The Hallyu in Pekanbaru: An Ethnographic Study on Indonesian Kpopers Parasociality

This paper explores the impact of the phenomenal Korean Wave orhallyu among the youths of Pekanbaru, in the Riau Archipelago, Indonesia. Thesignificance of Korean popular culture, better known as K-pop, is perhapsprimarily marked by the rising popularity of K-pop communities in key urbancities across Indonesia. In the context of Pekanbaru, however, there areapparently only 3 remaining active K-pop fandom communities left today outof 15 that attempted to advance the globalized phenomenon of hallyu. Criticallyinformed both by du Gay’s Circuit of Culture and Horton’s Parasociality as thestudy’s overlapping parameters, we focus our ethnographic inquiry on theimpact of hallyu on the members of K-popers Pekanbaru. The scope of ourinquiry on the identity construction of the K-popers Pekanbaru community isdefined by the ‘youthful’ consumption, production and regulation of hallyu’sparasociality. Data were collected through a set of ethnographic techniques suchas observation-participation, focus group discussions and in-depth interviewsthe founder and members of K-popers Pekanbaru as well as authorities on localand popular culture. The wider implication of hallyu on the maintenance of localand ethnic cultures in Pekanbaru will also be discussed in the paper