[Commlist] CfP: Circuits of K-content: Co-productions, collaborations, and connections

*Deadline:*Abstracts (500-word limit) by September 15, full drafts by 
December 1, 2025

*Background:*

After the first uses of “hallyu” in Chinese newspapers nearly thirty 
years ago, the metaphor of a Korean/wave/has largely been understood as 
fluid movements that radiate out from South Korea. Research on the 
Korean Wave has largely operated on this metaphor, whether celebratory 
or critical. Celebratory accounts in marketing, political science, or 
the emergent Hallyu studies have tended to understand the import and 
interest in “K-contents” as a sign of soft power and neoliberal economic 
advantage.

In some cases, the research has been motivated by a desire to strengthen 
and extend the Korean Wave’s distance, desirability, and duration for 
the nation’s political economic advantage. These utilitarian approaches 
imaged K-contents as tools to extend the nation’s influence or market 
position. In other cases, humanistic textual questions considered 
ontological questions about K-contents that allowed for its popularity. 
Borrowing from Shim’s (2006) foundational application of Bhabha’s (1996) 
postcolonial theory of hybridity, it has been a popular explanation for 
K-contents stylistic choices, language, and ideological meanings. In 
other cases, different waves are constructed into typologies to explain 
the sociotechnological interactions that shape the contexts, or the 
waters, in which K-content is experienced.

Less frequently, a few critical scholars have looked askance at the wave 
to interrogate the machinations of geopolitical power. Writing about 
Japan and Korea, Iwabuchi’s (2010) theory of brand nationalism warns 
that the overdetermination of the “K” or the “J” hides serious problems 
such as global media ownership and international intellectual property 
regimes. These are ideological and geopolitical projects, which is a 
concern also raised by Korean Wave scholars who apply “subempire,” 
Chen’s (1999) theory about the complicity and participation by some East 
Asian countries with the neocolonial, neoliberal Western order.

What these approaches – celebratory and critical – have in common is the 
assumption of an outward cultural impact. Whether the wave just makes 
damp or overwhelms like a typhoon, the wave metaphor and its 
unidirectionality are originating assumptions in much of the textual and 
production research. It is the purpose of this special issue to look 
otherwise and to consider not the question of flows and effects but of 
connections. Instead of ripples outward, the movement of K-content can 
be understood as currents within a complex circuit in which the contents 
of other nations can travel back through existing pathways and in which 
interactions change the nature of the current. After two decades of 
Korean Wave research, it is appropriate to also understand the receiving 
nations as not only accepting or rejecting Korean media but actively 
interacting with it. Although this has been explored in transnational 
audience research, the existing literature tends to not explore textual 
or industry questions that center the agency of other nations in which 
K-contents interact.

For this reason, the special issue is interested in understanding the 
mediated connections and meanings that are produced in co-productions, 
in metatextual narrative, in remakes and adaptations, and other forms of 
industry connection. The special issue particularly values new ways of 
thinking about co-constituted circuits with K-content rather than the 
metaphor of the Korean Wave, and, relevant to the journal, it is 
especially interested in these connections in the Asia-Pacific region. 
Papers that can/humanistically/investigate particular cases as well as 
theorize connections through existing and new frameworks are especially 
valued.

Topics might include but are not limited to:

  * Remakes of K-content or Korean remakes of other nations’ content
  * Adaptations of K-content or Korean adaptation of other nations’ content
  * Co-production and textual meanings
  * The production of co-productions – negotiating language, work,
    culture, distribution, etc.
  * Industry connections and collaboration
  * Narratives of inter-Asian connection, e.g.,/Ajoomma/
  * Diasporic narratives and documentaries – Koreans abroad or diasporas
    in Korea
  * Film festivals – Korean film festivals abroad or Asian-Pacific film
    festivals in Korea

**

*Submission guidelines:*

Interested authors should submit an abstract to David C. Oh 
(atdcoh /at/ syr.edu) <mailto:(dcoh /at/ syr.edu)>, the special issue guest editor, by 
September 15, 2025. Selected abstract authors will be invited to submit 
their full papers to the/Asian Communication Review/for anonymous 
review. Because papers will undergo anonymous review, an invitation to 
submit a full paper is not a guarantee of the manuscript’s acceptance. 
Submitted abstracts should have a limit of 500 words.

The/Asian Communication Review/is the first English-language journal 
published in South Korea. It is the official journal of the Korean 
Society for Journalism and Communication Studies. It is indexed in 
SCOPUS and KCI (Korean Citation Index).

No payments from authors will be required.

Contact: David C. Oh, (dcoh /at/ syr.edu)


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