'Gukppong' reality check

I watched, with admiration, the recent comeback performance of BTS on Netflix, which drew global attention. I also enjoyed, with a dose of Korean national pride, K-pop acts and the Korean-themed performances taking center stage at the recent Oscars and other international award shows. By most measures, Korea’s cultural influence is blazing across the global stage.

Yet, if you spend time consuming Korean media — whether legacy outlets or YouTube and social platforms — it seems as if every single one in the world is fixated on outside perspectives on Korea. Korean media is saturated with what might be called “reaction stories,” showcasing how foreigners are supposedly astonished by K-pop, K-beauty and K-whatever. At one point, I even encountered a flood of stories about K-defense, highlighting foreign praise of Korean military technologies used in the ongoing war between the United States, Israel and Iran. These stories typically arrive wrapped in familiar, clickable packaging such as “Why foreigners are envious of Korea,” “Americans crying over K-drama,” and “This is how (fill in the blank with foreign celebrities or top news sources like The New York Times) raves about Korean (fill in the blank with any Korean culture or product).”

There is, in fact, a term for this phenomenon: gukppong. It is the combination of the Korean words “guk” (nation) and “ppong” (slang for a drug). The term captures a kind of intoxication, a euphoric rush of national pride. Media content built around foreign admiration of Korea has come to be known, fittingly, as “gukppong content.”

But here is a necessary reality check: The world does not revolve around Korea. It is not the center of the universe, even if its cultural and economic standing has risen through the roof. Gukppong content can only provide a momentary high. Why, then, are Koreans so hungry for foreigners’ attention and recognition?

I believe part of the answer lies in Korea’s cultural dispositions, particularly collectivism and the legacy of Confucianism. In a broadly collectivist cultural setting, the boundary between “me” and “us” is more porous. When Korean cultural products succeed globally, that success is not experienced as distant or abstract; it feels personal, like a shared elevation in collective status. When a Korean artist wins, many Koreans feel that we have won. Confucian traditions further reinforce a sensitivity to others’ perceptions. Confucianism emphasizes relational harmony and social awareness and cultivates habits of attentiveness. Influenced by this tradition, many Koreans exhibit a tendency to be attuned to others’ opinions and behaviors so that they can belong to the group and be liked. Their identities are continuously negotiated through others’ perceptions. At the national level, this can translate to a heightened concern with how Korea is perceived abroad.

Still, it would be oversimplification to attribute the gukppong phenomenon solely to culture. I think the more immediate driver is the Korean media ecosystem itself. Gukppong content is easier and cheaper to produce, emotionally rewarding to many Korean audience members, and hence more profitable. It delivers quick validation, easy clicks and strong engagement. Digital algorithms, ever hungry for attention, amplify such content and circulate it efficiently to receptive audiences. In this sense, media does not merely reflect public sentiment — it actively cultivates and monetizes it.

There is nothing wrong in taking pride in the achievements of one’s compatriots. Every other country does it. But in contemporary Korea, this tendency appears unusually intensified, often tethered to an outsized desire for foreign recognition. What begins as pride can drift into dependency — an overreliance on external applause to affirm internal worth. If this pattern persists, one may get stuck in the bubble and lose the ability to see the world in a fair and balanced manner. A steady diet of gukppong content can create an echo chamber where admiration is amplified, criticism is filtered out, and complexity and nuances are flattened. At its worst, it can foster intolerance, bigotry and racism as gukppong content sometimes is tinged with a sense of superiority and hostility towards others.

Korea’s achievements are real, and they do not need constant external validation to be meaningful. A more grounded confidence would rest not on how loudly others cheer, but on a steady, self-assured understanding of what has been built — and what still remains to be done.

Min Seong-jae (smin@pace.edu) is a professor of communication and media studies at Pace University in New York.