#54 - Stephen Epstein

Contemporary Korean music is not limited to K-Pop. South Korea boasts a vibrant indie music scene, and neighborhoods such as Seoul’s Hongdae have live bands performing across various venues every night.

Our guest for this episode, Stephen Epstein, is probably one of the most acute observers and academic researchers of the Korean independent music scene. He kindly agreed to talk to us about the genesis of Korean indie rock since the 1980s, its political and societal underpinnings, the relationship between indie and mainstream, and of course some of the most influential bands in Korean indie music.

Stephen Epstein is Associate Professor and Director of the Asian Studies Programme at Victoria University of Wellington in New Zealand. He earned his BA from Harvard and his MA and PhD from the University of California, Berkeley.

Professor Epstein has published widely on contemporary Korean society, popular media and literature, and has translated numerous works of Korean and Indonesian fiction. Recent work on Korean popular music includes the articles Girls’ Generation? Gender, (Dis)Empowerment and K-Pop (with James Turnbull), and Into the New World: Girls’ Generation from the Local to the Global. He is also the co-producer of the documentary Us and Them: Korean Indie Rock in a K-Pop World (2015), a follow-up to his earlier documentary Our Nation: A Korean Punk Rock Community (2002; both co-produced with Timothy Tangherlini). Both movies were selected by several film festivals worldwide.