The study of Korean media, and K-dramas specifically, has been dominated largely by discourses surrounding the ‘Korean Wave’ and the increased popularity of South Korean popular culture abroad. More specifically, many English-language analyses have tended to focus their attention on the Korean Wave as an analytical framework, thus failing to acknowledge the ways in which these texts address domestic audiences and societal issues specific to South Korea. Thus, little attention has been paid to more implicit representations of the nation and its past in these K-dramas, a particularly noteworthy oversight when we consider that melodrama, a distinctly reflexive genre, is the governing mode of many contemporary K-dramas. Thus, this article aims to demonstrate the multiplicity of meanings that can exist within these media texts, paying particular attention to the reflexive capacities of the melodramatic mode. Through the examination of two case studies, Ireland and Descendants of the Sun, this article will discuss the ways in which shifting inter-Korean relations have been articulated in both dramas through sociopolitical contextualization and narrative analysis. This article will examine the use of foreign places and foreign crises in these dramas, and demonstrate their capacity to function as arenas for the expression and exploration of national trauma relating to the Korean war and the division of the Korean peninsula. This article aims to demonstrate that despite the increasing hybridization of Asian media, it remains important to analyse the relationship between K-dramas and domestic audiences in order to better understand the ways in which they address and work through significant social and political concerns for South Korean audiences.

This article proposes an analysis of a specific form of toxic fan practice within Korean pop (K-Pop) music fandoms, discussing the role these toxic discourses play in the formation and affirmation of positive fan identities. The specific toxic practices that will be discussed occur in response to the personal tragedies of others, frequently where suicide or attempted suicide is involved. In particular, this article focuses on the ways in which certain K-Pop fans target the personal tragedies of others as a means of reinforcing a positive relation to their fan-object. Crucially, the tragedies these toxic behaviours are directed towards are not immediately related to the fandom or fan-object, and these aggressive fan behaviours are largely unprovoked. This ‘Maybe if she stanned …’ phenomenon serves to express the superiority of fan communities by asserting their distance from the suffering of others, as well as the redemptive qualities of their fan-object. I argue that these toxic fan practices function as a means of reaffirming the righteousness of a particular fandom, and this righteous toxicity is itself the result of the K-Pop industry’s valorization of an emotionally heightened form of fan devotion, as well as a changing online fan environment. In doing so, I hope to demonstrate how toxic fan practices arise as self-affirming meaning-making discourses within fan communities.

As Brexit negotiations continue to draw criticism nearly two years on from the UK’s withdrawal from the European Union, many media outlets have concentrated on making sense of what has been dubbed the ‘Brexit circus’. In particular, significant media attention has been directed towards obstacles to Brexit’s progression, such as the issue of the border between Ireland and Northern Ireland and the ‘backstop’ arrangement. Through an examination of different media efforts to explain the border issue, this paper will discuss how conventional reporting methods have been unable to make this issue comprehensible to the individual. This paper will suggest that a hypertextual aesthetic form would provide a more effective means of making sense of the complexity of the border issue and its relationship to global political and economic structures. However, an understanding of the border issue also requires an understanding of the affective reality of life in this region and the history upon which this reality is founded. In this manner, this paper also argues that representational regimes capable of conveying affective realities could contribute important experiential dimensions to efforts to render dominant political and economic structures both cognisable and contestable.