Hallyu, the Korean wave

Few months ago, while I was in Korea, I was watching news in the morning. Suddenly, the K-pop was appeared in the news and my family were quite surprised because it normally do not broadcast the entertainment field. After a while, we were surprised again that there were rallies among young Parisienne to extend the K-pop concert in Paris. We knew that there were quite big Hallyu popularities in Asian region but it was quite hard to imagine that Hallyu will gain the popularities in Western coutries.


As a Korean, it is interesting and (quite happy) to see that the Korean culture is getting popular world wide. When my colleagues were came back from the conference held in Ajerbaizan, they told me that the Ajerbaizan people want to take picture with my colleagues keep saying how beautiful my colleagues are! The Korean telenovela is really popular in Ajerbaizan and they think every Koreans are pretty no matter how they really look like. My colleagues were amazed to the effect of Hallyu.

The Korean wave has been started from the Korean government's investment. Taiwan today illusted that the Korean government allocated national budget of US$805.2 to cultural and creative industry. http://www.taiwantoday.tw/ct.asp?xItem=177647&ctNode=1767 The Korean Creative Content Agency (KOCCA) also invest the African television market in order to spread Korean soap operah. The Korean wave enables braodcasting content market has been increased 9.3 % in 2009.

The diplomat analyzed that the success in Korean cultural exports due to the ownership is not belong to Korea but to the public which is distinct from the Hollywood products. http://the-diplomat.com/new-emissary/2010/10/22/the-seeds-of-hallyu/The content is for family friendly. Family can enjoy the Korean dravelas since the contents is mainly describing the family oriented stories without violent and sexual contents.

Miller suggested there are three ways how the telenovelas are exported. Most Korean drama exported in canned telenovelas format. When I was in Philliphine, I stayed in rural area with my Philiphine host family. We were watching Korean telenovelas through TV and it was interesting and sometimes embarrased me to see dubbed Korean telenovelas. Sometiems, Korean telenovelas are produced in order to export. They were put some sins filmed in target country making telenovelas to be familiar to the target culture.

In movie industry, it is quite interesting that there are many trials to co-products the movies across the Chinese/Japanese movies and Hallywood productions. Normally, it is much collarborated in co-products between Chinese, Japanese productions comparing to US productions. I believe this is mainly due to the cultural similarities. However, it is not yet successful.

With the globalization, the telenovelas are also spreading all over the world overcoming the cultural differences. The Korean wave improved itself that the Korean culture can be shared with other culture all over the world. The Korean wave is significant that this is the culture from East to the world not from the West which means that there is certain diversities arose in culture in entertainment industry.