Hallyu: The power of culture
A photo of Gangnam in the 1970s shows a farmer working in the fields with glitzy skyscrapers rising in the background—a striking illustration of Korea’s rapid gentrification and meteoric rise as a cultural juggernaut, with Hallyu or the Korean Wave gaining prominence in the late 1990s, rippling across Asia before reaching all the corners of the world and challenging the currents of global pop culture today.
Just look at how addicted we have become to K-dramas, whose stars dominate the billboards all over the city. It has become such a phenomenon that the Victoria & Albert Museum in London has dedicated an exhibition to explore its origins and wide reach through cinema, TV dramas, music and fandoms and how these have made an impact on the beauty and fashion industries.
Gangnam is particularly significant since the 2012 music video Gangnam Style by PSY is how most people first got swept up by Hallyu, placing South Korea on the international map. The catchy tune—making fun of one of Seoul’s most affluent districts and its achingly stylish habitués—went viral overnight on YouTube, breaking records as the first video to reach over a billion views and is now hitting 4.5 billion.
“The world’s biggest, fastest, cultural paradigm shift in modern history,” says writer Euny Hong, transpired in the space of just two generations. A long history of Neo-Confucian ideology inherited from 500 years of Joseon Dynasty Rule (1392-1910) was suddenly challenged with a new reality brought about by 20th-century events: Japanese colonial rule (1910-1945), the division of the country to north and south leading to the Korean War (1950-53), and a coup d’état in 1961 that inaugurated two decades of dictatorship.
Read more: Hallyu: The power of culture • l!fe • The Philippine Star (philstarlife.com)