Analog Hallyu: Historicizing K-pop formations in China

This article will revisit the beginnings of the spread of Korean popular entertainment in China in the mid-1990s to early 2000s by examining the contents of previously untapped Chinese language popular entertainment magazines and public recollections on internet forums. Considered here as critical archival resources, the authors argue that these materials are instrumental in offering both new chronologies and insights to the circulatory process of the regionalization of Korean popular cultures or Hallyu. Korean popular music (hereafter K-pop) entered China after the normalization of diplomatic relations between the two countries. Instead of the often singularized, culturalist argument of “shared traditions,” this article offers a more dynamic historiography of the Korean Wave in China that is termed here as “Analog Hallyu”.