HSounds like a relaxing day of cultural immersion, right? Complete your ablution and apply a moisturizing face mask infused with snail secretions to the sound of a girl group in the background. black pink.A bowl for lunch mixed rice And Bong Joon Ho’s movie.At night, I binge-watch his spicy zombie series “All of Us Are Dead.” Yangnyeom chicken and strawberry bottle Shochu. All this is done without ever setting foot in their country of origin.
Even the fact that all-conquering boy band BTS has been called up for military service can’t dampen the world’s appetite for all things Korean. K-Pop currently consistently tops the charts in the US and UK. Three years since Squid Game became his most-watched show in Netflix history, and four years since Bong’s Parasite, starring K-pop girl group Twice, became the first non-English language film to win Best Picture at the Oscars. Year. in 1st place On the US album charts, the Korean content giant shows no signs of slowing down.
In fact, Western studios are nowgold Rush”. Netflix recently announced $2.5 billion will be invested in Korean projects over the next four years, led by the second season of Squid Game. Disney and Apple TV+ are also commissioning more Korean shows. “Everyone wants Korean content,” said one Disney executive. recently said Hollywood Reporter. “It’s been popular all over Asia for 20 years.” [but] The fact that we can now travel all over the world is something new. ”
Even the BBC is getting in on the act. CBBC and BBC iPlayer launched in February gangnam project – A youth “drama” that examines “what it takes to become a K-POP superstar.” Sarah Muller, her head of commissioning and acquisition for 7-12 year olds at the BBC, said: “South Korea is the modern capital of the creative world.”
This country has come a long way in just a few decades. The 1988 Seoul Olympics marked a breakaway from nearly 30 years of military rule, but even at the turn of the century, South Korea was still exported overseas primarily for its automobiles, home appliances, and as a ruthless dictatorship with borders. It was known. Now, the surging tide is Korean (Hallyu Wave) has solidified Korea’s status as a cultural powerhouse.
“Hallyu is a new source of pride and confidence for Koreans,” said Ingyu Kang, a professor of digital journalism at Pennsylvania State University. He added that the phenomenon developed in tandem with the country’s “remarkable” economic growth in the decades since the stalemate that ended the 1950-1953 Korean War.
Others frame South Korea’s cultural progress as a government-led mission. The South Korean state has been working hard to turn its cultural identity into an exportable commodity since the late 1990s and early 2000s under President Kim Dae-jung. This trend has run through successive right-wing and left-wing governments in Korean politics.
But others believe this is a more fruitful public-private effort. “The global success of Hallyu is naturally the result of the efforts of the private sector, but the government is indirectly supporting the spread of Hallyu by creating a foundation where the private sector can demonstrate its creativity.” A spokesperson for the streaming content cooperation department said. Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism. “Consumers are no longer focused on the nationality of the content, but on the competitiveness of the content itself.”
The ministry serves as an umbrella organization for organizations that formulate promotional and creative policies, including the Korea Creative Content Agency, the Korea International Cultural Exchange Foundation, and the Korea Film Council, which receive trillions of won in funding from the government. A new generation of creators has also been fostered through the liberation of private enterprise through loans, tax breaks, and investments in institutions such as the Korea Film Institute, the Korea University of the Arts, and the influential Busan International Film Festival.
The range of K-genres continues to expand and now encompasses hardy perennials such as pop music, television, and film, as well as newer genres such as beauty, fashion, cooking, and literature.
Many foreign tourists flock to Seoul’s Myeong-dong district to buy cosmetics in bulk from Face Shop, Skin Food, and other retailers. These products are now part of the global K-beauty market. worth $18.32 billion in 2030, according to a recent report by Straits Research. “Thanks to Korea’s long-held history of using natural, unique, and non-irritating substances, Korean beauty products have a fairly mild composition,” the report states.
Korean cuisine is following a similarly dizzying trajectory. A take on the corn dog, a sausage snack with a crispy coating and a satisfyingly gooey center, it’s been one of the most popular street foods in the United States in recent years. British supermarkets regularly bottle kimchi. Kimchi is a classic Korean spicy pickle that’s world-famous for promoting gut health, and chefs are spicing up their dishes with chunks of kimchi. Gochujang – Fermented chili paste – drinkers are discovering why Shochu Distilled alcoholic beverages made from fermented grains have been loved in this country for a long time.
