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South Korean pop groups like Blackpink enjoy great success globally and are among the country's best-known cultural exports.
Evan Barringer was 14 when he came across Full House, a South Korean romantic comedy in which two strangers are forced to share a house.
Sitting in his home in Memphis, he played it thinking it was an Asian remake of a beloved 1980s American sitcom. It wasn't until the third episode that he realized realized that they had nothing in common except the name. But he was hooked.
This accidental choice changed his life. Twelve years later, he's an English teacher in South Korea – and he says he loves living here: “I got to try all the foods I saw in K-dramas, and I got to see several K-dramas. -pop artists at concerts whose lyrics I studied in Korean.
When Evan discovered Full House in 2012, South Korean entertainment was the world's first glance. Psy's Gangnam Style was Korea's most famous pop export at the time.
Today, it is estimated that there are more than 220 million fans of Korean entertainment worldwide, four times the population of South Korea. Squid Game, Netflix's most popular show, has just returned for a highly anticipated second season.
How did we get here?
The so-called Korean wave swept the world, experts say, when streaming success met American-inspired production value. And Korean entertainment — from pop music to pulpy dramas to acclaimed hits built around universal themes — was ready for it.
BTS and Blackpink are now household names on the global pop circuit. People are swooning over crummy K-dramas, from Dubai to India to Singapore. Overseas sales of all that Korean content – including video games – are now worth billions.
Last month, after 53-year-old poet and novelist Han Kang won the Nobel Prize for Literature, online forums were filled with memes highlighting South Korea's “Cultural Victory” — a reference to the popular series of Civilization video games.
And there were jokes about how the country had fulfilled the dream of its founding father, Kim Koo, who wrote that he wanted Korea to be a nation of culture rather than power.
Turns out this moment has been years in the making.
Timing is everything
After the end of the military dictatorship in South Korea in 1987, censorship was relaxed and many television channels were launched. Soon, a generation of creators grew up idolizing Hollywood and hip-hop, says Hye Seung Chung, an associate professor of Korean film studies at the University at Buffalo.
Around the same time, South Korea grew rapidly rich, benefiting from a boom in car and electronics exports. And money from conglomerates, or chaebols as they are called, has flowed into film and television production, giving it a Hollywood sheen.
They became owners of a large part of the industry, from production to cinemas. So they were willing to splurge on making films without worrying too much about losses, says Professor Chung.
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Korean entertainment also attracts many tourists, with visitors dressing in period costumes when visiting Seoul's Gyeongbokgung Palace.
K-pop, meanwhile, had become a trendy phenomenon in the country in the mid-90s, propelling the success of groups such as HOT and Shinhwa.
This prompted agencies to replicate Japan's grueling artist management system.
Look for young talents, often teenagers, and sign them to multi-year contracts whereby they become “perfect” idols, with razor-sharp images and hyper-managed public personas. As the system took hold, it transformed K-pop, creating more and more idols.
In the 2000s, Korean TV shows and K-pop were a hit in East and Southeast Asia. But it was streaming that brought them into the world and into the lives of everyone who owns a smartphone.
That's when the recommendation engine took over: it played a key role in introducing fans to Korean culture, moving them from show to show, covering different genres and even platforms.
The alien and the familiar
Evan says he watched the 4 p.m. episodes of Full House. He loved how it took time to build the romance, from quarrels banter to attraction, unlike the American shows he knew.
“I was fascinated by every cultural difference I saw. I noticed they didn’t wear shoes at home,” he recalls. So he followed Netflix's suggestions for more Korean romantic comedies. Soon, he found himself humming the soundtracks of shows and was drawn to K-pop.
He has now started watching variety shows, a type of reality TV where comedians take on a series of challenges together.
Evan Barringer
Evan Barringer, an English teacher in South Korea, became a fan of K-content when he was a teenager living at home in the United States.
As they scroll through the recommendations, fans are immersed in a world that seems foreign but familiar — a world that ultimately includes kimchi jiggae, a spicy kimchi stew, and kalguksu, a seafood broth and kelp noodles.
When Mary Gedda first visited South Korea, she went in search of a bowl of kimchi jjigae, as she had seen the stars do repeatedly on screen.
“I was crying (while eating it). It was so spicy,” she says. “I asked myself why did I order this? They eat it up so easily at every show.
Mary, an aspiring French actress, now lives in Seoul. Originally a K-pop fan, she then discovered K-dramas and learned Korean. She also starred in a few cameo roles. “I got lucky and I love it,” she says.
For Mary, food was a big part of the appeal because she saw a wide variety of it in K-dramas. Seeing how characters build relationships around food was familiar to her, she says, because she grew up in the French countryside in Burgundy.
Marie Gedda
Mary learned Korean after discovering K-pop and K-dramas
But there is also the promise of romance that lured Marie Namur from her native Belgium to South Korea. She started watching K-dramas on a whim, after visiting South Korea, but says she continued because she was “kind of attracted to all these handsome Korean men.”
“(These) are impossible love stories between a super rich guy and a girl who is generally poor, and, you know, the guy is there to save her and that really sells you the dream.”
But it's Korean women who write most of these shows — so it's their imagination, or fantasy, that captures the interest (and hearts) of other women around the world.
In Seoul, Marie said she had been “treated like a lady”, which had not happened “in a very long time”, but that “her dating experience is not exactly what I expected”.
“I don’t want to be a housewife. I want to continue working. I want to be free. I want to go clubbing with my girlfriends if I want to, even if I'm married or in a relationship, and a lot of guys here don't want that.
International fans often seek out an alternative world due to their disappointment with their own society, says Professor Chung.
Primitive romances, with handsome, caring, chivalrous heroes, attracted female audiences who turned away from what they saw as hypersexual American entertainment. And when social inequality became a stronger theme in Korean films and shows – such as Parasite and Squid Game – it attracted viewers around the world disillusioned with capitalism and the yawning wealth divide in their countries.
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A scene from Love Next Door: Romantic K-dramas have become a staple of streaming platforms around the world
Finding a global audience also posed challenges. The increasing use of English lyrics in K-pop has drawn some criticism.
And the spotlight is now more on the less glamorous side of the industry. For example, the immense pressure stars face to be perfect, as well as the demands of a hypercompetitive industry. Creators behind the hit shows have alleged exploitation and complained about not being fairly compensated.
Still, it's great to see the world showing interest in Korea, says Professor Chung. She grew up in repressive South Korea, where government critics were regularly threatened or even killed. It escaped into American films.
When Parasite was playing at the cinema in the small American town where she lives, she saw on the faces of other moviegoers the same wonder she felt as a child watching Hollywood films: “It's so great that our love is rendered. »
