From Production to Circulation: How Global Digital Discourse Constructs K-ness Beyond Korea (The Case of K-Pop Demon Hunters)
Abstract
Globalisation has fundamentally reshaped the circulation of cultural products, allowing media content to move across linguistic, cultural, and geographical boundaries through digital platforms. Korean popular culture—often discussed under the rubric of the Korean Wave (Hallyu)—provides a salient example of this transformation. However, much of the existing scholarship continues to locate cultural identity in the site of production, implicitly treating “Koreanness” as a stable cultural attribute tied to content produced within Korea. Such an approach is increasingly inadequate for explaining how cultural meaning is generated in digitally mediated, globally networked environments.
This paper examines how “K-ness” emerges through global digital discourse surrounding K-Pop Demon Hunters, a Netflix animated film produced outside Korea. It argues that K-ness should be distinguished from Koreanness: rather than referring to a culturally or nationally grounded identity, K-ness is conceptualised here as a hybrid, transnational formation of Hallyu that is produced through circulation, interpretation, and interaction. Despite its non-Korean production context, the film has generated extensive engagement framed in terms of Korean cultural identity, making it a productive site for examining how such meanings are constructed.
The analysis draws on the concept of networked publics, which understands digital platforms as environments where meaning is collectively produced through interaction, repetition, and circulation. This framework is combined with theories of participatory culture, discourse, and global cultural flows, enabling an interdisciplinary approach that brings together cultural studies, communication, and sociolinguistics.
Methodologically, the study adopts a mixed-methods design, combining time-series analysis with Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) of user-generated content from X (formerly Twitter). The dataset consists of English-language posts produced in response to the film’s release, focusing on original user contributions. Time-series analysis identifies patterns of engagement, while CDA examines recurring linguistic features, cultural references, and identity markers.
The findings show that users repeatedly mobilise K-pop aesthetics, Korean cultural references, and affective associations in ways that collectively construct K-cultural meanings. These meanings do not simply derive from the media text or its production context but emerge through distributed interpretive practices within networked publics. In this sense, K-ness operates as a discursive effect that is stabilised through repetition and circulation rather than anchored in national origin.
By distinguishing K-ness from Koreanness, the paper argues for a shift in how Hallyu is conceptualised: from a nationally bounded cultural export to a hybrid, transnational formation shaped by global digital communication. This reconceptualisation contributes to broader debates on globalisation, culture, and communication, and highlights the need to rethink cultural identity as an emergent property of networked interaction in the digital age.
