Pil Ho Kim, "Polarizing Dreams: Gangnam and Popular Culture in Globalizing Korea" (U Hawaii Press, 2024)
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I'm Leslie Hickman, one of the channel's hosts. Today we'll be talking to Dr. Pilho Kim about his new book, Polarizing Dreams, Gangnam and Popular Culture in Globalizing Korea, which was published in 2024 by the University of Hawaii Press. It explores diverse elements from protest songs from the 1980s to interviews with sex workers to weave together Gangnam's rich backstory and give readers a deeper appreciation of the global spread of Korean cultural contents.

Okay, so Dr. Kim, it's great to have you. Thank you so much, Leslie, for this opportunity. Okay, so before we begin, can you first tell us a bit more about yourself and also how you came to write this book? Sure. So I'm an associate professor of Korean studies at The Ohio State University.

I am a sociologist by training, but I happen to be in a department of East Asian languages and literatures. That's where, you know, the Korean program is. So this book, you know, was sort of...

is a kind of a hybrid between kind of a social science research as well as, you know, humanities. Um, so how, uh, did this kind of come about? Well, um, it, it's a long story, but I don't, I'm not gonna, you know, bore you with that. Um,

So starting from a little bit of my background, I happen to just have come of age in Gangnam. So part of it is kind of an eyewitness account of what happened in Gangnam, which is kind of what I consider a kind of epitome of South Korean capitalist development since approximately 2000.

late 1960s through, I guess, the first, at least, you know, first two decades of the 21st century. And also I kind of dabbled in my youth, as you can see, although I guess listeners cannot see me, but

In my youth, I sort of dabbled in music, pop music, journalism, pop music, criticism, whatever you call it. So that was sort of a starting point of my research into Gangnam. And the first chapter of the book was, of course, about

you know, pop music history, starting from, you know, Saiz Gangnam Style in 2012. And I go back in time and sort of trace the history of, you know, pop music, you know, industry in Gangnam. So the book consists of different parts, basically. Some of that is kind of a sociological, urban sociology, and

And others, it's kind of cultural history, which covers kind of, you know, from literature, cinema, and of course, music.

Thank you for that. Right. So before we go further, can you explain more about Gangnam? What is Gangnam? And when was it first developed? Where is it located? So we can better understand where all these issues are sort of centralized in this book. Yeah. So in my book, I don't really go deep into, you know, Gangnam's origin stories and all that, because there are many books, you know, already published about it, especially in Korean language.

And in English, there are some articles. I don't think there is a single book devoted to, you know, Gangnam and its history. But you can definitely find some, you know, good academic articles and some, you know, book chapters, you know, on that.

But just to give you some idea of what Gangnam is, literally it means south of the river, but specifically it refers to this kind of newly developed district, or rather, currently it's multiple districts, two and a half districts in the southeastern part of Gangnam, which started developing in...

Well, the plans came out first in the early 1960s when the Park Chung-hee administration came in through military coup.

But there were some fits and false starts and things like that. And the development began really in earnest with the construction of the Gyeongbu Expressway, Seoul Busan Expressway, that was completed in 1968, I believe. So the late 1960s was when Gangnam development started.

you know, began. And I think it came into really shape that we know of

around the mid-1980s. So that was sort of, you know, the massive development that created this kind of a new urban center south of the river. So it expanded, you know, saw the old city, you know, 500-year-old city in kind of a big way. And it was conceived as kind of a middle-class utopia, right?

when the first plan came out. And sure enough, in the 70s and 80s, when the South Korean economy was experiencing this high-speed development, the

The biggest beneficiaries were, of course, the elite, economic and political elite, but also this kind of a new middle class. Or rather, in Korean, they would prefer the term middle strata or 중산층. So many of these newly emerging urban middle class groups

people relocated themselves in Gangnam. And so that was kind of the beginning of this, you know, the beginning of the rise of Gangnam. And this kind of watershed moment came in the form of economic crisis in 1997, the Asian financial crisis that hit South Korea, you know, and devastated its national economy.

the middle class in Gangnam, many of them survived and actually thrived. But what happened was that not just the country as a whole, but

Gangnam specifically, there was this kind of a polarization, socioeconomic polarization began. So many sociologists talk about this fractured middle class when they talk about the South Korean society since the Asian financial crisis began.

