Doobo Shim
Over the past few years, an increasing amount of Korean popular cultural content – including television dramas, movies, pop songs and their associated celebrities – has gained immense popularity in China, Taiwan, Hong Kong and other East and Southeast Asian countries. News media and trade magazines have recognized the rise of Korean popular culture in Asia by dubbing it the ‘Korean wave’ (Hallyu or Hanryu in Korean). The Associated Press reported in March 2002: ‘Call it “kim chic”. All things Korean – from food and music to eyebrow‐shaping and shoe styles – are the rage across Asia, where pop culture has long been dominated by Tokyo and Hollywood.’ According to Hollywood Reporter, ‘Korea has transformed itself from an embattled cinematic backwater into the hottest film market in Asia.’
Yet a few years ago Korean popular culture did not have such export capacity, and was not even critically acclaimed by scholars. For example, The Oxford History of World Cinema, published in 1996, is alleged to have covered ‘every aspect of international film‐making’ but does not make any reference to Korean cinema, although it pays tribute to Taiwanese, Hong Kong, Chinese and Japanese films. Korean music was also ignored by researchers, as can be seen in the following comment in World Music: The Rough Guide, published in 1994: ‘The country has developed economically at a staggering pace, but in terms of popular music there is nothing to match the remarkable contemporary sounds of Indonesia, Okinawa, or Japan.’ […]
[…] The Korean wave is indebted to the media liberalization that swept across Asia in the 1990s. The Korean wave seems to have come into existence sometime around 1997, when the national China Central Television Station (CCTV) aired a Korean television drama What is Love All About?, which turned out to be a big hit. In response to popular demand, CCTV re‐aired the program in 1998 in a prime‐time slot, and recorded the second‐highest ratings ever in the history of Chinese television. In 1999, Stars in My Heart, another Korean television drama serial, became a big hit in China and Taiwan. Since then, Korean television dramas have rapidly taken up airtime on television channels in countries such as Hong Kong, Taiwan, Singapore, Vietnam and Indonesia, which saw media liberalization beginning in the 1990s. In addition, the recent economic crisis in Asia has brought about a situation where Asian buyers prefer the cheaper Korean programming; Korean television dramas were a quarter of the price of Japanese ones, and a tenth of the price of Hong Kong television dramas as of 2000. Korean television programming exports have increased so dramatically that in 2003, they earned $37.5 million, compared with $12.7 million in 1999.
In the late 1990s, a regional music television channel, Channel V, featured Korean pop music videos, creating a huge K‐pop fan base in Asia. In particular, the boy band H.O.T. found itself topping the pop charts in China and Taiwan in 1998; the band was so popular that album sales continued to surge, even after the band’s break‐up in mid‐2001. Following H.O.T.’s successful concert in Beijing in February 2000, many K‐pop stars such as Ahn Jae‐wook (an actor‐cum‐singer who starred in Stars in My Heart), boy bands NRG and Shinhwa, and girl band Baby V.O.X. have held concerts in China, attracting crowds of more than 30,000 Chinese youth for each concert. In 2002, Korean teenage pop sensation BoA’s debut album reached the number one spot on the Oricon Weekly Chart, Japan’s equivalent of the American Billboard Charts; this firmly established BoA in the Japanese music market. Now, most of Korea’s top‐notch singers take their concerts to Beijing, Hong Kong and Tokyo and often record their albums in the local languages before marketing their albums in these countries.
In 1999, a Korean blockbuster, Shiri, was shown in Japan, Hong Kong, Taiwan and Singapore, receiving critical acclaim and drawing large audiences (for example, it earned $14 million at the Japanese box office). Since then, Korean films have become regular fixtures in cinemas across Asia. For example, among the nine movies screened on 9 August 2003 at the cinema Cathay Cineleisure Orchard, Singapore, three were Korean, including Conduct Zero, Marriage is a Crazy Thing and My Tutor Friend (sneak preview). When the Korean film Joint Security Area opened in Japan on 26 May 2001, it became the first Asian import in the Japanese film market to be shown on as many as 280 screens. The success of Korean cinema in Asia has now spread to North America and Europe, with more and more Korean films attracting theatre‐goers in these continents. Major US‐based distribution companies such as Fox and Columbia have started to take Korean movies on for their global distribution runs. Furthermore, Hollywood studios are eager to buy remake rights to Korean films. For example, DreamWorks SKG paid $2 million for the remake rights to the Korean horror film, A Tale of Two Sisters; that is twice what the studio paid for the Japanese horror movie, The Ring, a few years ago.
