Korean American Youth and Transnational Flows of Popular Culture across the Pacific

Alexander Broughton

Week 7

Section A02

Jung-Sun Park’s paper was the condensation of many disconnected ideas about globalization and transnationalization, but I think it left out an important idea. Park referred to how the sharing of culture unites the Korean Americans, but I think he overestimates the extent to which Korean culture has diffused into the system. From personal experience, I have noticed that much of the cross-cultural interaction and “exotic hits” of other countries in the U.S. only become viral because they are americanized by racial stereotypes and much of the cultural diffusion is localized to what Park calls yuhaksaeng and first generation Asian Americans. For instance, take into account Panda Express and the cultural ubiquity of “Chinese food” and “take-out.” It has been fried in the American spotlight and paints the Asian American culture in a highly racialized and stereotypical way. In a way, I believe that U.S. culture twists and warps genuine Asian-Pacific culture to make it more digestible for white Americans. Of course, the coalition of Asian-Americans is not to be underestimated, but its connecting power to the social majority is lacking and misleading. Nonetheless, I believe that if we tread carefully, we can use this initial setback as a stepping stone to get us in the right direction, optimizing the hybridization of cultures into a coherent, open-minded super-culture.

How can we take steps to integrate Asian-Pacific culture into our own without misinterpreting the culture with our own biases?