Editor’s introduction

ABSTRACT

Through this special issue, we aim to provide the language to describe and give weight to the significance that the lifting of the Japanese cultural ban in 1998 had in understanding modern cultural exchange between Korea and Japan. We credit the lifting of the ban with the active cultural exchange that has happened between Korea and Japan, as well as the swift and indelible changes that were happening in South Korean culture in a short amount of time. We call this period and the effects of such the Japanese Cultural Influx, as a reflection of how Japanese culture has entered the Korean cultural landscape. We highlight the permanence of these changes, and we spotlight: 1. the dramatic shift in Japanese cultural consumption by the Korean public, 2. the active rather than passive role that the Korean public took to create legal and cultural shifts, and 3. how this period influenced the current approach to Japanese culture as well as the resurgence of nostalgic Japanese culture of the period.

KEYWORDS:

• Japanese Cultural Influx
• Japanese-Korean cultural exchange
• 1998 cultural ban

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Jung Soo Lee

Jung Soo Lee is a Ph.D. candidate at University of California – Irvine. Her research interests include science fiction, disability studies, and women and gender studies. Her dissertation is titled Take Care: Making and Re-making Disability in Contemporary Science Fiction. An article from her dissertation “The Alchemized Dis/abled Body as Recuperative Site in Fullmetal Alchemist” is scheduled to appear in Techno-Orientalism Volume 2.