Why China may soon lift its de facto ban on South Korean cultural products
While South Korea has become a cultural powerhouse around the world in recent years, there's one place where K-pop and K-dramas haven't dominated in quite the same way.
There's a de facto ban on Korean movies, music, and other cultural products in China. The restrictions began in 2017, reportedly in response to South Korea's installation of an American missile defense system.
But after almost eight years, and an increasingly rocky relationship with the United States, there are reports that China could soon reverse that unofficial ban.
Today on Commotion, University of Toronto professor Michelle Cho talks with guest host Rad Simonpillai about what we do and do not know about the future of South Korean TV, music, film and more in China's cultural market.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Winnipeg Free Press
11 hours ago
- Winnipeg Free Press
Bay Area cartoonist's biography a real trip
If you're acquainted with Mr. Natural, Fritz the Cat or the Keep on Truckin' crew, you'll need no introduction to the subject of this lengthy, detailed, sometimes revelatory, sometimes welcomingly familiar and intimate biography. R. Crumb (Robert Dennis Crumb, to be precise) is the far-out cartoonist/chronicler of the 1960s and '70s counterculture whose drugs, sexual freedom and music (to a lesser extent) he embraced on the streets and in the parks of San Francisco. Crumb, born into a highly dysfunctional family rife with mental illness and abuse, and by nature a skeptical outsider, wasn't a natural candidate to capture the spirit of the hippie movement in its Haight-Ashbury home in 1968 when the 25-year-old arrived from the American northeast. Crumb: A Cartoonist's Life Yet, he captured the look and feel of the LSD trips as he as enthusiastically chronicled the racial and sexual violence his generation was trying to overcome. Crumb 'satirized the hippies, well-meaning liberals, and most of all himself,'' Nadel writes. If that urgent message hadn't found its moment, the modern bestselling graphic novels would be impossible, Nadel adds. Crumb had long wanted to be a successful cartoonist — he and his brother Charles were relentless comic book makers as kids — and the discovery of Mad magazine in the mid-'50s altered his brain chemistry as surely as the LSD would a decade later. The magazine's subversion freed Crumb from the need for social acceptance, as Mad cover boy Alfred. E. Neuman intoned his catchphrase 'What, me worry?'' Even though Crumb lived in San Francisco during the birth of psychedelic music, he had a lifetime love of 1920s-era dance music, collected countless 78s and performed in a couple of bands with like-minded syncopators. He met Janis Joplin in San Francisco, and while he liked her well enough, her music not so much, although he illustrated the Cheap Thrills album cover for her and Big Brother and the Holding Company. Nadel recounts the first Crumb-Joplin meeting, where she told him he should grow his hair longer and stop dressing like a character from the depression novel The Grapes of Wrath. Crumb was on the leading edge of underground comics with his Zap Comix and many other titles such as Weirdo, Introducing Kafka and The Book of Genesis and others, and his work was rife with sexual themes, often shading into the scatological and pornographic. He was often short of cash and moved about the country often, and was prone to taking off to visit friends without notice, even when married. He was hitched twice, and in each case he and his partner had regular affairs, sometimes lasting for years. He didn't have much of a relationship with his two children. In later years, he became a vaccine skeptic. In other words, like many a genius, he at times countered his artistic success with a less salubrious general lifestyle. Crumb agreed to work with Nadel on this book, but it is a warts-and-all biography. The cartoonist imposed just one condition, Nadel says: 'That I be honest about his faults, look closely at his compulsions, and examine the racially and sexually charged aspects of his work. He would rather risk honesty and see if anyone could understand than co-operate with a hagiography.' Nadel, the curator-at-large for the Lucas Museum of Narrative Art and author of other books including Art Out of Time: Unknown Comic Visionaries, 1900-1969, weaves Crumb's present-day remembrances throughout the biography in a way that helps explain the madcap early life that made his name, shaped the underground comic oeuvre and helped develop many other cartoonists along the way. Nadel says Crumb is fond of saying 'No one understands… But of course, how could they.' It is a statement with many undercurrents, but in this biography Nadel helps readers understand Crumb himself and the effect his life and work had on North American society and a generation that was going to change the world. At 81, Crumb has slowed down, of course, but at whatever pace he can he still keeps on truckin'. Chris Smith is a Winnipeg writer.