And, you know, Gangnam really, again, was kind of an epitome of that. So the middle class in Gangnam, you know, showing this kind of, you know, polarization. So those who were able to stay in Gangnam moved really and moved up the ladder. But there were those who, you know, fell out of it and became really kind of a

precarious in terms of their economic situation. Okay. So polarizing dreams, when you're talking about these different issues, you use this unique structure in exploring both the physical and representational space of Kangnam. You go through literature and film and music. So can you explain a bit more about this structure and why you chose it for your book? Yeah. So I think I mentioned a little bit, you know, how,

you know, my background, you know, in terms of, you know, training and, you know, you know, interest, you know, came to the fore when I decided to write this book. So,

That's, I think, reflected in the structure of this book. So part of it is actually sociological research that I did. Well, I didn't think of it when I started this type of research to write a book like this. So there's the chapter, the last chapter, chapter six on gentrification that took place in Gangnam, especially in the 2010s.

and some other parts of it, talking about rather sociological aspects of this global polarization that I'm talking about.

But on the other hand, I really wanted to shed light on this cultural reflection or representations of Gangnam. And because I'm in the humanities department now, the book had to have this kind of a humanities aspect to it. So

This book was sort of assembled from different parts of my research into one. So there are these chapters about literature on Gangnam and cinema, and all these things were sort of added to my original research, which began the ball rolling in the, I think, even before Size Gangnam Style came out in 2012. So

I started researching pop music history in Gangnam going back in the late 2000s, 2010 thereabout.

And then, you know, Size Gangnam Style, you know, happened. So I had to incorporate, you know, that into it, which meant that, you know, stretching out the time period from the mostly 1980s and the 90s through the 2000 and the rise of K-pop afterwards. So that began, you know, that became the, you know, chapter one. And then, yeah.

Through that, I was able to sort of give a bird's eye view of how Gangnam came into being. And building on that, I started talking about Gangnam literature in Chapter 2 and 3 and cinema in Chapter 4 and on and on like that. I really enjoyed bringing in all these different elements that created not just like a

a factual understanding of Kangnam, but you've got a, like a feel of it as well from all these different areas. So I, I enjoyed that and yeah.

So my next question is about the music industry that you mentioned. You write that the center of gravity in the music entertainment industry used to be in Gangbuk, north of the river. And then by the mid-1990s, Gangnam had moved to Gangnam. So how did the epicenter of Seoul's music scene shift from the north to the south of the Han River to this place that had only been developing for a couple of decades? Right.

So it's a bit more complicated than just, you know, the center of gravity from moving from Gangbuk to Gangnam. In many other cases, that was what exactly happened. For example, education, high school education that I talk a little bit about, which is really important in creating, you know, Gangnam education.

But for music industry specifically, which I talk about in detail in chapter one, like I said, there were kind of multiple centers of gravity, so to speak. And there are still. But, you know, I'm...

I was more specifically talking about, I guess, recording industry or music production. And also, it's not just the music, of course, the film industry as well. There were nothing, there was nothing, of course, before the Gangnam development, again, that started in the, that

That mostly happened in the 70s and 80s. And the pop music industry, music industry specifically, started moving in, I think, early 80s. Maybe some of them in the late 70s, but mostly in the early 80s. And that...

I did some interviews with the music industry people for this research, and it turns out that there was no compelling cultural reason for that when some of these recording studios and this kind of production companies moved in, other than just this was a newly developed area with, you know, nice...

public transportation infrastructure. And then for that, most of these recording studios, production companies, and record presses are

Those were, at that time, it's hard to imagine now, but at the time, almost like cottage industries. Very small scale and not making a ton of money and things like that. And the big companies didn't really pay too much attention to them until, I think, until the 1990s.

So what happened was they were, for mostly economic reasons, it seemed that they started moving into Gangnam and, you know, began forming this kind of cluster. And then, of course, you know, when Gangnam development was kind of, you know, stalled,

even though the government was heavily investing in that, the government came with the idea of

promoting and pushing this kind of adult entertainment industry. I'm talking about nightclubs and karaoke bars and all these kinds of things, but so-called tourist hotels and things like that to Gangnam using their administrative power. So that worked.

So what happened was, along with this kind of recording studios and music production facilities, came in these nightclubs and bars and things like that. So slowly but surely from the early 80s, there was this kind of environment or environment

business uh you know sort of environment began it began forming right um so that's that was this the beginning of you know gangnam's you know music industry and the similar thing happened with the new with the film industry the the core of the film industry uh korean film industry was located in old downtown seoul called the chumuro um that still you know is kind of a used as a uh

for old Korean film industry. And Chungro business began folding in the 1990s when the Hollywood film industry

industry came in big time and started affecting Korean film goers and the film industry. And that's when they found that the film industry people found that moving to Gangnam will give a better chance for them. And it was really successful because this kind of business atmosphere and

well, the word I was looking for was ecosystem, basically. The business ecosystem created this kind of synergy. But again, in terms of the center of gravity, it's not just Gangnam, but of course, Korean music industry, the broadcasting is still very, very important, television broadcasting most specifically. So there's this island called Yeouido,

This is an island on the Han River where there used to be a lot of broadcasting studios, company studios were concentrated. So there was this kind of a connection from Yeouido to Gangnam along the Han River that these musical talents were going back and forth and back and forth. And that kind of

I think relationship is still there. Even though in Gangnam, you see quite a number of, you know, music cable television studios, still the, you know, over-the-air broadcasting and, you know, major channels are located in Yeouido and, you know, elsewhere in Seoul.

