Globalization of Hallyu: Understanding and Misunderstanding
In the Pandemic era, Korean popular culture has not stopped running,
but is showing an unexpected development pattern.
BTS's unexpected success, Korean movie dogs led by Bong Joon-ho,
and Korean dramas and television programs widely accepted around
the world beyond existing Hallyu fans through Netflix say
that the Korean Wave is no longer an East Asian phenomenon.
The unexpected success of the Korean Wave is creating various misunderstandings along with questions about the cause.
The light and shadow of this understanding and misunderstanding are summarized into the following four.
The Korean Wave is not a propagation phenomenon, but an acceptance phenomenon,
and it is the fact that the Korean Wave has not succeeded led by the Korean government.
Hallyu refers to a transnational cultural phenomenon in the globalization and digital era,
and was formed by intersecting various influences of East Asian popular culture.
The success of the Korean Wave beyond our expectations.
A small peninsula at the eastern end of the Eurasian continent,
surrounded and divided by powerful countries, the last country on Earth with a population of 50 million.
A small country, which has yet to lose its image as a developing country that has grown rapidly,
has become a country that exports culture loudly.
With the increase of students trying to learn Korean at universities around the world,
Korean is being newly established as a department,
not a liberal arts lecture, and sales of K-pop albums are changing the rules of the existing popular music industry set
by the U.S. in the digital music era.
Only overshadowed by the tremendous success of famous groups such as BTS, BLACKPINK, and TWICE,
most of the famous K-pop groups in Korea have larger overseas fandom, and the entry of Billboard 100 and 200,
which would have been reported in Korean newspapers until two to three years ago, is now common.
Netflix, which started its service in Korea in 2016, is pursuing a strategy to increase subscribers in Asia
by increasing Netflix original investment in Korea, a content powerhouse in East Asia, and as a result,
it has greatly expanded new Korean content audiences across Asia.
According to my research based on the daily top 10 programs in each country in 2020,
Korean films ranked fifth in the world and Korean dramas ranked second in the world after American dramas,
nearly doubling the ratings of British dramas, which ranked third.
It is not Poland or Columbia, where a small number of successful movies or dramas rise in their rankings,
but many current and past Korean movies and television dramas are loved simultaneously around the world.
Subscribers such as Disney and Amazon, as well as Netflix, will continue to target the global market,
and these platforms are expected to use Korean content that has proven its content power in any way, as Netflix did.
There are concerns about the negative impact of their investment on the domestic cultural industry,
but whether it is K-pop, Korean movies, dramas, or maintaining the current cultural, social,
and political energy, the future is bright as Korean Wave content.
Success beyond expectations is bound to stimulate curiosity about the cause.
The world is very curious about the growth of Korean pop culture,
and in the process of understanding the Korean Wave phenomenon,
various misunderstandings based on existing ideological biases are emerging.
Below, the light and shadow of this understanding and misunderstanding are summarized in the form of an issue.
Hallyu is not a propagation phenomenon, but an acceptance phenomenon.
First, the Korean Wave is not a propagation phenomenon, but a reception phenomenon.
The popularity of the Korean Wave, that is, Korean popular culture abroad,
was suddenly delivered to Koreans in the late 1990s with good news from abroad.
Koreans wondered why foreigners liked Korean dramas,
which were often self-criticized at the time, and why they liked Korean dramas better than Korean dramas.
Korean dramas and celebrities, which are popular in each country,
were also different, and the reasons for liking them were different.
Based on the common reasons for liking that emerged across the receptive natural sphere after removing the difference,
"Jeong," a Korean emotion related to cultural identity in East Asia,
consideration for the other, and Confucian characteristics were discussed.
All of these situations testify that the Korean Wave is an acceptance phenomenon,
so there is no room for interpretation as a cultural propagation phenomenon planned even in East Asia,
where the Korean Wave first became visible.
The development of the Korean cultural industry also provided a free creative environment essential for cultural development
by democratization in the 1980s and the abolition of various cultural restrictions in the 1990s.
However, this understanding is very natural for Koreans, but the absolute majority of cultural mediators such as Korean diplomats,
foreigners, foreign journalists, critics, intellectuals,
and public officials believe that the Korean Wave was created with the support of the Korean government.
Just like the Korean economy,
which developed under the leadership of the government through a five-year economic development plan based on the export economy,
the Korean Wave is believed to be the result of the cultural industry promotion policy implemented
by the Korean government in the late 1990s.
This belief is quite strong, and immediately after listening to my lecture claiming that the Korean Wave is an acceptance phenomenon,
I still ask back, "What was the Korean government's support policy like this to be possible?"
There may be many reasons why this belief was formed, but among them,
the Korean government has emphasized the role of the state in external relations
and has expanded the scope of private support activities in diplomatic activities.
For example, in the process of supporting a self-sustaining overseas Korean film festival,
it eventually makes the film festival like a local cultural center event.
After the Gulf War, the domestic introduction of soft-power strategies produced in the need to revise US foreign strategies
based on hard power seems to have overly emphasized and made the role of the state visible in this trend of transnational culture.
