Contemporary China And South Korea Popular Culture Studies

South Korea-China relationship, formed in 1992, has changed the stream of East Asian history and also served as a base for the improvement of the two nations' economic and cultural exchanges. For the past ten years, the two nations have become the greatest trade partners and not only trading but also cultural exchanges have progressed vigorously. Thanks to common cultural background and consistent cultural exchanges, South Korea and China could become a friendly nation each other without a hitch in spite of different ideology. Currently, pop culture accounts for the majority of cultural exchanges between the two nations. Therefore, understanding of the two countries' pop cultures is really important.The two nations see each pop culture from a different point of view: China judge effect and value of its pop culture from the viewpoint of Marxian political economy, on the other hand, South Korea understand its pop culture based on the diversity from the viewpoint of post structuralism. Despite these different viewpoints, cultural interchange between South Korea and China has progressed smoothly owing to the two facts: the two nations belong to Eastern culture and have been influenced by Western cultural imperialism. However, Chinese pop culture has socialist character, while South Korean pop culture has capitalistic feature.The two nations' present pop cultures, developed under each nation's historical circumstance, have both affirmative and negative influences. In China, since its transition into the market economy by the reform and opening, its people have become well-off and had more desire to enjoy culture. Under these circumstances, pop culture played affirmative roles such as relieving economical and mental stress, educating people, and forming civic society. On the other hand, because of cultural imperialism, cultural values and a way of thinking from the West have influenced upon Chinese pop culture and collapsed its traditional spiritual culture, causing the crisis of Chinese humanism.