ABSTRACT
This chapter examines how Korean cultural policies have shaped and constructed Korean popular music cultures. While the Korean government currently works to endorse and support Korean popular music as part of K-pop and hallyu (the Korean Wave), censorship of popular music has been enacted pervasively since the first Korean government was established in 1948. Particularly, President Park Chung Hee (in office: 1963-1979) enacted a pre-censorship of popular music as early as the mid-1960s. This lasted until 1996 when such censorship of the media was abolished under the presidency of Kim Young Sam (a.k.a. Kim Yŏng Sam 1993-1998). Although pre-censorship of music videos, lyrics, and performances still exists, it is not as strict as it was in previous time periods. In this chapter, I demonstrate that the government controlled and regulated popular music through censorship before 1996, and then strategically changed the policies to exert less control and offer far more support after 1996. I claim that the supervision and censorship of popular music before 1996 were political strategies that propagandized attitudes toward anti-communism and upheld the military government, emphasizing support for Park’s regime; government priorities also included the rehabilitation of the lost cultural identity of post-colonial subjects. However, the cultural industry policies that evolved after 1996 were pioneering vehicles to forge a national brand and to enhance economic expansion.