In fact, isn't the soft power discussion in the U.S. possible because it is the U.S. without any problems
even if the country's visibility As this concept and policy become key ideas for public diplomacy in Korea,
it is necessary to reflect on whether the government's role in private diplomatic activities is implemented in a prominent way and backfired.
In particular, the Korean government is at a time when it has to devise a different approach from the past.
In other words, Korea's public diplomacy implementation policy needs to be readjusted so
that the Korean Wave can be recognized as the result of Korea's self-sustaining cultural development and Korean cultural capabilities.
Although Korea is classified as an advanced country by joining the Organization for Economic Development and Cooperation (OECD) for economic growth,
it is also evidence that the elite of developed countries and various countries do not recognize Korea's cultural capabilities
and do not evaluate Korea as a real cultural advanced country that can have a global cultural impact.
France, which has a high government budget for cultural promotion, Japan,
which has supported Cool Japan for national branding, and Britain, the originator of creative industry discourse,
are not explained as the result of government support, but having such a belief in Korea remains imperialistic.
In this respect, the Korean Wave has a world history meaning.
Korea is given a task to show that countries that have not accumulated their original wealth due to the exploitation of past food democracies
and other people can have cultural capabilities and become cultural entities
that can fascinate other countries with cultural contents that have blossomed through democratization won by themselves.
For citizens of developing countries, Korea is a future that they can dream of.
Excessive efforts by the government ahead of the Korean Wave have adverse effects.
Second, while excessive government efforts to connect the Korean Wave and the Korean image at the level of public diplomacy are counterproductive,
the content of "K" among the Korean Wave phenomena continues to change in reality.
Along with the internationalization of the cultural industry,
it is well known through Netflix's investment that U.S. broadcasters or platforms are requesting joint production
and production to Korean production companies that have now secured trust in their production capabilities.
Bigger changes are taking place inside K-pop.
When an experimental group called "Exp-edition" composed of Americans was created in 2016,
K-pop fans criticized that they could not be K-pop for racial, linguistic, and regional reasons.
However, this criticism has also become a thorough discourse as Korean entertainment companies
are now creating K-pop idol groups purely composed of foreigners in foreign countries through audition programs.
In addition, even if there is no direct intervention from the K-pop industry,
the influence of K-pop is prominent in countries around the world.
As there are many cases in which the cultural form of idol groups created through auditions in the region resembles K-pop,
it is increasingly difficult to distinguish their music videos from K-pop except for linguistic characteristics.
In the face of this phenomenon, the question "What is K-pop's 'K'" has been asked to academia,
and in the world, K-pop is developing in a direction that is not exclusively connected to Korea.
Hallyu is a transnational cultural phenomenon in the era of globalization and digitalization.
Third, Hallyu and K-pop phenomena are often explained in connection with female fandom and MZ generation,
and furthermore, they are explained as cultural minority phenomena.
It reflects the quantitative reality because the distribution of women and young people is confirmed to be important through the audience survey of Hallyu and K-pop.
However, this narrow explanation of the Korean Wave phenomenon produces misunderstandings
that stereotype audiences of the Korean Wave.
Straightforwardly, K-pop has an excessive stereo type of culture that appeals to extreme youth female fandom
and middle-aged housewives with high television consumption,
or multicultural youth or LGBTQ who are alienated from the mainstream of the West.
There is insufficient ground to analyze what kind of understanding these stereotypes came from and under the influence of what discourse,
and it is replaced by summarizing the understanding of Hallyu audiences presented in recent studies.
Regardless of how the Korean Wave and K-pop fandom developed at the starting point and in the special context of each country in the recipient country,
the Korean Wave is a representative example of the transnational cultural phenomenon in the era of globalization and digital culture.
In other words, it is a global cultural phenomenon in which digital participatory culture,
the progress of globalization and racist problems arising from the Internet meeting,
and the more comprehensive gender sensitivity of the MZ generation intersect.
The reason why they are enthusiastic about the Korean Wave is not because Hallyu dramas or K-pop provide politically correct representation,
but because they provide new imaginative materials described above for generations, races, and genders in form.
In addition, due to the success story and historical meaning of Korea described above,
young people around the world are summoning K-pop solidarity at the scene of political conflict,
whether it is the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement in the United States, Hong Kong and Chile, Israel and Palestine.
The Korean Wave develops at the intersection of popular culture in East Asia.
Fourth, the cultural and industrial frame of the Korean Wave was developed by intersecting various influences of East Asian popular culture, not as if Korea had developed a secret weapon in a closed state. History testifies that culture develops through open communication and a culture that spreads widely lasts for a long time. Even if we do not retrospect the long history of Korean Chinese movie stars such as Jinrin in the early 20th century, we cannot understand the formation of important contents that make up theKorean Wave except for the influence of Hong Kong movies and pop songs in the 1980s and 1990s, Japanese cartoons, animation, trendy dramas, J-pop, and especially Japanese idol entertainment culture. In addition,
as the direct influence of the U.S. military through Sangju after the Korean War and from the U.S. since the 1980s,
the prototype of current K-pop as seen in the West Taiji phenomenon was created.
