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Abstract

Drawing on qualitative interviews with K-pop fans in Lima, Peru, this study explores how Latin fans think about and negotiate K-pop industries’ citations of Latin pop music tropes. It addresses the ways in which K-pop's practices of citing other cultures are perceived by the audience whose culture is cited. The Peruvian fans in this study suggest that the citations of other cultures observed in K-pop offer versatile entry points for them to easily engage in the cultural genre. For them, K-pop is a novel cultural genre that has become an alternative yet intimate cultural resource, especially compared to hegemonic American pop music. By providing an analysis of Latin K-pop fans’ lived experiences through the lens of cultural hybridity and appropriation, this audience study contributes to the field of transcultural media research.

Keywords

cultural appropriation cultural hybridity Hallyu (the Korean Wave)K-pop (South Korean pop music)Latin music Peruvian K-pop fans,transcultural fandom

Introduction

The recent global circulation of South Korean pop music (K-pop) effectively exemplifies transcultural media flows and their meaning-making processes. K-pop is characterized by single-sex idol groups’ synchronized choreography and upbeat, hybrid musical styles. This made-in-Korea music has penetrated global music markets beyond its country of origin and played a key role in the global rise of South Korean (Korean hereafter) media and pop culture, known as Hallyu (the Korean Wave). With this genre's continued popularity in Asia since the late 1990s and, more expansively, across the world in the past 10 years, K-pop industries have rapidly delocalized and transnationalized their systems, stars, and content. As Fuhr (2016: 16) points out, K-pop reveals an ‘inherent desire to be(come) global pop and to erase the K in its name’. This cultural genre has evolved by citing various musical styles, such as Afro-American and Latin music tropes (Anderson, 2020; Garza, 2021; Kim, 2020).

Against this background, the present article addresses two relatively understudied aspects of the existing research on K-pop's citations of overseas pop music tropes. First, geopolitically, this study examines the cultural junctures between K-pop and Latin pop music. While K-pop's connection with Western (especially Afro-American) pop music has increasingly attracted academic attention (Anderson, 2020; Fuhr, 2016; Kim, 2020; Kim and Saeji, 2020), its references to Latin music conventions have rarely been studied. Second, methodologically, this study explores audiences’ engagement with K-pop's cross-cultural citational practices, moving beyond an analysis of K-pop's content and representation. With a few exceptions (Anderson, 2020; Kim, 2023), the existing discussions of foreign influences on K-pop have primarily drawn on textual analysis without addressing audiences’ responses to, and engagement with, the citational practices in the genre. Addressing these – geopolitical and methodological – gaps in the existing research, the present study explores understudied areas in the transcultural flows of K-pop.

Among the other Latin American locations, Peru was chosen because it is known as a vibrant reception point of Korean pop culture in Latin America. Since its introduction of Korean TV dramas through the national TV network Panamericana Televisión in the mid-2000s and the first K-pop concert of idol group JYJ in 2012, the Peruvian fan base of Korean pop culture has rapidly expanded (Au, 2021; Carranza Ko et al., 2014a, 2014b; Jung, 2017; Perez, 2022). Nevertheless, with only a few exceptions (Carranza Ko et al., 2014a, 2014b), Peru has remained under-researched vis-à-vis studies of K-pop and Hallyu and thus requires further investigation.

Drawing on qualitative interviews with K-pop fans in Lima, Peru, this study explores how Latin fans perceive, think about, and negotiate K-pop industries’ citations of Latin pop music tropes. This audience study examines the effects of citational practices on intercultural dialogues and the hybridization of pop music. The exploration of overseas audiences’ engagement with K-pop's use of cross-cultural references is a timely intervention in flourishing studies of K-pop and, more broadly, transcultural media studies. In particular, given the increasing debates about how to engage with other cultures in K-pop fan communities (Cruz et al., 2023), the present study will contribute to facilitating critical examinations of the ways in which a cultural form engages with another culture's tropes through citational practices and overseas audiences’ responses to such cross-cultural citations.

Between cultural hybridity and cultural appropriation

Media and cultural studies have examined the practices of citing and referring to other cultures in the process of globalization. Among these studies, two frameworks – cultural hybridity and cultural appropriation – are particularly relevant because they offer conceptual tools for examining the cross-cultural citational practices that are observed in K-pop's use of Latin music tropes.

In analyzing citational practices, media researchers have engaged in a cultural hybridity framework (Kraidy, 2005). This framework examines media practice as a process that involves the fusion of different forms that blur and question a fixed notion of national or local culture (Kraidy and Murphy, 2003). The notion of cultural hybridity, which arose in media studies after the media imperialism thesis was substantially challenged, has been interpreted and applied diversely. By and large, on the one hand, liberal or postmodern perspectives on hybridity favorably evaluate diverse practices of cultural fusion because of their alleged sociocultural benefits. These celebratory discourses of hybridity appear to assume harmonious synergy and fusion between distinctive cultural forms and, in doing so, ideologically justify the commodification of different cultural texts without considering the power relations behind the process of hybridization (Burke, 2009). On the other hand, relatively critical perspectives on hybridity suggest that ‘cultures are not homogeneous essences’ and that ‘hybrids are never simply a mixture of pre-existing identities’ (Marotta, 2020: 2). Inspired by postcolonial theorists, such as Bhabha (1994), the critical perspectives explore the subversive possibilities that emerge between cultural conjunctions.

