John Lie teaches social theory at the University of California, Berkeley.

Prelude 
1. How Did We Get Here? 
Interlude 
2. Seoul Calling 
Postlude 
Coda 
Notes 
Glossary of Korean Terms 
Index

K-Pop: Popular Music, Cultural Amnesia, and Economic Innovation in South Korea seeks at once to describe and explain the emergence of export-oriented South Korean popular music and to make sense of larger South Korean economic and cultural transformations. John Lie provides not only a history of South Korean popular music-the premodern background, Japanese colonial influence, post-Liberation American impact, and recent globalization-but also a description of K-pop as a system of economic innovation and cultural production. In doing so, he delves into the broader background of South Korea in this wonderfully informed history and analysis of a pop culture phenomenon sweeping the globe.