An Oscar for Best Picture, a streaming record and now a Nobel Prize for Literature. In culture and entertainment, South Korea won the Oscar for Best Film in 2020 with Parasite. Its TV shows soar in streaming ratings and K-pop stars dominate the global charts. This Thursday (09/10), its prominent novelist Han Kong will become the 18th woman and first Asian to win the Nobel Prize for Literature. Little by little, the country is defining its place as a global cultural powerhouse. How did this happen?
From the late 1990s, Korean TV dramas – “dramas” – and K-pop idols began to gain strength in Asian countries, China and Japan, marking the beginning of Hallyu – a Chinese word meaning “Korean wave”.
But with the success of Psy Gangnam Style, in 2012, hallyu came to the West in force.
Over the next decade, the successes piled up. A babyshark song for kids took off on YouTube and was recorded for a generation. K-pop band BTS has amassed 23 Guinness Book records, including the most tickets sold for an online concert. Director Bong Joon-ho's Parasite won an unprecedented Oscar for the country, and the Round 6 series became Netflix's most-watched non-English-language TV show.
Such cultural exports could be worth about $13.2 billion (R$74.2 billion) to South Korea in 2022 – an industry bigger than home appliances and electric cars. However, most of this value is made up of video games like Battlegrounds Mobile, a massively popular multiplayer online game in India and Pakistan.
The South Korean government aims to grow the industry to $25 billion by 2027, with plans to enter new markets in Europe and the Middle East.
“Dramatic moments” shape cultural production
For director Bong Joon-ho, the secret to the East Asian country's cultural success is that everyone experiences “dramatic moments.” These include the Korean War of the 1950s, which locked Seoul in conflict with its northern neighbor's military dictatorship, sweeping economic change and democratic transition.
Many in the country have “experienced turmoil and extreme events,” Pang said. As a result, “our films couldn't be more different.”
South Korea “offers enough inspiration and stimulation for creators. It's a super dynamic and turbulent place,” he said.
Acclaimed and controversial South Korean filmmaker Park Chan-wook responded in a similar vein when asked about the secret to his country's cinematic success. “Why don't you try living in 'Dynamic Korea'?”
Nobel is the latest achievement
The 53-year-old novelist Han Kong, who won the 2024 Nobel Prize for Literature, does a great job of turning contemporary history into art. Since the announcement, his books have sold out on the shelves of bookstores across the country.
Han spoke of the transformative experience of learning about the 1980 massacre in his hometown of Gwangju, when South Korea's then-military government violently suppressed a democratic uprising.
She said her father showed her photographs of the scattered bodies of victims and citizens queuing up to donate blood amid the chaos, which later inspired her book Human Actions (Editora Totavia, 2021).
While many South Korean authors explore the themes of the country's traumatic past, Han has established his own “rising literary aesthetic” by tackling challenging subjects, says Oh Hyung-yup, a professor of Korean literature at Korea University and a literary critic.
South Korea has one of the worst female labor force participation rates among advanced economies, but women are pioneers in cultural exports.
Hahn's Man Booker International Prize-winning novel The Vegetarian (Editora Totavia, 2018), about a woman who stops eating meat, is considered a symbol of eco-feminism.
As the first Asian woman to win the Nobel Prize for literature, Han Kang's work is apt to deal with violence in a way that male writers have not in the past, Kang Ji-hee, a South Korean literary critic, told AFP news agency.
“Han Kong reimagined this kind of internal struggle,” documenting behaviors “previously considered merely passive, and gave them a new meaning,” Kong explained.
The industry grows organically
Korean cultural exports, from cinema to gastronomy, to the popularity of Korean foods such as kimchi and bibimbap abroad, seem to be part of a structured plan.
However, while the South Korean government has invested millions in the cultural sector, experts point out that success is largely due to the state's defiance, not because of it.
During former South Korean President Park Geun-hye's rule from 2013 to 2017, the Nobel Prize for Literature winner was among 9,000 artists named along with Bong to his government's list of critics.
Some government initiatives, such as the government-affiliated Korea Literary Translation Institute (LTI Korea), have helped bring works like Han's to a global audience. But a growing number of translators are becoming more adventurous in their selection of works.
In the full cycle of success
Success breeds more success in terms of cultural exports: for example, the reading habits of K-pop stars have boosted South Korean literature.
When BTS member Jungkook read a self-help book by Kim Soo-hyun, it sparked a sales frenzy, with hundreds of thousands of copies flying out of stores.
On the other hand, the success of the international market is contradicted by the emptying of the domestic situation. K-pop's “Korean Wave” is facing an internal crisis of sorts, with sales plummeting and the stock of major agencies in the region plummeting.
Suspicion is that in an effort to expand their appeal to a global audience – performing in foreign languages, topping music charts in major world markets and being promoted on talk shows – these bands run the risk of moving away from their roots. Away from the same fans who helped improve their careers.
gq/av (DW,AFP)