Among the diverse practices of cultural hybridity, particular modes of cultural fusion, which involve taking from another culture (especially the culture of a relatively marginalized group), raise questions regarding whose culture is appropriated, by whom, and how. In this regard, the notion of cultural appropriation has contributed to understanding how cultures of the other are commodified and what power relations are involved in cross-cultural media production and consumption. While not necessarily identical to the practice of hybridity, appropriation can be a process of exploring hybridity. To be precise, a cultural text can appropriate another work and also be considered hybrid, yet a cultural text can be hybrid without necessarily exploitatively appropriating another culture (Young, 2011). As media researcher Rogers (2006: 474) puts it, cultural appropriation can be defined ‘broadly as the use of a culture's symbols, artifacts, genres, rituals, or technologies by members of another culture’. Cultural appropriation as an active process of ‘making one's own of another culture's elements’ is particularly problematic when relatively marginal groups’ cultures are used, commodified, and represented by dominant groups (Rogers, 2006: 276).

Given the popular definition of cultural appropriation as majority cultures’ taking from minority cultures, the question of how to evaluate various other types of taking, citations, and referencing in cultural production becomes pertinent. As examined in this article, K-pop's frequent citations of Latin or Afro-American tropes, which contribute to the genre's cultural hybridity, may not necessarily be identical to the pattern of majority cultures’ appropriation of minority cultures (Anderson, 2020; Kim, 2023). K-pop's appropriative practices imply that the positions of the majority (i.e. those appropriating other cultures) and minority (i.e. the other whose culture is appropriated) cultures are relative. While Afro-American and Latin cultures have been marked by their unique histories of having been marginalized and/or colonized, these cultures’ roles in the contemporary global music industries are highly influential and relatively powerful, especially when compared with many non-Western cultures. Moreover, Korean culture may not be hegemonic in global power relations; Korea, the origin country of K-pop, has a history of having been marginalized and colonialized, which can be compared with Afro-American and Latin histories (Lie, 2012). While K-pop artists’ exploitative acts, such as ignorant uses of another culture's symbols, are problematic, such acts may generate meanings different from, and more complex than, White artists’ blackfacing, which explicitly references a majority culture's abuse of a minority culture. K-pop artists’ citations of other cultures may not necessarily be acts of cultural appropriation, which often refers to a majority culture's exploitative taking of a minority culture (Rogers, 2006). For example, K-pop's taking of Latin tropes may not necessarily be considered to be offensive and exploitative in Latin American society, as Asians and their culture are considered racialized others or minorities (Min, 2021a). Arguably, considering these factors, K-pop's incorporation of Afro-American and Latin tropes may constitute both cultural appropriation and cultural hybridity.

There have been debates about K-pop's citational practices, through which other cultures’ symbols and styles are adopted to enhance the Korean genre's global appeal. Given the contemporary history of Korea, which has been socioeconomically influenced by powerful nations, such as the US and Japan, it is not surprising that Korean cultural industries have cited and emulated overseas cultural forms. Frequent citational practices have increased cultural hybridity in K-pop, as well as in other Korean media genres, such as films and dramas. K-pop's highly hybrid styles and formats have obscured its Koreanness to a large extent (Lie, 2012). Despite the Korean cultural industries’ frequent citational practices, it may be questionable how, in practice, they generate cultural hybridity that contributes to an alternative ‘third space’ (Bhabha, 1994). As argued by Kim (2017), K-pop may have emulated American pop music conventions and ‘voluntarily’ been subsumed into American cultural hegemony rather than exploring critical agency to dialogically interact with or challenge it.

While K-pop's frequent adoption of references from other cultural contexts tends to be defined as a main characteristic of the genre, there have been some specific cases of explicitly insensitive citational practices that have been criticized for their problematic ways of cultural appropriation. For example, some K-pop artists, such as Mamamoo, who wore blackface at their concert, have been criticized for their out-of-context adoption of Afro-American symbols and styles. As another example, superstar K-pop group Blackpink's music video for the song ‘How You Like That’ (2020) included a scene in which Hindi deity Ganesha was disrespectfully utilized as a prop, which made Hindi audiences uncomfortable (Lee, 2020). Indeed, some K-pop artists and their entertainment companies have disrespectfully adopted and stereotyped other cultures – often Afro-American hairstyles, languages, and gestures – and been harshly criticized by global fans. While some of the artists, such as BTS, have apologized to their fans and have made an effort to improve their cultural awareness, others have remained silent or responded inappropriately to criticism. For this reason, global Black fans and listeners of K-pop have pushed K-pop industries to be more accountable (de Luna, 2020; Kim, 2023). In their criticism of K-pop industries’ recurring appropriation and stereotyping of Afro-American culture, some fans and commentators have even questioned the sincerity of recent K-pop artists’ engagement with social justice and anti-racism campaigns (Chatman, 2020; Chaudhry, 2020). Chatman (2020) claimed that, given K-pop industries’ repeated appropriative behaviors, K-pop “has not prepared for the global stage.”

