A large commercial building, with sign reading “Koreatown Galleria” at center.
Module 5: Korean Americans and Hallyu since 2000
Have their ongoing ties with Korea impacted the lives of Korean Americans?
The late 1990s and early 2000s introduced the world to the concept of Hallyu, or the “Korean Wave,” a term used to describe the growing global popularity and profitability of Korean popular culture. Thanks to Hallyu, South Korea has become one of the first non-Western countries to export a diverse array of cultural products to international audiences. This global reach has made South Korea a unique case. While it is common for a country’s popular music, movies, or fashion to reach foreign markets, it is less common for multiple forms of a country’s popular culture to gain global audiences simultaneously. For South Korea, these cultural products include music, television programs, films, as well as other cultural and digital productions.
Image 14.05.01 — The Korean historical drama Dae Jang Geum (2003–2004) was broadcast to more than 150 countries. It is credited with heightening the spread of Korean culture abroad.
Far from an accident or happenstance, Hallyu was the result of the South Korean government’s heavy investment in pop culture and media, which many officials saw as the key to increasing Korean influence throughout the world. The current popularity of South Korean media is a culmination of decades of concerted planning and funding by government entities. They believed that promoting South Korea’s “soft power,” or non-military cultural influence, would also bolster its economic and political standing.
In this module, we discuss the growth of South Korea’s soft power, and its significance to Korean Americans and how they’ve come to be perceived.
Why did the South Korean government heavily invest in the production of Korean popular culture and media?
What is Hallyu and its significance?
How has the global rise and popularity of Korean popular culture affected the lives, status, and perceptions of Korean Americans?
Hallyu
Starting in the 1990s, the South Korean government financially supported the production of television series (known as Korean dramas or K-dramas), popular music (K-pop), and movies. K-dramas gained so much popularity in East and Southeast Asia that actors like Bae Yong-joon and Choi Ji-woo became household names there. As a result of this popularity, tourism from other Asian countries to South Korea bolstered its economy. In 2004 alone, Japanese visitors to Korea increased more than 35 percent. The Korean historical drama Dae Jang Geum (also known as Jewel in the Palace), which aired in 2003–2004, reached audiences beyond Asia, broadcasting in more than 150 countries across four continents. In Iran, Dae Jang Geum was highly popular and reportedly received an audience rating of 80–90 percent. With the rise of online distribution platforms across the globe like Rakuten Viki, K-dramas became more accessible to global audiences. In 2018 streaming media giant Netflix began producing original Korean content, skyrocketing interest and reach.
K-pop, following closely on the heels of K-dramas, has become one of South Korea’s most popular and profitable exports. For a country that banned rock music in 1972, Korea saw its popular music industry develop and internationalize with remarkable speed because of investment from and collaboration with the South Korean government, music companies, and artists. In February 2000, the boy band H.O.T. became the first K-pop group to perform overseas, selling out a major concert venue in Beijing, China. A few years later, singer and actor Rain (also known as Bi) won recognition in US media outlets including Time and People magazines.
In 2012 singer Psy’s “Gangnam Style” became a global sensation as the first YouTube video in history to hit one billion views. With the music video’s images of a luxurious Seoul neighborhood and lifestyle, “Gangnam Style” fueled interest in Korean culture and popular music. Debuting in 2013, the seven-member boy band, Bangtan Sonyeondan (better known as BTS), was the world’s top-selling musical act in 2021. In 2022 the group became the first K-pop band to perform at the Grammy Awards. By the 2020s, K-pop groups had become common sights at US concert venues; for example, girl group BLACKPINK and hip-hop trio Epik High are just two Korean acts to appear at the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival and at stage shows in Las Vegas, Nevada.
The South Korean government has also invested heavily in movies. In the 1960s, with the international growth of American cinema, South Korea established a screen quota system to bolster its own film industry and limit Hollywood’s influence. Under the quota, theaters in South Korea are required to show Korean movies for a certain number of days each year.
At the peak in the 1990s and early 2000s, theaters were required to devote more than 40 percent of screening days per year to Korean-made films. The government also subsidized the film industry, providing seed money and absorbing production costs to support the rise of young filmmakers. This ensured they could afford to continue their work before receiving box office revenues.
These soft power investments by the government eventually paid off. Beginning in the early 2000s, Korean filmmakers such as Park Chan-wook and Bong Joon-ho began winning accolades and cultivating international fan followings for their innovative work on films including Oldboy (2003), The Host (2006), and Parasite (2019). Set in Korea, these films spurred international attention and tourism to the country. Parasite became the first-ever non-English language film to receive the Academy Award for Best Picture in 2020.
Image 14.05.03 — Parasite (2019), directed by Bong Joon-ho, became the first non-English language film to win the Academy Award for Best Picture. Its global success occurred in the context of South Korea’s government subsidies and screen quota system to develop a competitive national cinema.
