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The Global Impact of South Korean Popular Culture: Hallyu Unbound,edited by Valentina Marinescu. Lanham, Md.: Lexington Books, 2014. 166 pages. $80.00 cloth; $79.99 e-book.
The Global Impact of South Korean Popular Culture: Hallyu Unbound is an introduction to studies of South Korea's unprecedented global phenomenon, the so-called Korean Wave, or Hallyu, with a focus on Korean popular culture and cultural products exported to other countries, including Korean TV series, movies, and K-pop. The book contains twelve chapters written by experts on Korean popular culture or related fields in different countries and is divided into three geographical regions (Asia, Europe, and America). The chapters are preceded by an introduction of various faces of Hallyu around the world by Valentina Marinescu. The book covers the history and current status of Hallyu in Asia, Europe, and America, and the perception, social impact, and cultural identity of Hallyu from different perspectives and from different countries.
The success of Korean cultural products around the world follows from different dissemination stories. In Asia, Korean TV dramas and K-pop illustrate a...