However, in response to controversies over K-pop's explicit appropriation of other cultures, some scholars and critics have called for a nuanced understanding of K-pop's citational practices (Anderson, 2020; Cho, 2022; Fuhr, 2016; Lie, 2012). They suggest the consideration of the complexity and historicity behind Korean pop culture industries’ interaction with foreign cultural influences, as exemplified by Korean musicians’ engagement with Japanese and American music during the colonial and postcolonial periods. Moreover, several fan studies have demonstrated that transnational fans play an important role in redefining and negotiating the K-pop industries’ commodification of other cultures (Cho, 2022; Cruz et al., 2023).

Given K-pop's unique position between the West and its other, K-pop's citational practices may differ from Western cultural industries’ one-way and exploitative utilization of other cultures. Moreover, K-pop's utilization of other cultures varies in terms of its content, intentions, effects, and the power relations involved. As Kim (2020) argued in her analysis of K-pop's engagement with Black culture and hip-hop, K-pop artists’ performance of Blackness can be more than simple appropriation; it can be both ‘an experiential ground from which to explore generative possibilities for coalitional dialogue and a powerful catalyst for critical thinking about the violence of racial discrimination’ (Kim, 2020: 98). Similarly, several other scholars have also examined nuanced meanings that emerge in K-pop's citations of Western pop music tropes (Anderson, 2020; Fuhr, 2016; Kim and Saeji, 2020). This perspective challenges the (mis)understanding of K-pop's citational practices as the commercially oriented, offensive cultural appropriation of others.

In comparison to textual analyses of K-pop's use of transcultural tropes, including the above-mentioned study by Kim (2020; see also Fuhr, 2016; Jin and Ryoo, 2014; Lee, 2004), audience studies on the phenomenon are nascent. Anderson (2020) and Kim (2023) have offered rare examinations of overseas K-pop fans’ responses to the genre's taking from foreign music styles and symbols, which can be considered cultural appropriation and/or hybridization. Anderson (2020) finds that some fan reviewers view K-pop's citation of Black music as a simple imitation that thus lacks its own unique characteristics and authenticity; other fan reviewers recognize K-pop's relationship with the Afro-American tradition by acknowledging historical contexts. Meanwhile, Kim's (2023) investigation explores audiences’ engagement with K-pop's appropriation of other cultures through in-depth interviews with US fans of color. By focusing on fans’ capacity to critically reflect on K-pop industries’ recurring incidents of offensive cultural appropriation, the author finds that fans of color felt ‘betrayed by a genre they had embraced as an alternative to White-dominated media, where they once found acceptance and cultural resonance’ (Kim, 2023: 6).

Overall, despite flourishing discussions about K-pop's citation of other cultures as an important component that facilitates the genre's global appeal, there has been a lack of research into overseas audiences’ responses to the citational practices. In particular, the power relations involved in K-pop's references to other cultures have not been sufficiently explored. In this regard, it is necessary to further discuss what K-pop does to other cultures and how their audiences negotiate such citational practices.

Methods

To explore how Latin American K-pop fans think about K-pop's citations of Latin music tropes, the coauthor and field researcher (Labarta Garcia) conducted online interviews in Spanish with 26 Peruvian participants (21 women and 5 men) in July and August 2021.¹ The participants, who are referred to by pseudonyms in this article, were recruited via social media advertisements seeking K-pop fans in Lima, Peru. The interviewees were recruited until certain patterns were identified and the data were saturated (Glaser and Strauss, 1967). The recruited participants were relatively young – aged between 18 and 31 – and were highly knowledgeable about K-pop, especially because most of them had followed it for an extended duration – at least five years. Whereas half of the participants were particularly enthusiastic about one or two K-pop groups, the other half were ‘multi-fans’ who followed several K-pop groups simultaneously. Female participants (n = 21) outnumbered males (n = 5), which seemed to reflect the general demographic of Latin K-pop fans (Min, 2021b).

The participants were asked what they thought about several exemplary K-pop songs that explicitly incorporated Latin music tropes. For focused discussions, the participants were advised to watch three K-pop music videos of their choice among 12 pre-selected tracks that are known for their explicit use of Latin music styles.² The researchers pre-selected the 12 tracks based on extensive research and referring to reviews available on various fan sites. The tracks were chosen based on two main criteria. First, they directly include rhythmic structures and aural conventions specific to Latin music subgenres – for example, the brass-heavy instrumentals inspired by flamenco music in (G)I-DLE's ‘Señorita’ and the bossa nova acoustic guitar chords in TWICE's ‘Alcohol-free’. Second, the tracks have music videos that overtly ‘tropicalize’ (Aparicio and Chávez-Silverman, 1997) spaces that reimagine Latin music as ‘passionate, hot and spicy’ (Mendívil and Espinosa, 2016) – for example, NCT Dream's ‘Hot Sauce’ music video, in which Latin music tropes are combined with the music video's location (a taqueria, or a store that primarily sells tacos) and costume design (the idol members wearing a modernized form of a Cuban guayabera shirt).

