When I asked which dedication he would like best—"To Taeyong, TY, or To Tyong?"—he thought for a moment before replying, "Wouldn't To Taeyong be best?" That dedication is now on the first page of the book.

Building on that inspiration, my current bias, Taeyong, gave me the strength to finish writing. During a fansign in August 2023, I told Taeyong that I was working on a K-pop fandom book and would dedicate it to him, which surprised and delighted him.
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🙋🏻‍♀️ Is it true that you dedicated the book to your bias?

👩🏻‍💻 Yes! My first K-pop bias, Eun Jiwon, whom I have been a fan of since his debut in 1997, inspired me to begin this project around 2017.
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These videos can serve as examples of fans performing materialization of affective labor!

Taeyong loves sea creatures and playing Animal Crossing, so I visited the Seattle Aquarium when they had a collaboration with ACNH and created a video featuring various sea friends, which I showed to Taeyong during the video call fansign in October 2023. Enjoy! 🪼🐠🦭🪸💚

Taeyong loves reptiles, so I visited the Phoenix Herpetological Sanctuary and created a video featuring various reptiles, which I showed to Taeyong during the video call fansign in October 2023. Enjoy! 🐢🐍🦎🐊💚

My history as a fan and the knowledge I have acquired as such made it possible for me to enter certain spaces, understand the significance of certain protocols, notice changing norms, and discuss personal subjectivity as well as topics related to broader collective experiences.

🙋🏻‍♀️ How do you conduct research?

👩🏻‍💻 I combine insights from ethnography, cultural studies, fan studies, media studies, and performance studies. Significantly, I also draw on my own research as a participant-observer and co-performer witness.

Based on three decades of autoethnography, my book focuses on K-pop fans and their labor to show how fans perform a kind of materialization of affective labor from collective and communal fan activities to personalized labor that represents individual fans’ personalities and performances of care.

but not many know that I have been a K-pop deokhu (덕후: a Korean term connoting an avid, enthusiastic fan) for 30 years.

As a hardcore K-pop fan since the early 1990s, I have witnessed vast transformations in K-pop fandom, fan identity, and the roles fans perform to shape and promote the industry.
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🙋🏻‍♀️ Who are you?

👩🏻‍💻 Some people know me as Prof. Jeong, who teaches Korean film, literature, and pop culture at Arizona State University; some people know me as a Tyongf—a fan of Taeyong from NCT (and some love to drop by my office to look at my Taeyong Shrine or receive freebies!)
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💚 K-Pop Fandom: Performing Deokhu from the 1990s to Today

👩🏻‍💻 By Areum Jeong

📚 University of Michigan Press, February 2026

press.umich.edu/Books/K/K-Po...

🙌🏻 Available for pre-order now!