ScholarWorks@중앙대학교

초록

The Netflix animated film K-Pop Demon Hunters is a key example demonstrating the evolution of K-pop into a complex cultural structure that integrates music, performance, narrative, and platform strategy. This study analyzes how the film expands and restructures K-pop content’s formal and cultural identity, applying the concepts of hybridity, gender performativity, orientalism, and encoding-decoding. The findings indicate that K-Pop Demon Hunters expands expressive territory through the hybrid combination of K-pop and animation, experiments with the subversion of traditional gender norms via female warrior idols, decenters Orientalist representations by actively integrating Koreanness into the narrative, and visualizes the co-creative nature of K-pop identity by positioning fandom as the subject in conflict resolution. However, this experimentation is simultaneously modulated and constrained by global platform market strategies and industrial planning. This research contributes to K-pop studies by critically examining the tensions between cultural experimentation and industrial strategy, thereby clarifying the evolutionary trajectory of K-pop content and expanding its theoretical scope.

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