Park, S., Park, Y., Seo, S., & Song, J. (2025). Global icon or national star?: Interpreting the contested star image of BLACKPINK’s Lisa in a transnational context. Celebrity Studies, DOI: 10.1080/19392397.2025.2468186
This study examines how a transnational star’s persona is influenced and intervened by contesting nationalist and racist ideologies, with BLACKPINK’s Lisa serving as a case study. As an ethnic Thai K-pop star who has achieved global success, her identity can be framed either as a Thai star, a Korean pop star, or a global star. This overlap and potential conflict of multiple identities creates tensions surrounding her position among Korean and Thai audiences, which lead to questions pertaining to the articulation and negotiation between the local, national, and global. What contesting perspectives on nationality and ethnicity can we identify from Lisa’s star image in the context of transnational K-pop industry? What aspects of nationalism or racism can we discuss based on the production and consumption of her multi-faceted star image? To address these questions, this study investigates the construction of her star image in Thailand and Korea through an analysis of various media texts and discusses the nationalisation of transnationality and ethnic blindness within the context of transnational stardom.
You can find the full article here.
**********
Lisa’s case exemplifies what may be described as the ‘nationalization of transnationality’ within the sphere of popular culture. It refers to the phenomenon in which cultural products, including stars and celebrities, produced in a particular nation and attaining transnational status are claimed by nationalist sentiment. This phenomenon seems to be particularly pronounced in non-Western region. While Western stars have dominated global influence, Asian stars achieving global status has been a rarity. For countries with histories of cultural subordination and exploitation, a star with transnational appeal represents an asset that warrants protection. With Hallyu positioned as a counterflow to Western cultural dominance (Oh and Nishime 2018), the ‘K’ label has been embraced by Koreans as a badge of cultural achievement. The transnational disputes evident in Lisa’s situation underscore the tension between Thai fans’ fears of her assimilation into the K discourse and Korean fans’ eagerness to include her within it.
The nationalisation of transnationality is linked to soft power. This study shows how Korea and Thailand try to leverage attractive pop culture fixtures as a source of soft power. When Joseph Nye (1990) conceptualised the term soft power as the co-optive ability to ‘get others to want what you want’ (p.167), it effectively explained a non-coercive mechanism utilised by hegemonic countries, which employ ideological and institutional resources. However, in some Asian countries that have only recently began launching soft power initiatives, it is pursued as a form of cultural propagation or exports, thus sparking a regional soft power competition (Chua 2012). Accordingly, Korean government aims to bolster the cultural industry by supporting content-related enterprises and broadening the scope of Hallyu beyond pop culture to encompass lifestyle elements (Kwak 2022). Similarly, Thailand is aiming to initiate a ‘T-Wave’ (Bunnag 2022). The term T-Wave has appeared with the growing success of Thailand’s cultural industries in the 2020s, such as Thailand’s boy’s love series and some T-pop music groups. Notably, Milli, a Thai rapper, performed her song ‘Mango Sticky Rice’ at Coachella while eating the dish. After her performance, mango sticky rice went viral on social media, sparking further attention towards the potential of Thailand’s cultural exports. Discussions are now underway regarding the potential and direction of the T-Wave in emulating Hallyu (Bangkok Post 2021b, Bunnag 2022). While soft power initiatives as a form of regional competition and economic profit-making can rejuvenate the cultural sector, they also pose risks to the authenticity and integrity of popular culture, as political agendas might contaminate and manipulate cultural expressions, a concern highlighted by the discourse surrounding Lisa’s case.
Furthermore, our findings reveal that ‘ethnic blindness’ – a lack of cultural and ethnic awareness – is often masked by the sense of ‘globality’. Produced and consumed within a transnational framework, K-pop is celebrated by Korean media and government for its economic and soft power contributions. However, tensions lurk beneath the industry’s glittering façade, and current conflicts over Lisa reveal the tensions stirred up in the transnational landscape. Despite its use of ‘global’ and ‘transnational’ labels and the inclusion of foreign stars for worldwide appeal, the K-pop industry frequently exhibits a superficial multiculturalism focused on visual aesthetics, rather than fostering genuine cultural sensitivity. While Lisa’s talents and appearance may exemplify the global appeal of K-pop, her Thai identity is frequently marginalised by Korean audiences and is exploited to advance Korea’s soft power objectives. The label ‘global’ and the transnational stardom, seemingly indicative of transcending ethnic and national boundaries, paradoxically harbour inherent limitations that foster ethnic blindness. The industry’s embrace of diversity is confined to the parameters of Koreanness. Lisa’s case serves as another example that how the ethnic blindness inherent in the Korean cultural industry and society could impede a true intercultural understanding.
SOJEONG PARK 