ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the subculture of international K-pop fandom through mobile communication practices. Fans of Korean pop music (K-pop) around the world have been increasingly in the global limelight for their impressive feats of mass organizing, yet K-pop fans themselves use anonymous profiles to interact online. This chapter looks at embodied mobile communication practices to better understand the duality of pride and shame in contemporary K-pop fandom as it transitions from online to offline and back again. The way international fans organize around K-pop, as Korean media content, tells a story of fandom distinct from that of the popular Western genre. Understanding this community and its communicative constitution provides insight into the shape of mobile communication in a contemporary globalized network. Fans sense pride and shame through their own interactions online and offline with their favorite artists, non-fans, and with each other. By tracing embodiment theory through the autoethnographic narrative of an American researcher conducting participatory observation in Korea, the embeddedness of mobile communication into the K-pop fan community heightens sensations of time urgency, physical proximity, and competitive knowledge that change the way fans embody pride and shame in a community where physical and mobile experience intersect.
