The Impact of Japanese and South Korean Audiovisual Production on Spain: Circulation, Reception and Influence

In recent years, Japanese and South Korean audiovisual productions have become part of the Spanish social landscape at the rate at which their global circulation was turning Japan and South Korea into veritable cultural superpowers. In considering this issue, this article critically reviews the main theories applied to the study of cultural globalization, refuting the theses that had conceived its development in terms of Westernization and questioning the usefulness of the global/local equation from the impact of Japanese and South Korean audiovisual cultures on a planetary scale. From this perspective, we present the different contributions on the circulation, reception and influence of Japanese and South Korean audiovisual productions in Spain that make up the Notebook section of this monograph and which cover topics such as Japanese commercial animation on generalist television in the 1990s, the hyperactive communities of fans of audiovisual culture associated with Hallyu ("Korean wave"), the South Korean fiction set in our country available on Netflix, the reception of the works of the South Korean director Yeon Sang-ho and the role of the Sitges Festival in the interpretation and recognition of the "New Korean Cinema" in Spain, as well as the political uses of the image in the manipulation of the Japanese war newsreels during the Franco dictatorship. Finally, we outline the main lines drawn by filmmakers Carla Simon and Celia Rico in the conversation gathered in the Dialogue section, as well as the points of view set out in the (Dis)agreements section by the directors of the main film festivals with an Asian audiovisual presence in Spain.