Why is South Korean culture sweeping the globe?

SEOUL—It’s won Oscars. Its television shows and K-pop stars dominate global charts. Its leading novelist just won the Nobel literature prize. How did South Korea become such a global cultural powerhouse?

From the late 1990s, Korean dramas and K-pop idols started gaining traction in neighboring Asian countries like China and Japan, marking the start of “Hallyu,” or the “Korean Wave.”

But it wasn’t until Psy’s 2012 breakout hit “Gangnam Style” that Hallyu hit the West.

In the decade that followed, “Baby Shark” broke YouTube records, K-pop megastars BTS topped the charts, Bong Joon-ho’s “Parasite” won an Oscar, and “Squid Game” became the most-watched non-English show on Netflix.

Cultural exports were worth some $13.2 billion to South Korea in 2022, more than home appliances or electric cars—but the bulk of that was made up of video games, such as Battlegrounds Mobile, which are wildly popular in India and Pakistan.

The government is targeting $25 billion by 2027—so expect more K-culture, especially in new markets, such as Europe and the Middle East.

For “Parasite” director Bong Joon-ho, the key to the East Asian country’s cultural success is that it has lived through “dramatic times.”

The nation has lived through the 1950s Korean War which left Seoul locked in conflict with its nuclear-armed northern neighbor as well as military dictatorship and the sweeping economic transformation and democratic transition that followed after.

Many in his country have “experienced turbulence and extreme events,” Bong said. As a result “our movies can’t help but [be] different.”

South Korea “provides creators with ample inspiration and stimulation. It’s such a dynamic and turbulent place,” he said.

Park Chan-wook, another acclaimed filmmaker, had a similar answer when asked about the secret of his country’s cinematic success. “Why don’t you try living in ‘dynamic Korea?’” he replied.

Transformative experience

Turning contemporary history into art is what 53-year-old novelist Han Kang excels at.

Han, who won the Nobel Prize for Literature on Thursday, has spoken of the transformative experience of learning about a 1980 massacre in her native Gwangju, when South Korea’s military government at that time violently repressed a democratic uprising.

The first Asian woman to win a Nobel for literature recalls her father, also a renowned writer, showing her photographs such as the scattered bodies of victims and citizens lining up to donate blood in the chaos—images which later inspired her book “Human Acts.”

While many South Korean authors have delved into the themes of their country’s traumatic past, Han established her own “striking literary aesthetic” while addressing challenging subjects, said Oh Hyung-yup, a literature professor and critic at Korea University.

Women trailblazers

South Korea has some of the worst rates of female workforce participation among advanced economies, but for cultural exports, women have been trailblazers.

Han’s Booker-winning novel “The Vegetarian,” which follows a woman who stops eating meat, is regarded as a landmark ecofeminism text. But it was outsold internationally by “Kim Ji-young, Born 1982,” written by another leading woman writer, Cho Nam-Joo—about a married South Korean woman who quits her job to raise her child.

It is appropriate that Han’s work addresses violence in ways that male authors have not in the past, literary critic Kang Ji-hee told Agence France-Presse (AFP).

“Han Kang reinterpreted this type of internal struggle,” the critic Kang said, adding that this style documented behaviors “that were previously considered to be simply passive and gave them a whole new meaning.”

With the growing success of K-culture exports across the board—from film to food, with Korean staples like kimchi and bibimbap soaring in popularity overseas—it seems like part of a master plan.

But while the South Korean government has plowed millions into supporting cultural industries, experts say success has come largely despite, not because, of the state.

When former President Park Geun-hye was in power from 2013 to 2017, Han and Bong were some of the more than 9,000 artists “blacklisted” for criticizing the government.

Some government initiatives, such as the Literature Translation Institute of Korea, may have paid off, helping to bring works like Han’s to a global audience.

But a growing number of translators, who are more adventurous with their choice of works, have also helped to bring edgier offers to the international market.

K-pop support, drinking habits

Success also breeds more success, cultural export-wise: The reading habits of K-pop megastars have boosted K-literature.

When BTS member Jungkook was seen reading the self-help book “I Decided to Live as Me,” it sparked a sales frenzy, with hundreds of thousands of copies flying off shelves.

Bong also believes that his compatriots’ hard drinking habits helped spur creativity.

“We are a very workaholic country. People work too much. And, at the same time, we drink too much. So every night, very hardcore drinking sessions and everything is very extreme.”