Hallyu in Korean America
South Korean investments in the United States have also shaped the experiences of Korean Americans. Korean media companies such as CJ Entertainment (now CJ ENM) began investing in Koreatowns across the US in the 1990s and 2000s. They contributed to the redevelopment and gentrification of low-income neighborhoods in cities like Los Angeles, California. Before such investments, immigrants who resided and ran small businesses in these neighborhoods sold goods otherwise only available in Korea. With gentrification and redevelopment, Los Angeles’s Koreatown now boasts expensive real estate and trendy, high-end businesses. While these investments helped Koreatown rebuild after the destruction of Sa I Gu in 1992, it is important to note that the process of gentrification pushes out small businesses and residents, many of whom are Korean immigrants.
Image 14.05.04 — With its roots in Korean culture, the Koreatown Galleria became an iconic shopping and dining destination in Los Angeles, California, boosting its soft power or cultural cachet.
Socially, the ubiquity of Korean popular culture in the United States, and globally, has had mixed consequences for Korean Americans. On one hand, Hallyu has increased the prestige or “cool” factor of Korea in ways that have potentially boosted the social standing of ethnic Koreans in the US and around the world. Having a connection to Korea has offered some diasporic Koreans a form of soft power or cultural cachet.
The visibility of Korean Americans in the South Korean music and film industry has also created opportunities for performers of Korean descent who were born and/or raised in the United States. Such performers, having faced racism and marginalization in the US, are now better able to pursue creative careers abroad in Korea.
For example, Atlanta-born singer Eric Nam, a young Korean American, has successfully leveraged new opportunities in both the US and South Korea. Nam was born and raised in the US and attended college in Boston, Massachusetts. In 2012, he won a major Korean singing competition and then launched a music career in Seoul. More recently, Nam has released albums designed to reach wider audiences outside of Korea, including the US market. Over the past few decades, a number of other Korean Americans have cultivated transpacific careers. For example, mixed-race Korean American actor Daniel Henney has become a widely recognized face in both Korean and US movies and television shows.
Blurring Identities
Such successes in mainstream media representation and pop culture, however, have blurred the lines between Korean and Korean American identity, culture, and belonging.
This blurring is evident in some of the responses and coverage of K-pop group BTS’s May 2022 visit to the White House. In a press briefing delivered mostly in the Korean language, BTS reaffirmed the importance of standing against anti-Asian hate crimes during COVID-19 pandemic and promoted supporting Asian Americans’ sense of belonging and inclusion in US society. At the time, incidents of anti-Asian violence had jumped more than 300 percent, with record numbers of crimes happening in cities including Los Angeles, San Francisco, and New York in 2020–2022.
In many ways, BTS’s visit to the White House did what US officials wanted: It attracted global attention and raised public awareness of the problem of anti-Asian violence in the United States. The band’s movements were followed closely by fans across the world, so not surprisingly, their visit elicited an outpouring of interest and support in and beyond the US.
However, the White House’s choice of the South Korean music group BTS as a stand-in for Asian American communities—who were facing an onslaught of racist violence in the US—potentially reinforced the idea and perception that Asians and Asian Americans were the same. In addition, Asian American communities in the US are widely diverse, so their representation by a pop group from Korea may have perpetuated the idea that Asian Americans are Asian first, and Americans second. The racialization of Asian Americans as perpetual foreigners has historical roots, and it also became the rationale for the hate crimes committed between 2020 and 2022, as assailants blamed anyone who appeared “Asian” for the spread of the COVID-19 virus that originated in China.
Conclusion
Hallyu, or the global spread of South Korean popular culture, poses both potential opportunities and challenges for Korean Americans. Certainly, the popularity of South Korean culture has created a greater appreciation for Korea as a country. Interest and demand in Korean language courses, cuisine, tourism, and beauty products has grown, profiting the Korean economy and growing its corporations. But the prominence and popularity of Korean pop culture has also had the effect of racializing Koreans in the US, at times, as extensions of South Korea rather than Americans in their own right. Though not all Koreans in the United States choose to identify as American, the global popularity of South Korean popular culture can cast a long shadow for those interested in claiming a space in the US and asserting that they belong.
Glossary terms in this module
gentrification Where it’s used
The process of displacing longtime neighborhood residents from their community due to the influx of higher income residents and businesses, and real estate investment which brings higher rents, higher property taxes, and higher costs of living. Gentrification often disrupts the original community’s history, culture, and social networks.
Hallyu Where it’s used
A term meaning “Korean Wave” that refers to the global spread of Korean popular culture since the 1990s.
soft power Where it’s used
Refers to a nation’s strategic use of non-military cultural influence to develop positive perceptions of the country.
