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Beware the
fall of Wrangler, Coke and the American movie/music empire. As Pop Culture goes, so does trade and
commerce. KwC Roll Over, Godzilla:
Korea Rules
By NORIMITSU ONISHI, NYT, International, June 28, 2005 TAIPEI, Taiwan - Here in one of the first corners of Asia
hit by the "Korean Wave" of cultural exports, a television series
about a royal cook, "A Jewel in the Palace," proved so popular that
it is now used to advertise South Korea on the Taipei subway. A huge hit in
Mongolia, the drama also fueled a boom in tourists from Hong Kong visiting
South Korea. A weepy love story, "Winter Sonata," became the
rage in Uzbekistan after driving the Japanese into a frenzy last year. In
Thailand and Malaysia, people devoured "A Tale of Autumn," and
Vietnamese were glued to "Lovers in Paris." In China, South Korean
dramas are sold, and pirated, everywhere, and the young adopt the clothing and
hairstyles made cool by South Korean stars. South Korea, historically more worried about fending off
cultural domination by China and Japan than spreading its own culture abroad,
is emerging as the pop culture leader of Asia. From well-packaged television
dramas to slick movies, from pop music to online games, South Korean companies
and stars are increasingly defining what the disparate people in East Asia
watch, listen to and play. The size of South Korea's entertainment industry, which
began attracting heavy government investment only in the late 1990's, jumped
from $8.5 billion in 1999 to $43.5 billion in 2003. In 2003, South Korea
exported $650 million in cultural products; the amount was so insignificant
before 1998 that the government could not provide figures. But the figures tell only part of the story. The booming
South Korean presence on television and in the movies has spurred Asians to buy
up South Korean goods and to travel to South Korea, traditionally not a popular
tourist destination. The images that Asians traditionally have associated with
the country - violent student marches, the demilitarized zone, division - have
given way to trendy entertainers and cutting-edge technology. Candy Hsieh, 22, who was browsing through shelves of South
Korean dramas at a video store here, said her parents became fans and visited
South Korea last year. "I
used to think that Korea was a feudalistic, male-centered society," Ms.
Hsieh said. "Now I don't have the same image as I had before. It seems like
an open society, democratic." South Korea's entertainment industry was born for business and political reasons in the late 1990's. Increasingly rich Asians were thought to
be receptive to new sources of entertainment. What is more, South Korea, which long banned
cultural imports from Japan, its former colonial ruler, was preparing to lift
restrictions starting in 1998.
Seoul was worried about the onslaught of Japanese music,
videos and dramas, already popular on the black market. So in 1998 the Culture
Ministry, armed with a substantial budget increase, carried out its first five-year plan to build up the domestic industry. The ministry
encouraged colleges to open culture industry departments, providing equipment
and scholarships. The number of such departments has risen from almost zero to
more than 300. In 2002, the ministry opened the Korea Culture and Content
Agency to encourage exports. By the time almost all restrictions on Japanese
culture were lifted in January 2004, the Korean Wave - a term coined in China -
had washed across Asia. To South Koreans like Kim Hyun Kyung, a director at Cheil
Communications, an advertising agency in Seoul, feeling the reach of their
culture for the first time was surprising. In 2001, during a trip to Los
Angeles, she met a Chinese woman who brightened up when she learned that she
was Korean. "She was a big
fan of Kim Hee Sun," Ms. Kim said, referring to a South Korean actress who
is now more popular in China than at home. "She was happy that I had the
same last name as she did. We were meeting for the first time, but she had a
favorable image of Korea." South Korean dramas and music have started edging out
American and Japanese ones in Taiwan, which caught the Korean Wave early this
decade. Five years ago, Gala TV here paid $1,000 for one hour of a
South Korean drama, compared with $15,000 to $20,000 for a Japanese one, said
the network's vice president, Lai Tsung Pi. Now, a South Korean drama commands
$7,000 to $15,000; a Japanese, $6,000 to $12,000. "Korean dramas are considered more emotionally
powerful, and their actors are willing to come here to promote them," Mr.
Lai said. "Because of the Korean dramas, Taiwanese people have become more
willing to buy their products."
Sales
of South Korean consumer goods and cars have risen sharply here in the last
five years as well.
The number of Taiwanese going to South Korea rose from 108,831 in 2000 to
298,325 last year, even though the overall number of Taiwanese traveling abroad
fell during that period. South Korea has also begun wielding the non-economic side of
its new soft power. The official Korean Overseas Information Service last year
gave "Winter Sonata" to Egyptian television, paying for the Arabic
subtitles. The
goal was to generate positive feelings in the Arab world toward the 3,200 South Korean soldiers
stationed in northern Iraq. There have been unintended effects too. Copies of South
Korean dramas and music are being increasingly smuggled from China into North
Korea. One popular drama in the Communist North was "All In," the
true story of a South Korean gambler who went to Las Vegas with only $18 and
became a millionaire. North Korean women began copying the hairstyle of its
lead actress, Song Hae Kyo, prompting the authorities there to crack down on
"untidy" hair, said Kim Yang Rae, director general of the Korean
Foundation for Asian Culture Exchange. In mid-June, a 20-year-old North Korean soldier, Yi Yong Su,
defected across the demilitarized zone into the town of Chorwon in central
South Korea. The private said he had grown to admire and yearn for South Korea
after watching its television programs, South Korean military officials told
reporters. But the worry of a possible backlash - Taiwan, for instance,
is considering levying a 20 percent tariff on Korean programs - impelled the
Culture Ministry two years ago to form the cultural exchange foundation, to
prevent Southeast Asian countries from feeling that they are regarded only as
markets. "We've never had
this experience of seeing our culture spread outside our country," Mr. Kim
said about Korea's modern history. "I'm very proud, but also very
cautious." At the New Fantasy Travel agency here, about 80 percent of
travelers to South Korea pick television theme tours, visiting spots where
their favorites dramas were filmed, said the general manager, Louis Wang. Mr. Wang himself is not a huge fan. But his children, who
are, now feel closer to South Korea than to the country that considers Taiwan a
renegade province. "They've been learning the lifestyle of Koreans, their
fashion and their food," Mr. Wang said. "So now they're more familiar
with Korea's lifestyle than China's." http://www.nytimes.com/2005/06/28/international/asia/28wave.html |
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