Why South Korean culture is a global hit
October 11, 2024
Even though South Korean author Han Kang wasn't listed among the favorites for the 2024 Nobel Prize in Literature, her win happens to fit in an ongoing trend of international recognition for her country's culture.
Her breakthrough came in 2016 with the Man Booker International Prize for her novel "The Vegetarian," which was first published in 2007.
The prize was also shared with the translator of the novel, Deborah Smith, who then directly contributed to getting more Korean books translated into English. Following the success of "The Vegetarian," Smith founded Tilted Axis Press, a non-profit British publishing house specializing in the publication of contemporary Asian literature.
The popularity of Korean novels grew in other languages too. Since the Booker, Han Kang has also won other prestigious European awards, including France's 2023 Prix Médicis for foreign literature for her latest novel, "We Do Not Part," which will be published in English in 2025.
Other fellow Korean authors who are going strong on the international literary scene include Bora Chung, whose short story collection "Cursed Bunny" was shortlisted for the International Booker Prize in 2022; Kim Young-ha, who was awarded the Deutscher Krimi Preis (German Crime Fiction Prize) in 2020 — the most prestigious German literary prize for crime fiction — for "Diary of a Murderer"; or Cho Nam-joo, best known for her novel "Kim Ji-young, Born 1982" (2016), which has been translated into more than 18 languages.
But of course, the most visible South Korean pop culture exports are reaching the Western world through music, films and TV series, most prominently with Netflix's hit series "Squid Game," K-pop groups like BTS or Blackpink and Bong Joon-ho's Oscar-winning film "Parasite."
The K-wave first spread to other Asian countries
The steady success of South Korean pop culture reaches back several decades already.
The Chinese term "Hallyu," which literally translates as "Korean Wave" — now used to describe the popularity and spread of contemporary culture from South Korea — was coined in the mid-1990s. The rise of satellite media during that decade allowed K-dramas and Korean cinema to start spreading throughout East Asia and parts of Southeast Asia. The wave then rapidly moved onto to other parts of the world.
"Hallyu quickly conquered the Chinese market, but the industry always had their eyes on the US market, where it however faced many failures," Michael Fuhr, managing director at the Center for World Music of the Institute for Music and Musicology at the University of Hildesheim, told DW.
By 2008, South Korean cultural exports had surpassed the economic value of its cultural imports.
A grueling training system
The South Korean music industry differed from other markets early on through its idol training system, says Fuhr, author of works on K-pop.
The three biggest companies in the Korean entertainment industry, YG, SM and JYP, are agencies renowned for selecting hundreds of young trainees who are drilled in intense training programs, where they can spend 14 hours a day working on their performance skills. The pressure has also infamously led to many suicides in the industry.
At the end of the 2000s, the group Girls' Generation, formed by SM Entertainment, was a big hit in South Korea and Japan, while the boy band Big Bang, which was put together by YG in 2006, started gaining recognition abroad as well.
A milestone with Psy
But South Korean music's major breakthrough in the West came in 2012, with the global hit "Gangnam Style" by rapper Psy. His YouTube video was clicked more than a billion times within a few months, tallying up to more than 4.2 billion views to this day.
"Psy wasn't a classic representative of K-pop," points out Michael Fuhr, "but he demonstrated for the first time that language was no longer a barrier to international success."
The power of social networks
YouTube, along with other rapidly growing streaming and social media platforms, definitely contributed to the phenomenon. Suddenly, record companies were no longer dependent on broadcasters playing their songs or videos; fans could determine on their own what they liked.
"The fans of K-pop are well networked; the fan culture is very participatory and the industry knows how to serve it," says Michael Fuhr.
The agencies forming K-pop groups consciously select band members with different character traits to make sure that as many young people as possible can identify with them.
The bands are also required to have an active online presence, allowing fans to get the feeling that they're part of the lives of their idols, says Michael Fuhr: "It's a package that is being sold."
The high production quality of music and videos also contributes to its success. "From a Western point of view, what you see there is somehow new, but at the same time there's something familiar about it," says Michael Fuhr, pointing out Michael Jackson's influence on the sophisticated choreography of boy bands like Take That.
K-pop bands target an audience which has perhaps had enough of US pop stars and is searching for something "new and exciting, but at the same time not too strange."
Stories with a social commentary
"Squid Game," which returns for a second season at the end of 2024 after the first installment became a global sensation in 2021, likewise renews an established visual style.
The colorful aesthetics of the Netflix series feels familiar to a younger audience used to video games. For example, the symbols worn by the guards in the series — circle, square and triangle — are similar to those found on PlayStation consoles.
The issues addressed in the series — including poverty, hustle culture and the growing gap between the rich and poor — are universal, says Michael Fuhr.
Here too, successful films and shows offer a new take on long-standing social problems — with "Squid Game" and "Parasite" serving as the most prominent examples.
Beyond the fictional universes, these stories also provide insight into South Korean society, showing how many people in the country live in poverty, in cramped conditions, often without electricity and water or in basements, like the poor family who pushes their way into the life of a rich family in "Parasite."
According to the OECD, around 15% of the 52 million inhabitants have less than the average income at their disposal; poverty in old age is estimated at about 40%, which is the second-highest rate among the around 100 countries analyzed by the global policy forum.
According to the 2022 Seoul Young Adult Panel Study, more than half of the youth population in Seoul faces asset poverty, which means that they aren't able to cover their basic needs for three months in case of an emergency. Many families go into debt in order to provide their children with a good education.
At the same time, it is common in South Korea to look down on those who have less. "It's a society very much shaped by capitalist values," says Michael Fuhr. There is "a strong work mentality and in parts a neo-Confucianist hierarchy of values."
Haunting portraits of violence
Stylistically, novels by Han Kang have of course little in common with the brash style of "Squid Game" and other Korean thriller movies, or K-pop stars. Nevertheless, through her succinct and poetic style, she also reveals traits of Korean society that resonate universally.
Patriarchal oppression shine through in "The Vegetarian," in which a woman haunted by blood-filled dreams adopts a plant-like existence as a form of resistance against gendered violence.
Grief, guilt, brutality and injustice are explored in the equally haunting "Human Acts," which takes the brutal aftermath of the 1980 Gwangju Uprising as a starting point.
While the extreme violence of "Squid Game" made headlines, Han Kang portrays through her characters the physical and psychological impact of violence through her Nobel Prize-winning literature.
The author sees her novels as a form of resistance against violence, she said in a 2023 speech: "Examining the history of violence is a questioning of human nature. Even if violent scenes are portrayed, it is not for the sake of violence. It is an attempt to stand on the other side."
This article was previously published in German and updated on October 11, 2024, after Han Kang won the Nobel Prize in Literature.