Hallyu, literally meaning “Korean wave,” is the cultural consumption pattern of various Korean popular culture products that is evident in Asia, especially Hong King, Taiwan, China, Indonesia, Thailand, Vietnam, the Philippines, and Japan (Oh, 427). Hallyu products vary from television dramas to movies to music, and these products imported from Korea are consumed mostly by young to middle-aged women across Asia (428). Hallyu phenomenon started with Korean dramas in 1990s, which were mostly romantic love stories like “Winter Sonata” in 1990. Middle-aged, married women of Japan who had the time to watch television dramas during the day were the major consumers of Korean dramas broadcasted through Japanese channels (Jang and Paik, 198). Then this spread to China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan, and then to the rest of the regions of Asia (198). Many of the Korean dramas have very similar plot and structure of characters, yet they are able to gain such popularity throughout Asia. This can partially be explained through an analysis of “Confucian countries” of East Asia such as Korea, China, and Thailand. The Confucianism family values are strictly patriarchal, and Korean dramas almost always involve these issues of traditional family values, but in the perspective of the female characters. Many women, especially married, are able to deeply empathize with these situation, certainly much more than Hollywood shows featuring middle-aged women.

In 2000s, with the rapid development of the Internet and social media, television no longer was the main source of cultural consumption (198). Various contents became available through the Internet, and this geared the Hallyu trend into a different direction. The ease of accessibility drastically increased consumption of the youth, and thus K-pop or Korean “idol groups” became center of the Hallyu (Oh and Park, 368). In the next page, I will talk about the Korean idol industry more in depth. 

References

Jang, Gunjoo and Won K. Paik. Korean Wave as Tool for Korea's New Cultural Diplomacy. 2012, 196-202.

Oh, Ingyu. Hallyu: The Rise of Transnational Cultural Consumers in China and Japan. 2009, 425-459.

Oh, Ingyu and Gil-Sung Park. From B2C to B2B: Selling Korean Pop Music in the Age of New Social Media. 2012, 365-397.