Dr. Jungmin Kwon is a professor of digital culture and film studies in the School of Film at Portland State University. She studies and teaches digital culture, film and media, the media industry, audiences and fans, media celebrity, and Korean/East Asian popular culture from feminist and queer perspectives. She is the author of Straight Korean Female Fans and Their Gay Fantasies (2019, University of Iowa Press). Currently, Dr. Kwon is writing her second book, titled In Between (In)Visibility: Queer Media Cultures in Contemporary South Korea.
In 2022, she was selected for the College of the Arts Researcher of the Year and awarded the College of the Arts Dean’s Council Awards for Research, Scholarship & Creativity at Portland State University (Research Podcast). In 2020, she won the New Investigator Award from the National Communication Association’s Critical/Cultural Studies Division and the Encouragement Award from the College of the Arts Dean’s Council Awards for Research, Scholarship & Creativity at Portland State University.
Related Links
CV
Personal Website
Academia
ResearchGate
Selected Publications (please email for reprints)
Book
Kwon, J. (2019). Straight Korean Female Fans and Their Gay Fantasies. University of Iowa Press.
Journal Articles
Kwon, J. (2025). Korean women, gwangjang feminism, and transmedia feminist worldbuilding. Women’s Studies in Communication, 48(4), pp. 1-10.
Kwon, J. (2025). Queer visibility in Korean popular culture and queer invisibility in Korean communication and media studies. Korean Journal of Communication, 2(2).
Kwon, J. (2024). There is something wrong with falling in love: K-pop idols, romance, and the toxic K-pop industry. Flow: A Critical Forum on Media and Culture, 30(6).
Kwon, J & Eguchi, S. (2024). Introduction: Re-examining communication and media practices in/across queer Asia. QED: A Journal in GBLTQ Worldmaking, 10(2), pp. 1-7.
Kwon, J. (2023). Boys Love (BL) evolving into Gay Love?: Exploring the popularity and transformations of BL in contemporary Korean media. Flow: A Critical Forum on Media and Culture, 30(3).
Kwon, J. “Hey ‘brother,’ you can count on me”: Misogynistic masculinity and bromance in South Korean action cinema. Journal of Popular Culture 56(2).
Kwon, J. K(Q)ueer-pop: Toward a theorization of gender and sexuality in Korean pop culture. International Journal of Communication, 17, pp 52-71.
Kwon, J. (2019). Between Hyorish and Hyorism: A Korean TV star and social media activism. Television and New Media, 20(3), 241-156.
Kwon, J. (2016). Co-mmodifying the gay body: Globalization, the film industry and female prosumers in the contemporary Korean mediascape. International Journal of Communication, 10, 1563-1580.
Kwon, J. (2015). Queering stars: Fan play and capital appropriation in the age of digital media. Journal of Fandom Studies, 3(1), 95-108.
Book Chapters
Kwon, J. (2023). “I want to live a life that I choose”: Romanticized queer family and nature in Little Forest (2018). ReFocus: The Films of Yim Soon-Rye. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.
Kwon, J. (2022). The commercialization and popularization of Boys Love (BL) in South Korea. In J. Welker (Ed.), Queer Transfigurations: BL Media in Asia. Honolulu, HI: University of Hawaii Press.
Kwon, J. (2021). What fans want?: The past, present, and future of Boys Love (BL) cultures in East Asia. In S. Hong & D. Y. Jin (Eds.), Convergence Culture in East Asia. London; New York, NY: Routledge.
Kwon, J. (2014). Cultivating consumerism: Global media content and local audiences. In C. McCarthy, A. Kozma, K. Palma, & N. Lamers (Eds.), Mobilized Identities: Mediated Subjectivity and Cultural Crisis in the Neoliberal Era (pp. 154-167). Champaign, IL: Common Ground Publishing.
Ono, K. & Kwon, J. (2013). Re-worlding culture?: YouTube as a cultural interlocutor. In Y. Kim (Ed.), The Korean Wave: Korean Media Go Global (pp. 199-214). London; New York, NY: Routledge.
Kwon, J. (2011). From masculinity to cybermasculinity: Marginalizing the other in “DCinside.” In C. McCarthy, H. Greenhalgh-Spencer & R. Mejia (Eds.), New Times: Making Sense of Critical/Cultural Theory in a Digital Age (pp. 195-228). New York, NY: Peter Lang Publishing.
Courses
FILM 131: Film Analysis
FILM 231: Advanced Film Analysis
FILM 480 Contemporary Film Theory
FILM 486: Media Industry, Audiences, and Fans
FILM 487: Gender and Sexuality in Global Digital Culture FILM 487: Global Social Media Culture
FILM 487: Contemporary Korean Cinema FILM 487: Global Queer Cinema
FILM 487: Global Queer Cinema
Affiliations
Department of Women, Gender, and Sexuality
Institute for Asian Studies