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that also talks about Kangnam are the formation of the middle strata, which you spoke about a bit earlier in the 20th century and the dissolution of it in the 21st century.

You also refer to this dissolution as global polarization. So can you first elaborate on the term Gangnam literature? What exactly does that describe? And then how Korean authors address the above themes in their work? Yeah, I mean, Gangnam literature, I guess, you know, you can take it literally, basically, literature on Gangnam. But the term was actually coined, I believe, in the mid-2000s or, you know, at the late 2000s.

when I think a couple of newspaper reporters specializing in literature

wrote these pieces about so-called Gangnam literature. And they mostly focused on these contemporary women writers who were actually the Gangnam insiders. They were themselves Gangnam residents for a long time, middle class or upper class, highly educated background, and writing very frankly about

They're based on their own experience. And that really kind of, I think, resonated with, you know, the readership of these newspapers. Mostly, I would say, you know, on the conservative side, but, you know, major newspapers in South Korea. I sort of found, you know, this kind of, you know,

treatment on, you know, Gangnam literature a bit problematic because, you know, these reporters didn't really, you know, mention a whole lot about, you know, how far, you know, literature on Gangnam, you know, goes back, right?

And mostly they were, you know, praising these women writers in the 2000s to, you know, make the point that all the kinds of criticisms on Gangnam, especially in the 1990s, from the early to mid to the 1990s, there were a lot of, you know, cultural critiques about Gangnam and the sort of

embodiment of that is a poet named Yoo Ha, who later became a well-known filmmaker. Yoo Ha made his name by writing a series of poems about Apgujeong-dong, which is probably in the 90s especially, the most luxurious area of Gangnam and kind of

you know, reviled by many. Thanks in large part, you know, to Juha's really scathing, you know, critique about this is kind of, you know, overabundance, you know, because consumption and all these kinds of things, right?

And these women writers in the 2000s, where they were not explicitly criticizing, you know, you all or by, you know, sort of pushing back. But rather, they were talking about, you know, that the people in Gangnam, residents of Gangnam are not real. And not all of them are really kind of rich, you know, mindless, you know, people.

but rather they had their own problems and they had their own kind of reflections about their living conditions and things like that, which is really appreciable. And I think I got into that quite a bit in my book. But what I wanted to highlight was that

Gangnam literature actually goes, you know, far back, right? And it started in the early 1970s when the sort of, you know, towering figures of South Korean literature, you know, back then, I'm talking about, you know, writers like Choi In-ho and Park Wan-seo, both of them, you know, wrote about, you know, Gangnam in its very early, you know, beginning in the early 1970s. And they're sort of

um, critique, uh, made a whole lot of sense to me and spoke to me loudly, uh, when it came to this kind of, uh, uh, you know, class issues that, uh,

you know, from the beginning existed when Gangnam was developing. There were some, you know, of course, you know, original and you may call it native, you know, local residents who may have been displaced or actually got rich, right, by selling those, you know, selling their land to the developers, right?

But, you know, they sort of moved out and, you know, in their place came these, you know, highly educated middle class people.

And when they came in, what they found, you know, what they immediately started doing was to distinguish themselves from who they left behind in the northern part of Seoul. More, you know, less affluent and less educated, you know, people. So this kind of class divide started from the get-go.

And, you know, these, you know, writers in the 70s were talking about it, right? In a very kind of, you know, explicit way. And then, of course, in the middle, soon after that, Jose came along with his, you know, magnum opus, Dwarf, Nanjang-ga Sua-ul-in Jagung-gong, which was published in the late 1970s. But he started writing about this kind of a

series of stories from the mid-1970s. And this was full of criticism about urban development in South Korea, not just focused on Seoul. And Gangnam was actually a big part of it. Although, you know, didn't come out as, you

you know, it's a sort of focus of attention when they talk about, you know, dwarf. And actually I'm focusing more on the sequel to the dwarf, which is, you know, time travel, travel that was published in 1980, 83. And,

And in that really, you know, Cho Se-hee focused on, you know, the part of Gangnam called Jamsil, where the Olympic Stadium is located. And really one of the core areas of Gangnam. And this is where I think he really distinguished himself by connecting this, you know, criticism of, you know, capitalist urban development and, you know, this kind of class polarization that came with it.

but also the environmental impact that this whole Gangnam development caused. And so I try to sort of move focus from the well-known 1990s and 2000 Gangnam literature to the earlier part of it. And that was chapter two and chapter three of my book. Thank you for your answer. If

If I could just ask you also, what about, I'm veering a little bit off, but literature that's come after those times, so after 2000s as well, like, is there a condom literature that is coming out newly today? And does it look any different? Yeah.