Against this backdrop, Korean pop stars have become cultural icons in the region. One example is Ahn Jae‐wook, who has commanded tremendous popularity in China, as evidenced by his clinching number one spot in a poll of the most popular celebrities in 2001, even surpassing Hollywood actor Leonardo DiCaprio who was then at the apex of his global popularity. Korean stars have had a big impact on consumer culture, including food, fashion, make‐up trends and even plastic surgery. It is not uncommon to find Asian youth decorating their backpacks, notebooks and rooms with photographs of Korean stars. In the streets of Hanoi and Beijing, it is common to find young members of the ‘Korea Tribe’, or Koreanophiles, sporting multiple earrings, baggy hip‐hop pants, and the square‐toed shoes of Seoul fashion. So popular are Korean actresses Lee Young‐ae, Song Hae Gyo, Kim Hee Sun and Jeon Ji‐hyun that it has been reported that their wanna‐be fans in Taiwan and China request their facial features when going for cosmetic surgery. […]
The period from the late 1980s to the mid‐1990s was an important turning point for the Korean media, with the introduction of liberalization in the sector. Until 1987, only domestic film companies were allowed to import and distribute foreign movies in the market. Under US pressure, in 1988 the Korean government allowed Hollywood studios to distribute films directly to local theatres and, by 1994, more than 10 Korean film importers had shut down their businesses. This opening of the market to Hollywood majors affected the vitality of the local film industry in general, such that the number of films produced annually fell from 121 in 1991 to 63 in 1994. In 1994, Hollywood’s market share in the local market reached 80 percent, from 53 percent in 1987. Therefore Korean cinema, which was ignored by local audiences, who considered it poorly made, boring and often maudlin, was drawing its last breath.
A rapid increase in foreign television programming as a result of television channel expansion was also a matter of concern. In its first year of cable television services in 1995, Korea imported $42.82 million worth of television programming, marking a sharp increase from the previous year’s foreign programming import figure of $19.86 million. Further, the spillover of satellite broadcasting, such as NHK Satellite and Star TV, posed a serious challenge to political sovereignty and cultural integrity.
In this context, two factors awakened Koreans to the importance of culture and its industrial development. In 1993, when the common view was that there was no hope for the revival of the local film industry, the film Sopyonje unexpectedly topped the box‐office chart with more than a million admissions – the first Korean film ever to attract such a large audience. The film also received unprecedented invitations for screenings in art theatres, and on college campuses in Japan, the United States and some European countries. Sopyonje is a film about an itinerant family that earns a living performing pansori, the traditional popular musical form of Korea in which a story is sung by a singer, accompanied by a drummer. Although pansori was designated as a national cultural treasure by the government, it was neglected once the country was subjected to American culture. The film, which portrayed a declining or ‘derelict’ traditional folk music genre, and was largely shot in a beautiful rural landscape, revived nostalgia for and public interest in ‘our culture’; the family in the film, on the verge of starvation, symbolized the fate of Korean cinema embattled by Hollywood. Sopyonje was released when people were beginning to pay attention to leisure, culture and ‘self’ – aspects they had gone without during the decades of Korean industrialization.
Against this backdrop, a government report awakened the Korean people to the cultural industry’s potential contribution to the national economy. In 1994, the Presidential Advisory Board on Science and Technology submitted a report to the president suggesting that the government promote media production as the national strategic industry by taking note of overall revenue (from theatre exhibition, television syndication, licensing, etc.) from the Hollywood blockbuster, Jurassic Park, which was worth the foreign sales of 1.5 million Hyundai cars. The comparison of a film to Hyundai cars – which at that time were considered the ‘pride of Korea’ – was apt enough to awaken the Korean public to the idea of culture as an industry. This revelation became a household topic for quite a long time, in accordance with the globalization‐cum‐information age discourse. Following the report, the Korean government established the Cultural Industry Bureau within the Ministry of Culture and Sports in 1994, and instituted the Motion Picture Promotion Law in 1995 in order to lure corporate and investment capital into the local film industry.
In their efforts to create a cultural industry, Koreans emulated and appropriated the American media system with the mantra ‘Learning from Hollywood’. It was argued that Korea should promote large media companies as well as a more commercial media market. A media policy report submitted to the Korean government in 1995 reads as follows: ‘Korea needs to encourage vertically integrated media conglomerates. … While there is a concern for the projected monopoly of information, in order to cope with the large‐scale TNCs, we need media conglomerates to match their size and resources.’ In this regard, sprawling family‐owned, big business groups in Korea, or chaebol, such as Samsung, Hyundai and Daewoo, to name a few, expanded into the media sector to include production, import, distribution and exhibition. In the process, the conventional Korean developmental regimen of an export‐oriented economy continued, as evidenced by a remark made by a senior manager of the Daewoo group’s film division: ‘It is our duty and responsibility to export Korean films overseas.’ In the context of the public’s rising interest in ‘our culture’ provoked by Sopyonje, and the improved film‐viewing environment enabled by chaebol investment, including expanding film choices and more convenient theatre facilities, Korean cinema gradually began to attract local audiences. […]
In general, the Korean pop music market was not vibrant before the 1990s. Korean youth preferred American pop songs to local ones; live concerts were not common and, when they were held, they were on a small scale. In fact, the two public television networks, Korea Broadcasting System (KBS) and Munhwa Broadcasting Company (MBC), controlled music distribution and held sway over the direction of music consumption. There was no authoritative record sales chart, except for weekly chart shows on television, which served as the only criteria by which songs and singers were judged popular, and by which audiences decided which albums they should buy. Furthermore, musicians were required to perform with the television networks’ in‐house studio bands and dancers, which deprived the country of the opportunity for diverse elements of local pop music to grow spontaneously. These conditions influenced musical styles to fit into the specifications of the television medium, such that songs usually had a long instrumental introduction and an extended fade‐out, to allow emcees to make some announcements, or a link between one song and another.