Given the scarcity of audience studies on K-pop's citations of other cultures, especially in the context of Latin music and culture, the present study's in-depth interviews contribute to research on cultural globalization and particularly the Korean Wave. While K-pop has significantly drawn on US musical styles in its evolution (Anderson, 2020), K-pop's citation of Latin American music tropes is a relatively recent phenomenon. The analysis of this phenomenon will show how K-pop engages in different cultural conventions and meanings beyond the US-centered Western influences.

Contextualizing the transcultural flows of Latin tropes

Prior to exploring fans’ responses to Latin tropes in K-pop, it would be helpful to review Latin music's increasing integration into other music genres, especially in the context of the US music and K-pop industries.³ Latin music styles have influenced other music genres, and vice versa. Latin music styles have been integrated into other music forms through cross-cultural interaction in Latin diasporas across a wide range of geographic areas (Mendívil and Espinosa, 2016). Latin music has evolved heterogeneously through various forms of hybridity, such as Venezuelan artists’ projects being inspired by Puerto Rican salsa music (Berríos-Miranda, 2003) and Peruvian chicha being the culmination of ‘huayno mestizo, Colombian cumbia, and diverse Cuban rhythms’ (Bailón, 2004: 53).

The various forms of ‘cross-fertilizations between Latin and non-Latin genres’ (Hernández, 2003: 27) are not free of tensions and anxieties. Even before K-pop's use of Latin music tropes, debates had arisen around the US music industries’ appropriation of Latin music and culture (Hernández, 2003). Problems with the cultural appropriation of Latinidad include stereotyping and decontextualizing, which can be harmful to Latinx. The stereotyping of Latin culture, or ‘tropicalization’ (Aparicio and Chávez-Silverman, 1997), especially in Western music industries, tends to be presented in ‘images of idyllic beaches, palm trees and bikini-clad women’ (Negus, 1999: 133), along with typical Latin sounds, such as reggaetón's ‘Dem Bow’ beat and salsa's clave patterns (Kattari, 2009). Even projects coming directly from the Latino diaspora in the US have sometimes had contradictory results. For example, Luis Fonsi's global success with ‘Despacito’ has impacted global music industries to a large extent (Cobo, 2022) but has been criticized for its stereotyping of Blackness in Latinidad, which is often observed in the reggaetón genre's mainstream crossovers (Rivera-Rideau and Torres-Leschnik, 2019). In the US market, Latin music has been celebrated as an element representing cultural diversity and hybridity on the one hand, but remains exoticized and fetishized on the other (Cepeda, 2001).

The role of Latin music in K-pop industries has been rather limited as Latin American cultural influences on Korean cultural markets have been insignificant – especially compared with the US's long and extensive influences. The geocultural distance between Korea and Latin America may also be a primary reason why K-pop's citations of Latin tropes have not been as extensive as the genre's reference to US-based music conventions and artists. While nearly 2 million diasporic Koreans are estimated to live in the US and many US-born/trained artists of Korean descent have made visible contributions to the hybridization of K-pop, Korean diasporas in Latin America remain rather sporadic.

K-pop's citations of Latin culture and music can also be considered ‘tropicalization’ because it follows the US music industries’ appropriation of Latin tropes to some extent. However, as exemplified in K-pop girl group TWICE's ‘Alcohol-free’ (2021), whose music video portrays stereotypical tropical Latin images, the song itself musically experiments with combining different styles – bossa nova, Cuban salsa, and hip-hop – interchangeably. In this regard, some K-pop songs’ citations of Latin tropes seem more complex than typical ‘tropicalization’. That is, K-pop's citation of other cultures has been somewhat stereotypical yet engages with some experimental aspects (Garza, 2021). Thus, Latin tropes in K-pop may not fit the conventional definition of cultural appropriation that is premised on uneven relationships between the hegemonic subjects who appropriate and the subaltern objects who are appropriated (Arya, 2021; Cattien and Stopford, 2023). The conventional cultural appropriation framework may not sufficiently address complex cultural interactions between diverse cultural stakeholders, such as cultural referencing between non-hegemonic subjects and mutual influences in the process. In particular, Korea's ambivalent positions in the global mediascape – its increasing cultural influence yet marginalized position as an exotic and racialized other especially in Western contexts (Min, 2021a) – complicates the ways in which K-pop's citations of other cultures are defined in between cultural appropriation and cultural hybridization. Thus, it is questionable how K-pop's citations of US pop music tropes and Latin music tropes can be analyzed in the narrowly defined cultural appropriation framework. Moreover, while K-pop has adopted Latin tropes as a way of globalizing the genre (Garza, 2021; Roiz, 2022), K-pop and Latin music have also mutually influenced each other in their musical and visual styles to a certain extent. For example, Peruvian folk artist Lenin Tamayo emerged as a social media star when he mixed local languages (Spanish and indigenous Quechua) with K-pop beats (Briceño, 2023). This ‘Q-pop’ (‘Q’ for ‘Quechua’) phenomenon shows how K-pop influences local music styles and musicians in Peru. In this manner, K-pop tropes seem to be gradually incorporated into Peruvian music scenes, whereas Latin music tropes have been influential in K-pop industries.

