Youth, Ecstasy, and the World: Beyond the Postmodern and the Post-Subcultural through Rave Culture in South Korea

Abstract

This article investigates complex and variegated responses from South Korean youth to western commodities advertised online for global rave culture in South Korea. The investigation is to trouble concepts of globalization and glocalization that are fundamental to scholars who theorize on global youth culture. Take for example Douglas Kellner or A.C. Besley, who, like many scholars, interpret transnational youth culture as either a) a product designed to integrate non-western youth to the logic of global capitalism, or b) a product designed to do such things that ends up becoming hybridized or glocalized by non-western youth who appropriate global culture through local experiences and cultural backgrounds.

However, this article delves into the language of South Korean youth on western commodities, which illustrates how global youth culture does not follow merely two scenarios. In fact, the discrepancy between western theorists and the theorized subjects is wide. The last section considers another discrepancy, one that exists between western scholars and South Korean schoalrs on the same subject of youth culture to similarly question the authority of western theoretical concepts placed on non-western subjects.