ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on interpretive and critical interrogations of pop cultural impacts among Taiwanese participants. It analyzes lived experiences in order to investigate the discursive pushes and pulls of J-pop and K-pop in Taiwan. The chapter shows how Japanese and Korean culture and people are homogenized in the eyes of Taiwanese, and on how Taiwanese national identities and self-perceptions are co-opted in such pop cultural consumptions. It reviews pertinent research to gain background knowledge regarding historical developments and the flows of J-pop and K-pop in Asia, especially in Taiwan. In Taiwan, Japanese homogenization prevails favorably as the 'standard/real/innovative/first' in relation to that of Korean. Korean products have undeniably taken up considerable space in Taiwan's foreign import market, once occupied by Japan and the US Taiwanese people have largely homogenized Japanese and Korean people and cultures based on the cultural images represented in J-pop and K-pop. Such homogenizations, reversely, co-opt Taiwanese identities and self-perceptions.
