Books

Jin, D. Y. (2023). Understanding the Korean Wave: Transnational Korean pop culture and digital technologies. Routledge. 

A comprehensive and critical introduction to understanding the Korean Wave (Hallyu) as a transnational media phenomenon. This book provides an accessible introduction to the Korean Wave—the rapid growth of local cultural industries and the global popularity of Korean popular culture over the past 30 years—providing historical, political, economic, and socio-cultural context to its initial rise and enduring popularity. Jin explores the transnational cultural flows of Hallyu across a variety of products and digital technologies—from television dramas, film, and K-pop to online games, and webtoons—and explains the process of cross-media convergence and the socio-political contexts behind the Hallyu phenomenon. He also explores how overseas fans and audiences advance K-pop fandom as social agents in different geo-cultural contexts. The book concludes by discussing if Hallyu can become a sustainable global popular culture beyond a fan-based regional cultural phenomenon. Each chapter features detailed contemporary case studies and discussion questions to enhance student engagement. This is essential reading for students of Media and Communication, Cultural Studies, Korean Studies, and Asian Studies, particularly those taking classes on popular culture and media, media and globalization, Korean popular culture, and East Asian culture.

Jin, D. Y. (2023). Understanding Korean webtoon culture: Transmedia storytelling, digital platforms, and genres. Harvard University Press.

Webtoons—a form of comic that are typically published digitally in chapter form—are the latest manifestation of the Korean Wave of popular culture that has increasingly caught on across the globe, especially among youth. Originally distributed via the Internet, they are now increasingly distributed through smartphones to ravenous readers in Korea and around the world. The rise of webtoons has fundamentally altered the Korean cultural market due to the growth of transmedia storytelling—the flow of a story from the original text to various other media platforms, such as films, television, and digital games—and the convergence of cultural content and digital technologies. Fans can enjoy this content anytime and anywhere, either purely as webtoons or as webtoon-based big-screen culture. Understanding Korean Webtoon Culture analyzes webtoons through the lens of emerging digital cultures and discusses relevant cultural perspectives by combining two different, yet connected approaches, political economy and cultural studies. The book demonstrates the dynamics between structural forces and textual engagement in global media flows, and it illuminates snack-culture and binge-reading as two new forms of digital culture that webtoon platforms capitalize on to capture people’s shifting media consumption.

Jin, D. Y. (2022). Global South discourse in East Asian media studies. Routledge.

This book examines the nexus of East Asian media, culture, and digital technologies in the early 21st century from a Global South perspective. Providing an empirically rich analysis of the emergence of Asian culture, histories, texts, and state policies as they relate to both Asian media and global media, the author discusses relevant theoretical frameworks as East Asian popular culture and media have shifted the contours of globalization. After overviewing Western media/cultural theories and histories, the book explores the ways in which East Asia-focused analytical frameworks are able to shift people’s understanding of globalization and media, drawing upon examples from different East Asian countries to illustrate how current cultural flows have influenced and have been influenced by a handful of dimensions. Offering an important contribution to understanding the historical trajectory and recent developments of East Asia media, this book will interest students and scholars of media, communication, popular culture, cultural studies, Asian studies, politics and sociology.

Jin, D. Y. (2022). Ten debates on the Hallyu mythology (한류 신화에 관한 10가지 논쟁 in Korean). Hanul.

Jin, D. Y. (2021). Artificial intelligence in cultural production: Critical perspectives on digital platforms. Routledge.

This book offers an in-depth academic discourse on the convergence of AI, digital platforms, and popular culture, in order to understand the ways in which the platform and cultural industries have reshaped and developed AI-driven algorithmic cultural production and consumption. At a time of fundamental change for the media and cultural industries, driven by the emergence of big data, algorithms, and AI, the book examines how media ecology and popular culture are evolving to serve the needs of both media and cultural industries and consumers. The analysis documents global governments’ rapid development of AI-relevant policies and identifies key policy issues; examines the ways in which cultural industries firms utilize AI and algorithms to advance the new forms of cultural production and distribution; investigates change in cultural consumption by analyzing the ways in which AI, algorithms, and digital platforms reshape people’s consumption habits; and examines whether governments and corporations have advanced reliable public and corporate policies and ethical codes to secure socio-economic equality. Offering a unique perspective on this timely and vital issue, this book will be of interest to scholars and students in media studies, communication studies, anthropology, globalization studies, sociology, cultural studies, Asian studies, and science and technology studies (STS).