Fans’ negotiation of Latin tropes in K-pop

Peruvian fans in this study expressed somewhat uncertain views on K-pop's citations of Afro-American cultural tropes, such as some K-pop idols’ adoption of certain Black hairstyles, because they were not fully aware of the contexts of Korean and Afro-American cultural relationships. However, when it comes to K-pop's recent citations of Latin cultural components, the Peruvian fans tended to hold a relatively supportive and favorable position. The interviewees’ accounts revealed two common responses to K-pop's incorporation of Latin tropes. First, K-pop's citational practice was considered an intercultural and mutually beneficial process rather than one culture's exploitation of another. Second, the interviewees often compared K-pop's subtle and experimental citations of Latin tropes with the US music industries’ highly commercial use of Latin music tropes.

Soft appropriation

K-pop's use of Latin tropes can be considered cultural appropriation in that it takes from other cultures for commercial benefit. However, the Latin fans in the study did not necessarily criticize K-pop's citational practices as a whole. According to most respondents, K-pop's practices appeared to be a relatively soft and subtle form of cultural appropriation that did not threaten the authenticity and identity of Latin culture. Some respondents clarified that cultural appropriation was harmful only when it entailed ‘owning’ or ‘stealing’ a local cultural component for another culture's benefit. In their view, K-pop's citational practices might not necessarily have the clear effects of stealing and replacing Latin cultures.

Most respondents favorably evaluated the increasing presence of Latin tropes in K-pop songs and music videos. They were excited to encounter Latin tropes in K-pop because the adoption practices could signify K-pop artists’ effort to reach out to Latin audiences. Indeed, the K-pop industry has been increasingly interested in Latin markets and consumers; the incorporation of Latin tropes and collaborations with Latin musicians can be seen as the K-pop industries’ strategy to widen their market outside Asia and North America (Roiz, 2022). Some fans expressed their excitement about K-pop's presentation of Latin tropes, especially because it implies the recognition of Latin culture and, moreover, K-pop's response to Latin fans. Carolina, a 25-year-old university student and longtime fan of K-pop group Super Junior, said, ‘It was exciting to see my favorite idols speak Spanish.’ She also stated, ‘I think that Latin music styles being used in K-pop songs is cool and that it shows their respect for Latin cultures. It may be their way of responding to us [Latin fans].’

According to the respondents, Latin tropes in K-pop allowed them to easily sing along and access the cultural genre that originated in a distant context. For the respondents, because Korea felt geographically and culturally distant from Peru, it was surprising to explore Latin components in songs produced in such a faraway location. Latin trope-incorporated K-pop tracks appeared to facilitate cultural proximities between Latin fans and K-pop. For example, Victoria, a longtime fan in her early twenties who had been listening to K-pop for over 10 years, welcomed the recent increase of Latin tropes in K-pop, as it made the genre more familiar to her. She noted, ‘[Owing to Latin tropes in K-pop,] you end up identifying the rhythms that you already know.’ Maria, a 19-year-old university student, spoke about her indifference to Latin pop, stating that her listening to these K-pop tracks and liking them might be ‘funny because I don’t really like Latin pop’. That is, while she had minimal interest in Latin pop previously, she began to enjoy a hybrid form of music that mixes K-pop and Latin music. Antonio, a 23-year-old fan, found that ‘if K-pop groups find that fusion [between K-pop and Latin music] and it works, it could be very good. Those intersections can have great results and we’ve even seen so many of them already,’

The experiences of encountering local cultural tropes of their own through distant cultural content seemed to offer the Peruvian fans not only a sense of cultural proximity to K-pop but also a resource for exploring their own culture. Several respondents noted that the attractive aspects of Latin culture could be widely promoted and discovered through K-pop. Francesca, a 20-year-old fan who studied international business and tourism at a university, opined that the increasing presence of Latin tropes and language in K-pop helped Latin America to be more recognized beyond stereotypical portrayals. According to her, ‘Perhaps Koreans have a certain image about Latin America being about partying, but if it gets them interested enough to come visit the region, then it's not completely negative. The interaction has to start somewhere.’

K-pop's citational practices were not unanimously endorsed by all respondents. Several fans expressed mixed feelings, maintaining that there were recurring cases of wrongdoing that involved the exploitation of Latin tropes only to attract attention and to look good without a sincere effort to understand cultural contexts. For example, speaking of the inclusion of images of tropical beaches, cocktails, and other K-pop stereotypes of Latin culture and music in the music video for TWICE’s ‘Alcohol-free', Daniela, a K-pop multi-fan in her early twenties, stated, ‘Some people might take it the wrong way, as in “Oh now they’ll see us that way.” They might also think that Latinos are very hot, extroverted, and very direct, like kissing you on the cheek.’ Daniela's accounts can be compared with those of Francesca, who was similarly concerned about the consequences of the stereotyping of Latin cultures portrayed in K-pop music videos but stayed overall positive about the effects of citational practices. Francesca stated: ‘Foreign audiences associate Latin America with the concepts of “party,” “beach,” and “Caribbean.”’ However, despite the remaining stereotypical components in the citational practices, she welcomed the incorporation of Latin music and culture into K-pop, viewing the practices as ‘opportunities for Korea and Latin America to grow closer and break stereotypes’. Speaking specifically about TWICE's ‘Alcohol-free’, she did not consider it cultural appropriation because it did not aim to ‘steal something as their own without giving credit’. Instead, for Francesca, ‘Alcohol-free’ is an example of ‘cultural appreciation’, which implies intercultural exchange.

