K-Pop Fandom @kpopfandom - Bluesky Profile

Graphic of now available book "K-Pop Fandom: Performing Deokhu from the 1990s to Today" by Areum Jeong

"K-Pop Fandom" by @areum.bsky.social is now available! This autoethnography explores the K-pop fandom and its evolution. Start reading here: doi.org/10.3998/mpub...

16.02.2026 21:50 — 👍 6 🔁 2 💬 0 📌 0

K-Pop Fandom: Performing Deokhu from the 1990s to Today K-Pop Fandom insists that K-pop fan practices and activities constitute a central productive force, shaping not only K-pop's explosive global popularity, but also K-pop's cultural impacts, politics, and horizons of possibility. Over the past three decades, the K-pop fandom and its activities have expanded, intensified, and diversified along myriad dimensions, assuming novel social, technological, and economic forms, some of which are unique to K-pop, and some of which reflect broader cultural and industrial logics of globalized mass entertainment culture. Areum Jeong argues that K-pop fans, in performing deokhu—a Korean term connoting an "avid fan"—perform a materialization of affective labor that also seeks to produce good relationships between asymmetrically positioned actors in the K-pop ecosystem. Through an autoethnography of becoming a K-pop deokhu, Jeong connects their experiences to generations of K-pop fans, showing simultaneously how fandom practices have shifted over time and the intricacies of fan labor participation. This personal connection paved the way for participant-observation and co-performer witnessing methodologies in the study, which crucially allowed for collaborating with fans whose communal pursuits have been stigmatized by dominant discourses that denigrate their activities as solely addictive, uncritical, and wasteful. Jeong's genre-spanning corpus of fan activities and analyzing its contexts and contents represents an important contribution to the making of a fan archive that is also an archive of affective labor.

Sorry! The open access link is
doi.org/10.3998/mpub...

16.02.2026 05:05 — 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0

HAPPY PUBLICATION DAY! 🎉📚

K-POP FANDOM is officially out! 🙌🏻

Available via print and open access!
(Free for viewing online via www.fulcrum.org/concern/mono...)

Many thanks to @uofmpress.bsky.social for believing in and supporting this project 💚

16.02.2026 00:08 — 👍 6 🔁 1 💬 1 📌 0

Many thanks to Rebekah Buchanan for taking the time to read my K-pop book and interview me on @newbooksnetwork.bsky.social! 🫶🏻🙌🏻🫰🏻

The podcast episode is now available via newbooksnetwork.com/k-pop-fandom

11.02.2026 01:55 — 👍 5 🔁 2 💬 0 📌 0

Many thanks to Rebekah Buchanan for taking the time to read and respond to my K-pop book on @newbooksnetwork.bsky.social! The podcast episode will be available soon. 🫶🏻🙌🏻🫰🏻

04.02.2026 20:28 — 👍 3 🔁 2 💬 0 📌 0

K-Pop Fandom: Performing Deokhu from the 1990s to Today with Areum Jeong Promoting understanding & cooperation between the U.S. & Korea, The Korea Society offers programs, events, & resources on Korean culture, policy & education

I will give a hybrid talk on my K-pop book on February 12, 18:30 EST at The Korea Society. Hope to see you there!

For more info, please see:
www.koreasociety.org/arts-culture...

14.01.2026 07:40 — 👍 5 🔁 5 💬 0 📌 2

THANK YOU! 🥹💚

x.com/maath48/stat...

27.01.2026 23:08 — 👍 6 🔁 2 💬 0 📌 0

I will be at Auburn University from March 3 to 6 as the Caroline Marshall Draughon Center for Arts & Humanities Visiting Scholar -- if you are in the Bama area, I would love to see you! 🙌🏻

auburnoilbooksellers.com/event/in-con...

22.01.2026 11:40 — 👍 2 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0

K-Pop Fandom: Performing Deokhu from the 1990s to Today with Areum Jeong Promoting understanding & cooperation between the U.S. & Korea, The Korea Society offers programs, events, & resources on Korean culture, policy & education

I will give a hybrid talk on my K-pop book on February 12, 18:30 EST at The Korea Society. Hope to see you there!

For more info, please see:
www.koreasociety.org/arts-culture...

14.01.2026 07:40 — 👍 5 🔁 5 💬 0 📌 2

🎉 #1 in New Releases in South Korean History

💚 K-Pop Fandom: Performing Deokhu from the 1990s to Today

👩🏻‍💻 By Areum Jeong

📚 University of Michigan Press, February 2026 @uofmpress.bsky.social

press.umich.edu/Books/K/K-Po...

🙌🏻 Available for pre-order now!

