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Why is south Korean culture so addictive for western citizens?

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- they do not have a strict hierarchical system like historical times, but they do have people with higher positions who help out with economy/government (chairman/chairwomen, wealthy families)

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- their pop culture (K-pop) and films (k-dramas) are very addicting (somehow)

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- K-dramas have very different and long layouts for their series

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- how did this addiction all start?

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- history of Korean hierarchical and oppressed culture

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- history of censorship in North and South Korea

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- how do we know Korea's pop culture is so addictive?

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- is Korea only well-known for their pop-culture?

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- How are North Korea and South Korea linked, or not? What are the misconceptions?

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We all have surely heard the term "The Korean Wave," which refers to the increase in global popularity of South Korean culture. Korean movies, songs and TV series have all had big breakthroughs in recent years, and the popularity of these Korean productions has turned into a globe phenomenon.

While likes of boy band BTS and girl group BLACKPINK have become an obsession, especially among youngsters, series like "Boys Over Flower" and the recent, record-breaking " Squid Game" have also conquered the hearts of viewers. Moreover, films like " Parasite," "Train to Busan" and " Minari " have won many awards, capturing the attention of cinephiles. But how were Korean music, TV series and movies primed for this viral moment?

Big bang

On U.S. election day in 2008, Seung Bak and his business partner went to a Korean broadcaster's outpost in Los Angeles with $50,000 of their savings, asking to license Korean television dramas to stream online.

They were met with quizzical stares. Who outside the Korean diaspora would watch Korean shows, much less pay for them? Would American TV viewers all of a sudden start reading subtitles? And what the heck even is streaming?

It would be several more years before Netflix's own streaming business took off in earnest and "binge-watching" became a couch sport. It was well before - it is hard to even imagine now - BTS, "Parasite," then "Squid Game" created a South Korean cultural output that captured the world's imagination and redefined how entertainment transcends borders.

Bak and his fellow Korean American entrepreneur Suk Park, though, were already seeing a groundswell of demand for Korean content in the U.S. and across the English-speaking world. Fans were illegally downloading or streaming pirated shows, risking malware and enduring incessant pop-up ads. They were organizing among themselves to subtitle hours and hours of melodrama for the growing legions of non-Korean-speaking devotees.

Something about the shows incited a fervor, a thirst, that cut across language and culture and spread virally - at a time when "going viral" had not quite yet entered the lexicon.

"We were finding this raw demand that seemed to have existed organically," said Bak, who co-created the streaming site DramaFever, later sold to SoftBank, then to Warner Bros. in 2016 for "a nine-figure sum." The site sampled and experimented with content from around the world, from Bollywood to Eastern Europe. But none seemed to resonate with users the way Korean shows did.

"How is it possible," Bak said, "that this little country can create story lines that so many people want to consume?"

Removal of borders

It happened with K-pop when fans eagerly raced down the rabbit hole of snazzily produced music videos and imitable dance moves on YouTube. It happened with films when "Parasite" won four Oscars and buzz started surrounding director Bong Joon Ho and other South Korean auteurs. It's happening again with Korean scripted shows and melodramas following the global hit "Squid Game," with streaming algorithms queuing up one South Korean production after another.

The global moment South Korean cultural exports are enjoying is a confluence of social media and streaming services bringing down cultural borders and language barriers at a time when the nation's creative industries were ambitiously poised to expand beyond a limited domestic market.

In 2020, South Korea logged a trade surplus in intellectual property rights relating to arts and culture for the first time, a trend that continued in 2021, according to the Bank of Korea.

"South Korea, because of this tradition of export-oriented industrialization, intensified after the (1997 Asian financial) crisis, really designed everything to be exported," said John Lie, a University of California, Berkeley sociologist who has written extensively about K-pop. "It's meant to have universal appeal."

Eclipse of contrasts

Behind each South Korean cultural phenomenon that's swept the world in recent years is a unique set of intricate crosscurrents.

In K-pop, concerted efforts from music labels and talent agencies targeted overseas markets beginning in the early 2000s, recruiting Chinese, Japanese, Thai and Asian American trainees for girl and boy bands, and releasing songs in languages other than Korean. Another crucial driving force was the highly organized fan bases K-pop groups spawned that would stream a preferred artist's new releases and videos as part of all-out social media blitzes to build hype around singles and albums.

The success of Korean movies came another way. Decades of protectionism that mandated Korean theaters devote a certain quota to domestically produced cinema merged with a robust film industry dating to the 1960s that flourished with the end of censorship. That set the stage for a generation led by cinephiles steeped in Hollywood influence. "Parasite" director Bong Joon Ho and filmmaker Kim Jee-woon have each cited the impact of watching films on AFKN, the American Forces Korea Network, broadcast for U.S. troops stationed in South Korea.