Oh, yes. So thank you for asking. And actually, I'm talking about, you know, in I think, chapter three and four, I'm also talking about the, you know, what they dubbed Gangnam literature, that is 2000, you know, pieces. And I also, I also read plenty of, you know, critical messages about

from the Gangnam insiders themselves about Gangnam. So they are defending themselves, but at the same time, they also see the problems with Gangnam, with its class polarization and with its kind of environmental degradation and all these kinds of disasters that plague Gangnam. These kinds of things are

really enduring topics in Gangnam literature. So I'm talking about Moon Jung-hee and

the poet Moon Jung-hee and Jung Mi-kyung, the novelist, late novelist Jung Mi-kyung and Jung Hee-yeon, who talk quite a bit, very eloquently about the Sanpung Department collapse, which was a kind of a monumental event in Gangnam development and Gangnam literature. So continuing on that, in the 2010s and thereafter, there is this kind of...

I wouldn't call it post-Gangnam literature, but this kind of, you know, continuous, you know, output of, you know, Gangnam literature, again, very critical of, you know, many different aspects. And one of the things that I've focused on is, you know, Kim Saga's novel In Heaven, or 천국에서, which feature these, you know, younger generation, you know, Gangnam, you know, youths.

who grew up in Gangnam and went through this traumatic event of Asian financial crisis and became part of the victims or beneficiaries of this class polarization in the same cohort among this group of friends. So Kim Sa-Wa's In Heaven is one of those really exemplary pieces along with some others that I

really talk much about that describe Gangnam in the aftermath of Asian financial crisis and then 2008 again global financial crisis and moving further on. So many things I couldn't really give mention but

There is this book about people of Jamsil neighborhood written by Jeong A-eun who unfortunately recently passed away. And I think this is probably one of the best literary depictions of how sort of education, especially the college prep education, affects the Gangnam's middle class and elite people today.

Okay. All right. Thank you for that. So you've mentioned some environmental change, like how the environment is sort of yoked with the idea of Kangnam and physically as well. So can you describe that a bit more? I know you mentioned Chamshil. So what about Chamshil or Kangnam in general brings to mind environmental degradation or change or anything like that? Right. So...

I guess we got to start with Jose again. But, you know, he was talking about Gangnam, especially Jamsil, being built on, you know, sand, right? And so people in, you know, Jamsil, Jamsil residents should be thankful, you know, for the, you know, the concrete, right? Made of, you know, sand and, you know, the, you know, the steel reinforcement, the rebar, right? And,

That really kind of rings true. But basically, what happened was in Gangnam development from a larger picture was part of the Han River comprehensive redevelopment, especially in the 1980s when Jamsil was redeveloped. So you see that the Han River was prone to large floods. The

The latest biggest one was just before the completion of the Han River development in 1984, I believe, that killed quite a number of people. So part of the Han River development was to control the flow of the river so that the flood doesn't happen.

And to that end, they built this kind of underwater barrages, two big underwater barrages that pretty much made almost the flow of the Han almost stand still. And one of them just happened to be in Jamsil area. It's called Jamsil Underwater Barrage or Jamsil Sujungbo.

And then they started digging up the riverbed. Part of it was, of course, to, you know, again, you know, increase the capacity of the river so that the river doesn't flood. Right.

And a part of it was to provide a construction material for these companies to develop and build these kinds of high rise apartments, starting with Gangnam, of course.

So, you know, Jose was describing all these kinds of things. And he was witnessing, of course, you know, these environmental, you know, degradations happening around, you know, around the river and in Jamsil area. And he was, I think, really worried about...

You know, these high rises built upon the, you know, upon sand, you know, basically, this was a kind of, you know, habitually flooding island of sand that was really Jamsil, but they, you know, reclaimed it by, you know, putting a lot of dirt in it.