08.01.2026 12:30 — 👍 6 🔁 4 💬 0 📌 1

Unboxing the advanced copy! 💚

💚 K-Pop Fandom: Performing Deokhu from the 1990s to Today

👩🏻‍💻 By Areum Jeong

📚 University of Michigan Press, February 2026 @uofmpress.bsky.social

press.umich.edu/Books/K/K-Po...

🙌🏻 Available for pre-order now!

13.12.2025 22:30 — 👍 3 🔁 1 💬 0 📌 0

Unboxing the advanced copy! 💚

💚 K-Pop Fandom: Performing Deokhu from the 1990s to Today

👩🏻‍💻 By Areum Jeong

📚 University of Michigan Press, February 2026 @uofmpress.bsky.social

press.umich.edu/Books/K/K-Po...

🙌🏻 Available for pre-order now!

13.12.2025 22:14 — 👍 3 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0

When I asked which dedication he would like best—"To Taeyong, TY, or To Tyong?"—he thought for a moment before replying, "Wouldn't To Taeyong be best?" That dedication is now on the first page of the book.

01.10.2025 08:00 — 👍 2 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0

Building on that inspiration, my current bias, Taeyong, gave me the strength to finish writing. During a fansign in August 2023, I told Taeyong that I was working on a K-pop fandom book and would dedicate it to him, which surprised and delighted him.
⬇️

01.10.2025 08:00 — 👍 2 🔁 0 💬 1 📌 0

🙋🏻‍♀️ Is it true that you dedicated the book to your bias?

👩🏻‍💻 Yes! My first K-pop bias, Eun Jiwon, whom I have been a fan of since his debut in 1997, inspired me to begin this project around 2017.
⬇️

01.10.2025 08:00 — 👍 2 🔁 0 💬 1 📌 0

These videos can serve as examples of fans performing materialization of affective labor!

01.10.2025 07:35 — 👍 2 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0

Taeyong loves sea creatures and playing Animal Crossing, so I visited the Seattle Aquarium when they had a collaboration with ACNH and created a video featuring various sea friends, which I showed to Taeyong during the video call fansign in October 2023. Enjoy! 🪼🐠🦭🪸💚

01.10.2025 07:35 — 👍 2 🔁 0 💬 1 📌 0

Taeyong loves reptiles, so I visited the Phoenix Herpetological Sanctuary and created a video featuring various reptiles, which I showed to Taeyong during the video call fansign in October 2023. Enjoy! 🐢🐍🦎🐊💚

01.10.2025 07:35 — 👍 2 🔁 0 💬 1 📌 0

My history as a fan and the knowledge I have acquired as such made it possible for me to enter certain spaces, understand the significance of certain protocols, notice changing norms, and discuss personal subjectivity as well as topics related to broader collective experiences.

01.10.2025 07:35 — 👍 4 🔁 0 💬 1 📌 0

🙋🏻‍♀️ How do you conduct research?

👩🏻‍💻 I combine insights from ethnography, cultural studies, fan studies, media studies, and performance studies. Significantly, I also draw on my own research as a participant-observer and co-performer witness.

01.10.2025 07:35 — 👍 2 🔁 0 💬 1 📌 0

Based on three decades of autoethnography, my book focuses on K-pop fans and their labor to show how fans perform a kind of materialization of affective labor from collective and communal fan activities to personalized labor that represents individual fans’ personalities and performances of care.

01.10.2025 06:30 — 👍 2 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0

but not many know that I have been a K-pop deokhu (덕후: a Korean term connoting an avid, enthusiastic fan) for 30 years.

As a hardcore K-pop fan since the early 1990s, I have witnessed vast transformations in K-pop fandom, fan identity, and the roles fans perform to shape and promote the industry.
⬇️

01.10.2025 06:30 — 👍 2 🔁 0 💬 1 📌 0

🙋🏻‍♀️ Who are you?

👩🏻‍💻 Some people know me as Prof. Jeong, who teaches Korean film, literature, and pop culture at Arizona State University; some people know me as a Tyongf—a fan of Taeyong from NCT (and some love to drop by my office to look at my Taeyong Shrine or receive freebies!)
⬇️

01.10.2025 06:30 — 👍 3 🔁 0 💬 1 📌 0

💚 K-Pop Fandom: Performing Deokhu from the 1990s to Today

👩🏻‍💻 By Areum Jeong

📚 University of Michigan Press, February 2026

press.umich.edu/Books/K/K-Po...

🙌🏻 Available for pre-order now!

01.10.2025 06:14 — 👍 5 🔁 4 💬 0 📌 4

K-Pop Fandom

Latest posts by kpopfandom.bsky.social on Bluesky

@kpopfandom is following 20 prominent accounts