Video Analysis of "V" by Junoh Bark

For the video analysis portion of the final exam, I will examine Bak Jaebeom's music video “V”. At first glance, it seems that all this video does is promote diversity with its cast from various countries around the world. While that is true, I argue that this video creates the sense of intimacy between him and his fans, while simultaneously reaffirming his Korean identity. In the music video, Bak Jaebeom spends noticeable amount of time trying to seduce women of various nationalities into a romantic relationship with him. This does not only shows his attempt to become a global star, but in the process, it also encourages a para-social relationship between the fan and Jaebeom, described as a fantasized “relationship with a music star … conducted by the fan alone with only mediatized representations of the start as the other participant” (Auslander 2015, 324). In other words, by creating a music video where Jaebeom is on a journey to become the romantic interests of these women, it is made easier for his fans from different parts of the world to fantasize about their beloved star, Bak Jaebeom, trying to seduce them. Shortly after the release of the “V” music video, Jaebeom started an interactive, fan-based campaign to promote his new music video which I witnessed. It involved his fans posting photos or videos holding up a v sign somewhere in the image and tagging it V. Then, Jaebeom would post those images on his own Instagram page as instagram stories. This is an example of “the K-pop industry … actively [utilizing] user-generated international social networking sites” (Jung 2015, 81). This simultaneously helps to create intimacy between the fans and the star while yielding the opportunity to promote a product without any cost to the star. In the midst of his cosmopolitan romantic pursuits, the video also re-affirms Bak Jaebeom's Korean identity. In 0:57 of the music video, he complains, in the lyrics, that they are not able to understand each other due to them not speaking the same language. This is mirrored visually, in form of Google translate layout where the languages Korean and Japanese are shown, and Jaebeom's words are written in Korean. Even though he is an American citizen born in Seattle, and his first language English, he sends his audience the message that his language is Korean. This is particularly important in a society where the language and nationality share a strong bond with one another, for the language is an important part of Korean identity. In 1:05 of the video, the quintessential Korean body of water, the Han river, is shown, and in 3:08, when Jaebeom is taking a selfie with all eight women featured in the video, the location under his ID is shown as Seoul, Korea. All of these small details hint at his Korean identity. This supports the idea that music videos “embody a mediation of global and the local”. (Lee 2006, 143). While the video stars a Korean, his Korean-ness is only hinted on throughout the video, and most of noticeable evidence of nationality belongs to the women of various countries in the music video. This demonstrates the balance between the traditional Korea of nationalism and that which embraces globalization. Bak Jaebeom's “V” serves him as a tool which both creates intimacy between him and his fans as well as a method to reaffirm his Korean identity, which was questioned during his MySpace scandal. After his comeback to Korean music scene, however, he has proved to the Korean audience of his Korean identity and with “V”, he attempts to convey his Korean-ness on an international scale. His efforts “[widen] our understanding of a regional 'community'”, reaching beyond traditional boundaries such as international borders, as shown during his Instagram V campaign, which had participants from all over the globe (Otmazgin 2016, 2).

Works Cited

Auslander, Philip. “Everybody's in Show Biz: Performing Star Identity in Popular Music.” In The SAGE Handbook of Popular Music, edited by Andy Bennett and Steve Waksman. 317-31. Los Angeles, CA: SAGE reference, 2015.

Jung, Eun-Young. “New Wage Formations: K-Pop Idols, Social Media, and the Remaking of the Korean Wave.” In Hallyu 2.0: The Korean Wave in the Age of Social Media, edited by Sangjoon Lee and Abé Mark Nornes. 73-89. Michigan: University of Michigan Press, 2015. Lee, Hee-Eun. “Discourses of Korean-ness in Korean popular music.” In medi@sia: Global media/tion in and out of context, edited by Todd Joseph Miles Holden and Timothy J. Scrase. 128-146. New York: Routledge, 2006.

Otmazgin, Nissim Kadosh. “A New Cultural Geography of East Asia: Imagining A 'Region' through Popular Culture.” The Asia-Pacific Journal Japan Focus vol. 14, issue 7, no. 5 (2016): 1-12.