And, you know, so he was saying basically that kind of those those streams that didn't really disappear, but rather they go underneath these apartments. Right. So given the fact that now you see a lot of singles, you know,

popping up in Seoul. I understand that you are living in Seoul, right? And just a couple of days ago, there were huge sinkholes, although this was not in Gangnam area per se. But when they built this 123 story tower, the Jamsil Lotte Tower,

A lot of critics were actually pointing to the fact that the foundation may not be strong enough to build such a high-rise skyscraper, but they went out and did it anyway. So all these kinds of things are really kind of ominous forebodings that Jose predicted about

about, you know, the whole Gangnam development and how, you know, the destruction of the environment, you know, took place at that time. And, of course, you know, Gangnam development sort of set an example of this kind of, you know, concrete-based, you know, high-rise apartment buildings in which now a majority of South Koreans live. So,

whether or not, you know, this type of urban development has, you know, negative impact on, you know, on environment, you know, in general, I think it's still quite debatable. But I would say that, you know,

especially the 1980s style, wasn't really favorable to this kind of natural world. Yeah, and I'll try to make a connection here. So also with the environment changing because of the development in Kangnam as well as other parts of Seoul, some environment changes, but also the developments itself

is not always or often it's not always positive it's not always stable like the ground beneath it is not always stable the development is not always and so it brings about something that's been called disaster capitalism and you mentioned one of them is Sanfeng so can you maybe describe some more like what is disaster

disaster capitalism that has been around or within Gangnam or within Korea? How does that term manifest in the minds of the Korean people or the Korean culture?

Yes, thank you. So we are speaking about this in, I think, on the heels of another disaster, probably you're aware, again involving this infrastructure construction. I'm talking about this, I think, a subway line. The subway line, they're building on the outskirts of Seoul, the Ansan, Gwangmyeong city area. The tunnel collapsed. And I think...

One worker

was rescued and the other one is still missing. So unfortunate thing is this disaster capitalism involving Korean businesses, but more specifically construction businesses, is still ongoing after all these years. So that's the sort of a backdrop of speaking of Korean-style disaster capitalism that I talk about in the book, especially with regard to these disasters in Gangnam,

Starting with the Seongsu Bridge collapse and then, you know, Sanpung Department, you know, collapse. So disastercapitalism.term originated from, you know, Canadian journalist Naomi Klein's bestselling book, The Shock Doctrine, The Rise of Disaster Capitalism.

So in her original usage of the term, I guess, disaster capitalism is something like this. So when disaster strikes, whether it's man-made disaster, like war or terrorist attack or things of that nature or natural disasters, capitalism is

tends to, for lack of a better term, capitalize on these kinds of disasters when the population became really vulnerable and in this kind of fetal position. So they can push forward all these kinds of predatory measures

uh that the population would otherwise you know reject right and that was sort of a you know kind of a definition of disaster capitalism and shock doctrine so prototypical shock doctrine was something like uh you know the you know 9-11 terrorist attack which led to um this kind of uh you know the invasion of iraq so shock after shock and then you know these uh you know uh

You know, military industrial complex, these, you know, weapons manufacturers, you know, took advantage of it, you know, by, you know, clamoring for this kind of a war, which had nothing to do with the terrorist attack and made a lot of money off of it. Right.

Korean disaster capitalism, I think, works somewhat different. So I took the term disaster capitalism because disaster and capitalism are closely related in South Korean context, but not necessarily kind of a shock doctrine, an always shock doctrine way.

But rather, I want to talk about, you know, especially Korean, you know, construction companies from the 1970s through the, you know, Gangnam development, 1980s and 1990s, when these disasters actually struck, built their business on, you know,

Just quoting disasters, basically. Not worrying, not paying almost any attention to what may come if they continue to disregard any kind of safety measures. And this is not about technical, technological issues either.

So I'm talking about something like this. So 1980s, when, you know, South Korean construction companies, those big, you know, family owned big conglomerates had these construction arms and they sent those companies to the Middle East when the Iran-Iraq war was going on and all these kinds of conflicts were going on, you know, in this area, right?

And they were making a lot of money by building these infrastructures because these Middle Eastern countries were swimming in petrol dollars, basically, by selling off oil to the rest of the world. And even though they were in this kind of military conflict, they still had the money to build their infrastructure at the same time.

And when the war and conflict went on to this kind of high gear, many other countries' construction companies backed off because they thought about their own security, their workers' security, and so on. But Koreans remained. And what happened was

Something like what happened in 1988 when the Iranian oil refinery construction site was attacked by Iraqi Air Force and killed more than 10 scores of Korean construction workers there. Right.

