Conference Agenda

Located in Gangnam, South Korea’s most competitive educational district, SM Universe Academy—an arts institute founded by SM Entertainment—launched a training program in 2023 to nurture future K-pop artists. Like pre-conservatory systems in classical music, the academy reflects a broader ecology of elite training in contemporary Korea. Through intensive instruction, disciplined practice, and highly structured pedagogical systems, the goal of the institution is clear: to cultivate musicians into virtuosos from an early age, defined narrowly through technical perfection. This parallel between K-pop and classical music invites a broader reconsideration of how “virtuosity” is produced and valued: which bodies, performances, and musical practices have been historically recognized as legitimate and trained within prevailing evaluative hierarchies.

Drawing on debates surrounding the “manufactured” dimensions of both K-pop and contemporary Korean classical pianism, this paper reframes musical virtuosity as a disciplined, embodied practice produced through sustained labor, institutional authority, and pedagogical training. I argue that the virtuosic achievements of Asian musicians reveal and challenge Western hegemonic aesthetic authorities. Tracing the genealogy of virtuosity to nineteenth-century European aesthetics and the formation of modern taste hierarchies (Bourdieu), I examine how these systems of valuation became embedded in East Asian educational institutions during the twentieth century. Within this context, virtuosity in Korea became a sociocultural capital through which Korean musicians gained legitimacy, recognition, and opportunities for social mobility in national and international spheres. In particular, classical pianism offers a strategic comparative lens because both fields operate through a shared cultural logic of disciplined labor, technical perfection, and institutional validation.

This paper further asks why certain forms of musical labor are pathologized as “mechanical repetition” while others are celebrated as evidence of genius. Utilizing Foucault’s theories of disciplinary power and discourse, I investigate how institutions regulate bodies, shape performance practices, and define legitimate forms of musicianship. By examining contemporary discourses, I deconstruct the myth of innate virtuosity and propose instead that virtuosity should be understood as a politically and socially cultivated embodiment: the product of routinized labor, culturally specific bodily practices, and pedagogical systems.

South Korean television commercials from the 1960s through the 2000s contain a rich and largely unexplored musical archive. This paper argues that commercial music in this period functioned not merely as a marketing tool but as a cultural mirror, reflecting and actively shaping shifting Korean social values across four decades of rapid modernization.

Although scholars have examined the influence of K-pop idols on contemporary advertising, the role of commercial music in constructing Korean social identity before the 2000s remains underexplored musicological discourse in English scholarship. This study fills that gap by examining a curated corpus of broadcast commercials from the 1960s through the 1990s, analyzing musical style, lyrical content, vocal aesthetic, and visual imagery as interconnected cultural texts.

This paper identifies three broad phases of transformation. In the 1960s and 1970s, commercial music prominently featured full-family imagery and nationalist themes emphasizing collective identity, generational unity, and national reconstruction. Jingles frequently incorporated traditional melodic contours alongside Western instrumentation, reflecting Korea's negotiation between cultural heritage and modernization. In the 1980s, a transitional phase emerged in which youth-oriented advertising began to appear alongside enduring family-centered content, with new influences from Western pop styles. By the 1990s and into the 2000s, advertising music shifted decisively toward individualism, romantic coupling, and youth-centered aesthetics, with background instrumental tracks largely replacing singable jingles and with older generations usually disappearing from commercial imagery altogether.

Drawing on close musical analysis, advertising studies, and cultural history, this study demonstrates how advertising not only reflects but actively composes South Korea’s transition from developmental nationalism to consumer modernity. In doing so, it positions commercial music as vital source for musicological inquiry into memory, ideology, and the acoustics of social change.

In December 2024, South Korean citizens organized large-scale yet peaceful rallies demanding then-President Yoon’s resignation after his declaration of martial law. Music played a visible role in the rallies, from collective singing to the use of K-pop light sticks and the recirculation of “Into the New World” (2007), the debut song of the prominent K-pop girl group Girls’ Generation. In this paper, I argue that K-pop and its largely female fandom practices have transformed South Korean protest culture by translating fan-based solidarity into political solidarity. I analyze how “Into the New World” came to function as a protest anthem and how fan-based cultural practices and responses to women’s political expression facilitated new forms of participation in protest movements.

I demonstrate how contemporary protest practices differ from those of the Gwangju Uprising of 1980, a response to the military coup and martial law under Chun Doo-hwan. Citizens resisted state violence through armed struggle and protest songs, including the national anthem and “March for Our Beloved” (1981). Traumatic memories of this period have shaped later protest practices: rather than confronting authorities through physical conflict, contemporary protesters emphasize solidarity through collective, nonviolent expression.

In the 2016 and 2024 impeachment rallies, “Into the New World” emerged as a powerful protest anthem. Its lyrics such as “Might be an unknown future with obstacles, but I won’t change” and “We can’t give up” were recontextualized as protest slogans, while K-pop light sticks, originally designed for concerts, were repurposed as visual symbols of collective presence. Young women with experience of affective solidarity within K-pop fandoms played a central role in generating political-affective solidarity across diverse backgrounds and sustaining mass participation. In addition to fan-based practices, women’s democratic engagement took shape under constraints on their political expression, as evidenced by the cyberbullying of female singers who implied political solidarity with protesters through fan-communication platforms. This study shows how “Into the New World” and the pressures surrounding women’s political expression jointly reshaped democratic participation in South Korea, signaling a new phase in its ongoing evolution.