism

Acknowledgments

I would like to thank Dr Griseldis Kirsch, Dr Colette Balmain, and Dr Sabrina Yu for their help in my research underlying this article. I am also grateful to Professor P. David Marshall for his valuable feedback and encouragement at the Fourth International Celebrity Studies Conference in Rome, where the earliest version of this essay was presented.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. Although the two terms are oft-used interchangeably, international stars refer to those who achieved international fame without performing in screen work outside their home countries, while transnational stars are those who have transferred from one national/local industry to another, usually in a different language (Yu 2012a).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Elaine Chung

Elaine Chung is a Lecturer in Chinese Studies at Cardiff University. Her research interests lie in the transnational politics of East Asian popular cultures. Her essays have been published in East Asian Journal of Popular Culture and edited volumes with McFarland, Routledge, Multilingual Matters, Edinburgh University Press, and MLA. She has also co-edited a Special Issue on East Asian media comedies for Archív Orientální (2022).