why does hallyu matter

Why Does Hallyu Matter? The Significance of the Korean Wave in

South Korea

Jeongmee Kim

When I was in Korea in the summer of 2006 I heard the term Hallyu (sometimesspelt ‘Hanryu’ or ‘Hanliu’) used to describe a dizzying variety of things. Hallyuroughly translates as ‘the Korean wave’ and is used in relation to numerous Koreancultural practices. It initially covered areas such as TV shows, stars and pop songsbut also, as the Korean Parliamentary Culture and Tourism Research Groupexplains, ‘The meaning of Hallyu has increasingly expanded to include Koreanlifestyle such as food, fashion and sports and so on.’1 Over time, as Dean Visserstates in ‘What Hip Asians Want’, Hallyu’s usage has over time come to describe ‘allthings Korean – from food and music to eyebrow shaping and shoe styles’.2 JaneKagan, for example, goes so far as to suggest that the choreographed and uniformKorean clapping at the 2002 World Cup was a part of Hallyu.3 Dong-Hwan Kwonincludes in the realm of Hallyu the export of Korean ‘technological goods’ to otherAsian countries.4 Hallyu has in fact come to refer to so much that its actualmeaning is now hard to pin down other than to signify a perceived success of some-thing Korean.

Just as unclear as to what Hallyu specifically means are the origins of the term,there being at least three candidates for its derivation.5 The first candidate is a pro-motional CD of Korean pop music made in 1999 by the Korean Ministry ofCulture and Tourism and distributed through its embassies. The title of the CDwas ‘Hallyu’ which meant in this case ‘the style of Korean pop music’. With thesuccess of Korean pop music in China soon after, the Chinese press reported‘Hallyu hits China’ and the Korean press apparently adopted this term from thenon. The second possibility is that the term came from Taiwan when the press werereporting their surprise at the success of Korean dramas and music. They used thephrase ‘HailHallyu’, which translates as ‘winter ice storm in summer’ and is a localexpression for something happening very unexpectedly. So again it is possible thatHallyu filtered into popular usage from here. The third possibility is that the termoriginated in China in 1991 when a Beijing newspaper used ‘Hallyu’ (translated as‘cold stream’) to express concern at the behaviour of certain sectors of Chinese

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youth who were becoming fascinated with Korean pop music and drama. Like acold stream, Korean culture was seen to be relentlessly trickling into their culturalspace.

Despite the vagueness of its definition and origins, the concept of Hallyu hasbecome a rallying cry within Korea for the perceived success of its cultural indus-tries in Asia. Thus, as Hallyu is so all-encompassing and yet so vague, for the pur-poses of clarity this article will focus on television drama to analyse what the termrelates to, but also what it has come to mean, particularly to Koreans. Hallyu tele-vision drama has become popular in a number of Asian countries includingSingapore,6 the Philippines,7 Vietnam,8 Taiwan,9 Mongolia10 and China.11 Thepattern has tended to be a breakthrough series – such as Endless Love/ Gaeuldonghwa (KBS Productions, 2000) in the Philippines, Fireworks/ Boolkkotnoli(MBC Productions, 2006) in Taiwan and Winter Sonata/ Gyeoul yeonga (KBSProductions, 2002) in Japan – followed by the mass importation of televisiondrama from Korea. Academically, there have been numerous accounts attemptingto explain the rise of Hallyu in Asia. Critics like Sae-Kyung Yoo and Kyung-SookLee12 have applied Joseph Straubhaar’s notion of cultural proximity,13 which positsthat exported cultural products from culturally similar countries have a betterchance of popular success than those from more culturally unfamiliar ones. Yooand Lee examine the common features in the content of Hallyu dramas to explaintheir appeal, concluding that the most successful contain Confucian values thatcross certain national borders within Asia. Eun-Kyung Yang contends however thatsuch a conclusion fails to take into account the popularity of such dramas in therest of Asia, particularly in the South East, where shared value systems are far lesseasily identified in countries with widely different religious and social convic-tions.14 Dong-Hwan Kwon suggests in his discussion of the rise of Hallyu televi-sion drama in the Philippines that rather than just shared social and culturalvalues, popular aspects have proven to be the production quality, succinct plotsand fashions on display in the dramas. In terms of social values, rather thanConfucian ones, these shows appeal more broadly in their depictions of a com-munity based on hierarchical family relationships between elders and youngsters,extended family relationships, which most other Asian countries can understand.15

