Their critique highlights the nature of global interconnectivity being undeniably complex and not, at any point, balanced or stable. With media culture research being in its infancy, current ideas of media cultures can be perceived to have a tendency to oversimplify extremely complex processes and spaces due to a constantly changing contemporary media landscape (p.92). Container ideas also theorize societies as a territorial entity bordered by a “state container” which becomes problematic as a nation can technically be deterritorialized under this presumption when media cultures within a nation are spatially fragmented, undermining a large component of nationalist thinking in politics (Couldry & Hepp 2012, …show more content…
During the late 1980s, the cultural policies within Korea were “wholly protectionist” and focused on conserving Korean culture from western influences under the belief that western popular culture would blemish traditional Korean culture (Kim 2007, p.147). The origins of the Hallyu, however, began during the 1990s, with Korean popular songs and soap operas being adopted into Chinese media as a part of what was dubbed, the “Hallyu Syndrome.” The term “Hallyu” had been derived from a CD called “Hallyu” which had been specifically curated by the Korean culture and tourism ministry in an effort to promote a positive perception of Korean culture in China (Kim 2007, p.12-13). State policies truly began the facilitation of transcultural exchange in 1998, when Kim Dae Jung entered office. It was under Jung’s administration that cultural activities were being directly affected as his approach to the emerging soft industries was summed up as “intervening in cultural affairs as little as possible and supporting them as much as possible” (Kim 2007, p. 161). The amount of control the state executed over the production and consumption of media to position the nation in a more attractive light expresses that media cultures can in fact be marketed through