Thesis

Transcultural K-pop fanfiction : authors, readers, and imagined Koreas

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Awarding institution
  • University of Strathclyde
Date of award
  • 2026
Thesis identifier
  • T18040
Person Identifier (Local)
  • 201784369
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Qualification Name
Department, School or Faculty
Abstract
  • This thesis investigates how transcultural K-pop fans imagine, negotiate, and contest “Korea” through English-language K-pop fanfiction. It asks four main questions: how non-Korean authors construct fictional Koreas; what shapes their decisions about representing “Koreanness”; how K-pop RPF readers comment on these stories; and what these practices reveal about the nature of transcultural K-pop fandom. Ultimately, this thesis argues that transcultural K-pop fanfiction is a site where affective affinity and friction coexist. At the level of writing, transcultural fandom is normatively contested and marked by asymmetries of power and entitlement. These negotiations do not produce a single stable of image of “Korea” but a range of imagined Koreas whose contours shift across genres. Koreanness is taken up and reworked differently across AUs, yet these heterogeneous imagined Koreas converge around a shared project of constructing queer-safe spaces, which I call queer Korea. At the level of reception, however, much of this friction recedes from view. Instead, K-pop fanfiction readers’ practices align closely with broader anglophone fanfiction gift-culture norms and affect. In this sense, friction in transcultural fandom is displaced than absent, as it surfaces most sharply in authorial self-reflection and on social media platforms. Moreover, these findings contribute to transcultural fandom studies by theorising how affect, friction and racialised authority are distributed across different fan practices, and to fanfiction studies by foregrounding K-pop RPF as a hybrid space where global fanfic conventions, mediated Koreanness and queer world-building are collaboratively negotiated.
Advisor / supervisor
  • Blair, Kirstie
  • Eckler, Petya
Resource Type
DOI
Date Created
  • 2025

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