THE IMPACT OF BLACK FEMALE INFLUENCERS ON TRANSNATIONAL KOREAN BEAUTY: A CASE STUDY OF TWO BLACK BEAUTY VLOGGERS

Abstract

The trend of Korean beauty has started to gain attention from international countries as the phenomenon of Korean wave a.k.a. hallyu has spread globally. The concept of Korean beauty itself is known to be highly associated with having fair skin. Nevertheless, the popularity of Korean skin care products and cosmetics has drawn not only fair skin women, but also women with dark skin. Although their dark skin colour does not fit the concept of K-beauty, they devotedly follow the trend. Two of them are YouTube black female influencers, Darcei Amanda and Kennie JD, who like to create contents related to Korean beauty. Their contents on Korean make up look and fashion style has influenced Korean beauty industry to become aware of the demand and needs of dark-skinned women. Some scholars have addressed the influence of hallyu on cultural hybrization. Woongjae Ryo (2009) Korean wave is an indication of the new global and local transformation. Agustina and Lukman (2017) mainly discusses the hybrid cultures developed by Indonesian beauty vloggers who persistently use halal-certified Indonesian cosmetics to acquire the Korean look. Jin and Yoon (2016) social media platforms and fans' interactions have increased the spread of Korean wave. beauty influencers, Charlotte (2017) discovered about the influence of beauty vloggers on consumer-buying intention. Hence, this paper aims at exploring how these female vloggers use their platform to give impact on the phenomenon of Korean beauty. The research findings revealed that these black beauty vloggers managed to influence the Korean beauty industry to be more inclusive.KEYWORDS: Korean beauty, local concept, inclusivity, black influencer, YouTube