ABSTRACT
Despite intensified cultural flows between Japan and Korea since the late 1990s, the two countries' national relationship has continued to be strained and problematic. To understand political-cultural relationships between Japan and Korea in the realm of pop music, it is necessary to examine both Japanese responses to the Korean pop music presence in Japan and Korean responses to Japanese pop music in Korea, which are neither parallel nor even. The chapter explores the 1980s and 1990s, when a few Korean singers gained popularity in the Japanese enka market. It introduces several trends of the early and mid-2000s, the first-round of the Korean Wave in Japan. The chapter provides the late 2000s, as TVXQ/Tohoshinki became the most successful K-pop band in Japan. It discusses the second-round of the Korean Wave, also known as the "K-pop boom" in Japan, begun in 2011.
