ABSTRACT
The continuing success of the Korean Wave in TV dramas has evidenced the ability of Asian media and cultural products as global media exporters not only to breach cultural boundaries, but also to subvert the hegemony of American and European popular culture. Yet at the same time, the asymmetrical and intensified trans-Asian flow of the “Korean brand” has also courted geo-political tension, as Asian polities are increasingly challenging “soft power” of Hallyu dramas. This chapter traces and explores the different facets of the intricate relationship between K-dramas and Asian modernities during the course of the Korean Wave. It argues that while the Korean Wave in TV dramas has constructed a “brand” of mediated cultural modernity for aspiring fellow Asian neighbors, the rise and rise of digital media technology has also encouraged the emergence of Asian fans as the hapless soldiers of cultural nationalism, making the Korean Wave a destabilizing rather than a harmonizing agent in the Asian region.
