THE PHENOMENON OF THE KOREAN WAVE AS A MANIFESTATION OF METAMODERN CULTURE JUVENILIZATION

Abstract

The article studies the phenomenon of the growing popularity of the “Korean wave” in modern globalized culture. The author highlights the following features of Korean popular culture, i.e., visual aesthetics, romanticism, a double code – the program promoting South Korean historical and value narrative in the West immanent in the cultural product. Assumptions have been made about the instrumentalization of the “Korean wave” to gradually displace the archetype of the Alien by the archetype of Own for the European audience. The “artificial”, post-industrial nature of the “Korean wave”, which is based on the production of cultural artifacts according to strict technological standards, is emphasized. Metamodernism is put forward as a promising optics of conceptualizing the phenomenon of the “Korean wave” in its incompatibility with postmodernism: if postmodernism is characterized by liberal cynicism and cultural fatigue, the Korean wave can be interpreted only in light of the trend of “new sincerity”.