Winnipeg Free Press
11 hours ago
- Winnipeg Free Press
Fit for the pit
There are few things punks enjoy more than arguing over what or who is or isn't punk. If nothing else, In Too Deep: When Canadian Punk Took Over the World — a new book documenting commercially successful Canadian musical exports of the early Aughts, with varied ties to the punk world — should prove to be a spirited conversation starter. Just how far that conversation goes will depend on how crusty the punks involved in that conversation are. John Woods / Free Press files In January 2025, Sum 41 perform at the Canada Life Centre in Winnipeg. If one grants that the artists featured in the book — such as Gob, Sum 41, Billy Talent, and Napanee, Ont.'s very own superstar Avril Lavigne — are at least influenced by punk, if not dyed-in-the-darkest-denim punk themselves, then one might consider this well-researched book a welcome addition to a growing list of Canadian music histories focused on relatively contemporary subjects. Overall, In Too Deep provides an insightful look at the music industry in Canada during the early days of the 21st century, and how online innovations such as file sharing, message boards and MySpace impacted the industry, for good or ill. While chapters on Billy Talent, who gained massive popularity in Europe, and Alexisonfire, who broke out in the American hardcore scene, cover much the same ground as the chapter detailing their careers in Michael Barclay's Hearts on Fire: Six Years That Changed Canadian Music 2000-2005, they do make for solid introductions for readers unfamiliar with either group or the punk scenes from which those Ontario bands emerged. Similarly, while devoted fans of any of these groups may or may not come across any information they were unaware of beforehand, those without much prior knowledge are provided insightful snapshots of the early histories and the big breaks of all nine artists profiled. Organized and written in much the same manner as Dan Ozzi's Sellout! — which detailed the DIY-to-superstar trajectories of American punks such as Green Day, Against Me!, My Chemical Romance and more — In Too Deep is a very readable, if only passingly critical, overview of the artists involved and an overlooked era in Canadian music history generally, where homegrown groups of misfits certainly made major international commercial splashes and commensurate influence on many big name mainstream artists coming up today. Commercial and mainstream, of course, being the operative words. In wrapping up the chapter on Sum 41, Bobkin and Feibel state that the group 'became Canada's first internationally acclaimed punk band,' although the statement isn't qualified beyond a list of sales achievements, and that the band's songs appeared in a number of Hollywood films. Weekly A weekly look at what's happening in Winnipeg's arts and entertainment scene. There are many Canadian punk bands, both predecessors and contemporaries of the artists profiled here, who may not have had the sales numbers to go up against Sum 41, but whose artistic and cultural impact is much more profound. Bobkin and Feibel do pay some lip service to these contemporary groups, with brief but well-placed 'Further Listening' sidebars throughout, which feature critically acclaimed local heavy hitters such as Propagandhi — whose debut How to Clean Everything is credited by Fat Mike with establishing Fat Wreck Chords' signature sound of the '90s, a style credited by the authors to have influenced at least half the bands featured here — as well as Toronto's Fucked Up, among others. In Too Deep But the legacy of groups such as DOA and Teenage Head are given just brief nods in the introduction, while punk pioneers such as SNFU and Nomeansno, who spent decades in the punk trenches and influenced countless bands along the way (and to this day), aren't given any ink at all. Which just goes to show, you can't please everybody all the time — especially not punks. Sheldon Birnie is a Winnipeg writer and the author of Missing Like Teeth: An oral history of Winnipeg underground rock 1990-2001.
CBC
19 hours ago
- CBC
Will this be the summer of Addison Rae?
Social Sharing Over the last five years, Addison Rae has managed to make the jump from young internet celebrity to legitimate pop star. It's a transition that can be almost impossible to manage, but with the success of her 2024 song Diet Pepsi and a brat summer tailwind from her appearance on Charli XCX's Von dutch remix, the former TikToker is ready to emerge as an artist all her own. Today on Commotion, culture writer Joan Summers, music journalist Maura Johnston, and rapper Rollie Pemberton join host Elamin Abdelmahmoud to share their thoughts on Rae's self-titled debut album, Addison. We've included some highlights below, edited for length and clarity. For the full discussion on the new Lorde single and the latest from the band Turnstile, listen and follow Commotion with Elamin Abdelmahmoud on your favourite podcast player. WATCH | Today's episode on YouTube: Elamin: We met Addison Rae as a TikTok influencer, and she's managed to do the improbable — which is, become a legitimate, bonafide pop star…. Today the debut album, Addison, came out. Joan, we've been talking about this moment for a minute…. Why is 2025 gonna be the summer of Addison Rae? Joan: I think Addison Rae, you said just perfectly, did the impossible by fully transcending from TikTok stardom to pop stardom. It is a pipeline that has been paved by many other people before her, but none quite like her, where they started on the internet as a TikToker. She was a college student, cheerleading. She was in Louisiana, got on the Internet, and fully transitioned from that to this. And I think she's really the first one to do it in this way. What I think people are picking up on is, when she debuted, there was a lot of chatter about authenticity. Is this real? Can we trust what she's doing? Is this really coming from her heart, her soul? And I think despite all the criticisms she faced post- Diet Pepsi — which were totally unfounded and mostly teenagers on the internet, if you ask me — I think that she stuck to her guns. She did something weird. She put out something unlike any of what her peers are doing right now. She found some luminaries in New York, overseas to help produce the record. And speaking of that record and those luminaries: all women. I think it's one of the first pop albums this year that we can confidently say is produced entirely by a team of up-and-coming young women. So I'm very proud of her. And I just think that people are finally resonating with what she's rocking. WATCH | Official music video for Fame is a Gun: Elamin: Joan Summers said Addison Rae is for the girls…. When you survey the way that Addison is landing, Rollie, does it feel authentic to you? Do you hear this record and go, "This feels like you are trying to give me something that is coming genuinely from you."? Rollie: You know, typically … my soul would tell me this is contrived, but knowing what's actually going on, I feel like it really is authentic. You know? I definitely feel like there was a bit of a PR blitz to establish Addison's coolness…. The Charli XCX co-sign — which by the way, that Von dutch remix is amazing. It's such an incredible song. That was the first thing that perked me up where I was like, "Oh wait, she's really about that life. She really wants to make music." It's not just a TikTok celebrity who's like, "How can I be more famous? Let me be an artist." It felt very authentic. I think the fact that she's going with the Y2K aesthetic — you know, the headphones on, she got the iPhone earpods and everything — it feels like it's really true to her interests. And the aesthetic actually just works so much for her. I feel like seeing people like Charli XCX and Lana Del Rey really getting behind her, that's the ultimate co-sign for me. They don't just do that for anybody…. I'm like, okay, these are people who are genius pop stars, strategists, artists. They see something of that in Addison Rae, and that's why they want to get behind it, I think. Elamin: I think it's really important to absorb how unlikely all of this is, because we are, I think, in a cultural moment that is very allergic to the inauthentic. I think we can kind of smell it right away. There's a sense of, "Oh, this feels like something beyond our control came together," [or] "This was assembled in a boardroom somewhere." And whenever you get that sense, I feel like there's a sense of, I don't want to mess with this. I'm not rocking with it. But for her to transcend that mountain, it's a much higher and harder mountain to climb.