This is a kind of a very stereotypical disaster capitalism that Korean companies, especially construction companies, were pursuing. And then it sort of came back to haunt them.

when this kind of Middle Eastern construction boom sort of came to an end, and they went back home, they came back home, and started building these kinds of infrastructure and apartments around the country, including Gangnam. So,

you know, Seongsu Bridge collapse and Sanpung collapse. All these things were sort of really kind of this shoddy, deficient construction, which really disregarded all these kinds of safety measures and standards. And that's what happened. So that's, I think, what disaster capitalism, you know, meant in South Korean context, especially in the 80s and the 90s.

And then, of course, you know, in a kind of a different ways, these disasters continued on in South Korea. So civil ferry disaster and, you know, Itaewon disaster. And now this, a smaller or bigger disaster.

So this kind of, well, what they call the insensitivity to, you know, this, you know, security, as Koreans would call it, you know, 안전감증 is still, you know, prevalent even after disaster, after disaster, after disaster. Yeah. So not to get, continue on with the more negative theme, but you also have, you write about,

about social evils. Like it's a breeding ground for social evils in Kangnam. And one of those evils is also the sex industry. And so you mentioned that a little bit at the beginning, how that industry started to grow there along with some entertainment industries. So what connection does this industry have with Kangnam and what insight? I was really interested in the film Beastie Boys, but just in general films or other cultural products, like what connection

kind of insight can they give us into what this sex industry, like the role it has in Kong number South Korea in general? Yeah. So, I mean, it's not even a secret, I guess, you know, and it's not just about the Korea that, you know, sex industry and entertainment industry are closely connected. Right. So it's not no surprise that from the very beginning in the 1970s and 80s up until today, you

sex industry and entertainment industry are all concentrated in close proximity. And I would also put beauty industry in that as well.

More specifically, fashion and cosmetics, I'm talking about cosmetic surgery, cluster in Gangnam, all are sort of related to and a fine major clientele and those workers in entertainment and sex industries. So these are not coincidences at all to me.

And, you know, I think I'm relying heavily on, you know, the prior literature, academic literature on, you know, South Korea's sex industry. And I think I'm just moving the direction slightly toward the Gangnam where

It is really kind of a thriving and, you know, really kind of a capital, a sex industry capital of entire South Korea. So I understand that you recently had an interview with Professor Jungmi Park, the, you know, State Sexuality, the book, which is a really wonderful book, you know, going through this kind of a history of, you know, South Korea's, you know, sex industry and how it was a really critical component of nation building, right?

And in it, I think she talks about, of course, not just about the sex industry catering to the foreign military. I'm talking about U.S. military here, but also this kind of sex industry, a

Combined with this kind of tourism promotion, the so-called, you know, kiseng, you know, tourism, you know, business that began in the 1970s, mostly luring the, you know, rich Japanese clientele, right?

And that, of course, started in Gangbuk, the north of the river. But with the Gangnam development, and again, going back to the government promotion of Gangnam development, part of it was sending entertainment and sex industry to the south using their administrative power of giving license to these kind of industry establishments.

So that really made a huge difference in terms of, again, moving the center of gravity from Gangbuk to Gangnam. This time is sex industry and adult entertainment industry. So all these kind of so-called room salons, these are, of course, entertainment escort bars having this kind of mostly women, but there are male hosts as well, male sex workers, etc.

hosting these, you know, rich, you know, clientele. And this has become one of the major industries in Gangnam today. And this, I think, was covered by books like Professor Jungmi Park's book and also, you know, Jin Kyung Lee's book on, you know,

Sex Industry. The title is, I think, Service Industries. The book came out in 2011, I think. So, you know, my chapter on Gangnam sex industry is a kind of a little bit of an update on that, especially focusing on Gangnam.

And I wanted to sort of really give some ideas about this by, you know, bringing in this, you know, visual text that is, you know, Beastie Boys by, you know, filmmaker Yoon Jong-bin. But also these, you know, sort of memoirs about, you know, I don't think I interviewed, you know, I used to interview with a sex worker, maybe some

you know, indirect quotes from the, you know, journalistic accounts. But there's this, you know, memoir by, you know, Madam, that is the sort of manager or owner of this, you know, room salons, right? And that was a really fascinating look into how this room salon business, which is kind of at the heart of Korea's sex industry, you know, works and how this kind of, you know, chain of theft

whether it's personal or even corporate debt now, because this room salon industry is really big, huge. Because South Korea's underground economy revolving around the hosting culture

which really greases the will of the above-ground mainstream economy, the businesses, that way. So there is this kind of a very close partnership with Gangnam's

mainstream economy. Of course, Gangnam is a powerhouse in terms of entertainment industry and, of course, the high-tech industry and finance industry, all these kinds of major industries. But there is, of course, the dark side of it, the underground economy, and that is undergirded by this kind of sex industry and all that.