Jin, D. Y. (2021). The Routledge handbook of digital media and globalization. Routledge.

The book begins by interrogating globalization as a critical and intensely contested concept, and proceeds to explore how digital media have influenced a complex set of globalization processes in broad international and comparative contexts. Contributors address a number of key political, economic, cultural, and technological issues relative to globalization, such as free trade agreements, cultural imperialism, heterogeneity, the increasing dominance of American digital media in global cultural markets, the powers of the nation-state, and global corporate media ownership. By extension, readers are introduced to core theoretical concepts and practical ideas, which they can apply to a broad range of contemporary media policies, practices, movements, and technologies in different geographic regions of the world—North America, Europe, Africa, the Middle East, Latin America, and Asia.

Jin, D. Y., Yoon, K., & Min, W. J. (2021). Transnational Hallyu: The globalization of Korean digital and popular culture. Rowman & Littlefield Publishers

While the influence of Western, Anglophone popular culture has continued in the global cultural market, the Korean cultural industry has substantially developed and globally exported its various cultural products, such as television programs, pop music, video games and films. The global circulation of Korean popular culture is known as the Korean wave, or Hallyu. Given its empirical scope and theoretical contributions, this book will be highly appealing to any scholar or student interested in media globalization and contemporary Asia popular culture. These chapters present the evolution of Hallyu as a transnational process and addresses two distinctive aspects of the recent Hallyu phenomenon - digital technology integration and global reach. This book will be the first monograph to comprehensively and comparatively examine the translational flows of Hallyu through extensive field studies conducted in the US, Canada, Chile, Spain and Germany.

Hong, S-K. & Jin, D. Y. (Eds.). (2021). Convergence of East Asian pop culture. Routledge.

This book observes and analyzes transnational interactions of East Asian pop culture and current cultural practices, comparing them to the production and consumption of Western popular culture and providing a theoretical discussion regarding the specific paradigm of East Asian pop culture.

Jin, D. Y. (2021). Global esports: Transformation of cultural perceptions of competitive gaming. Bloomsbury Academic.

Global eSports explores the recent surge of eSports in the global scene and comprehensively discusses people's understanding of this spectacle. By historicizing and institutionalizing eSports, the contributors analyze the rapid growth of eSports and its implications in culture and digital economy.

Jin, D. Y. (Ed.). (2020). Transmedia storytelling in East Asia: The age of digital  media. Routledge.

This book offers a thorough investigation of the recent surge of webtoons and manga/animation as the sources of transmedia storytelling for popular culture, not only in East Asia but in the wider global context. An international team of experts employ a unique theoretical framework of media convergence supported by transmedia storytelling, alongside historical and textual analyses, to examine the ways in which webtoons and anime become some of the major sources for transmedia storytelling. The book historicizes the evolution of regional popular culture according to the surrounding digital media ecology, driving the change and continuity of the manhwa industry over the past 15 years, and discusses whether cultural products utilizing transmedia storytelling take a major role as the primary local cultural product in the cultural market. Offering new perspectives on current debates surrounding transmedia storytelling in the cultural industries, this book will be of great interest to scholars and students of media studies, East Asian studies and cultural studies.

Lee, H. J., & Jin, D. Y. (2019). K-pop idols : Popular culture and the emergence of the Korean music industry. Lexington Books.

Converging theory and practice, this book provides a unique analysis of Korean youth’s attempts to become global celebrities within the growing K-pop phenomenon, which is rapidly becoming part of global media systems and culture. K-pop has become one of the most popular cultural forms in the global music markets, despite having a relatively new global presence.

Jin, D. Y. (2019). Globalization and media in the digital platform age. Routledge.

Offering an in-depth look at globalization processes, histories, texts, and state policies as they relate to the global media, Jin maps out the increasing role of digital platforms as they have shifted the contours of globalization. 

