ABSTRACT
Korea's popular music emerged at the beginning of the twentieth century as a creative, yet ambivalent, product of and response to the complex modernization instigated by Western influences, technological innovations, and Japanese imperial politics. The definition of popular music in Korea has been closely associated with external influences and in the beginning, in particular, with European modernity transmitted and filtered through Japanese colonialism. Many Korean groups and singers allegedly copied not only directly from American pop stars, but also from Japanese pop culture, as Jung Eun-Young showed in her dissertation on the Japanese presence in Korean pop culture. The American Forces Korean Network (AFKN) and the camp towns that formed next to the military bases were the prime disseminators of American pop culture and music. The impact of American pop culture resonated well in the new hedonistic lifestyle of adult and urban middle-class Koreans after the war.