Transformation comes from the ‘new and unexpected combination of human beings, cultures, ideas, politics, movies, songs’ noted by Rushdie, thus changes originating from globalization trends and democratic reforms began to transform the local music market. After Seoul’s 1988 lifting of restrictions on foreign travel, the country became more exposed to the outside world. With the sharp rise in disposable income in the early 1990s, many Koreans purchased satellite dishes to pick up Japanese stations and Star TV. Against this backdrop, Korean music fans came to have a better grasp of global music trends, and hungered for new tunes from local musicians. According to Howard: ‘Political freedoms were mirrored by musical experimentation, as musicians began to realize that they had to attempt to be distinct if they were to succeed in gaining an audience. … [M]ore and more musicians appropriated foreign music styles.’ In this context, the three‐man band Seo Taiji and Boys, composed of underground bassist‐singer‐songwriter Seo Taiji and two rapper‐dancers, released the single ‘I Know’ in 1992. This was arguably the first rap track in Korea, and it excited local music listeners, who were fed up with the ballads and ppongjjak that lacked dynamism and musical experimentation. […]
Seo Taiji and Boys’ popularity was based on innovative hybridization of music. The band creatively mixed genres like rap, soul, rock and roll, techno, punk, hardcore and even ppongjjak, and invented a unique musical form which ‘employs rap only during the verses, singing choruses in a pop style’ with dynamic dance movements. Each of their albums was in itself a musical experimentation. In their first album, they showed how Korean rap would sound. In their second, they experimented with a crossover between ‘high and low’ music by inviting the traditional Korean percussionist Kim Deoksu and modern jazz saxophonist Lee Jeongsik to play for their album recordings. From their third album, they became ‘vocal’ in sending out social messages, with an attempt at gangsta rap. Since Seo Taiji, the syncretism of a wide range of musical genres in one album has become commonplace in Korea. What has come into existence is a hybrid but distinctively Korean pop style.
Second, Seo Taiji and Boys not only expanded the scope of K‐pop but also the scale of the music market. In the small, dormant market, the group’s first album was ‘the fastest‐selling record since 1982’. During its four years of activity, the band was estimated to have earned more than 10 billion won from record sales (6 million copies of their four albums), music video sales, concerts and other commercial activities. With an endless crop of imitation groups of Seo Taiji and Boys, sales of home‐grown pop acts have since outpaced foreign albums by four to one, the Recording Industry Association of Korea reports. As of 2002, Korea is the second largest music market in Asia with $300 million album sales per year. […]
The factor of ‘cultural proximity’ is not enough to explain the success of K‐pop across the region. According to a Chinese K‐pop fan: ‘Korean pop culture skillfully blends Western and Asian values to create its own, and the country itself is viewed as a prominent model to follow or catch up, both culturally and economically.’ This explanation is most appropriate in Vietnam where ‘South Korean TV dramas provide the tightly controlled communist country with an enticing glimpse of the outside world’. As such, the ‘vision of modernization’ inherent in Korean popular culture plays a part in making it acceptable in some Asian countries.
The development of Korean media industries and their advance into regional markets is clearly a sign of resilience of the subaltern – and of the ‘contamination of the imperial’, considering the context of decades‐long American domination of global cultural industries. However, while Korean cinema is enjoying success, the all‐or‐nothing blockbuster business has caused concern over a narrowing of diversity. It is reported that, as of early February 2004, TaeGukGi: The Brotherhood of War was playing on 110 screens while Silmido was being shown on 53 screens, combining to take up nearly 92 percent of Seoul’s total 178 screens. Industry observers have begun to say, ‘What Korean cinema needs now is not one movie that attracts 10 million viewers, but 10 movies that attract 1 million viewers.’ We need to be reminded that, until now, all the outcries against cultural imperialism have been made to protect ‘diversity’ and the ‘coexistence’ of cultures. Similarly, the commercial drive of the Korean media is also a cause for concern for the media performance. No longer constrained by the obligation of public service, media companies indulge themselves in pursuing profit maximization by getting their products and services to the largest number of consumers, not only in Korea but also overseas, and this kind of capitalist activity has been justified in the name of national interests. However, it is time for us to ask what constitutes national interests. […]