The practice of imagining idols within romantic and sexual relationships, known as “shipping,” is central to the global fandom of K-pop, allowing fans to develop affective relationships with celebrities through practices such as writing fan fiction. In particular, shipping that reimagines boy groups such as BTS within romantic or homoerotic relationships is especially common as a method of articulating fandom and exploring sexual agency, thus producing spaces within Korea’s patriarchal society where women’s sexual desires can be safely explored. International aspects of BTS shipping, particularly within Japanese and Anglophone fandom spaces (in Australian and the Philippines), is then analyzed. While BTS shipping in Japan tends to conceptualize homoerotic relationships between men via sexual practices and behaviors divorced from identity, Anglophone shipping tends to instead overtly deploy LGBTQ identity politics. Nevertheless, both practices possess queer potentials that allow fans to affectively explore their sexuality. The chapter concludes with a discussion of the role of shipping in affirming the presence of queer fans within global K-pop culture.

The history and nature of the Athenian Empire (arche) is not the primary subject of Thucydides’ History, but his text is nevertheless a critical piece of evidence for it. After briefly surveying the key features of the Athenian Empire and its development, this chapter explores Thucydides’ picture of Athenian imperialism, focusing on three areas in particular. First: how can imperial power be justified? Second – a related but different question – why do states seek imperial power (is it, indeed, something over which states have a choice or is it an inevitable feature of interstate politics)? Finally, how and why do empires fail?

Thucydides emphasizes the labour that he has put into creating his History, but this is a text that also requires labour from its readers if they are to uncover the truth about past events. This chapter explores what that process of uncovering the truth might look like using as case studies Thucydides’ account of the growth of Athenian imperial power in Book 1 and his narrative of the plague in Book 2. Finally, the chapter addresses the question of why Thucydides might have adopted this approach to writing and presenting his History.

This chapter focuses on so-called proto-K-pop, just prior to the birth of K-pop as exportable good in the late 1990s, and the subcultures based on nightclubs and discotheques from the mid-1980s to the early 1990s. The dancers and DJs who gathered at Seoul nightclubs (and in other cities) emulated dance and music from the United States, Europe, and Japan, and constructed their own “authentic” genre. In the late 1980s and early 1990s, dancers began their careers as backup for the established singers and gradually repositioned themselves as “dancers who sing.” During the same period, some DJs who became producers, managers, and songwriters successfully challenged the existing record industry. This chapter investigates the transformation of the small-scale and scattered subculture based in nightclubs into a lucrative business associated with the organized music industry. Three production-cum-management companies – SM (Hyun Jin-young and Wawa), Line (Kim Gun Mo), and Yoyo (Seo Taiji and Boys) – are closely examined. It is inevitable to contrast the rap/reggae/techno-oriented 1990s with the folk/rock/ballad-oriented 1980s. But this chapter eschews the dichotomy by showing the genre diversity consciously designed by the industry. It aims to show the ground zero of the so-called K-pop machine, without making any teleological assumptions.

Thucydides’ History is a rich source for our understanding of the character and interrelations of the ethnic sub-groups of the Greeks and different communities within the Greek world, as well as the relations between Greeks and non-Greek (‘barbarian’) communities. After establishing some key methodological principles relating to studying ethnicity in the Greek world, this chapter explores Thucydides’ contribution to our understanding of Greek ethnicity. It analyses the role of descent and cultural factors in the construction of ethnicity. It also explores the role that ethnicity plays in Thucydides’ description and analysis of the Peloponnesian War.

With their Billboard chart-topping albums and sold-out stadium concerts around the globe, BTS today is the biggest success story of international K-pop. The unprecedented success of BTS challenges the understanding and study of K-pop, as it simultaneously reinforces previously existing perspectives while demanding several new ones. This chapter traces the career of BTS, surveying the historical implications of their rise to the dramatic change in the landscape of music consumption in the era of new media. Rather than depending on music industry insiders or media gatekeepers, the pop stars of the internet era form a strong and direct connection with their fans. ARMY, BTS’s global fandom, is emblematic of this change. ARMY fans do not merely buy albums or generate publicity for their stars; they open new fronts in the discourse and creative derivative work centered around BTS, further fueling the group’s worldwide success. In the US mainstream pop music market dominated by US and UK acts, these shifts in defining BTS’s success demand reconsideration of the future possibilities of Asian stars.

The invention of the MP3 and its distribution on the internet affected the South Korean music industry in multifarious ways, instigating a sharp decrease in CD sales but also contributing to K-pop’s shift from audio to visual culture. Because many scholars contend that K-pop is driven by the visual, academic analysis has been dominated by discussions of visual aesthetics; other aspects of K-pop, especially its use of acoustic techniques and vocalization, have largely been neglected. Drawing on R. Murray Schafer’s definition of “soundscape” – where sound is the combination of layers of culture, place, acoustic space, and technology – this chapter provides an overview of K-pop’s soundscapes over the past thirty years. The industry has responded to new recording technologies and new media, which are linked to specific aspects of South Korean time and space. The mediation of sound in studio recording booths, where K-pop singers give literal voice to their self-expression, has become an integral component of the sonic form. In addition to the vocal styles of K-pop artists, the chapter addresses the auditory practices of recording artists ranging from singer-songwriters to K-pop boy bands as well as the interventions of sound engineers and producers in the recording process.

This chapter examines the emergence of hip hop in contemporary South Korea. Drawing on Henry Louis Gates Jr.’s concept of “signifying” and Achille Mbembe’s idea of “becoming black,” it looks at hip hop as a phenomenon where “Blackness” has gained a fungible agency that counters neoliberalism. The chapter explores the ways hip-hop performers in South Korea draw on their own experiences of social marginality in the ghetto-like world produced by unrelenting academic and economic competition to create their work. It also considers how the Korean language obliges rappers to experiment with its syntax and prosody in order to generate the rhymes and repetitions associated with hip-hop poetics. The author argues that rap in the South Korean context has become a successful adaptation of a foreign musical genre, in a manner that recalls the discovery and mastery of Western popular music by Korean musicians in the years following the Korean War. The recent popularity of hip hop reestablishes ties to premodern and precolonial practices of oral musical storytelling that were neglected and overlooked during the period of modernization.

Singing along has aided songs to gain wide geographic distribution and popularity. In the case of K-pop, singing along is hampered by the lack of language skills. However, a key component of K-pop’s success has been the visual – music videos that feature beautiful stars and trending fashions – and, perhaps most of all, a prominent dance component. Fans from around the world have been moved to interact with K-pop by substituting dancing along for singing along. The barrier to participation is low – cover dancers benefit from a song and choreography created by other artists. While some dancers only practice, without uploading videos or performing, others attract viewers to private subscriptions for access to full videos and interactions with the dancers. Fans perform dances for crowds, upload them online, enter cover contests, and even develop new careers. They can become quite well known, their videos drawing millions of views. Just like the K-pop idols, the Korean government supports these activities. This chapter outlines the variety of cover dance activities, investigates the motivations of cover dancers using interview data, discusses the implications for cultural diplomacy, outlines the economy of K-pop cover dance, and touches on the ways it contributes to learning about Korea.