From K-pop to K-drama: how South Korea became a cultural giant

In a new Korean drama filmed in a cavernous set building on the outskirts of Seoul, a detective pursues a man who will live 600 years due to a curse. Gun shots ring out. Then silence. Then a woman breaks the silence with a shout: “I told you not to shoot her in the heart!”

For more than an hour the scene was recorded on several occasions. It was part of Bulgasal: Immortal Souls, a new show that will launch in December on Netflix. Jang Young-woo, the director, hopes it will become the latest South Korean phenomenon to captivate an international audience.

South Korea had long lamented its lack of innovative cultural exports. For decades the country’s reputation was defined by its cars and cell phones made by companies like Hyundai and LG. His movies, television shows and music, meanwhile, were mostly consumed by a regional audience. Now K-pop stars like Blackpink, the dystopian dramaThe Squid Game and award-winning films such as Parasites they are as common as any Samsung phone.

Just as South Korea modeled on Japan and the United States to develop its manufacturing prowess, the country’s directors and producers say they have spent years studying Hollywood and other entertainment centers, adopting and refining the formulas of the industry and adding Very Korean touches. Once streaming services like Netflix broke down geographic barriers, the creators say, the country transformed from a consumer of Western culture into an entertainment giant and major cultural exporter in its own right.

In recent years alone, South Korea surprised the world with Parasites, the first foreign language film to win the Best Picture category at the Academy Awards. And thanks to BTS it has one of the biggest bands in the world, if not the biggest. Netflix has featured 80 Korean movies and TV shows in recent years, far more than it had imagined when it began its service in South Korea in 2016, according to the company. As of Monday, three of the top ten most popular series on Netflix were from South Korea.

“When we did Mr. Sunshine, Emergency landing in your heart and Sweet HomeWe didn’t have a global impact in mind, ”said Jang, who served as a co-producer or co-director on Netflix’s three hit Korean shows. “We just try to make them as interesting and meaningful as possible. It is the world that has begun to understand and identify with the emotional experiences that we have been creating from the beginning ”.

The growing demand for Korean entertainment has inspired independent creators like Seo Jea-won, who co-wrote the screenplay with his wife for Bulgasal. Seo said his generation voraciously consumed American television hits such as The nuclear man and Miami Vice, and thus they learned “the basics” and began to experiment with shape by adding Korean details. “When high-quality streaming services like Netflix arrived with their revolution in television show distribution, we were ready to compete,” he said.

South Korea’s cultural output remains small compared to some key product exports such as semiconductors, but it has given the country a kind of influence that can be difficult to quantify. In September, the Oxford English Dictionary added 26 new words of Korean origin, including hallyu, which means “Korean wave.” North Korea has called the K-pop invasion a “vicious cancer.” China has suspended dozens of K-pop fan accounts on social media for their “insane” behavior.

The country’s ability to raise its influence as a cultural power contrasts with Beijing’s ineffective state campaigns for the same purpose. South Korean officials who have tried to censor artists from the country have not been very successful. Instead, various politicians have started promoting South Korean pop culture and laws have been enacted such as the one allowing some male pop artists to postpone mandatory military service. This month, government officials allowed Netflix to install a giant statue of The Squid Game at the Seoul Olympic Park.

Explosive success didn’t come overnight. Long before The Squid Game became the most watched series on Netflix or BTS performed at the United Nations, Korean TV shows such as Winter sonata and groups like Bigbang and Girls’ Generation had conquered other markets in Asia and beyond. But they did not achieve the global reach of the current wave. With the single “Gangnam Style,” Psy became a one-hit artist.

“We love telling stories and having good stories to tell,” said Kim Young-kyu, CEO of Studio Dragon, South Korea’s largest studio, which produces dozens of series a year. “But our domestic market is too small and too competitive. We needed to go global. “

Even though South Korea had been producing inequality-themed plays, international audiences didn’t really start paying attention until last year, whenParasites, a film that focuses on the huge gap between rich and poor, won the Oscar.

“The world didn’t know about these works until streaming platforms like Netflix and YouTube helped it discover them at a time when people are watching more entertainment online,” said Kang Yu-jung, a professor at Kangnam University, in Seoul

Before Netflix, a limited number of national broadcasters controlled the South Korean television industry. Since then, those stations have been overshadowed by streaming platforms and independent production studios, such as Studio Dragon, which provide the funding and artistic freedom needed to reach international markets.

South Korean censors screen the media for content deemed violent or sexually explicit, but Netflix shows are subject to less strict restrictions than those aired on local television networks. The creators also say that the country’s censorship laws have forced them to be more creative, concocting characters and plots that are more compelling than most.

Scenes are often full of emotionally complex interactions, or “sinpa.” Heroes are often ordinary people, deeply flawed, trapped in impossible situations, and clinging to shared values ​​such as love, family, and caring for others. Directors and producers say they deliberately want all of their characters to “smell like humans.”

As South Korea emerged from the maelstrom of war, dictatorship, democratization, and accelerating economic growth, its creators developed a keen nose for what people wanted to see and hear, and that often had to do with social change. Most of the country’s top box office films tell storylines with plots that speak to ordinary people, such as income inequality, and the frustration and class conflict it generates.

Director of The Squid Game, Hwang Dong-hyuk, first gained renown with Dogani, a 2011 film based on a real-life sexual abuse scandal at a school for the hearing impaired. The widespread outrage sparked by the film forced the government to identify teachers with a history of sexual abuse in schools for disabled minors.

Although K-pop artists rarely talk about politics, their music has been central to South Korea’s vibrant protest culture. When students from Ewha Women’s University in Seoul launched a series of campus marches that led to a nationwide uprising against the government in 2016, they sang Girls’ Generation’s “Into the New World”. “One Candle” by the boy band god became the unofficial anthem of the “Candle Revolution,” which led to the departure of President Park Geun-hye.

“A dominant feature of Korean content is combativeness,” said Lim Myeong-mook, author of a book on Korean youth culture. “It channels people’s frustrated desire to rise, their anger, and their motivation for mass activism.” And, now, with so many people locked at home, trying to cope with the enormous anguish caused by the pandemic, global audiences may be more receptive to those issues than before.

“Korean creators are adept at quickly copying what’s interesting from abroad and making it their own, making it more interesting and better,” said Lee Hark-joon, professor at Kyungil University and co-author of K-pop Idols.

On the set of Bulgasal, dozens of workers rushed to get all the details of the scene perfect: the toxic fog that covered the air, the drops of water that fell on the wet ground and the “sad and pitiful” look of the dejected man. The supernatural plot of the series is reminiscent of favorite American television shows such as The secret X files and Stranger Things, but Jang has created an exclusively Korean tragedy focused on the eopbo, a Korean belief that both good and bad actions affect a person in the afterlife.

After the recent success of Korean plays abroad, Jang hopes that audiences will flock to the new show. “The bottom line is: what is sold in South Korea is sold globally.” (E)

Choe Sang-hun is the Seoul chief correspondent for The New York Times, focusing on news about North and South Korea.