Okay. Thank you for that. And I was looking up that the book as well as the state sexuality. You're right. Yeah, we I think that was hosted by Miranda Melker last year, but there is so many books about this particular issue. And so, yeah, lots of things to look into there.

For one of my last questions, I wanted to ask about solidarity and, you know, coming together against some of these issues, some of the more negative issues that surround Kongnam and larger issues within the country. So I know that there was also like that year when a woman was killed in Kongnam Station and that actually ended up being...

visible act of solidarity when people started putting Post-it notes. And so there's one way, but can you also describe perhaps other ways that victims of polarization and disaster capitalism and justice, not just within Kangen, but without, have peaked up or have appeared? And also what

potential alternatives or alternative dreams do you see taking shape around the idea of karnam right so uh when i wrote the manuscript of this book and i think i gave a you know various talks uh with uh you know parts of the this book you know in in some of the some of the universities in north america um

And when I got the reviews, you know, external reviews for this, you know, book manuscript, you know, many of these, you know, comments that I got was, were about, you know, sort of negativity and, you know, kind of pessimistic, you know, outlook that, you know, book presents. And I can't really deny that, you know, the, you know,

pessimistic overtone of the book because I really wanted to sort of look into the dark side of what Gangnam represents, which is kind of again, on the surface of it, really a shining example of South Korea's

you know, progress, right? Economic progress and cultural progress and all these kinds of things. Now, you know, globally, South Korea pries really itself in kind of achieving advanced country, so-called advanced country status.

But I think it really should be balanced with its glaring problems. And, you know, I think South Korea is still suffering from it. And so really putting a kind of a

magnifier on that, especially in terms of its cultural representations. Again, there are many, many books on Gangnam, and I'm not the only one who takes various issues about Gangnam, really. It's polarization. They came with this kind of global success story. But

But yeah, so I wanted to respond and I thought I did respond in some parts of my book, especially in conclusion and, you know, the last chapter, which is about gentrification. But I wanted to tell a little bit more about just, you know, gentrification story about Gangnam because one can see, you know, the whole Gangnam development has a big, you know, style, different style gentrification story.

But in Chapter 6, I was talking about a really quite different urban practice that came out of Gangnam, some pockets of Gangnam that

Not really, you know, opposed, but show a different, you know, alternative to, you know, Gangnam style urban development that is, you know, high rise apartments, pretty much uniform style, and all these kinds of things, car dominated, you know, very much, you know, American way of life in a sort of very, you know, Koreanized way, right?

And they were finding their inspirations from this kind of small village or small, you know, city, walkable city, you know, that kind of, you know, urban, you know, development. And, you know, their sort of inspirations came from, I think, Western Europe and places like that, right?

So these are new urban pioneers. We're creating these pockets of a small walkable neighborhood where this kind of independent business could be thriving and all that. And, you know, bringing in like-minded people, bohemian sort of segment of, you know, Gangnam's urban bourgeoisie, so to speak.

And they have their own limits, of course. And many of them sort of got swept in, in the end, in this kind of a gentrification cycle. And they themselves got, you know, displaced in the end. And in their places, these, you know, corporate, you know, chain stores came in and basically make these, you know, promising, once promising neighborhoods again come commercially that zone, right?

But that practice, you know, their practice, even though some of them, you know, ended up as a kind of a failure, had, I think, shown some signs that, you know, South Koreans, especially those who wanted to

to find some alternative, you know, try this kind of things. And, you know, this may still be a viable way to, you know, sort of counter this, you know, large scale, you know, high rise dominated urban development. So that's one, maybe a little bit feeble, but, you know, sign of, you know, pushback,

from this kind of very negative Gangnam style urban development.

And another thing is what you pointed out with regard to Gangnam's political visibility. And, you know, Gangnam, especially the Gangnam station area, becoming a site of political protest, political protest against this kind of a gendered, you know, misogynistic violence that came to the fore with this, you know, Gangnam station murder case in 2016. And then afterwards, of course, with, you know, this

scandal broke out in, you know, in Gangnam, again, nearby Gangnam Station area that involved this K-pop, you know, juggernaut with the YG Entertainment and the, you know, Black Sun, you know, nightclub. They came back, right?

And then, you know, again, put on this kind of, you know, protest against misogynistic violence and, you know, this kind of, you know, sex industry exploitation of women again. So highlighted, you know, that part. So back in the 80s and even the 90s, Gangnam was, especially in the 90s and early 2000s, a bastion of political conservatism, right?

