Squid Game, Blackpink, K-pop and K-drama make South Korea a cultural superpower

Evan Barringer was 14 years old when he stumbled upon Full House, a South Korean romcom where two houseguests are forced to share a house.

Sitting in his house in Memphis, he played pretending to be the Asian version of a beloved American sitcom from the 1980s. It wasn’t until the third episode that they realized they had nothing in common except the name. But he was drawn.

That random choice changed his life. Twelve years later, he’s an English teacher in South Korea – and he says he loves it here: “I have to try all the food I’ve seen in K-drama, and I’ve seen a few K. -pop artists in concerts whose lyrics I like to learn Korean .”

When Evan discovered Full House in 2012, the South Korean entertainment industry was not well-known around the world. Psy’s Gangnam Style was the most popular Korean song at the time.

Today, there are more than 220 million Korean entertainment fans worldwide – four times the population of South Korea. The Squid Game, Netflix’s most popular show, has just returned for a much-anticipated second season.

How did we get here?

The so-called Korean Wave swept the world, experts say, when the success of the brand met the cost of American-inspired design. And Korean entertainment – from pop music and mushy dramas to popular songs built around international themes – was ready.

BTS and Blackpink are now household names around the world. People are complaining about K-drama from Dubai to India to Singapore. Exports of these Korean products – including video games – are now in the billions.

Last month, the 53-year-old poet and poet Han Kang won the Nobel Prize for his writings, Internet boards were full of memes showing the “Culture Victory” in South Korea – a reference to the popular video game Civilization.

And there were jokes about how the country fulfilled the dream of founding father Kim Koo, who famously wrote that he wanted Korea to be a country of culture rather than power.

As it turns out, this moment has been years in the making.

After the South Korean dictatorship ended in 1987, censorship was abolished and mass media was introduced. Before long, there was a generation of producers who grew up worshiping Hollywood and hip-hop, says Hye Seung Chung, an assistant professor of Korean Film Studies at the University of Buffalo.

At about the same time, South Korea grew rich rapidly, benefiting from the boom in automobiles and electronics. And money from conglomerates, or chaebols as they are known, flowed into movies and TV, giving them a Hollywood-like appearance.

He started owning many companies, from production to movies. So they were willing to increase production volume without worrying too much about losses, says Prof Chung.

K-pop, meanwhile, became an uproar in the mid-90s, leading to the success of groups like HOT and Shinhwa.

This encouraged organizations to emulate Japan’s boring technology practices.

Find young talent, often at a young age, and sign them to multi-year contracts where they become “perfect” idols, with clean images and well-managed public relations. When this system caught on, it changed K-pop, creating more and more idols.

By the 2000s, Korean TV shows and K-pop were popular in East and Southeast Asia. But streaming took them into the world, and into the lives of everyone with a cell phone.

That’s where the recommendation engine took over – it’s been essential for introducing fans to Korean culture, taking them from one show to another, across different genres and platforms.

Evan reportedly starred in 16 episodes of Full House. He liked how it took time to develop a love, from conflict to attraction, unlike the American shows he was familiar with.

“I was fascinated by the diversity of every culture I saw – I realized they didn’t wear shoes indoors,” he recalls. So they adopted Netflix’s ideas for Korean content. Before long, he found himself humming sports music, and was drawn to K-pop.

Now he’s started watching a variety of shows, a reality TV show where players face multiple challenges together.

As they try to follow the instructions, fans are immersed in a world that sounds strange but familiar – which eventually includes kimchi jiggae, a kimchi-flavored lentil, and kalguksu, a seafood and kelp soup.

When Mary Gedda went to South Korea for the first time, she went in search of a bowl of kimchi jjigae, as she had watched the stars many times.

“I was crying [as I ate it]. It was very spicy,” he says. “I thought, why did I order this? He eats easily in every show.”

Mary, who wants to be a French actress, now lives in Seoul. Originally a fan of K-pop, he discovered K-drama and learned Korean. He has also done several cameo roles. “I got lucky and I really like it,” he says.

For Mary, food was a big part of the interest because she saw variety in K’s play. Seeing how the characters form relationships over food was familiar to her, she says, because she grew up in the French countryside in Burgundy.

But there is also the promise of love, which drew Marie Namur to South Korea from her native Belgium. She started watching K-dramas quietly, after going to South Korea, but says she continued because she was “very attracted to handsome Korean men”.

“[They] it’s an impossible love story between a super-rich guy and a girl who’s usually poor, and you know, the guy’s there to save her and he’s selling you dreams. “

But it’s Korean women who are writing most of these shows – it’s their ideas, or fantasy, that are capturing the attention (and hearts) of other women around the world.

In Seoul, Marie said she was “treated like a lady”, which did not happen “for a long time”, but “her relationship was 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 out 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 look for another country because they are disillusioned with their own people, says Prof Chung.

Prim romances, with glamorous, caring and attractive heroines, are drawing female audiences away from what they see as hypersexual American entertainment. And when social inequality became a strong theme in Korean films and shows – such as Parasite and Squid Game – it attracted viewers around the world disenchanted with capitalism and economic inequality in their own countries.

Seeking a global audience has also brought challenges. The prevalence of English lyrics in K-pop has drawn criticism.

And now there’s a bigger look at the more visible side of the industry. Stars are under a lot of pressure to be perfect, for example, with the demands of highly competitive companies. Producers who make blockbuster shows say they are exploited and complain that they are not paid well.

However, it is good to see the world paying attention to Korea, says Prof Chung. He grew up in repressive South Korea, where opponents of the government were threatened or even killed. He took refuge in American films.

When Parasite played in a movie theater in the small American town where he lives, he saw on the faces of some moviegoers the same awe he had as a child watching Hollywood movies: “I feel so good that our love is back.”