This paper is part of a broader project examining the spate of recent Korean television dramas and reality-cum-talk shows that draw attention to Korea's relationship with a larger Asia. In particular, I argue that these shows are inculcating a hierarchical sense of South Korea's relationship with an Asian hinterland, and simultaneously promoting a radical shift in Korea's gendering of the "foreign" from male to female. Given our conference venue, however, I want today to restrict my discussion to a small subset of such programs that focus on encounters between South Korea and Vietnam. Although the South Korea-Vietnam relationship has unique features that have created an ambivalent, fraught history, these ambiguities also allow Vietnam to serve as a particularly fruitful site for exploring Korea’s evolving relationship with its continental neighbors, and perhaps, despite its unique features, even to stand as a metonym for developing “Asia” in South Korean popular culture. ...