In addition to debates about stereotypes of Latin culture in K-pop videos, a few respondents were critical of how K-pop artists performed Latin tropes. For example, Andrea, a fan in her early twenties, lamented about the inaccuracies in Latin components in K-pop, such as incorrect Spanish pronunciation. She stated, ‘Actually, it would be good if the pronunciation would get better, since there are other songs that include Spanish and have great pronunciation. [K-pop] having better pronunciation would look and sound better.’ Her account implies that cultural appropriation is determined not only by the content cited but also by the ways in which it is delivered and performed. In this regard, many respondents were supportive of K-pop artists’ efforts to be responsive and respectful to their Latin fans. Speaking of Epik High's song ‘Rosario’, the aforementioned fan Antonio appreciated that ‘they have a really good way of honoring Latin culture and its instruments’.

Most fans in the study often emphasized the uniquely intimate and interactive relationships between K-pop artists and their global fans. According to Antonio, the fans considered that K-pop artists were making an effort for their fans by using other cultures’ tropes. The respondents believed that even if some K-pop content may not genuinely represent Latin cultures, K-pop artists would respond to their fans’ concerns. According to the fans, K-pop idols’ highly responsive and genuine attitudes toward their global fans soften any commodifying forces that may drive K-pop's citational practices. While the incorporation of Latin tropes into K-pop can be an ignorant and stereotypical take on another culture, Latin fans in the present study considered it their favorite artists’ gesture to communicate with their fans who would otherwise be left behind in US fan- or Korean fan-centered K-pop universes. The above-mentioned fan Victoria sometimes felt, ‘Latin America ends up being the last place in terms of what K-pop companies prioritize. If K-pop groups have a tour, they usually target the US market.’ In this regard, for Victoria, encountering Latin tropes is a pleasant surprise ‘because we [Latin fans] feel considered and closer to the artists that we like.’

Another way of understanding Latin tropes in K-pop as a soft mode of cultural appropriation was to position particular K-pop songs and artists in historical and socioeconomic contexts, while acknowledging any improvement in K-pop's appropriative practices. Among the respondents, a few long-term K-pop fans commented specifically on the context of K-pop's engagement with Latin music, as well as other overseas music styles. They also emphasized the fans’ ability to interpret and reflect on different forms of citational practices. While critically aware of the cases of offensive appropriation in K-pop, the fans recognized the positive effects of its citation of and fusion with Latin tropes. In particular, Victoria, a longtime K-pop fan in her early twenties commented on Korean media industries’ offensive adoption of Latin cultural components in the past.

There used to be a Korean variety show that had someone putting a fake moustache and acting like they were from Mexico. People [in Mexico] would say ‘Oh, wow, they’re talking about my country’ – but that was before, what we thought of as the 2^nd generation [i.e. K-pop idols and fandoms around 2010s]. But now, not so much. Now there's a little spark [points to her head] saying ‘Hey, what's this person doing putting on a fake moustache acting like they were from Mexico, Mexicans aren’t like that.’ So there has been that change. Now fans would say ‘Hey, there's something wrong here.’

As Victoria pointed out, Korean media industries’ appropriative practices may have existed for decades. According to her, while Latin fans may not have sensitively responded to the exploitative acts, recent fandoms appeared to keenly intervene in K-pop industries’ attempt to commercially appropriate Latin cultures. Victoria implied that, due to such feedback loops between fans, artists, and industries, Latin tropes in K-pop may not simply reproduce one culture's exploitation or commodification of the other, but instead involve synergistic potential between two cultures. In this regard, Diana, a 19-year-old amateur K-pop cover dancer, said, ‘As long as both [Latin music and K-pop] maintain their own sense of style, then the fusion is good’.

Overall, despite some variations in their interpretations, most fans in the study were in favor of Latin tropes in K-pop. As David, a 23-year-old leader of a dance crew that frequently creates personalized choreographies for K-pop songs, pointed out that there were mutual benefits for K-pop and Latin music/audiences in K-pop's citational practices: ‘Latin Americans are able to get closer to Korean culture, and vice versa.’ Most respondents shared the view that K-pop's citational practices are not necessarily exploitative appropriation but, rather, ‘cultural appreciation’ (in their own terms), or what can be referred to as soft appropriation.⁴

K-pop as an alternative

As discussed in the previous section, the Peruvian fans in this study tended to soften the negative connotations attached to K-pop's cultural appropriation by emphasizing the intercultural aspects of the genre. Another salient response was to situate K-pop in comparison (or contrast) with US pop music in terms of the incorporation of Latin tropes. According to some respondents, K-pop's citational practice was considered an act of ‘cultural appreciation’ and even ‘experimentation’, while the US music industries’ practice was critically accused of explicit cultural appropriation and commodification. For example, Leticia, a 23-year-old longtime fan of Seventeen, was critical of Justin Bieber's remix of ‘Despacito’ (2017) because she felt that he did not seem to show a serious interest in Latin music, even finding it ‘a bit lacking’. In this manner, some respondents were dissatisfied with the ways in which Latin music and culture were incorporated into American pop music. They were concerned about stereotyping that did not sufficiently consider the complexity and historical context of Latin culture.

