HOW ARE KOREAN MEN SEEN? CONSTRUCTS AMONG MEXICAN WOMEN BY MEANS OF HALLYU

Abstract

In contemporary Mexican society young people demonstrate strong consumption habits of entertainment products from Republic of Korea. The arrival of the first Korean cultural products dates back to 2002, however, it is impossible to pinpoint the specific date when the consumption of Korean entertainment products overgrew from the initial phase of Hallyu dissemination into the craze for K-pop and idol groups. During the last decade, the synergy between the potential of Korean companies and production houses, the social and the diplomatic networks of the Korean government and the digital transfer made it possible to transform this consumption into a global trend, with a telling effect on Mexican women. This research analyzes how the impact of cultural products from the Republic of Korea framed the Mexican women’s imaginaries of Korean men and how those imaginaries make them to consider those men as new ideal. The paper focuses on the ways in which Mexican women have come to regard the distinguishing masculinity features of present-day South Korean men as an aspiration object of an ideal man in the contemporary context. The concepts from cultural studies such as cultural industries, consumption, symbolic use and gender as a symbolic construct are used to analyze the data obtained through open online surveys. The questions were proposed to focus groups which openly show consumption of Korean cultural products.