Korean popular culture has infiltrated the global arena of entertainment. Millions of fans worldwide have an obsession with Korean media, including TV programs (K-dramas), films, and music (K-pop). Korea has managed to leap forward far beyond the expectations some might have had for a small East Asian nation. As of 2021, the country enjoys the status of one of the most prominent cultural hubs, competing with Western giants such as the U.S. and Europe. Korea has become a valuable link in circulation of transnational cultural content, expertly combining local quirks with mass appeal. An evident example of Korea’s success is the phenomenon of K-pop fandoms and the success of BTS, a seven-member boy band from Korea. The rapid shift in the cultural role of Korea demands the contemplation on the role of transnationality and hybridity in the development of the Korean Wave. There is a need to investigate the transnationality and hybridity of the phenomenon on multiple levels. The following paper aims to examine the nuanced contribution of transnationality and hybridity to the spread of Korean culture worldwide, including the stages of production, circulation, and consumption.
Firstly, it is crucial to define the Korean Wave as the primary step of the process’ conceptualization, allowing a further in-depth discussion. The term is rather multi-faceted, with Lee and Zhang (2021) offering a simplified definition of the Korean Wave as “the Asian-regional and global popularity of South Korean pop culture” (p. 521). As various forms of content, including television dramas, songs, and films, originated in Korea started to grow in popularity globally, Asian media outlets coined the phrase “Korean Wave,” known also as Hallyu. Although the pull of the Western cultural forces is strong globally, even in Asia, as a phenomenon, Hallyu serves as an example of the rise and expansion of local cultural industries in countries, not limited to a typical list of the most culturally influential ones.
Transnationality is mostly a scholarly concept used to investigate cultural flows beyond national borders, with Hallyu exemplifying it accurately. It refers to the process of people, ideas, and cultural commodities expanding far beyond national borders since they do not limit their target audience to national consumers. The Korean Wave is a transnational cultural phenomenon, which initiates a counter-flow of popular culture in the international arena. The constant dominant flow of Western cultural influences is now being challenged by Hallyu and the growth of non-Western cultural powers overall. The existence of the Korean Wave contributes to the elimination of cultural status-quos. After all, until recently, no one has noticed Korean pop culture or taken it seriously. For instance, the scholarly community actively excluded media created in South Korea from discussions surrounding international film-making and music production. Hallyu signifies a shift towards the rapid growth in popularity experienced in the Korean film-making industry, music industry, and TV production (Byeongcheol, 2006; Huang, 2009; Jung & Kim, 2013). As of now, Korean pop cultural has truly reached the transnational milestone.
Over the past decades, the pathways of production, circulation, and consumption of Korean culture have been altered as a result of transnationalization. The flow of content from South Korea has shifted from physical form to non-material cultural content. At the earliest stages of the Korean Wave, enterprises in Korea produced and distributed finished products, including DVDs with films or CDs with songs (Byeongcheol, 2006; Jung & Kim, 2013). However, the focus on global expansion has changed the perspective on content production and circulation, leading to producers and distributors to adopt a new transnational model.
The content was no longer disseminated through physical copies, altering the direction of the Korean Wave. Korean content outgrew the export model, which relied heavily on material products, focusing instead on non-material offerings such as remakes, TV format, as well as K-pop transmedia storytelling (Jin, 2016). The nation’s television format perfectly exemplifies such a shift rooted in the abandonment of finished materials as the primary cultural focus. According to Jin (2013), “unlike a finished or canned television program, a format is easily replicated and the framework for adaptation licensed through the international television market for local adaptation” (p. 45). As evidenced by the nation’s TV industry, cultural corporations in Korea now invest heavily in the export of non-material products.
A transnational flow of Korean media is supported by the rise of digital technologies and hybridization. Social media plays a part of great significance by allowing the content originated in Korea to circulate globally, reaching millions of international consumers. Web-sites such as YouTube, Facebook, and TikTok serve as an efficient channel for Korean cultural producers to distribute content, altering the traditional pathways of circulation and consumption. Hybridity is another element central to the rise of Hallyu. As evidenced by the mind-boggling success of K-pop, consumers worldwide are attracted to “K-pop’s differentiation from its predecessors in Europe, America, and Japan” (Jung & Kim, 2013, p. 84). The global rise of Korean culture is attributed to a combination of universal factors as well as domestic quirks, which distinguish “Korean” from the rest.
Cosmopolitan attitudes, modernization, and educational competition all contribute to the West’s influence on the nation, resulting in the content produced locally possessing just enough Western characteristics to appeal to the United States and Europe. Despite that, differentiation from the West is Korea’s selling point as producers take advantage of “certain cultural specificities that can be found only in Korea” in an effort to catch the attention of Western audiences (Jung & Kim, 2013, p. 86). These attempts are then translated in how the content is packaged and what instruments are used to distribute and promote it.
In conclusion, it is evident that the Korean Wave is a multi-dimensional transnational phenomenon, which is supported by hybridization, social media, and nuanced storytelling. In order to expand, Korean cultural industries had to abandon some of the existing practices in favor of new ones, which would contribute to Hallyu. Transnationality and hybridity of the content produced in Korea are some of the contributing factors affecting the stages of production, circulation, and consumption.
References
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