Korean Wave Fandom in Romania: From Consumers to Cultural Agents

Abstract

The paper explores how the Korean Wave (or Hallyu) is received, practiced, and localized among Romanian fans of South Korean culture. Moving beyond an understanding of Hallyu as imported entertainment, the study approaches K-pop, K-dramas, and similar cultural phenomena as resources through which fans build preferences, communities, identities, and instances of cultural mediation. The research uses a mixed-methods design based on an online questionnaire administered in March 2025 to 122 Romanian Hallyu fans. The findings show that Romanian fans express strong affective attachment to Korean culture while remaining cautious in assessing their own cultural knowledge. Their engagement was structured by a transmedia ecology linking K-pop, K-dramas, webtoons, social media, streaming platforms, fan communication, Korean products, and language learning. Fan practices are active but unevenly formalized. Respondents reported following artists, sharing content, voting, buying albums, talking to other fans, attending events, and learning Korean, yet official fan-club participation was limited. The results also revealed selective media consumption, critical reception of K-dramas, interest in broader East Asian cultures, and strong imagined tourism toward Korea. Korean language learning appeared as a particularly significant form of cultural investment. The article argues that Korean cultural diffusion in Romania is not a linear process of media exposure, but a complex articulation of affect, platforms, commodities, sociability, criticism, language, regional comparison, and imagined mobility. This paper contributes to Hallyu studies by foregrounding local fan agency within a specifically Eastern European cultural context.