- Lecture Title: From the Opening of the Ports to the Korean Wave: How Korean Popular Music Met the World

- Lecturer: Dr. Sookeung Jung (Korean Studies, Freie Universität Berlin), Dr. Sookeung Jung is a postdoctoral researcher at the Korea-Europe Center, Institute of Korean Studies, Freie Universität Berlin, where she studies industry, genres, production, and reception in East Asian pop culture. A former television writer and independent producer, she earned her Ph.D. from Georgia State University in 2019 with a dissertation on the Korean broadcasting industry.

- Abstract: This lecture, "From the Opening of the Ports to the Korean Wave: How Korean Popular Music Met the World," begins with the question, "Where did K-pop come from?" Its aim is to show that today's Korean popular music—represented by global icons such as BTS, Blackpink, and PSY—did not emerge suddenly at a single moment, but rather stands upon a long historical foundation comprising traditional performing arts, popular songs of the colonial era, the Korean War and U.S. military base culture, youth counterculture, television, YouTube, and global fandom. Guided by the central question, "How did Korean popular music transform from a peripheral music that absorbed foreign influences into a musical system that now commands global attention?", the course offers a diachronic survey spanning roughly a century and a half—from the opening of the ports to the present-day Korean Wave—in order to provide a multidimensional understanding of the formation, transformation, and globalization of Korean popular music.

- Date & Time: Wednesday, 3 June 2026, 14:00 – 16:00
- Venue: K23/27, Habelschwerdter Allee, 14195 Berlin
- Language: English

- To attend the event, please contact Suhon Lee: s.lee2@fu-berlin.de