In contrast, Latin tropes in K-pop tended to be considered a mutually beneficial mixture of two cultures. For example, Milena, a 26-year-old BTS and TXT fan, compared the US industries’ ‘one-off’ collaborations with Latin music to K-pop projects’ involvement of Latin musicians – for example, Super Junior bringing Leslie Grace with them on their tour after the release of ‘Lo Siento’, which, in her view, showed solid and mutually beneficial interactions between two cultures. David also emphasized how the incorporation of Latin tropes in K-pop can be a practice of intercultural exchanges:

The fusion [between K-pop and Latin music] is an exchange of cultures [Korean and Latin American]. It has only gotten stronger, which then contributes to cultural globalization. In particular, it allows for diverse festivals – the K-pop World Festival, for example – to become bigger and recruit more foreign talent. Latin Americans are able to get closer to Korean culture, and vice versa.

When the Peruvian fans in this study compared the use of Latin music tropes in K-pop with that in US pop music, they shared a perception of K-pop as an alternative, novel genre that emerged within a distant geocultural context. Adriana, a fan in her early twenties who frequently danced to K-pop, commented on K-pop's novelty: ‘The market is always expanding, and new generations of audiences are looking for something new after getting bored of the same sound.’ In comparison, US music was considered by the fans as cultural content that was both familiar and influential in the Peruvian and Latin mediascape. For José, a 31-year-old K-pop fan who works in Peruvian music industries, the US–Latin American proximity ‘means that it's easy for the US [to use Latin tropes] because it has such a large Spanish population, people who speak Spanish’. As the US media industries have had a strong influence on Latin American audiences, Latin culture represented in the US media was not seen to be particularly novel or appealing to the young people who sought new cultural resources. Overall, similar to a few Latin American studies of K-pop, the fans in the present study seemed to be curious about K-pop and its way of engaging with Latin tropes, whereas they already felt familiar with American media industries’ conventional use of Latin cultural components (Carranza Ko et al., 2014a, 2014b; Min, 2021b).

Of course, many fans in the study admitted that K-pop's use of Latin tropes was driven by commercial interests. However, they highlighted differences between K-pop and US pop music in terms of the commodification of Latin tropes. For example, Milena noted that US music industries’ use of Latin tropes was primarily for popularity and profit seeking, whereas K-pop's use of Latin tropes was attempted somewhat randomly rather than being highly calculated:

I think they [US artists and industries] only take Latin tropes if they’re already popular. Luis Fonsi made ‘Despacito’, and it became very popular, and only after did Demi Lovato do a collaboration with him. But with K-pop idols, these songs kind of came out of nowhere, and it's not like the songs had a boom after their release. For example, ‘Mamacita’ by Super Junior only became popular inside the fandom, and with KARD, there was a bit more of a boom, but it wasn’t something that every idol had. They [K-pop artists and industries] don’t really take Latin tropes because they are famous but, rather, because they fit the song.

Like Milena, some respondents highlighted the similarities and differences between the K-pop and US music industries in terms of the use of Latin tropes. For example, Carla, a K-pop multi-fan in her early twenties, posed the following question: ‘Western artists always do this type of fusion, so why not K-pop too?’ According to her, both industries consider Latin America an important new market for increasing their sales; however, aside from financial gains, K-pop's use of Latin tropes may also serve to further Latin fans’ engagement. Carolina stated, ‘They [K-pop artists] already had the connection with their fans here [in Latin America] beforehand, so the inclusion of Latin tropes only makes that bond grow stronger.’ The collaborative and participatory aspect of K-pop's taking from Latin culture implies that cultural appropriation may not always be one-dimensional or unidirectional – that is, the hegemonic subject's exploitative use of the other (Cattien and Stopford, 2023). Instead, as revealed in the Peruvian K-pop fans’ accounts, transcultural citational practices can soften the side effects of cultural appropriation, entailing alternative, hybrid cultures that continuously redefine local cultures (García Canclini, 2005).

Given the respondents’ accounts, the US music industries’ incorporation of Latin music tropes may be perceived by Latin audiences as a force of ‘market-driven cultural diversity’ (Guldin, 2021). For the Latin American fans in the study, the recent success and remaking of Latin music in global markets might be driven by the extensive Americanization of local cultures, which has threatened the Latin American media industries and audiences for decades (Dorfman and Mattelart, 1975). In comparison, Peruvian fans’ engagement with K-pop seems to offer a different model, in which cultural appropriation is negotiated by the intimate relationships between the Latin audiences whose culture is cited and the K-pop artists who cite the overseas audience's local culture. Albeit imaginary and mediated through digital and social media, transcultural fan–musician interactions in the process of taking and performing other cultures in K-pop may function as an alternative to commodifying forces that voraciously appropriate other cultures from a distance, without any intimate interactions between the one who cites and the other whose culture is cited.

