Hallyu Culture Analysis from Malaysia Newspaper Online.

Hallyu Culture
Arts & Culture 2008-04-29 11:29
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The Korean Wave, or ‘Hallyu’—from popular music to dramas and films—has become a phenomenon embracing Korean culture as a whole. Above everything else, however, TV dramas are considered to have taken the lead in creating Hallyu. Exports of Korean dramas have seen remarkable growth since 2000. Analysis shows that, in general, the sudden popularity of Korean dramas in Asia is ascribable to the content of the dramas, sophisticated technology and the attractiveness of the actors and actresses.

Common comments heard about Korean dramas and the main factors for their popularity include: Plots and content of the dramas are not old-fashioned but very original. The plots show dynamic changes and ups and downs. The stories have very familiar tones and deal with everyday events. Owing to outstanding production technology, the backgrounds, settings and music are excellent. The camera work is particularly outstanding. The graceful beauty and attractiveness of the stars, their outstanding personalities, their sensational fashions and excellent performances inspire admiration.

Korean popular culture has also presented an important cultural text with which people talk about conflicts between generations, jump over national barriers, and discuss disputes between men and women.

Take the case of Winter Sonata, which has been popular in Japan since 2003. This single TV drama has aroused favourable interest toward
Korea more successfully than any other previous effort, on a government level, to better relations between Korea and Japan. Middle-aged Japanese women have created a Winter Sonata craze and the ‘Yonsama’ phenomenon. Through another country’s drama, they have identified their desire for intimacy between a man and a woman, found their hope for new gender relationships and felt satisfaction; this in turn has led to their expanded interest in Korean society as a whole.



Bae Yong-joon’s Winter Sonata has become somewhat of an Asian version of Hollywood productions, but it has something Korean and something oriental which we do not readily notice. In contrast to this drama, Jewel In The Palace (Daejanggeum) introduces Korea directly. This drama starts with the concept that food and medicine have the same roots, an idea alien to the West.

Compared to Winter Sonata, Daejanggeum has endless resources with which Hallyu may well be further developed. Though it is a single TV drama, it contains Korea’s true culture, Korea’s past and present. If the ‘Yonsama’ boom is compared to a wave on an ocean’s surface, Daejanggeum is a rapid flow of undercurrents containing our history of several thousand years, particularly with its typically Korean theme song.



Instead of choosing between ‘Yonsama’ and Daejanggeum, we may as well think of ‘Yonsama’ and Daejanggeum as two wheels of a cart. The same mass media might be more interested in an Asian version of Hollywood, plus a Daejanggeum-style drama where ancient Korean court dresses and things Korean, including clothes, food and houses are shown.


In dealing with Hallyu, what is viewed as most important is how to connect it with the national image. In order for Hallyu to find its proper place within the realm of national cultural policy, we have to understand Hallyu’s meaning in the context of time and the region. We have to make an accurate analysis of Hallyu’s specific characteristics in each country. It is also important to find out which country is interested in importing what type of Korean popular culture.


The foreign currency crisis in 1999 coincided with the huge success of the blockbuster Shiri. The economic recession in 2004 ushered in an era of 10 million spectators with Shilmido and Waving Taegukki. Economic difficulties are good medicine for Korean films. It is common knowledge that economic recession results in reduced consumer spending, including on cultural activities, which have nothing to do with livelihood. A shrinking of the cultural industry is easily predictable.

Since the foreign currency crisis, on top of the emergence of several blockbusters, the Korean film industry has had increased exports and has received more awards in major overseas film festivals, and is now enjoying an unprecedented heyday. Hallyu, which surfaced in China and Southeast Asia and then swept Japan after the economic crisis in 1999, also proved the competitiveness of Korean dramas.

Numerous kinds of analyses regarding the Hallyu phenomenon have identified several typical problems.

First, there appears to be a one-sided, nationalistic superiority complex regarding the Hallyu phenomenon. This attitude reveals self-satisfaction with the excellence of Korean culture. This doesn’t fit with the goal of mutual exchange of culture in this global age. At the same time, on the contrary, there are self-humbling perspectives. Some say that Hallyu is a cultural optical illusion and is nothing but a temporary wind.

For example, they think it is a temporary trend, which has appeared during the cultural chaos following the decline of the production bases of popular culture in Japan and Hong Kong. Some devaluate the trend saying that it is only nonmainstream culture, limited to teenagers and juveniles. Some criticise it for being a B-class culture, too trendy and consumption-oriented. They have a negative view, likening it to a variation of the Zhonghua ideology of China and the cultural imperialism of the Co-prosperity Sphere of Great East Asia of Japan.

In a public hearing on Hallyu held by the Cultural and Tourism Committee of the National Assembly in Korea on April 20, 2005, a strong issue was made of Hallyu seeking only short-term profits while standing in the centre of popular culture. It may be pointed out that Hallyu has failed to develop into an overall interchange of culture and arts because it has concentrated on making profits doing domestic cultural business mainly by performing popular music and dramas. People responsible for importing Korean culture in Asian countries are very much concerned about the ‘impatience’ and ‘money-first attitudes’ by those dealing with Korean popular culture.

Quite a few people who had expected too much from Hallyu in terms of profit-making later found no guarantee of profitability and washed their hands of it. In the case of music discs, the popularity of Korean pop songs and stars doesn’t necessarily result in making profits on many occasions owing to rampant illegal reproductions.

All in all, almost every specialist is worried about the ‘lack of content’ and the ‘lack of strategy’ for Hallyu’s propagation. How to steadily provide good-quality cultural content, how to solve flooding problems of small-scale performance promoters, and how to strategically handle international negotiations are problems to be solved. Those arguments arise from economic concerns, not from interests in culture.

An important aspect of Hallyu is offering the possibility of creating an Asian cultural community on a higher level. It is suggested that this opportunity should be used to make a cultural block to arrest Western or American culture. It is apparent that as they watch Asian dramas, Asians who have experienced similar modernisation processes begin to have a sense of solidarity and that their envy of the West changes. It is significant to know that Hallyu has made each Asian country regard Asia as its reference group.

In the long run the higher objective of building an Asian cultural bloc should be reached. Hallyu is now creating a new epoch in forming our culture and establishing a new cultural policy. Accurate recognition and understanding of this will motivate us to expand Hallyu’s extension and to deepen inner potential. (By KANG CHUL-KEUN In Seoul/ The Korea Herald/ AsiaNews)

MySinchew 2008.04.29