John Nguyeat Erni and Siew Keng Chua argue that ‘racial proximity’ is anotherfactor that can explain the popularity of Asian-wide television drama as there areshared ‘norms of beauty (male and female), mannerisms, styles in clothing, a senseof Asianess in contrast to perceived western outlooks, and so on’.16 Jane O.Vinculado, conducting interviews in the Philippines, found that audiences felt theycould ‘relate to the physical characteristics of the characters . . . they are not aliento them compared to the Caucasian-looking characters in the Latin novellas’ whichhad been the most popular television imports prior to Hallyu drama.17 One couldargue, therefore, that it is not just what Hallyu offers, but what it offers as an alter-native that has contributed to its success. Rather than Latin telenovelas andWestern dramas, Korean Hallyu presents a general and recognisable Asian-ness, afactor that Japanese television drama also profited from in the international Asian

48 Critical Studies in Television 2/2


market during the 1990s. Koichi Iwabuchi, for example, examined the portrayal ofromance among young people in Japanese dramas and proposed a transnationalAsian understanding of how social and family structures act as obstacles to younglove.18

The Korea presented in many of the most popular Hallyu dramas is a fantasyspace in which modern life is conducted in a world to which traditional values ofa bygone age are rigidly adhered. In the case of Autumn in My Heart/ Gaeuldonghwa (Seok-Ho Yun, 2000), for example, romantic love rather than sexualattraction is always foregrounded. This is particularly evident in the scene wherethe protagonists Joon-Suh (Seung-Heon Song) and Eun-Suh (Hye-Kyo Song) runaway together and hide out in a remote farmhouse. There is no explicit act of phys-ical contact between them. Instead their time as lovers is presented with a child-like innocence as they sleep in separate beds, keep their clothes on and endlesslytalk about their feelings for each other. Their strong sense of family obligation,duty and social propriety prevent them, even when alone, from behaving as themodern young couple they clearly are. Such old fashioned sentiment has exportedwell, as Dong-Hwan Kwon’s research illustrates. Conducting interviews he foundthat for many Philippino Hallyu watchers an important reason for why they pre-ferred Korean dramas over Western ones was because of the ‘conservative’ natureof the love scenes. One interviewee emphasised that it was, ‘Not only the lovescenes but also the way they dress . . . I think if you watch Mexican telenovelas, evenwestern ones, the girls are usually very made up . . . they have very heavy make upand they have . . . [plunging] necklines [and] short hemlines . . . but in Asian espe-cially Korean [drama] they dress like how we dress everyday.’19

Political and economic reasons have also been analysed to explain the success ofHallyu. Doobo Shim argues that media deregulation (a number of Asian govern-ments legalising cable TV) in the 1990s accounts for the success of the Hallyudramas in Asia, as it opened previously closed doors to the large-scale export ofKorean dramas into several Asian markets.20 Seung-Hae Son describes how theemergence of cable and satellite created competition between TV channels withinthe importing countries, which, in turn, led to aggressive promotion and advertis-ing on the part of channel providers within each importing country.21 As thenumber of channels grew, so the market share of each decreased, making it lesspractical to produce home-grown dramas and financially more attractive toimport ready made and comparatively cheaper products. Dal-Yong Jin makesanother observation, suggesting that the crisis experienced in the Tiger economyduring the 1990s made the more affordable Asian dramas the preferable option inrelation to the more expensive Western imports.22

Yet what I find particularly revealing about the Hallyu phenomenon is not whatHallyu means or why it is so successful, but the peculiar way in which the term hasbeen applied. Koreans cannot label cultural products as Hallyu straightaway. AsJin-Seok Kang explains in his article ‘Hanryu is the Cultural Code of East Asia’,23

Hallyu is a term that can only be applied to a cultural product once it has beenexposed to foreign audiences. In other words, not every Korean drama, film or pop

Significance of the Korean Wave in South Korea 49


song, no matter how popular in Korea, will be labelled Hallyu – only those thathave been exported and done so successfully.

The TV drama Winter Sonata is a good example of how a programme, its starsand director all became Hallyu. It was sold to the Japanese network NHK for444,000,000 Won (22,000,000 Won per episode), the highest price ever paid byJapan for a Korean dramatic export. Its Korean star Yong-Jun Bae became a house-hold name in Japan after its release in 2003, achieving a level of popularity thatcould not be ignored even in Korea. He was called ‘Yong-sama’ (sama being anhonorific title reserved for Japanese royalty) and gained a huge female following inJapan. Japanese magazines and newspapers bought Korean articles for translationin their publications, and Chosun Weekly reported that there were around 50Japanese reporters working in Korea, assigned to report his movements as well asinterview him when ever possible. This, apparently, was because any news on Baesold magazines and newspapers.24

Yet the impact of Winter Sonata went far beyond the success of its star. In 2003Gakamigahara City in Japan reconstructed the sets as part of a local festival, includ-ing the Nam-I island path, complete with the benches where the two protagonistsshared their first kiss. The city also sold Winter Sonata Bento (Lunch Boxes) con-taining the menu of what the production team had to eat while making thedrama.25 Following such reports it was apparent to Koreans just what an impact itsdrama was having internationally.26