Jin, D. Y. (2019). Transnational Korean cinema: Cultural politics, film genres, and digital technologies. Rutgers University Press.

This book emphasizes the economic and industrial aspects of the story, looking at questions on the interaction of politics and economics, including censorship and public funding, and provides a better view of the big picture by laying bare the relationship between film industries, the global market, and government. Jin also sheds light on the operations and globalization strategies of Korean film industries alongside changing cultural policies in tandem with Hollywood’s continuing influences in order to comprehend the power relations within cultural politics, nationally and globally. This is the first book to offer a full overview of the nascent development of Korean cinema.

Jin, D. Y., & Su, W. (Eds.). (2019). Asia-Pacific film co-productions: Theory, industry and aesthetics. Routledge.

This book examines cross-regional film coproduction within the Asia-Pacific region. It contributes to the reconfiguration of geographic, political, economic, and cultural relations.

Jin, D. Y., & Kwak, N. (Eds.). (2018). Communication, digital media, and popular culture in media.  Lexington

Korean communication and media have grown to become some of the most significant segments of Korean society. This book historicizes the growming scholarship in Korean media and culture.

Yoon, T. J., & Jin, D. Y. (2017). The Korean Wave: Evolution, fandom and transnationality. Lexington Books.

Since the Korean Wave started in the late 1990s, Hallyu Has undergone many changes, and this book documents and analyzes the emergence of Hallyu.

Lee, M., & Jin, D. Y. (2017). Understanding the business of global media in the digital age. Routledge.

Focusing on three main approaches--media economics, political economy, and production studies, this book provides an empirically rich analysis of media ownership, structures, and culture.

Jin, D. Y. (2017). Smartland Korea: Mobile communication, culture, and society. The University of Michigan Press.

This book examines the technology's innovation and the evolution, the digital economy through the lens of political economy, and the youth culture embedded in the Korean smartphone contexts. 

Jin, D. Y. (Ed.). (2016). Mobile gaming in Asia: Politics, culture and emerging technologies. Springer.

This book analyzes mobile gaming in Asian context and looks into a localized mobile landscape, with special reference to young Asian's engagement with mobile gaming.

Jin, D. Y. (2016). New Korean Wave: Transnational cultural power in the age of social media. Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press.

This book analyzes the social and technological trends that transformed Hallyu from a mostly regional interest into a global powerhouse. It provides rationales why we witness the New Korean Wave, compared to the early stage of Hallyu. 

Jin, D. Y. (2015). Digital platforms, imperialism and political culture. Routledge.

This book conributes to the platform imperialism discourse by mapping out several core areass of platform imperialism.

Jin, D. Y. (2022). Theories of science journalism (과학저널리즘의이해 in Korean) (2nd ed.). Hanul.

This book is about the increasing role of science journalism in the age of digital media, big data, and privacy. 

Jin, D. Y. (2013). De-convergence of global media industries. Routledge.

As the first comprehensive attempt to analyze the wave of de-convergence of the global media system, this book makes sense of those transitions by looking at global trends.

Winseck, D., & Jin, D. Y. (Eds.). (2011). The political economies of media: The transformation of the global media industries. Bloomsbury.

This book is as alert to developments in our main oubjects os analysis--media institutions, technologies, markets, uses and society.

Jin, D. Y. (2011). Reinterpretation of cultural imperialism (문화 제국주의의 재해석 in Korean). Communication Books.

This book is to reinterpret cultural imperialism theory in the 21st context. 

Jin, D. Y. (2011). Hands on/hands off: The Korean state and the market liberalization of the communication industry. Hampton Press.

The book is a contemporary political economic analysis of the various dimensions in the rapid growth of the Korean communication industry. 

Jin, D. Y. (2010). Korea’s online gaming empire. The MIT Press.

This book examines the rise of Korean online games in the global marketplace, the emrgence of eSports as a youth culture phenomenon, and the working conditions of professional gamers.

Jin, D. Y. (Ed.). (2010). Global media convergence and cultural transformation: Emerging social patterns and characteristics. IGI Global.

This book explores diverse perspectives and approaches in order to reflect varied perspectives on the convergence of cultrue and new media technology.