Reconsidering Transnational Cultural Flows of Popular Music in East Asia: Transbordering Musicians in Japan and Korea Searching for "Asia"

After the South Korean government lifted its ban on Japanese culture in 1998, transnational cultural flows between Japan and South Korea entered a third phase of cultural traffic between the two countries. Among the flows, I concentrate on transbordering or translocation of Japanese and Korean musicians and interactions between them. After analyzing cultural interactions between Japanese and Korean music both in contemporary and historical experience, I explain in detail the practices of these transbordering musicians, especially Lee-tzsche (Sang-ŭn Yi) and Hachi (Kasuga Hirofumi). The different types of symbolic representations by different transbordering musicians are critically examined. I argue that analyzing contemporary Asian cultural flows in this conceptual framework has implications for the public debate in Korea in regard to how to go beyond postcolonial relations without erasing the memory of a troubled history.