Transnational Media Consumption and Cultural Identity: Young Korean Women's Cultural Appropriation of Japanese TV Dramas

This paper attempts an ethnographic study of transnational TV consumption by young Korean women in their everyday lives. Rather than generally mapping out Korea's watching of Japanese TV dramas or investigating the reception of a specific type of Japanese TV drama, it seeks to examine how young Korean females are still constrained by conventional gender systems, but have appropriated Japanese TV dramas. By examining their consumption of these dramas, this study discusses not only the ways in which young Korean female fans have created or experienced transnational consumption space, wherein they have negotiated their cultural or gender identities in the age of globalization, but also the degree to which their reception experiences have been hybridized.