Korean television series first got a foothold in Japan, then in China, before exploding in popularity across Asia, giving rise to what's been termed the "Korean wave." Initially, based on melodramatic storylines and Cinderella-esque tropes, the shows have matured in production quality, diversified in genres and strengthened in plot as the industry has become increasingly profitable and commanded more substantial budgets.

With the arrival of streaming services including Netflix, Korean scripted series have crossed over to Western audiences in a way that's been surprising even to their creators.

Particularly resonant across borders has been a long-running undercurrent of social critique among Korean filmmakers that's bled into scripted shows, evinced in the less-than-subtle dark class commentary of "Parasite" and "Squid Game." Former president Park Geun-hye, a conservative impeached in a corruption scandal in 2017, was so threatened by the influence of progressives in the arts that she and her aides kept a blacklist of thousands, including film directors and actors, whose funding, opportunities and careers were stymied.

"It has a very high 'travelability' factor that was underestimated in the beginning," said Sarah Chung, a Korean drama devotee who estimates she's watched several hundred South Korean shows. She's made a career out of it, building the English-language recap site Dramabeans and creating fan content for Netflix in recent years. "They thought only the Korean diaspora liked it, and that wasn't true; only the Asian diaspora would like it, and that wasn't true. It kept defying expectations on how far it resonated."

Chung said the shows' appeal was that it invested audiences in characters over the course of a limited miniseries that promised a cathartic conclusion, rather than the drawn-out, seasons-based system established in the U.S.

"I think K-dramas, K-content, has somehow managed to put its finger on getting an emotional rise out of the viewer," said Chung, who left Netflix at the end of December. "They push your buttons."

New chances

Hyun Park, head of the global division for Studio Dragon, a production company behind some of the biggest Korean drama hits in recent years, said the recognition brought by the success of "Parasite" and "Squid Game" was opening up new horizons for the industry.

Until the arrival of Netflix and other streaming services - Apple TV+ and Disney+ launched in South Korea late last year, in addition to a handful of homegrown providers - Korean writers and directors were limited in subject matters and tied to broadcast schedules, he said.

"It's a new chance for our creators to do everything they've wanted to ... There's a lot of pent-up creativity finding ways to manifest," said Park, who was also part of the early team at DramaFever. "We're about to experience a renaissance of Korean dramas at a cinematic scale."

Recent breakthrough moments surrounding Korean films, music or shows generated online conversations worldwide akin to buzz surrounding global events such as the World Cup or the Olympics, said Kim Yeon-jeong, Twitter's head of K-pop and Korean content partnerships.

The latest is "All of Us Are Dead," a zombie series set at a South Korean high school, which quickly rose to top global Netflix charts with 125 million viewing hours in the first week, 236 million in the second. It's become only the second non-English-language show to top Netflix's viewership in the U.S., after "Squid Game." It's the first of 25 South Korea-produced shows the service has announced it will be releasing this year.

Twitter conversations about K-pop reached a tipping point and began increasing exponentially around 2017 and 2018, Kim said. And similar to the way K-pop's fandom expanded, viewers who tweeted about one Korean show appeared to soon start watching and tweeting about other dramas, based on an analysis of associated terms on Twitter, she said.

"The 'buzz model' of K-pop is expanding to Korean dramas," she said. "There's quality that's been building up over a long time that's found a channel of communication through social media ... Before, no matter how good the content was, it couldn't get to the outside world."

Korean producers are now taking a more focused and aggressive approach to establishing themselves in the U.S. market. Two of the biggest K-pop agencies, Hybe - the architect behind BTS - and SM Entertainment are partnering with American labels and studios and holding auditions to launch K-pop groups in the U.S.

In November, CJ ENM, the producer behind "Parasite" and Studio Dragon's parent company, acquired Endeavor Content's scripted business for $775 million. Studio Dragon announced plans last year to co-produce its first U.S. series, "The Big Door Prize," based on an M.O. Walsh book about a mystery machine that shows up in a small Louisiana town.

It's an ironic reversal from decades prior, when South Korean filmmakers so feared being wiped out by an incursion of Hollywood films that, in protest, they released live snakes at theaters showing the 1987 film "Fatal Attraction."

"Korea's always been obsessed with soft power, with having a voice in the world," said Hyun Park of Studio Dragon. "After 'Parasite,' we thought, it's our time."

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K-wave: How South Korean pop culture took over the world

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With the increasing craze for Korean entertainment products, South Korean culture is in high demand recently. But what is it about Korean music, TV and...

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“Starting in the mid-1990s, the Korean government made an effort to bring the cultural industries as part of the national economy,” said Dal Yong Jin, the author of “Transnational Hallyu.”

