Nation branding or marketization?: K-Classic and Korean classical musicians in an era of globalization

ABSTRACT

While many people may believe that Korean classical musicians’ success is the result of endless hours of practice and special musical instruction for talented children from a young age, this paper explores the systematic investment in classical music by the Korean government and large corporations. This paper aims to understand classical music as a nation branding tool in two ways. First, we trace Korea’s cultural policies since the early 1960s and locate the government’s investments in classical music in its cultural agendas. Second, by taking a critical approach to nation branding that highlights the role of the market and marketization, we investigate how and why classical musicians have collaborated with the Korean government in order to promote national pride domestically and a positive image of the nation internationally in an era of global competition. We highlight the government’s new agenda, ‘K-Classic,’ which has support from various actors, including private corporations.

KEYWORDS:

• Classical musicians
• nation branding
• cultural policies
• K-Classic

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

This paper was supported by International Research Funds for Humanities and Social Science of Chonbuk National University in 2016.

Notes on contributors

Jinwon Kim

Jinwon Kim, Ph.D. is Visiting Assistant Professor of Sociology at Hamilton College. Kim’s research explores themes of urban sociology, transnational and global sociology, migration, Asian and Asian American studies, and consumption. She is currently working on her book manuscript on Koreatown in Manhattan, as a transnational space for consumption, leisure, and entertainment, or Transclave. Kim’s works appear in City& Community and CUNY Forum. Kim earned her doctorate in sociology at the Graduate Center, City University of New York.

Meebae Lee

Meebae Lee received her Ph.D. in historical musicology from the Graduate Center of the City University of New York, United States. Building on her doctoral dissertation, ‘Rewriting the past, composing the future: Schumann and the rediscovery of Bach,’ her recent work concerns J. S. Bach’s latent legacy in Robert Schumann’s music. Her article ‘Schumann’s romantic transformation of fugue: “Fugengeschichte,” the well-tempered clavier, and vier fugen op. 72’ was published in Acta Musicologica in June 2014. She also works to interpret the unique art music scenes in South Korea through sociological perspectives, as appeared in the article, ‘Entangled modernities in the culture of Korean music publishing: challenges in establishing a contemporary Korean art music archive’ in Fontes Artis Musicae 64/3 (2017). She is an assistant professor in the music department at Chonbuk National University in South Korea.