K-spice

bell hooks’ “Eating the Other” and the Globalization of South Korean Popular Culture

Abstract

This article critically examines the cultural politics underlying the commodification and consumption of South Korean culture in the globalized cultural economy. Adapting bell hooks’ seminal essay “Eating the Other: Desire and Resistance” to contemporary contexts, it argues that K-culture functions as “spice”—a consumable, palatable exoticism that adds a new flavor to the mainstream culture while remaining a niche phenomenon. Incorporating critiques of value aestheticization in contemporary capitalism, the analysis highlights that K-culture exemplifies a broader development: cultural difference is reduced to aesthetics, packaged as a sanitized surface-level novelty, whose complexities are flattened and cultural elements depoliticized. The article introduces a novel theoretical approach to understanding the globalization of South Korean popular culture, simultaneously expanding hooks’ analytical framework for today’s aestheticized global cultural marketplace and articulating a broader transformation in how cultural difference is produced, consumed, and valued.