K, In Between: Relabeling Koreanness to Transnational Americanness, or Vice Versa?

Abstract: This article explores how the new era of global OTT (over-the-top) platforms changes the production tendencies of K-content and affects the understanding of its cultural identity. As production and distribution venues for K-content transited to global OTT platforms, the vital criteria for defining cultural identity shift from traditional belongings (ethnicity, race, nationality) to monetary belongings (citizenship, legal ownership, branding). In this context, the prefix “K” in K-content no longer represents authentic Koreanness. Instead, it is reinterpreted as commodified otherness that would support the neoliberal global mediascape. By analyzing how global OTT platforms produce their own original K-content and how it is relabeled under the platforms’ brand titles, this study questions the potential future of new correlation between global OTT platforms and K-content and its impact on K-culture in general. Via platform imperialism and decolonial theory, this article aims to answer whether the new cultural convergence of local content and global OTT platforms will lead to K-content’s assimilation into neoliberal Americanization, embodied through global OTT platforms, or to its liberation from the long-standing orthodox cultural hierarchy based on nationality.