Winter Sonata was not actually that popular when it first broadcast in Korea in2002. But following its Japanese success, it was rebroadcast in April 2005 and didmuch better. More interestingly perhaps is, after its successful exportation, WinterSonata was retrospectively labelled a Hallyu drama. Hallyu, therefore, is not a termthat is reliant on any particular notion of artistic quality, aesthetic principle orgeneric content, but rather it is an evaluation of the ‘exportability’ of Korean prod-ucts. The term inextricably carries with it the notion of selling Korean-ness to therest of Asia, and has thus become extremely important to Koreans not only as asource of entertainment but also of national pride. Rather than just being symp-tomatic of the economic rise of Korea and its investment in its cultural industries,Hallyu has become emblematic of the rise of Korea within Asia and of its culturalinfluence on its neighbours. To explain this nationalistic dimension further, I willexamine the television drama, Autumn in My Heart, the prequel to Winter Sonata,and the programme that in Korea has been widely accepted as marking the begin-ning of Hallyu television drama.

Autumn in My Heart was first broadcast in Korea on 18 September 2000 on KBS(Korean Broadcasting System). It received very high ratings, and at its peak of pop-ularity, attracted 45 per cent of Korean viewers.27 Its success led to the producer,Seok-Ho Yun and its four lead actors – Seung-Heon Song, Hye-Gyo Song, Bin Wonand Chae-Young Han – becoming household names. Autumn in My Heart finishedon 7 November 2000 after being shown weekly for almost two months. So suc-cessful was it that Yun went on to produce three sequels: Winter Sonata (which ranfrom 14 January 2002 to 9 March 2002), Scent of Summer/ Yeoleum hyangki (which



ran from 7 July to 8 September 2003) and a belated sequel Spring Waltz/ Bomuiwalcheu (which ran from 6 March to 16 May 2006). Autumn in My Heart and itsthree sequels are referred to in Korea as the ‘four seasons series’ and the locations,mise-en-scène and narratives attempt to echo the mood of each season. Forexample, Autumn in My Heart is about a romance that briefly blooms beforecoming to a tragic end. It is set against a backdrop of falling leaves and golden hueswith a melancholic soundtrack, all suggestive of the title’s season.

The story of Autumn in My Heart is a tragic love story about a young man, Joon-Suh, and a young woman, Eun-Suh. These two people grew up together believingthey were brother and sister, sharing a happy life with loving parents. When theywere teenagers, Eun-Suh was involved in a serious accident after which a doctorrevealed the shocking news that she was not Joon-Suh’s biological sister. It turnedout that a classmate of Eun-Suh (who disliked her because she was envious of Eun-Suh’s wealth) was his real sister. As a result of this revelation, Joon-Suh’s parentstake their real daughter back, as she was living a life of poverty, and decide to moveto America to start a new life together. They offer to take Eun-Suh with them butshe elects to stay behind with her biological mother who lives alone in penury.

Next the drama jumps a few years to when Joon-Suh returns to Korea andbecomes engaged to a beautiful artist, Yu-Mi (Na-Na Han), whom he met inAmerica. He has been unable to forget Eun-Suh, his estranged sister, and is deter-mined to find her. In the meantime, she has been working as a janitor at a resortcomplex to support her family, enduring poverty and an abusive brother. As theseries develops, Joon-Suh and Eun-Suh continue to narrowly miss each other, thusbuilding up the suspense for when they finally meet. When they eventually do so,they cannot admit that they have always been in love, again escalating the narra-tive tension for when they at last admit their true feelings. When they do, their loveis met with disapproval from everyone, setting up the well-known tale of star-crossed lovers kept apart by family and social rules. To complicate matters, Joon-Suh is forced to return to his fiancé out of a sense of duty following her attemptedsuicide. Eun-Suh then learns that she has a terminal illness, a fact that she hidesfrom Joon-Suh. At the end of the series, Joon-Suh discovers the truth and rushesback to her for a blissful last few days before Eun-Suh dies happily with Joon-Suhbeside her. The final scene of the drama shows Jun-Suh walking slowly and withpurpose straight towards a fast-approaching truck.

Autumn in My Heart is extremely sentimental and in this is indebted to ‘shinpa’melodrama, which has been popular in Korea for years. The weekly magazineHankeoryu 21 explains how Autumn in My Heart is pure ‘shinpa’ because it con-tains many of the traditional situations: the tragedy of separation caused bypoverty; a female lead with a terminal illness; rivalry between the rich and thepoor; putting duty before personal happiness; the foregrounding of destiny andfate.28 The report concludes that the success of Autumn in My Heart clearly showsthat ‘shinpa’ remains a hugely important aspect of Korean popular culture. It hasalso undoubtedly contributed to the success of Hallyu drama in Asia. For example,the actress, Hae-Sook Kim, who plays Eun-Suh’s biological mother, has seen her


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career go from strength to strength in Asia playing the self-sacrificing mother innumerous Hallyu dramas, and winning the International Cooperation Award atthe 16th Japanese Critics Awards in Tokyo on 27 March 2007.29 Mothers are notalone in their suffering, however, as we see almost every main character (includ-ing, in an interestingly recent development, male protagonists) crying on a weeklybasis.

