K-Pop and the Creative Participatory Engagement of Thai Fans: When Cultural Hybridity Becomes Cultural Authenticity

ABSTRACT

K-pop products generally avoid cultural particularity, but they speak to specific neoliberal aspirations of middle-class urban audiences in Asia, even if such dreams are a distant reality in working-class regions in Thailand. This paper features the popular “Deksorkrao” YouTube channel, produced by a group of K-pop fans in Thailand’s northeast. We provide a discourse analysis of their home-made cover of Blackpink’s “Pink Venom” that incorporates symbols particular to agricultural life. We argue that this form of creative participatory engagement is a uniquely authentic expression that speaks to a familiar discourse in Thai life, but uses K-pop as its vehicle.

KEYWORDS:

• Cultural hybridity
• K-pop
• participatory engagement
• popular culture
• Thai studies

Disclosure Statement

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

Availability of Data and Materials

The data used and/or analyzed in this paper are all publicly available. No primary research data collection was conducted for this project.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Matthew Robert Ferguson

Matthew Robert Ferguson teaches in the Intercultural Studies and Languages program at Mahidol University International College (Bangkok, Thailand), teaching courses in Popular Culture and Intercultural Communication. Research interests include narrative inquiry, cultural identity formation, and the internationalization of higher education in Thailand.

Thanyavee Thanyodom

Thanyavee Thanyodom is a recent graduate of the Intercultural Studies and Languages program in the Ethics, Philosophy, and Economics concentration at Mahidol University International College in Bangkok, Thailand. For her undergraduate thesis, she completed a project on the hegemonic influence of the Korean pop culture industry on the economy and culture of Thailand.