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In 2012, Psy’s “Gangnam Style” becomes the first video to break 1 billion views on YouTube.

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Kpop had its first biggest explosion of popularity in 2018

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Watch the video attached. Think about the impact that K-pop art schools has on its rise to popularity. Take notes below.

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Many shows and groups have won global awards. For example, BTS accepting the Top Social Artist award in 2018, film 'Parasite' winning 4 Oscars.

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Streaming services like Netflix have contributed with the spread of Korean series for Western audience to watch

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The Power of K-Pop | Dabin Woo | TEDxYouth@AASSofia

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Watch Netflix Explained documentary on K-pop

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Watch Netflix Explained documentary on K-pop

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https://www.imdb.com/title/tt8453106/

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Elaborate music videos, adoring fans, killer choreography. Learn about the global music phenomenon from South Korea that goes beyond "Gangnam Style". Elaborate music videos, adoring fans, killer choreography. Learn about the global music phenomenon from South Korea that goes beyond "Gangnam Style". Elaborate music videos, adoring fans, killer choreography. Learn about the global music phenomenon from South Korea that goes beyond "Gangnam Style".

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"Explained" K-Pop (TV Episode 2018) - IMDb

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Elaborate music videos, adoring fans, killer choreography. Learn about the global music phenomenon from South Korea that goes beyond "Gangnam Style". Elaborate music videos, adoring fans, killer choreography. Learn about the global music phenomenon from South Korea that goes beyond "Gangnam Style". Elaborate music videos, adoring fans, killer choreography.

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S1 Ep4

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With North Korea as its threatening neighbour, South Korea also has the perfect excuse for internet censorship: national security. It ends up being an overused argument to promote a crackdown on “fake news” and the blocking of websites that are accused of being pro-North Korea.

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Since 1988, after the end of Chun Doo-hwan (全斗煥)’s dictatorship, all democratically elected presidents became involved in scandals, mostly related to corruption and controlling online opinions (or at least having unrestricted access to them).

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Facebook, for example, imposes strict policies on any pornographic content, censoring anything deemed suggestive, including the female nipples. In addition to censoring images, Facebook also decided to remove users whose ideologies do not seem to fit for the platform, leading to yet another debate on freedom of speech.

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Many people believe South Korea as Pro-North-Korea

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Censorship is for Privacy and protection of the people. (It is largely for good and not to restrict public access to content)

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Kpop has had a huge influence to people around the whole world.

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The government is not oppressing the people. There have been large political movements towards liberation in big topics.

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The government adopted plans to reduce industrial carbon emissions but failed to pass legislation to phase out coal in energy production. The construction of a new coal-fired power plant continued. Women's rights were further undermined as the government continued with controversial plans to abolish the Ministry of Gender Equality and Family and cut budgets aimed at preventing and responding to violence against women. An increasingly hard line was taken against peaceful protesters including labour and disability activists. The indefinite detention of refugees and migrants was found to be unconstitutional.

Background

In August, tens of thousands of people protested peacefully in the capital, Seoul, against the release of Fukushima nuclear wastewater by Japan into the Pacific Ocean. In September, around 30,000 protesters took part in a march for climate justice in Seoul.

Right to a healthy environment

In April, the government adopted the National Basic Plan for Carbon Neutrality and Green Growth that includes plans for lowering greenhouse gas emissions and supplementing resulting reductions in energy production capacity with other technologies such as nuclear power.

In June, the National Human Rights Commission of Korea (NHRCK) submitted an opinion to the Constitutional Court in support of petitions contesting the constitutionality of the government's Carbon Neutrality Act. The opinion stated that the greenhouse emission reduction targets were too low and would unjustly pass on the burden of cutting emissions to future generations.

The Coal Phase-out bill, first proposed in 2022, that includes provisions to stop coal power generation projects currently under construction and to prohibit new licences, was still pending at year's end. In the meantime, the construction of a new coal-fired power station in Samcheok, Gangwon province, continued.

Freedom of expression, association and assembly

The erosion of rights to freedom of expression, association and assembly continued against a backdrop of a government clampdown on "illegal" protests.

In January, the city-run transport company Seoul Metro filed a suit against the disability advocacy group Solidarity Against Disability Discrimination (SADD), claiming KRW 601.45 million (approximately USD 450,000) in damages for train delays and losses caused by SADD protests since 2021 against lack of disabled access to trains. As part of SADD's campaign for improved access to public transport for people with disabilities, wheelchair users repeatedly boarded and disembarked from trains to draw attention to their calls for more spending on wheelchair ramps, elevators at metro stations and other mobility measures.