The rather old fashioned nature of Autumn in My Heart as well as producer Yun’sother sequels, despite their international success, has received criticism, particu-larly for producing a picture postcard view of Korea.30 However, it can be arguedthat this picturesque, over-idealised image of Korea is one of the major reasons forthe pride Koreans take in Hallyu. Although unrealistic, it has changed the image ofKorea for Asian audiences. For example, in China the impact of Hallyu drama hasapparently led to Korea being associated with ‘technical advancement and modernstyle’.31 For the Japanese: ‘Korea conjured up images of “dark, noisy, smelly,” . . .but now . . . fans associate Korea with “beautiful things”.’32 This projected imagehas also had an important impact on Korean tourism.

In 2003 ‘Park Young Su, Assistant bureau chief at the Korean NationalTourism Organisation (KNTO) said, “thanks to the success of shows likeAutumn in My Heart and Winter Sonata, we’ve had 130,000 tourists from China,Taiwan, Hong Kong, Singapore, Malaysia and Thailand coming to visit the loca-tions where the dramas were filmed” . . . The number of Taiwanese who visitedKorea in 2003 totalled 180,000, a 50 per cent increase from the previous year’sfigure of 120,000.’33 In response to this growth in ‘Hallyu tourism’, the realKorea, to a small extent, has been reconstructed to fit the fantasy of the Koreaexported abroad, and the one visiting tourists expect to see. The Korean TourismOrganisation created an official website containing tourist informationspecifically for Hallyu tourists. ‘Hello Hallyu’34contains detailed informationabout locations where Korean Hallyu dramas (Autumn in My Heart, WinterSonata, Jewel in the Palace, for instance) were filmed. The Autumn in My Heartweb pages contain six memorable locations from the drama complete withtextual information regarding which dramatic events occurred at each site.Other information provided includes how to get to there, accommodation andthings to do. The website can be read in Korean, Japanese, Chinese and English.Korean travel agencies have taken advantage of this opportunity, creatingnumerous itineraries aimed particularly at Japanese tourists; local councils havealso jumped on the bandwagon. In May 2007 Seoul City Council opened theFour Seasons House at Sang-Su Dong that has reproduced several sets from the‘four seasons series’. The house also displays photos and props from the series aswell as organising special events, such as concerts featuring music from theseries, meetings with the actors and autograph signings. The city council is opti-mistic that many foreign visitors will visit the Four Seasons House and conse-quently help revive the local economy in the surrounding area.35 Doobo Shimdiscusses in the article ‘Hybridity and the Rise of Korean Popular Culture in Asia’that ‘Korean big business is making efforts to transform Korean wave fans into



consumers of Korean products and services’.36 Yet in terms of the tourist indus-try Korea, to a point, is also transforming itself to meet the demands of Hallyufans.

However unrealistic the projected portrayal of Korea is, especially in terms of thecountry’s international image, Hallyu appears to be working. In Asia, as Shimexplains:

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 dec-orating their backpacks, notebooks and rooms with photographs of Korean stars. Inthe streets of Hanoi and Beijing, it is common to find young members of the ‘KoreaTribe,’ or Koreanophiles, sporting multiple earrings, baggy hip-hop pants, and thesquare-toed shoes of Seoul fashion. So popular are Korean actresses [Young-Ae Lee,Hae-Gyo Song, Hee-Sun Kim and Ji-Hyun Jeon] that it has been reported that theirwanna-be fans in Taiwan and China request their facial features when going for cos-metic surgery. 37

Given the success of Hallyu and its stars at exporting a complimentary image ofKorea, it is not surprising that the Korean government has identified it as a meansof serving national interests at a political level. In 2004 the Korean governmentinstigated the export of Hallyu dramas including Autumn in My Heart, WinterSonata and Jewel in the Palace/ Dae Jang-geum (Byung-Hoon Lee, 2005) to Egypt.The government stated that this cultural exchange would help to establish a posi-tive image of Korea and improve relations between the two nations at the timewhen South Korea was about to send more troops to Iraq. This was the first timeKorean television drama had ever been shown in the Middle East and, more impor-tantly given the contemporary international political climate, was consciouslydone so to serve a diplomatic function; its export designed to convey the goodcharacter of Koreans and justify the country’s honourable intentions in taking partin military action.38

