“The street style always offers fresh inspiration that you might not necessarily find in other cities,” Holly Tenser, buying manager for ready-to-wear at London-based boutique Browns, writes in an email. Mischief fashion label founders, Jieun Seo and Jiyoon Jung © Taekyun Kimįeaturing heavily in K-dramas and worn by K-pop idols, Korean fashion hasn’t been equally influential on a global scale, but Seoul has emerged as a buzzy, fashion-forward city. Its emphasis on a natural, glowing look, ingredient-based products and affordable pricing turned the beauty industry on its head, bringing smaller direct-to-consumer brands to the fore, many of which were snapped up by global conglomerates such as L’Oréal and Estée Lauder. K-beauty, supported by K-drama and K-pop stars, has grown into a $6.5bn export industry, ranking fourth in the world after France, the US and Germany. When Korean television drama Dae Jang Geum aired in Thailand in 2005, demand for Korean food boomed in the country. The early popularisation of K-dramas in China, Japan and south-east Asia opened the door to other media genres, such as films, music and gaming, as well as beauty and food. One angle of the exhibition is to show how the different parts of Hallyu work in synergy, lifting each other up. Hallyu! The Korean Wave chronicles Korea’s rapid industrialisation and economic growth in the 1960s and 1970s, before dedicating specific segments to K-drama and films, K-pop, and K-beauty and fashion, with immersive installations, videos, photography, costumes and artworks.
In September, Hallyu will be at the centre of the first exhibition about Korea to be held at the Victoria and Albert Museum since 1961. Jung Ho-yeon on the red carpet at the 2022 Met Gala, New York, Jamie McCarthy/Getty Images Without any of these elements, Hallyu wouldn’t have been as successful as it is today. Investment banks and private conglomerates, known as chaebols, poured money into the sector, seeing new opportunities to cash in.Ī still from Netflix’s South Korean drama ‘Squid Game’ © 2021 NetflixĪ country often invaded but rarely taking the role of the invader, South Korea also benefited from a sort of geopolitical benevolence - it was seen as far less threatening in the Asian region than countries such as China or Japan. Under President Kim Dae-jung, who was inaugurated in 1998, the government allocated $148.5mn to the new Basic Law for Cultural Industry Promotion, which described the promotion of the industry as a “state responsibility”. Psy performing ‘Gangnam Style’ in New York on the ‘Today’ show, in 2012 © Jason Decrow, Invision/AP/Shutterstock These began to receive government support after a switch from investment in heavy manufacturing.Īs Euny Hong writes in her book The Birth of Korean Cool: How One Nation Is Conquering the World Through Pop Culture, “If it were not for the crisis, there might never have been a Korean wave Prior to the crisis, the South Korean entertainment industry didn’t make an aggressive effort to peddle its wares overseas.” South Korean pop culture began rippling across Asia after the 1997 financial crisis, notably in the export of television dramas and films.
In 2020, the value of South Korea’s cultural content exports, which include industries such as music, movie and broadcasting, reached an estimated $11.92bn according to the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism, up 16.3 per cent from the year before.īack in 2012, however, the west was late to the party.
K-pop stars are global ambassadors for luxury brands such as Dior, Louis Vuitton, Tiffany & Co, Céline and, in the case of all-women group Blackpink, Bulgari Korean series such as Netflix’s Squid Game break viewership records and Korean films - Bong Joon-ho’s Parasite among them - win mainstream accolades. Today, Korean culture is so widespread in the west that K-pop idols are invited to the White House to speak about anti-Asian hate crimes and Asian representation, as mega pop band BTS did in June. Psy’s global success is often seen as the moment when Korean pop culture stepped on to the western stage, and more broadly a turning point for “Hallyu”, aka the “Korean wave”, a Chinese term referring to the soaring popularity of South Korean pop culture across the world.
Ten years later, the “Gangnam Style” video is nearing 4.5bn views. Created to accompany “Gangnam Style”, a catchy pop song making fun of one of Seoul’s richest districts, the video held the most-watched title for five years, pushing YouTube to increase its view count limit. In November 2012, a music video from South Korean singer Park Jae-sang, more popularly known as Psy, became the most-watched video on YouTube ever.