In September, the Constitutional Court ruled that provisions in the National Security Law prohibiting "anti-state", "enemy-benefiting" and "espionage" activities were constitutional. The law, which has been subject to multiple legal challenges, has been used to silence dissent and to arbitrarily prosecute individuals for peacefully exercising their rights to freedom of expression and association.

Also in September, the Constitutional Court struck down a law that punished attempts to send anti-Pyongyang messages, for example leaflets carried by balloon or via cross-border rivers, to North Korea with up to three years' imprisonment, on the grounds that it was inconsistent with constitutional guarantees of freedom of expression.

Workers' rights

Harassment of labour activists intensified in the context of President Yoon's anti-union rhetoric. Police launched criminal investigations into the activities of dozens of trade union members during the year and conducted raids on union offices. A police search and seizure operation on the office of the Korean Construction Workers Union (KCWU) took place on 1 May. On the same day, KCWU executive, Yang Hoe-dong, set fire to himself in front of the Gangneung branch of Chuncheon District Court and died the next day. He was under investigation in connection with his union work, including accusations that he had "blackmailed" construction companies to pay union fees and hire unionized workers.

On 31 May, police demolished a memorial altar to Yang Hoe-dong, injuring four people, and threatened to use pepper spray to break up a peaceful rally organized by the Korean Confederation of Trade Unions.

Discrimination

Women's and girls' rights

The government continued with its controversial plan to abolish the Ministry of Gender Equality and Family, but had not done so by the end of the year. In October, the government announced significant cuts to the 2024 budget for preventing violence against women and supporting survivors, provoking strong criticism from hundreds of women's rights organizations. On 24 August, protests were held in Seoul demanding that the authorities do more to end violence against women following the murder of a woman earlier in the month in Sillim-dong park, in the Gwanak district of Seoul.

In August, a network of campaigners for safe abortions lodged a petition with the NHRCK stating that the government was violating the right to health of women by failing to enshrine the right to abortion into law. In November, the UN Human Rights Committee urged the government to take appropriate legislative and other measures to implement a 2019 Constitutional Court decision which decriminalized abortion in order to ensure effective access to safe abortion.

LGBTI people's rights

In February, the Seoul High Court ordered the National Health Insurance Service (NHIS) to resume health insurance coverage for Kim Yong-min, as a dependent of his same-sex partner. It was the first court ruling in South Korea to legally recognize same-sex partners. The ruling found that the NHIS's spousal insurance system was discriminatory because it did not grant equal benefits to people in same-sex relationships. The NHIS appealed the ruling.

In May, a group of cross-party National Assembly members tabled a marriage equality bill to amend the civil code in order to permit same-sex marriage. The bill was not expected to be adopted but was regarded as an important symbolic step in increasing pressure on the government to expand the definition of "family".

In May, the NHRCK made recommendations to the Supreme Court on revising its rules relating to gender recognition for trans people to ensure compliance with human rights standards. These had not been acted on by year's end.

On 26 October, the Constitutional Court, for the fourth time, upheld Article 92-6 of the Military Criminal Act, which criminalizes consensual same-sex sexual acts within the Korean military.

Refugees' and migrants' rights

A Constitutional Court decision offered the prospect of greater protection for refugees and migrants in South Korea. On 23 March, it found that the provisions of the Immigration Control Act, including indefinite detention of foreign nationals subject to deportation and the absence of an independent review of detention decisions, were unconstitutional and violated the principles of proportionality and due process. The Ministry of Justice said it would challenge the ruling.

Children's rights

On 23 March, the Constitutional Court found that provisions of the Act on Registration of Family Relations, making birth registration by the biological father of a child born to unmarried parents almost impossible, violated the constitution. It confirmed that the right to birth registration must be guaranteed to all children in the country, regardless of their nationality or status.

Sexual and gender-based violence

On 26 January, the Ministry of Justice rejected plans, announced earlier the same day by the Ministry of Gender Equality and Family, to revise the legal definition of rape under the criminal code to include non-consensual sex. The current definition requires proof of "violence or intimidation" which is inconsistent with international standards under which lack of consent is a fundamental element of rape.

Death penalty

Several developments raised concerns that South Korea may be considering resuming executions. In April, the Supreme Prosecutor's Office announced plans to introduce the death penalty for infanticide and for crimes relating to the sale and distribution of drugs to children. In August, the justice minister ordered correctional institutions to inspect and carry out any necessary maintenance of their execution facilities.

1. "South Korea: High Court health insurance ruling offers hope for marriage equality", 21 February

2. "South Korea: Ruling on LGBTI soldiers a distressing setback for human rights", 26 October

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Stay up to date on the state of human rights in South Korea with the latest research, campaigns and education material from Amnesty International.