As Hallyu has increasingly become seen as an important aspect of how Korea isviewed and promoted abroad, the flip side is that national pride can be dented andKorea cast in a less flattering light when Hallyu contains elements that are seen totarnish the country’s reputation. Such an instance occurred in 2004 when thepopular Hallyu star, Seung-Heon Song, was involved in a military service scandal.In Korea, it is mandatory for men over the age of 18 to do national service. Militaryservice is a hot issue in Korean society and is perceived as more than simply amatter of national security. There is also a great emotional and sentimental reso-nance surrounding the fact that young men are seen to be selflessly serving theircountry. While Song was filming a new drama, Sad Love Story/ Seulpeun yeonga39

abroad, the story broke that he had unlawfully avoided being drafted. In responseto this, Song returned to Korea and made a public apology to the nation. However,a Member of Parliament, Sang-Ho Yoo, proposed that Song’s military service bedelayed in order for him to finish his current acting project given the importanceof Hallyu to Korean national interests. Yet this suggestion, rather than easing the



situation, further ignited national outrage and Yoo also had to make a publicapology. In November 2004 Song began his military service and completed it on15 November 2006. Following his release, he held an event for his fans (Asian FanMeeting 2006, 18–19 November 2006) with around 4,500 Asian fans from eightcountries attending the event. This created another round of criticism after Songand his management put on an exhibition of photos and memorabilia gatheredfrom his two years of military service. Many Korean found this distasteful, as itwas perceived that he was attempting to further his career at the expense of serviceto his country, particularly since he had tried to avoid it in the first place.40 Whatthis incident illustrates is that being a good Korean is an integral part of being aHallyu star. No matter how internationally famous a star gets, they are still per-ceived, first and foremost, as representing their country: they must be a goodKorean first and a Hallyu star second.

Allied to the notion of Hallyu selling Korea abroad is the rather more worryingnationalistic sentiment that the nation is finally asserting itself within Asia, attain-ing a position of dominance it has long deserved. Alongside jingoistic language thataccompanies Hallyu, such as Korean ‘Hallyu Stars Storm Asia’41 and Korean Hallyu‘Conquering Asia’,42 there have been assertions that historically Korea has alwaysbeen a huge influence within Asia; a notion embedded in the term Hallyu, as if thiswave flows far back into history. For example, Jae-Hae Im’s edited book There wasHallyu in Ancient Korea is a collection of articles that examine the social and cul-tural influence of Korea (dance, fashion, etc.) on Asia throughout history.43 Thisview of Korea’s far reaching and long-lived influence has a wider resonance as it isbound with the current notion of Korea culturally conquering its neighbours afteryears of being colonised. The fact that Korea is now exporting, rather than import-ing, culture is a fact not lost on the Korean government. As Dong-Hoo Lee informsus:

The Korean government has banned the import of Japanese popular culture since itsliberation from Japanese colonial rule in 1945 . . . For Korea, Japan has been regardedas a ‘close but distant’ other/oppressor . . . The majority of Koreans have been very sen-sitive to the inflow of Japanese TV programs and their ‘bad’ impact on Korean culturalidentity. In 2000, Korean TV stations were for the first time allowed to importJapanese-produced sports programs, documentaries, and news reports. However, thegovernment has not yet allowed Japanese TV dramas and other entertainment pro-grams to be imported. The government’s reason for this is said to be in considerationto the public fear that undesirable cultural aspects of the former colonizer, such as rel-atively liberal expressions of sex and violence as well as commercialism, would nega-tively affect Korean culture.44

Although this has been relaxed in recent times, with the Japanese channel NHKnow available on cable for example, Korea, to a certain extent, can be viewed as acountry that has enjoyed one way transnational exchange in relation to Japan,happy to export Korean-ness to Japan whilst only half-opening the door toJapanese cultural influence in return. This in extreme terms can be viewed, as with



the nationalistic language surrounding Hallyu, with Korea colonising its formercoloniser. Yet the language of conquest that so often accompanies reports onHallyu in Korea is recognised by some within the country as being undesirable. No-Ja Park, for example, objects to the use of such ‘pseudo-colonial’ terminology asoverly jingoistic, complaining that such an imperialistic stance is unjustifiablefrom a country that has historically suffered so much from unwanted imperialdominance by its Asian neighbours.45 Seong-Uk Lee contends, in his discussion ofthe Korean film industry, that ideally the current movement towards exportationto the Asian market should be to establish an Asian network on the basis of ‘coop-eration’ rather than aiming to ‘conquer’ markets in the region.46

The nationalistic tone that accompanies Hallyu has interesting implications tothe study of transnationalism and post-colonialism because the focus is on Asianrather than global domination. Both of these areas in Western academic discoursetend to focus on the West-East binary. Hallyu (in another revealing aspect of theterm) indicates the importance to Korea of transnationalism solely within aspecific regional context, as Hallyu can only be applied to cultural productspopular within Asia. In relation to post-colonialism, the term in Korea, rather thanconjuring images of former Western imperialistic endeavours, signifies more thehistorical dominance of Japan over the nation. Therefore, given that Korean cul-tural products are now being perceived in the country as making inroads intoJapan, this exportation has a patriotic resonance of conquering the conquerors,perhaps incomprehensible to Western academics. Thus, although a fuller discus-sion lies outside of the parameters of this article, Hallyu has interesting implica-tions for the application of such concepts to Asian cultural exchange, as in the caseof Hallyu, the West is excluded from both the post-colonial and transnationalaspects of Korean television drama.

