'Hallyu' as messenger for Korean culture
Rhie Dong-hie, head of program planning division of the Academy of Korean Studies.
By Rhie Dong-hie
Korea is known to be the only country to transform itself from a foreign-aid recipient into a donor.
The same is happening in the cultural sector. Korea has long been busy importing Western cultures through the United States and Europe, and has been almost a recipient-only country as far as pop culture is concerned.
Recently, however, the country has begun to export its cultural products to the outside world, as shown by the “hallyu” or the Korean wave. Korean pop music, TV dramas, and movies are now creating enthusiastic fans in many parts of the world.
These Korean cultural products have begun to exert strong influence on people’s lifestyles in a number of Southeast Asian countries including Thailand and Vietnam.
The TV drama“Daejanggeum,” better known as “Jewel in the Palace,” even enjoyed great popularity in African countries such as Zimbabwe and Ghana and Iran in the Middle East, where it led to the promotion of campaigns aimed at instilling the spirit of its heroine.
Psy created another hallyu phenomenon.
When he sang “Gangnam Style” at Times Square in New York and the Eiffel Tower Square in Paris, tens of thousands of people from all over the world danced with him, singing along although they had never learned the Korean language before.
For middle-aged Koreans, the scene reminded them of the days of their youth when they tried hard to sing along to American pop songs despite that they barely knew English.
Psy’s performance must have touched the heartstrings of many middle-aged pop fans in Korea whose younger years were dominated by Western pop culture.
Psy’s success on the world stage reminds me of a scene I witnessed when I was young. It was in the early 1980s that I saw a performance of pop music by a Korean band at a university festival interrupted by some students throwing rocks at them.
Many Korean students at that time opposed the flood of Western, particularly American, culture into Korea, denouncing it as cultural imperialism. Looking back, it was a desperate effort to preserve the traditional Korean culture against the formidable power of Western culture.
The Korean wave is now a huge cultural phenomenon. There might be students outside Korea who, just like those Korean students in the 1980s, are struggling to protect their own culture against hallyu’s invasive power.
Isn’t the Korean wave just another form of cultural imperialism? I hope that the Korean wave will be able to get over the elements of commercialism or cultural imperialism that may be contained in it.
I expect it to become a friendly messenger of Korean culture, bringing joy and happiness to those who enjoy it.
Then, how do we find the message of Korean culture? I would like to find it in the principle of “Hongik Ingan” (Universal Goodness and Love for All Mankind), which emerged with the birth of the first Korean kingdom about 5,000 years ago.
A widely-respected Korean freedom fighter named Kim Koo gave his own interpretation of this principle in his writing, “My Desire”: “I want our nation to become the most beautiful nation in the world.
I do not want our nation to become the richest and powerful nation in the world. Because I have felt the pain of being invaded by another nation.
I do not want my nation to invade others. The only thing that I desire in infinite quantity is the power of a highly-developed culture.
This is because the power of culture both makes ourselves happy and gives happiness to others I believe that this is the ideal of Hongik Ingan of Dangun, our national founding father.”
However, the current form of the Korean wave does not seem to promote the ideal of Hongik Ingan.
Many countries in the world try to learn Korean economic development and culture.
If we include the concept of Hongik Ingan in our cultural activities, cultural diffusion caused by the Korean wave may benefit the whole world, distinguishing the Korean wave from Western cultural imperialism.
The writer is head of program planning division of Korean studies promotion service of the Academy of Korean Studies.