This book provides a unique overview of the digital transformation media industries have experienced following the COVID-19 pandemic. Industries addressed include television, art, gaming, and music. The book investigates the impact of immersive technologies on various media. It examines in-depth changing consumer behavior in the digital space. This includes development of new content models based on creative thinking, digital collaboration models and personalized psychologically based analysis of digital consumer behavior.

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.

The COVID-19 pandemic has dramatically changed social interactions. Social distancing policies, lockdowns, and mandatory quarantines have accelerated the technological mediation of communication (e.g. AI-mediated communication, computer-mediated communication) on an unprecedented scale, willingly or otherwise. Many physical activities such as office work, education, and conferences have had to be performed in the online space through social media apps, the metaverse or specialized programs on mobile phones or laptops as part of pandemic control efforts. As a result, digitally mediated channels have become critical for information acquisition and communication across a wide spectrum of human activities such as education, social interaction, entertainment, and commercial activities. Human beings are increasingly reliant on non-human agents, including social media, Artificial Intelligence (AI) powered tools, or smartphone mobile devices for most routine activities, professional communication, and social interactions. As scientific understanding of COVID-19 improves, pandemic restrictions are gradually loosening. However, it remains to be seen whether the pandemic communication paradigm characterized by heavy technological mediation and reliance on non-human agents will also gradually decline, or will the paradigm shift become deeply entrenched with further acceleration of dependency on technological mediation and non-human agents.

A vibrant exploration of Korean cuisine, both in Korea and in Koreatowns around the globe, with more than 75 bold, flavor-packed recipes and stunning photography from the New York Times bestselling authors of Koreatown. “A whirlwind introduction to a whole new world of food and an entirely new perspective on Korean cooking.”—Ruth Reichl, journalist and author of The Paris Novel Join chef Deuki Hong and journalist Matt Rodbard as they take an insider’s look at the exciting evolution of Korean food through stories of chefs and home cooks, as well as recipes that are shaping modern Korean cuisine, including sweet-spicy barbecue, creative rice and seafood dishes, flavor-bombed stews, and KPOP-fueled street food. In Koreatown, Deuki and Matt explored the foods of Korean American communities across the United States. Now with Koreaworld, they show how Korean cuisine today is nothing less than an international culinary revolution, from the ancient plant-based cooking of famed Buddhist monk-chefs to modern charred-greens rice rolls and pork-stuffed fried peppers. Koreaworld takes readers into the bustling metropolis of Seoul, where the modern-day barbecue scene is pushing into new territory with recipes like Smoked Giant Short Ribs cooked over hay and where the city’s third-wave coffee culture is exploding. Deuki and Matt also visit Jeju Island, where seafood dishes like Jeju Whole Fried Smashed Rock Fish rule supreme, and they explore the plant-based temple cuisine found in the rural province of Jeolla-do, with dishes such as Cold Broccoli Salad with Ssamjang Mayo. The tour continues with late-night food adventures in Los Angeles and stops in the kitchens of innovative chefs from New York City to Portland who are putting modern spins on Korean classics with dishes like Rice and Ginseng–Stuffed Roast Chicken, Grilled Kimchi Wedge Salad, Kkaennip Pesto, and Pineapple Kimchi Fried Rice. Filled with recipes, stories, and conversations of Korean food’s global evolution, Koreaworld is essential reading for anyone curious about the future of food.

The COVID-19 pandemic has disrupted the economies, public health, and medical care systems. It is also shaping the future of work. The pandemic has normalized various trends about work, with significant implications for enterprises, employee health, and wellbeing. Internationally, employers, government agencies, public health agencies, trade unions, and professional associations have dealt with maintaining economic activity while keeping workers safe and healthy. The pandemic has emphasized the importance of work in shaping population health and wellbeing. This perspective implies a multilevel system framework to aid in understanding the complex and diverse interactions of factors impacting worker health and wellbeing. It also implies how trending changes in employment and working conditions have been accelerated by the pandemic. Government organizations concerned with population health and wellbeing, and economic activity must expand their capability to screen, assess, and react to these trends after the pandemic. Additionally, integrated enterprise and workplace-based approaches that consider the interactions among these multidimensional drivers will build organization and worker resilience to navigate the continual changes in work and worker safety, health, and wellbeing in a post-pandemic world.

Combining global, media, and cultural studies, this book analyzes the success of Hallyu, or the "Korean Wave” in the West, both at a macro and micro level, as an alternative pop culture globalization. This research investigates the capitalist ecosystem (formed by producers, institutions and the state), the soft power of Hallyu, and the reception among young people, using France as a case study, and placing it within the broader framework of the 'consumption of difference.' Seen by French fans as a challenge to Western pop culture, Hallyu constitutes a material of choice for understanding the cosmopolitan apprenticeships linked to the consumption of cultural goods, and the use of these resources to build youth’s biographical trajectories. The book will be relevant to researchers, as well as undergraduate and postgraduate students in sociology, cultural studies, global studies, consumption and youth studies.

This book examines the first regional strategy of South Korea toward Southeast Asia and India. At issue is how a middle power (a G20 country with the tenth largest economy in the world) seeks to play a larger and more comprehensive role in regions beyond the Korean peninsula. Hitherto, South Korean foreign policy has focused on nuclearizing North Korea, alliance maintenance with the United States, tricky relations with its most important economic partner China, and difficult ties with Japan marred by historical and territorial disputes. The Moon Administration has sought to diversify South Korean foreign policy by elevating ASEAN and India to the same strategic level as the United States, China, Russia, and Japan. To be sure, the latter countries continue to be most significant to the Korean peninsula. However, this book offers different country and regional perspectives on Seoul’s first regional grand strategy to play a role commensurate with its status as a middle power.

The first scholarly volume to investigate the impact of social media and other communication technologies on the global dissemination of the Korean Wave

This new textbook is a timely and interdisciplinary resource for students looking for an introduction to Korean popular culture, exploring the multifaceted meaning of Korean popular culture at micro and macro levels and the process of cultural production, representation, circulation and consumption in a global context. Drawing on perspectives from the humanities and social sciences, including media and communications, film studies, musicology, cultural studies, sociology, anthropology, history and literature, this book provides a comprehensive and up-to-date overview of Korean popular culture and its historical underpinnings, changing roles and dynamic meanings in the present moment of the digital social media age. The book’s sections include: K-pop Music Popular Cinema Television Web Drama, Webtoon and Animation Digital Games and Esports Lifestyle Media, Fashion and Food Nation Branding An accessible, comprehensive and thought-provoking work, providing historical and contemporary contexts, key issues and debates, this textbook will appeal to students of and providers of courses on popular culture, media studies and Korean culture and society more broadly.