Mapping Global Impacts of Hallyu: Introduction Session

Welcome Keynotes

Vice-Chancellor
University of the Arts Singapore

Welcome Address from the University of the Arts Singapore

Professor Kwok Kian Woon (PhD, University of California at Berkeley) is Vice-Chancellor of the University of the Arts Singapore. He is also Emeritus Professor at the Nanyang Technological University, where he had served as Professor of Sociology and in several pioneering roles over two decades. He was a founding member of the School of Humanities and Social Sciences, the first Head of Sociology, Senate Chair, Associate Provost of Student Life, and Associate Vice-President (Wellbeing).

Prof Kwok has a sustained record of teaching, research, academic leadership, and intellectual engagement in civil society and the public sector, especially in the areas of the arts and heritage. His writings and public presentations have covered central themes such as ethics and politics; history and memory; the nation state and civil society; mental health and wellbeing; and culture and the arts.

Venka Purushothaman

Deputy President and Provost
LASALLE, University of the Arts Singapore

Welcome Address from LASALLE

Dr Venka Purushothaman is Deputy President and Provost at LASALLE College of the Arts. He is an award-winning art writer and academic with a distinguished career in Singapore's arts and creative industries. Venka advances transformative arts education and is the founder of the Asia-Pacific Network for Culture, Education and Research (ANCER). He speaks internationally on meta trends in arts and education. Venka serves on expert panels dedicated to Singapore's arts, culture and youths. Internationally, he chairs the Strategy Board of Zurich-based Shared Campus, a consortium of arts universities developing new educational paradigms and the International Advisory Council of the New York-based Living Arts International, which develops artists in Cambodia. He is also a member of the International Cultural Relations Research Alliance of the Institut für Auslandsbeziehungen (Germany), a grouping of scholars studying new approaches to international cultural relations. Venka is a Fellow of the Royal Society of the Arts, UK and University Fellow at Musashino Art University, Japan and a member of Association Internationale des Critiques d'Art, France (AICA Singapore). He holds a PhD in Cultural Policy and Asian Cultural Studies from The University of Melbourne.

Kwan Min Lee

Korea Foundation Professor in Contemporary Korean Society and New Media
Director, WKW UX (User Experience) Lab
Nanyang Technological University

Welcome Note from the Korea Foundation Professor

Kwan Min Lee is the inaugural Korea Foundation Professor in New Media at the Wee Kim Wee School of Communication and Information at Nanyang Technological University (NTU). Previously, Lee was the World Class University (WCU) Professor and founding director of Interaction Science Research Center at Sungkyunkwan University (SKKU), S. Korea. Lee also directed Samsung Electronics’ User Experience (UX) Group and the Creative Lab(C-Lab) as one of the youngest Vice Presidents in the Samsung corporate history. Prior to SKKU and Samsung, Lee was tenured Associate Professor at the Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism at the University of Southern California (USC). Lee specializes in UX (User Experience) research and design, social and psychological effects of ICT (Information and Communication Technologies), and human-computer interaction (HCI). Lee’s research funding exceeds 12 million US dollars. Lee holds multiple international (USA, EU, and S. Korea) patents in smart display interfaces, remote controller, gesture control, and multimedia production.

Keynote Presentation

Dal Yong Jin

Distinguished Professor in Global Communications
Simon Fraser University, Canada

AI Encounters the Korean Wave: Cultural Production's Perspective

Since the early 2020s, AI has become one of the most significant digital technologies influencing cultural industries. While several countries, such as the U.S., the U.K., Canada, and China, advance their use of AI in cultural production, Korea has vehemently increased its use of AI in various forms of cultural production, including K-pop, dramas, reality shows, films, and webtoons. AI has played a pivotal role in Korea's cultural production, from the production of popular culture to the circulation of cultural content to the consumption of cultural programs. Korean cultural creators and industry firms have adopted AI to create various cultural programs. The involvement of AI has not yet fundamentally shifted the characteristics and content of Korean popular culture; surely, AI's encounter with cultural content in the Hallyu context will grow. This talk offers critical insights into the local cultural industries that work with AI technology. By discussing the ways in which cultural creators develop AI-engendered cultural programs, it discusses Korean cultural industries firms that have partnered with AI technology to determine why they pursue AI-supported cultural production. It eventually talks about the critical understanding of AI-embedded popular culture in terms of creativity and audience reception in the New Korean Wave era while delving into the increasing role of AI in local cultural production as part of the Hallyu tradition.

Dal Yong Jin is a Distinguished Simon Fraser University Professor. He completed his Ph.D. in the Institute of Communications Research at the University of Illinois in 2005. Jin's major research and teaching interests are digital platforms and digital games, globalization and media, transnational cultural studies, and the political economy of media and culture. Jin has published numerous books, journal articles, and book chapters. His books include Korea's Online Gaming Empire (2010), Digital Platforms, Imperialism and Political Culture (2015), New Korean Wave: transnational cultural power in the age of social media (2016), Smartland Korea: mobile communication, culture and society (2017), and Artificial Intelligence in Cultural Production: Critical Perspectives on Digital Platforms (2021). Jin has also published articles in scholarly journals, such as New Media and Society, The Information Society, Media, Culture and Society, and Information Communication and Society. In May 2022, Jin was inducted as an International Communication Association (ICA) fellow—the highest recognition of distinguished scholarly contributions to the field of communication. He is the founding book series editor of Routledge Research in Digital Media and Culture in Asia. He has been directing The Transnational Culture and Digital Technology Lab since the summer of 2021.

Introduction Session