Given that Hallyu can be applied to so much, perhaps it is more profitable tothink about the term less as a generic definition that signifies the ‘Korean-ness’ ofcultural products, but rather as a nationalistic sentiment that essentially means‘successful in Asia’. Korean cultural products that attain genuine global success areseen as something else entirely and not labelled Hallyu even though they maycontain as much ‘Korean-ness’ as a Hallyu product. Films, for example, that havereached a global audience such as Oldboy (Chan-Wook Park, 2003) and LadyVengeance (Chan-Wook Park, 2006) have not been labelled Hallyu because theirimpact has been as great, if not greater, in the West than in the Asian market. Whatthis implies is that local or regional success is easier to appreciate, to take pride in,than global achievements, in countries that are geographically further away andhave historically less to answer for. Perhaps the simplest parallel for the pleasureKoreans take in Hallyu can be drawn with sporting events where the most impor-tant and satisfying victories are against their nearest neighbours.

Therefore, Hallyu as a term appears to be rigidly and geographically limited tothe borders of Asia. At the 60th Cannes Film Festival, Do-Yeon Jeon won the BestActress Award for her role in Secret Sunshine (Chang-Dong Lee, 2007). On herreturn from Cannes there was a press conference during which she was praised for



becoming a ‘world star’. Having become internationally recognised as a result ofthe film and her award at Cannes, she was described as ‘a world star that has gonebeyond a Hallyu star’.47 This distinction highlights the fact that the Asian marketand the Western market are perceived differently and that to become a star beyondAsia means dropping the Hallyu epithet.

The important caveat is that successful cultural export does not, of course,equate with superior cultural quality. As Iwabuchi demonstrated in his study ofJapanese TV drama, Tokyo Love Story (Fuji Television Network, 1991), we also needto consider historical, political, social and economic circumstances that help orhinder such exportation. Also contrary to what Hallyu may be seen to represent,which is the growing cultural domination of Korea in Asia, the popularity ofHallyu may well be the result of the fact that it is simply producing the types ofdrama that Asians want to see at the moment. As Iwabuchi states,

Transnational cultural power does not necessarily mean the straightforward embodi-ment and recognition of one culture’s superiority over another but can be defined asthe capacity of a culture to produce symbolic images and meanings which ‘appeal tothe senses, emotions, and thoughts of the self and others’.48

Therefore, although Hallyu is successful in Asia, it does not necessarily mean thatKorean cultural superiority is finally being recognised, which much of the nation-alistic language that accompanies it tends to imply. Hallyu as a term is open tosuch connotations due to the indistinctiveness and vagueness of its actualmeaning, allowing it to encompass all that is culturally influential in Asia as seento originate from Korea. Thus in some circles Hallyu in Korea has come to signifythe long awaited cultural ascendancy and Asian-wide recognition of Korea.However, this correlation between success and Korean cultural quality serves apolitical, economic and nationalistic agenda that ignores all the other reasons forthe success of Hallyu. Not least of these is the complicity and willingness of Korea’sAsian neighbours to embrace Korean stars, dramas, music and fashions, andwelcome them into their homes. This is not conquest but rather a willing collab-oration and acceptance. There is undeniably a dark side to the Hallyu phenome-non, its evident success used by some to re-write history and, in extreme cases,even human biology. Donga Science, for example, published a special cover story(January 2006) which discussed the DNA of the nation. It offered a ‘scientific’rationale for the nation’s success in entertainment and sports, arguing thatKorean’s biological advantages were a result of the vitality of the Korean race. Yetrather than looking exclusively at Korea for the meaning of Hallyu, or viewing itas a form of cultural conquest, it is transnational cultural exchange that hasenabled Korean cultural products to be exported en masse. Rather than focusingon the negative aspects of Hallyu, which serve to suggest the rise of Korea at theexpense of its Asian neighbours, I prefer to view it in an optimistic light as a pos-itive indicator of a growing openness and willingness to communicate betweenAsian countries.




Notes

The MMU (Manchester Metropolitan University) Cheshire Faculty Research Committeesupported my research in Korea for this article. I would also like to thank Dr Basil Glynn forhis advice and comments on this article.