Or a very interesting thing was in the 70s and 80s, it wasn't so when Gangnam was in its formative period. But 90s and 2000s, especially after the economic crisis, Gangnam became really kind of a bastion of political conservatism. But there were cracks like this. Maybe it has...

you know, nothing to do with, you know, the businesses that are rooted in Gangnam or Gangnam residents themselves. But at least the space itself became a kind of a highly visible target for this kind of very, you know, disruptive political protest that, you know,

give a shock to political conservatism that Gangnam is known for. Another thing is, of course, Gangnam Station intersection is where Samsung corporate headquarters is located. And that's where this fired worker from Samsung started this high-altitude protest, which after 350 days or even more,

won his almost improbable victory. And Samsung, for the first time, despite its history of anti-union activities and attitudes, had to apologize.

So that kind of very symbolic acts of protest started taking place in Gangnam. And I think it's a really kind of a sign that, you know, even places like Gangnam, where it's, you know, it's really inherent sense of place is really among many Koreans who especially are outside Gangnam,

you know, are really not good or even foul or evil can change with this kind of act of protest and different urban, you know, practices like, you know, a different way of, you know, organizing, you know, urban development and ways of living. Thank you for that. Yeah. The idea of place can always change as time goes on. People decide like we're changing this or that, but yeah,

Yeah, there's a lot of packed in into just one area of soul and you can understand a lot from it. So your book does a really great job of outlining some of these different issues and where to see them in pop culture and elsewhere. So yeah.

My last question for now is that what do you see this book bringing to the larger discussion about Korean studies or other disciplines? What can readers expect to learn from reading your book? Oh, yeah. So the contribution. Well, yeah. So

academically, I guess, again, you know, this is not the first book on Gangnam, but in terms of academic research as a monograph, I think it is the first written in English, especially. And

So, you know, that I think I would consider a contribution in and of itself. And of course, as you mentioned, when you were asking me this question, that Gangnam, although this is just a part of Seoul, although it's quite a big part, again, it's kind of an epitome of the entire country in many ways, right?

its development, how it came into being and how it sort of thrived and then faced its own crisis and so on and so forth. So by looking at this, and especially in terms of its cultural representations, and also combining it with social scientific insights, I think I'm extending this kind of cultural history that

mostly, again, in English-speaking academia,

thus far hasn't reached a later part of 20th century, past 1980s, I believe. So up until 1980s, there was this kind of democratization. And so there was a lot of interest and focus on South Korea's political and cultural history up until 1980s, and maybe a little bit of early 1990s. But I think with this cultural history in Gangnam, I think I'm extending it to

the, you know, the end of the 19th, the end of the 20th century and extending it toward the 21st century. Great. Is there anything you're working on now that readers could expect in the future? Well, yeah, multiple projects. But, yeah,

One thing that I immediately need to do is to write a kind of entry-level academic book on K-pop. So this will be a co-authored effort because my expertise is not in, even though I'm considering myself a pop music historian, I am not really a kind of up-to-date expert on contemporary K-pop.

even though I teach the courses on K-pop by demand from students. But I do have my collaborator, a recent PhD, who's now a postdoc at Yale University, Dr. Wonsuk Lee. He wrote a dissertation on K-pop.

So he's a real kind of a resident expert in K-pop. So I am collaborating with him to write about, you know, K-pop for high school and undergrad students in, you know, again, English speaking in the English speaking world. And it's going to be a short one. I expect it to be about

20 to 30,000 word long book. And hopefully we can finish and publish it by the end of next year.

So that's the sort of immediate plan for my next project. And the longer term project is another sort of cultural history. But I think this goes way back to the maybe late 19th century up to the present again. And I am really based, I'm based in the United States. So although I am giving this interview in Korea, I'm,

So I've been always interested in South Korea, the U.S.-Korea cultural relationship and its sort of political implications. And Gangnam is another part of it, really. If you read the book, I'm talking a lot about American Dream and stuff like that and how the dream of Gangnam, the polarizing dreams, are actually sort of kind of a derivation from the American Dream.

So, this time for the next project, I am going to focus on the Black Freedom Dreams, going back to the abolitionist movement in the U.S., Black abolitionist movement, through the, of course, you know,

you know, civil rights movement, black free, you know, black liberation movement up to, you know, of course the, the black lives matter movement in recent years and how, you know, they had, have had impact on, you know, Korean pop culture, but also more broadly, you know, East Asian culture as well. Wow. That, that sounds really interesting. I'll have to look for that some years down the road when it comes out. Mr.

This has been great. So thank you so much for your time. This has been Dr. Pilho Kim on his new book, Polarizing Dreams, Kongnam and Popular Culture in Globalizing Korea. Thanks again and take care. Thank you so much.