K-Pop: Popular Music, Cultural Amnesia, and Economic Innovation in South Korea

I have not read them all, but this is the best account I have come across so far of the phenomenon of K-Pop. It explores the musical, social, political, historical, and cultural Korean and global context that led to K-Pop, and then examines what the significance of K-Pop is today.It should be emphasized, however, that this book is not going to be for every K-Pop fan. The author is a professor at UC Berkeley (and a Korean-American), and unless you have at least a college degree (or the equivalent), many of the plethora of intellectual and cultural allusions and references are going to mean nothing to you. If you do get this, I highly recommend the Kindle version; makes it much easier to quickly look up arcane words (the author does enjoy showing off his vocabulary).Some more specific comments:– The first part of the book spends considerable time looking at the pre-K-Pop Korean musical environment. Discussion of musical forms can be a bit dry, but becomes much more interesting if you look up songs and/or performances on YouTube (sometimes links are provided in the book to these).– I think I really gained a greater appreciation for the unique cultural and political environment of South Korea by reading this book. Certainly was not aware that previous governments had actually repressed popular music.– The author decided to undertake this study for reasons similar to my own reasons for an interest in the subject. He was a middle-aged guy who discovered some amazing music and videos that seem to have sprung out of nowhere, and wondered how such high quality performances, from an apparently unlikely source, came to be.– The book covers K-Pop through 2012. A lot has happened since then, especially in terms of K-Pop becoming even more musically diverse and the overall quality, at least arguably, improving. But I don't think anything fundamentally new has occurred.– The book takes a balanced look at K-Pop. It explores the good and the bad. And even though the author is an intellectual, he is also a fan and argues that even popular music has real cultural value.

Good book , a lot of high level speech

I liked the insight into the South Korean history through music. However, I think sometimes it became repetitive.

Decent quantity of information on the subject of K-pop.