1 Korean Parliamentary Culture and Tourism Research Group, ‘Suggestions on Strategicand Supportive Methods to Aid the Sustainability of Hallyu’, 2005: http://www.assembly.go.kr (in Korean).

2 Dean Visser, ‘What Hip Asians Want’, Washington Post, 10 March 2002, A23.3 Jane Kagan is director of the UCLA Extension Department of Entertainment Studies

and Performing Arts. This opinion was expressed in an interview with a daily newspa-per, Kyunghyung Shin-moon, following her attendance at the ‘International Seminar onthe Promotion of Hallyu-Wood’. The seminar was organised by Gyeonggi Province andheld on 2 June 2006 at Goyang City in Gyeonggi Province. http://news.khan.co.kr/kh_news/khan_art_view.html?artid�200606291831131&code�100100 (in Korean).

4 Dong-Hwan Kwon, ‘Is It Too Early to Talk about “Hallyu” in the Philippines?:Koreanovela and Its Reception Among [the] Filipino Audience’, ‘Cultural Space andPublic Sphere in Asia: an International Conference’, The Institute for Communication,Arts and Technology, 15–16 March 2006, Seoul, 258: http://asiafuture.org/csps2006/01program.html (in Korean).

5 Research Group, ‘Suggestions on Strategic and Supportive Methods to Aid theSustainability of Hallyu’: http://www.assembly.go.kr (in Korean).

6 Sang Kim, ‘Does “Hallyu” exist in Singapore’, The Journal of East Asian Studies, 42,2002, 114–36 (in Korean).

7 Kwon, ‘Is It Too Early to Talk about “Hallyu” in the Philippines?’, 257–88; Jane O.Vinculado, ‘Asia Invades the Philippines: Asian Soap Operas and Philippine TelevisionProgramming’ ‘Cultural Space and Public Sphere in Asia: an International Conference’,234–9; http://asiafuture.org/csps2006/01program.html.

8 Han-Woo Lee, ‘The Korean Wave in Vietnam: Its Formation and SocioeconomicInfluence’, The Journal East Asian Studies, 42, 2002, 93–113 (in Korean).

9 Lihyun Lin, ‘The Paradox of the Korean Wave in Taiwan’, ‘Cultural Space and PublicSphere in Asia: an International Conference’, 129–43: http://asiafuture.org/csps2006/01program.html.

10 Sun-Ho Kim, ‘The Character and Prospect of the “Wave of Korean Culture” inMongolia’, The Journal East Asian Studies, 42, 2002, 59–72 (in Korean).

11 Eun-Sook Lee, ‘A Study of the Popular “Korean Wave” in China’, Literature and Film, 3,2002, 31–59 (in Korean); Jin Heo, ‘The “Hanliu (the Korean Syndrome)” Phenomenonand the Acceptability of Korean TV Dramas in China, Korean Association for Broadcasting& Telecommunication Studies, 16, 1, 2002, 496–529 (in Korean); Zang Ying, ‘A Study ofthe “Korean Wave” and Reception of Korean Dramas in China: From the Perspective ofCollege Students’, MA dissertation, Yonsei University, Seoul, Korea, 2003 (in Korean).

12 Sae-Kyung Yoo and Kyung-Sook Lee, ‘The Cultural Proximity of the Television Dramasin East-Asia Countries: Wish Upon a Star of Korea, Love Talks of Hong Kong and Loveand Sorrow of China’, The Korean Journal of Journalism & Communication Studies, 45,3, 2001, 230–70 (in Korean).

13 Joseph Straubhaar, ‘Beyond Media Imperialism: Asymmetrical Interdependence andCultural Proximity’, Critical Studies in Mass Communication, 8, 1, 1991, 39–59.


14 Eun-Kyung Yang, ‘Beyond “Hallyu”: The Globalization of the Korean TelevisionIndustry’, Studies of Broadcasting Culture, 16, 1, 2004, 9–13: http://office.kbs.co.kr/book/1407.

15 Kwon, ‘Is It Too Early to Talk about “Hallyu” in the Philippines?’, 276.16 John Nguyeat Erni and Siew Keng Chua, ‘Introduction: Our Asian Media Studies?’ in

Erni and Chua, eds, Asian Media Studies: Politics of Subjectivities, Blackwell Publishing,2005, p. 7.

17 Vinculado, ‘Asia Invades the Philippines’, 238.18 Koichi Iwabuchi, Recentering Globalization: Popular Culture and Japanese

Transnationalism, Duke University Press, 2002.19 Kwon, ‘Is It Too Early to Talk about “Hallyu” in the Philippines?’, 273.20 Doobo Shim, ‘Hybridity and the Rise of Korean Popular Culture in Asia’, Media, Culture

& Society, 28, 1, 2006, 28. See also Jun-Hao Hong and Yu-Ciung Hsu, ‘Asian NICs’Broadcast Media in the Era of Globalization: The Trend of Commercialization and ItsImpact, Implications and Limits’, Gazette, 61, 3–4, 1999, 228; Indrajit Banerjee, ‘TheLocal Strikes Back: Media Globalization and Localization in the New Asian TelevisionLandscape’, Gazette, 64, 6, 2002, 526; Graham Murdock, ‘Past and Posts: RethinkingChange, Retrieving Critique’, European Journal of Communication, 19, 2004, 30.