This global output benefits an economy that is now Asia’s fifth-largest economy. South Korea’s cultural content exports will reach an all-time high of $12.4 billion in 2021, dwarfing revenues from consumer electronics and electric vehicles. According to a survey by the Modern Research Institute In 2019, BTS was thought to be worth approximately $3.67 billion to the South Korean economy annually in exports, consumption, and tourism, and in 2020, the band’s single “Dynamite” reached number one in the United States. It is believed that around 8,000 jobs were created.
Many of the content providers are small independent startups covering publishing, music, video games, broadcasting, film, and animation, but they coexist and collaborate with other companies. Zaibatsu, a huge family-run conglomerate that traditionally has close ties to senior politicians (Lotte and Orix are two notable players). Small businesses also benefit from government assistance. According to Yonhap News, South Korea received 790 billion Korean won ($593 million) last year to expand exports of Korean cultural content.
However, viewing Hallyu as a national project created in government agencies and boardrooms ignores the essential nature of Brand Korea. “It’s a mistake to view Hallyu as a product of top-down government planning,” said John Lee, a professor of sociology at the University of California, Berkeley, and author of “K-Pop: Economic Innovation.” , Cultural Amnesia and Popular Music in Contemporary Korea. “When dramas and pop music became popular, the government was willing to support and claim credit for it through measures such as tax breaks and using the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Korean embassy to promote pop culture.”
Although successive governments have been happy to associate themselves with the Hallyu wave, Kang says Korean artists thrive best when the state takes a backseat. He referred to the basic principles of the Kim Dae-jung regime’s mission in the 1990s and 2000s to transform the culture into Hallyu. The industry was “support but don’t interfere.” “It may sound cynical, but the best thing the Korean government has done is to leave creators alone,” he says.
Relations between the government and some of the country’s cultural standard-bearers have not always been easy. “Funding has not always been distributed fairly and transparently,” Kang said, citing revelations that the conservative government was involved in fraudulent funding between 2008 and 2017. . Blacklisted singers, actors, writers and filmmakers They criticized what they perceived as left-wing politics, stripped them of their support, and even pressured producers not to hire them. Targets include Oscar-winning director Bong and Song Kang-ho, the lead actor in “Parasite,” as well as Hwang Dong-hyuk, the author of “Squid Game,” and others known for films such as “Oldboy” and “The Handmaiden.” Director Park Chan-wook was also included. .
Hallyu can sometimes reveal a darker side, raising questions about South Korea’s attitude towards mental health, sexual assault and exploitation, especially of women. It has been rocked by a series of scandals and recent high-profile suicides, including one by Lee Sun-kyun, best known for his role in Parasite. Revelations that K-pop stars were secretly filmed having sex with women without their consent have shocked South Korea. Morcha Surveillance cameras are also pervasive in the K-pop realm, and were seen as evidence of rampant misogyny at the heart of the country’s entertainment industry.
Perhaps ironically, K-pop is now international. “K-pop employs an extensive global division of labor, from Swedish composers and Italian costume designers to American choreographers,” Lee says. The industry has long featured international genres like R&B and hip-hop, from the uniformly androgynous vibes emitted by boy band members to the avoidance of “controversial” themes like sex and violence. , has injected “Korean characteristics.”
K-pop’s most successful artists have long performed different language versions of the same song depending on their target market. This approach helped BTS’ Jungkook soar to the top of the US Billboard Hot 100 and UK singles his charts last year. His debut solo single “Seven”. The multilingual performer is joined by a number of his K-pop bands that are not Korean at all. South Korean mega boy band NCT currently includes his NCT Wish, which consists of six Japanese members, and his WayV sub-branch, which consists of Chinese and Thai members. Vcha, on the other hand, is an American girl group based in Los Angeles.
The Korean boom shows no signs of slowing down yet. International interest in learning this language is also growing. Last year, in response to demand for classrooms, the government increased the number of schools affiliated with King Sejong Academy, a government-supported Korean language education institution, to 244 for enrollment in overseas Korean courses, from Duolingo enthusiasts to modern languages. The school expanded to 270 schools. Undergraduate – rose.
“I predict that the next ‘big thing’ will be literature,” Kang says. “Korea’s incredible storytelling talent is on display through movies, television series, and webtoons, but despite growing recognition, Korean literature is still underappreciated.
Min Jing Lee’s 2017 debut novel Pachinko, based on her family history, received critical acclaim and a screen version on Apple TV+. “The deep experience and resilience of the Korean people, who have endured harsh challenges such as colonialism, division, war, poverty, and dictatorship in the same century, is condensed in the depth and richness of their literature.” Mr. Kang says. “Koreans have many fascinating stories to share with the world.”