Overall, for the Peruvian fans, K-pop was considered an alternative cultural form that did not necessarily threaten the Latin culture and identity. In comparison, as the US media has been influential on Latin media environments and audiences, its influence was considered to be more extensive and hegemonic.

Conclusion

K-pop has increasingly cited and incorporated other cultural tropes, which may have affected the genre's globalization and transcultural fan cultures. Although the frequent citational practices can potentially involve exploitative and insensitive uses of other cultures, the modes of cultural fusion observed in K-pop may vary and accordingly entail diverse meanings. By focusing on recent examples of K-pop songs and music videos that visibly include Latin music tropes in aural and visual conventions, this study has explored how Peruvian fans think about the use of Latin tropes in K-pop. Most fans in the study considered K-pop as a cultural genre that reorients the existing cultural boundaries and facilitates intercultural dialogue through fusion between Korean culture and others. According to the respondents, K-pop's citational practices in the songs and music videos seemed to offer versatile entry points for overseas fans to engage easily with the novel cultural genre. They appreciated the cultural citations as K-pop artists’ efforts to reach out to Latin audiences who were geographically and culturally distant from Korea.

The examples of Latin tropes in K-pop discussed in this study may not be entirely free from characteristics of cultural appropriation. For example, several songs and their music videos (e.g. TWICE's ‘Alcohol-free’) reveal the exoticization and stereotyping of Latin culture to some extent. However, given the fans’ overall favorable responses, K-pop's citations of Latin tropes discussed in this study seem to have the potential to facilitate cultural hybridization between K-pop and Latin music, as these two non-Western cultural forces do not necessarily share the same hierarchical power relations evident when a majority culture appropriates elements of minority cultures. The examples addressed in this article imply that K-pop's use of other cultures can potentially be signified somewhere between cultural hybridization and cultural appropriation, depending on several factors such as (a) power relations between the citing subject (i.e. K-pop) and the cited (i.e. other cultures), (b) effects of citations (e.g. the disrespectful commodification of other cultures or the synergistic creation of an alternative ‘third space’), and (c) audiences’ responses and engagement (e.g. audiences whose cultures are cited in K-pop). Among these factors, the present study has empirically explored global audiences’ responses to K-pop's citational practices. The fans’ responses suggest that K-pop's increasing borrowing of and reference to other cultural tropes can be interpreted in various ways by its global audiences.

As K-pop industries and artists have increasingly referred to, and taken from, other cultures, the risk of cultural appropriation has continued – from the inaccurate insertion of foreign languages in lyrics to the ignorant pastiche of other cultural symbols in music videos (Kim, 2023). However, as suggested in this study, cultural citations do not necessarily entail appropriation. There are various types of citational practices, which can be signified by different audience groups through negotiation between (a) (creative) hybridization that destabilizes fixed cultural boundaries and hierarchies and (b) (exploitative) appropriation that serves to commodify and objectify other cultures. The commodifying forces behind the K-pop industries may have, at least partly, attempted the convenient borrowing of other cultural references in order to quickly appeal to wider audiences. However, vibrant K-pop fan cultures known for extensive social media-driven discussions, debates, and participation, have questioned and challenged the insensitive utilization of other cultural symbols and tropes. Global fans have actively engaged in debates about K-pop's citational practices and the artists have responded to fans’ feedback by becoming involved in social cause-driven campaigns (Cho, 2022).

Given the potentially diverse effects and meanings of K-pop's citational practices, it may be hasty to define K-pop industries’ increasing cultural citations as exploitative cultural appropriation that only serves to maximize the industries’ commercial interests. Cultural blending and borrowing add meanings both for those who cite and for those whose cultures are cited. In particular, K-pop fans’ active and reflexive engagement with the genre's evolution, and K-pop artists’ highly responsive attitudes toward the fans (Min et al., 2019), may operate as an antidote to the industries’ commercial interests in exploitatively using other cultures. The fans in this current study expressed appreciation for cultural citations and flows between Korean and Latin American mediascapes, which offered them an alternative resource to counter or reorient US-centric, Western-oriented cultural hierarchy.

To explore how Latin tropes in K-pop are signified and re-signified in between the appropriation and hybridization frameworks, further audience studies are required. As Latin America comprises various countries and cultures, the present study's focus on Peruvian fans does not attempt to represent the full breadth of Latin audiences’ reactions to K-pop's citational practices. Comparative audience studies across Latin America can contribute to exploring diverse modes of cultural hybridity in the Korean Wave.

Footnotes

Declaration of conflicting interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

This article draws on research supported by internal research funding of the University of British Columbia Okanagan.

ORCID iD

Kyong Yoon

Notes

Author biographies

Kyong Yoon is Principal's Research Chair in Trans-Pacific Digital Platform Studies at the University of British Columbia Okanagan, where he is affiliated with the Cultural Studies undergraduate program and the Digital Arts & Humanities and Global Studies graduate programs.

Camila Alexandra Labarta Garcia is a Peruvian researcher and language instructor based in Osaka, Japan. She is an alumna of the University of British Columbia Okanagan.

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