21 Seung-Hye Song, ‘Internationalization of the Broadcasting Industry andRearrangement of Cultural Boundaries in Respect to the Export of Korea BroadcastingContent in the Asian Market’, Studies of Broadcasting Culture, 13, 1, 2001, 1–20 (inKorean): http://office.kbs.co.kr/book/1356. See also Lin, ‘The Paradox of the KoreanWave in Taiwan’, for an account of this in Taiwanese.

22 Dal-Yong Jin, ‘Regionalization of East Asia in the 1990s: Cultural and EconomicAspects of the Television Program Trade’, Media Asia, 29, 4, 2002, 215–28.

23 Jin-Seok Kang, ‘Hanryu is the Cultural Code of East Asia’, Journal of InternationalPeace, 2, 1, 2005, 221–2.

24 Chosun Weekly, 1825, 2004, 57.25 Ibid., 58.26 For the popularity of Bae in Japan see also China Daily, ‘Nine Hurt in Crush of “Yong-

Sama” fans in Japan’, 26 November 2004: http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/english/doc/2004-11/26/content_395208.htm; ‘Japanese Marriages Falling Victim to “Yongfluenza” ’,Japan Today, 17 July 2004: http://www.japantoday.com/jp/shukan/234.

27 Eun-Ha Baek, ‘The Unchanging Rules of Yun Suk-Ho Drama’, Cine21, 413, 2003, 73.28 Hankyureo 21, 333, 2000: http://h21.hani.co.kr/section-021015000/2000/

021015000200011080333045.html (in Korean).29 Cine 21, 597, 2007, 32.30 Baek, ‘The Unchanging Rules of Yoon Suk-Ho Drama’, 70–3.31 Chosun-Ilbo, 22 August 2007, E6.32 Norimitsu Onishi, ‘What’s Korean for “Real Man?” Ask a Japanese Woman’, New York

Times, 23 December 2004, Late Edition, A23.33 Shim, ‘Hybridity and the Rise of Korean Popular Culture in Asia’, 30.34 See ‘Hello Hallyu’: http://english.tour2korea.com/hellohallyu/.35 Segye-Ilbo, 31 May 2007, 11.36 Shim, ‘Hybridity and the Rise of Korean Popular Culture in Asia’, 30.37 Ibid., 29.38 Radio Korea International, KBS, 28 May 2004: http://english.kbs.co.kr/news/newsview_

sub.php?menu=5&key=2004052820.



39 KimJongHak Productions produced this drama for 7,600,000,000 Won. It featuredwell-known Hallyu stars such as Song and Hee-Sun Kim. As a result of the Song scandaland his subsequent departure from the project to embark on his military service thedrama was on the verge of cancellation, but was salvaged when Song was replaced bythe lesser known actor, Jung-Hoon Yeon. The drama was broadcast in January 2005 onMBC (Munhwa Broadcasting Corporation).

40 Segye-Ilbo, 18 November 2006: http://www.segye.com/Service5/ShellView.asp?TreeID�1052&PCode�0007&DataID�200611181447000057 (in Korean).

41 Chosun-Ilbo, 16 June 2006, A25.42 Sports Chosun, 27 June 2007: http://sports.chosun.com/news/ntype2.htm?ut�1&

name�/news/entertainment/200706/20070627/76776103.htm (in Korean).43 Im Jae-Hae, ed., There was Hallyu in Ancient Korea, Jisik Sanup Publications, 2007.44 Dong-Hoo Lee, ‘Cultural Contact With Japanese TV Dramas: Modes of Reception

and Narrative Transparency’, in Koichi Iwabuchi, ed., Feeling Asian Modernities:Transnational Consumption of Japanese TV Dramas, Hong Kong University Press, 2004,p. 251, pp. 258–60.

45 No-Ja Park, ‘Should You Be Proud of Hallyu?’ Hankyoreh, 20 June 2005: http://www.hani.co.kr/arti/opinion/column/43712.html.

46 Seong-Uk Lee, ‘Becoming the “Server” for an Asian Network through Collaborationrather than Conquest’, Korea Culture and Arts Journal, 306, 2005, 69–75.

47 Cine 21, 606, 2007, 75.48 Koichi Iwabuchi, Recentering Globalization: Popular Culture and Japanese

Transnationalism, Duke University Press, 2002, p. 133.



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