Surfing the Korean Wave: K-pop Fan Practices in Vietnam

This thesis explores Vietnamese K-pop fan practices in capitalising on, expressing, forming and transforming fan identity and community as they interact with the mainstream discourses of the Vietnamese mainstream media and the Korean Wave industry. K-pop is an entertainment industry from South Korea and part of the Korean Wave, popularly known as Hallyu. The global popularity of Hallyu has contributed to the rise of fans’ activities in Southeast Asia, particularly among young music fans. This thesis examines how local Vietnamese K-pop fans’ experiences are conditioned by Vietnamese sociocultural reality. This reality is a result of Vietnam's transformation into a multi-faceted nation with a mixture of local traditions, communist political values and global orientation. On the one hand, K-pop, as part of the Korean Wave, is framed as form of soft power for Korea by various literature. In this mainstream view, fans are often delineated as supporting actors who engage in the consumeristic culture of the Korean Wave to emphasise its global success. On the other hand, the Vietnamese government and mainstream media view these fans as fanatical and as a challenge to their nation-building effort. This thesis addresses Vietnamese K-pop fan practices in negotiating the tension between these conflicting discourses through three research questions: (1) What are the unique features of Vietnamese K-pop fan practices, and how do these pertain to fans’ socio-cultural reality? (2) What are the dynamics among Vietnamese K-pop fans in their community-building practices? And (3) How are the fan practices essential to reconstructing their identity as Vietnamese K-pop fans? This research draws on theories and literature from fan studies, digital media studies and Vietnamese studies. It uses affect theory as the theoretical framework to carve out a space for Vietnamese K-pop fans in exciting field of fandom study, with a focus on Southeast Asian fandoms. Affect theory is employed to frame Vietnamese K-pop fan practices in identity expression, representation, and commercialisation, community building and response to their social reality and cultural imaginary. This thesis is an academic tribute to young adult K-pop fans in Vietnam as well as my journey of self-discovery as a diasporic Vietnamese-American aca-fan (academic fan). Conducting research (interview and participant observation) for this thesis took me to both Hồ Chí Minh City and Hanoi from August to November 2017. Online observation has continued throughout the project, partly due to COVID-19 travel restrictions. Based on qualitative research methods, this thesis illustrates how Vietnamese K-pop fans negotiate their presence and influence in the online space and offline in public places in Vietnamese metropolitan centres. Their use of K-pop has enabled them to not only reconstruct their consumerist and collective identities during the cultural and economic transformations in Vietnam but also to challenge the power relation between media producers and consumers through collective fan activities and agency.