How can we account for the ideological stakes when the bodies of K-pop performers vicariously play out features of blackness? On the one hand, the performance of racial variants by K-pop idols and fans has functioned as a visual means of deconstructing racial purity in Koreans, but on the other hand, it has problematically internalized the view that divides races into an imagined order, which has plagued US society and politics.

Sustained by the triangulated forces of the K-pop industry, South Korean national policy, and the ever-morphing discourse on culture and technology in the postindustrial era, industry leader SM Entertainment's “new culture technology” invites critical scrutiny of neoliberal labor practices in the K-pop industry, the South Korean inflection of the creative economy, and the unique pursuit of cyborgized celebrity culture that emerged as a collaboration between private entertainment companies and the South Korean state.

Yoduk Story is the first known North Korean dissident musical, staging a fictional account of the authors' traumatic memories and experiences in a gulag. Despite the creators' indictment of North Korea as a human rights violator and Yoduk Story 's efforts to subvert everything that the North Korean state represents, the musical borrows from North Korean propaganda techniques, including propagandist revolutionary operas.

On the stages of Pyongyang, the capital of North Korea, propaganda performances celebrate the regime of Kim Il-sung. On the streets of Pyongyang there are frequent patriotic parades and other displays glorifying the state leader. Author Kim explores the dynamics between Pyongyang on stage and Pyongyang as stage.