In the 2010s, a new phenomenon was spotted in the Seoul Metro. K-pop fans began adorning subway stations with large ads congratulating their heroes—so-called K-pop idols—on their birthdays and other anniversaries. Not only have these fandom-produced ads transformed the visual landscape of the Seoul Metro, they also invited novel spatial practices when fans, primarily young women, toured the ads to take photographs of and with them. Based on ethnographic observations, this article explores how fandom ads and fans visiting them make the Seoul Metro social and public in new ways. Drawing on Henri Lefebvre’s theory of the production of space, the article frames fans’ ads themselves and engagements they invite as assertions of the “right to the city,” and relates them to spatial interventions that reclaim urban spaces based on symbolic—not legal—ownership, such as murals and graffiti. The article argues that K-pop idol ads recapture the Seoul Metro from domination by commercial advertisers’ interests and appropriate it as a space of fandom, particularly female fandom. It also contends that this reorganization of space carries implications for a broader reclamation of subway surfaces as urban resources.

中文翻译：

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首尔地铁中的偶像广告：K-pop 粉丝、地铁空间占用和城市权

在 2010 年代，首尔地铁出现了一种新现象。K-pop 歌迷开始在地铁站装饰大型广告，祝贺他们的英雄——所谓的 K-pop 偶像——在他们的生日和其他纪念日。这些由粉丝制作的广告不仅改变了首尔地铁的视觉景观，还邀请了新的空间实践，当粉丝（主要是年轻女性）参观广告并与他们合影时。基于民族志观察，本文探讨了粉丝广告和访问它们的粉丝如何以新的方式使首尔地铁成为社交和公众。文章借鉴 Henri Lefebvre 的空间生产理论，将粉丝的广告本身和他们邀请的参与框定为“城市权利，”并将它们与基于象征性而非合法所有权（例如壁画和涂鸦）回收城市空间的空间干预联系起来。文章认为，K-pop 偶像广告将首尔地铁从商业广告商利益的统治中重新夺回，并将其作为一个粉丝空间，特别是女性粉丝。它还认为，这种空间重组对于将地铁表面作为城市资源进行更广泛的改造具有重要意义。