Description
Book SynopsisIn
Tourist Distractions Youngmin Choe uses Korean hallyu cinema as a lens to examine the importance of tourist films and film tourism in creating transnational bonds throughout East Asia and how they help Korea negotiate its twentieth-century history with the neoliberal present.
Trade Review"Choe productively establishes a discussion that is relational rather than focused on bounded national contexts. She does terrific work in tying together solid and eminently useful historical context information and on-site research with close readings and more speculative, very insightful discussion. It is a balance that is difficult to achieve, but one that is especially rare in the study of popular culture from Korea." -- Alexander Zahlten * Journal of Asian Studies *
"Choe’s work is highly readable, inspiring, and absorbing.
Tourist Distractions also promises to be productive in the classroom. It will attract and distract hallyu fans in Korean studies and researchers with interests in tourism studies, visual and cultural anthropology, cultural studies, and film studies." -- Barbara Wall * Social History *
"Although an impressive amount of scholarship on Hallyu cinema has been published in the last decade, the transnational affect of Hallyu cinema through re-contextualizing it as audience emotions, tensions, and transnational self-reflections has not been the focus of critical attention.
Tourist Distractions fills this void in Korean film studies with a persuasive voice by establishing the transnational linkages of Hallyu to Japan, China, and North Korea since the early inception of the Hallyu boom." -- Yongwoo Lee * Pacific Affairs *
“This is a multilayered and elegant model, albeit one still under construction, that certainly suggests a much more contextually rich way to interpret the significant works of the Korean Wave; for that contribution alone Choe’s book should be considered a must-read.” -- Kyu Hyun Kim * Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies *
"Enriching the oeuvre of Korean film scholarship with its theoretical rigor,
Tourist Distractions fills a critical gap in Hallyu studies by placing it in productive dialogue with Korean studies, tourism studies, film studies, cultural studies, and visual/cultural anthropology." -- Haerin Shin * Journal of Korean Studies *
Table of ContentsAcknowledgments ix
Introduction. Distracted Attractions 1
Part I. Intimacy
1. Feeling Together: Pornography and Travel in
Kazoku Cinema and
Asako in Ruby Shoes 31
2. Affective Sites: Hur Jin-ho's
April Snow and
One Fine Spring Day 59
Part II. Amity
3. Provisional Feelings: The Making of
Musa 89
4. Affective Palimpsests: Sudden Showers from Hwang Sun-won's "Sonagi" to Kwak Jae-yong and Andrew Lau's
Daisy 112
Part III. Remembrance
5. Postmemory DMZ:
Joint Security Area,
Yesterday, and
2009 Lost Memories 143
6. Transient Monuments: Commemmorating and Memorializing in
Taegukgi Korean War Film Tourism 166
Conclusion. K-hallyu: The Commodity Speaks in Kang Chul-woo's
Romantic Island, Bae Yong-joon's
A Journey in Search of Korea's Beauty, So Ji-sub's
Road, and Choi Ji-woo's
if 197
Notes 205
Bibliography 229
Index 241
