People in Hongdae seem to enjoy their own culture. That culture is usually called 'Independent culture'. If you have seen 'Show me the money' or if you have heard music of '10cm', you have experienced Korean indie culture even though you never realized. Symbolic images of indie culture is busking. People who enjoy indie culture usually do not care of others' eye and play music or dance. Also, indie films are usually very realistic or very abstract. This is why indie film is sometimes called 'art film'. Indie films deal with serious and isolated themes which mainstream culture cannot reach. Similarly, indie books and indie magazines such as 'Wet magazine' or 'Elephant shoe' deal with sexual issues in Korean societies and indie music.These topics are not popular in mainstream culture. As I mentioned, we often say indie culture as 'Hongdae culture' because many percentage of indie industry are based on Hongdae. The word 'indie' is technically abbreviation of 'independent'. This contains meaning against commercialized culture system. Indie culture is what desires autonomy from current mass media. Today I want to talk about this 'indie culture'.
People consider 'Independent culture' as an alternative of recent commercialized culture. Korean independent culture has been popular as we know through the success of 'old partner' or 'Jang ki-ha and faces' which are an indie film and an indie band in Korea. However, the interest toward those kinds of culture does not constantly raise . Only few famous symbols of indie culture are treated fairly and do what they want to do. According to National statistical office, 1,453 indie music albums were released from 1996 to 2007. Most of the people know only 2 or 3 famous albums. It means most of indie musician failed to introduce their music to the public. Through these statistics, we can notice that indie scene system doesn't work well. I found the problem is started with wrong communication toward the public. Thus, I want to talk about 'Current Korean indie culture does not communicate with the public well'. I want to find the specific problems and help resolve matters.
Pop culture means commercialism culture that is mass produced by mass media and reproduced by many culture recipient. Thanks to technological advance and stabilization of living, mass culture became a culture that anyone can enjoy. This situation makes current flood of culture. Pop culture is always exposed by media and what people learn is pop culture itself. However, there is a nonmainstream culture in Korean society. It is 'Independent culture'. It is also a kind of pop culture. It just has different characteristic because it is not based on commercial viability or mass appeal. Then why indie culture is nonmainstream? It is not because indie culture is lowbrow or worthless. It is because of lack of communication with the public. Value of the indie cultureㅡartistic complexity or creativityㅡlost its light in front of the universality of mass media. We have to share value of the indie culture with the public. In other words, we should help their communication. This research is not to blame mass culture. To find problems of Korean current indie culture scene and to help communication with the public is purpose of this research.
It is hard to distinguish mainstream culture and indie culture. However, there is a certain wall between two of themㅡin terms of fame, pay, or reactions of the public. I'll prove that current indie scene has problems through comparing two cultures. There are some reasons to support my idea. They can be distinguished into two partsㅡthe problem of the indie scene and the problem of the public. Three reasons are lack of PR, lack of professional workforce, and bias of the public. First and
second one are originated in its own scene, and last problem is originated in the public rather than the scene.
First, lack of public relations interrupt the communication between current Korean indie scene and the public. PR or marketing is a core strategy to compete with other culture resources. Many indie culture directors are not aware importance of marketing because they believe the public will recognize complexity of indie culture someday as long as they create nice contents. However, it is hard to compete with mainstream culture that always uses attractive PR skills. The public is easy to be attracted by another culture contents rather than boring and dull indie culture. Mainstream culture never gives time to examine if indie culture is good or not. Not only because of directors' unawareness, it is caused by lack of money. Without huge capital, this scene cannot afford huge cost of marketing. As a result, indie culture loses opportunity to display its attraction to people.
Second, lack of professional workforce makes bad communication between indie scene and the public. In Korean indie culture scene, directors are who didn't get any professional education of directing culture or art. Art management is not popular in Korea. Furthermore, for INDIE culture, it is hard to find someone wanting to learn how to work on it. Thus there are not enough people to promote indie culture as well as there are not enought poeple to create indie contents. These reality shows that Korean indie scene has significant problem on communication toward the public.
Lastly, the public has bias on indie culture. Middle of the political and ideological changes, Korean indie culture grew up around Hongdae during 1990s. Hongdae(Hong ik Univerisity) is famous for a college of fine arts. Because of this, there is a freewheeling atmosphere around it. This atmosphere contributed to the formation of Korean indie scene around Hongdae. However, because this scene is too concentrated around there, people misunderstood it as a culture of alcohol, drug or adult entertainment. Also, this bias makes gab between users of indie culture and non-users. It worsens the lack of communications between them and it really makes the scene isolated. Thus, there is a huge problem of communication between the scene and the public.
Other people might say indie culture is improving and the public is already aware it as a new, interesting culture. Also they might say indie culture is used well by the public. They may support their idea through introducing how many people like indie musician 'Jang ki-ha and faces' or how many people watch indie film 'old partner' . I partially agree with that because we cannot deny that it is growing. They also point out that indie culture has maniacs. I also agree with that idea. However, comparing to main stream culture such as K-Pop, it is too slow to say it is growing well. We need to see the reality objectively. Compare to mainstream singers who usually throw concerts in stadiums, indie singers do not have enough capital to throw huge concerts. They usually perform at small clubs or busk. In addition, compare to commercial movie that takes almost 50% of screens, there is not enough screens for indie films. Also, maniacs are maniacs. Do you call fans of PSY or Bigbang as MANIACS? Because indie culture seems strange and odd, you call them maniacs. I mean, using word 'maniacs' has underlain meaning that it is minority. For these reasons, I do not believe current indie scene is communicating with the pulbic well. It needs change.
Korea is called culturally powerful nation. However, I think attention of people is concentrated on main one.This phenomenon attributes to the absence of communication.
Main stream culture gets bigger and bigger as if it is unlimited. Indie culture gets no chances to show its attraction. Indie scene should find ways to promote communications through increasing PR workforce or something. We should change the way of communication through resolving the three problems I suggested. I strongly believe that current Korean indie scene should reflect its own problems related to communication and chage the attitude.
Reference
Choi jung kyung, Busan university(2011) Mass-communication precedents of independent culture, its vitalization strategies
Yang kyung ae, Chugye Art College(2014) Active Plans for the Independent Music to Popularize the Local Independent Labels : Focusing on the case of Sangsangmadang Label Market
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