Fashion:
The American style streetwear originates from the Californian surf and skate culture. Over time, this style encompasses a mix of other elements such as basketball and hip hop. Such styles were donned by rap stars such as Eminem, Jay-Z and 50 Cent, which in turn influenced the styles of many other countries through their exposure in the mainstream media.

Plastic Surgery

Americans have different beauty standards compared to Koreans as they focused more on liposuction, and breast implants. Since Korea has many plastic surgery companies, there are many Americans who opt to go to Korea to get their plastic surgery done because of the more natural look. 

 

WORLD WIDE: 6,282,774 ticket sales

Park Chan-Wook is one of South Korea’s most globally known film director. His most renowned work, the “Vengeance Trilogy” with its most acclaimed piece “Oldboy”, led him to worldwide recognition and pushed the South Korean film scene onto the world stage.

Oldboy’s cultural origins serve as another focal point of this essay, since globalization in the age of transnationalism do not prevent non-American films from reaching a global audience.

This dichotomy that the audience was faced with in regards to the actions and moral compass of the protagonist vaulted the movie above mere popcorn flick into the realm of legends. These complex feelings allowed Oldboy to resonate with people around the world, sending it to be forever remembered as a great film.
Heightened feelings of nervousness and unease in Korea,  born of the apprehension of a transition of the government at the time, helped cement the overall impact of such thriller films and helped them resonate better with their audiences.

Kim Jee-woon is a South Korean film director and screenwriter. The Korean thriller movie, “I Saw the Devil” that was directed by him was Influenced by David Fincher’s “Zodiac” as he was interested in crime thrillers and focused on dark desires and passions. He tried to emulate the look of “Zodiac” by using softened hues, contrast and using dull dark colours in his films to create the eerie atmosphere.

Music:
Further research shows that through the exposure of American pop music, several popular artists that emerged in Korea actually diverges from the traditional K-pop sound. Examples of such artists are Lee Jung Hyun, a female techno artist and several hiphop artists like Drunken Tiger and Epik High.

Rock music is also starting to break into the mainstream in Korea with the emergence of YB, which gained national recognition.

Gaming:
On the PC platform for gaming, Starcraft, an RTS game made by Blizzard, is seen to be the most popular game in Korea despite Korea having its own very popular MMORPGs.

But on the mobile platform, Korea is still dominating the market as it can be seen that most of their games are found on the top of the list on Google Play Store. An example would be Lineage 2 Revolution.

Park also influenced other American directors who are fans of his works such as Quentin Tarantino, who compared Park Chan-wook ability to direct a thriller to that of Michelangelo ability to paint a masterpiece. Spike Lee another american director also highly respected Park’s film “Oldboy” so much that he directed the American adaptation in 2003. Unfortunately, it didn’t gain much positive response from the moviegoers. 

Thus Park made his first English debut movie in America with the movie titled, "Stoker." In the movie, he worked with Philip Glass, an American Oscar-nominated avant-garde composer who created “Einstein on the Beach’ and “The Hours” and Emily Wells, an   American multi-instrumentalist for the music and score. 

Kim Jee-Woon's  thriller film "A Tale of Two sisters” was deemed a huge success that there was an American adaptation called “The Uninvited” directed by The Guard brothers. It received mixed reviews compared to the Korean version. Kim Jee-Woon went to make his first American debut film, “The Last Stand”(2013) that starred Arnold Schwarzenegger, who chose to make a comeback in Kim's film even though he was given a chance in another film directed by James Cameron. Kim Jee-woon is planning on switching his film genre with his upcoming American film "Coward" based on Ed Brubaker's criminal graphic novel series. 

Music:
It can be seen that while many musical influences from America were drawn to Korea, there are instances whereby the Americans themselves are supportive of the Koreans' music. An example would be PSY's Gangnam Style, which actually broke the Youtube record of 1 billion views. The music was for the most part sang in Korean, but it still garnered a large global viewing. This shows that genres of music, with the help of the internet, can actually cross into other cultures.

With that being said, further research still shows that K-pop is mainly a mixture of several different genres of popular Western music. K-pop hits now possess the above mentioned elements, from electro-pop to R&B to piano ballads to hip-hop to soul music, but pulled off in their own style and blended in a way such that it is uniquely theirs.

An example would be Brown Eyed Girls.
WHAT IS BROWN EYED GIRLS??
Racing, cinematic violins and cellos
+ | Regal trumpets
+ | A pulsing beat
+ | Actual kitten-like “meows”
+ | Mariah Carey-esque belts and whistle notes on the bridge
x | 4 fearless femme fatales with crazy vocal skills
= | “Sixth Sense” by Brown Eyed Girls

BTS

One of Kpop famous bands will be BTS that is making their mark gradually in the American Music industry as they even got to the   top 10 on the all-genre Billboard 200 chart with their new EP Love Yourself: Her. They are the first Kpop band to ever do that in the history. They also had the opportunity to perform at the American Music Awards 2017, getting everyone a whole lot excited including the audience and stars such as Ansel Elgort and Demi Lovato.

Gaming:
An interesting topic found in the online forums was on the origins of the widely popular MMORPG, Guild Wars 2. Guild Wars 2 is a game ran by Arenanet, which is the US division of NCsoft, a Korean gaming company. Many people were debating on whether it is a Korean or an American game.

My own research showed that the game was indeed mostly created by Arenanet, but was published by NCsoft. While Arenanet had made the game, the creation revolved around the ideals of NCsoft's own Korean MMORPGs, like Aion. The only difference would be that players are encouraged to level up through exploration and other acts instead of the infamous grinding of most Korean MMOs. Hence from here, we can actually see that this game is actually made such that they are trying to meet half way, with the game being able to cater to both the eastern and western audiences. 

Overwatch
Overwatch is a team-based multiplayer online first-person shooter video game developed and published by Blizzard Entertainment, a premier developer and publisher of entertainment software that was started by Allen Adham, Frank Pearce and Mike Morhaime, three American UCLA (University of California, Los Angeles) graduates. Blizzard organized an eSports tournament which was The Overwatch World Cup 2017 with South Korea team coming up as the champion.

It was their second World cup win in a row. In the recent Overwatch league 2018, South Korea created a team called Seoul Dynasty winning most of their matches until they were given their first loss by New York Excelsior another team that has South Korean players. Three full Korean teams (Seoul Dynasty, New York Excelsior and London Spitfire) are at the top three currently showing their dominance in the league. 

There is even Calvin Klein online store in Korean. http://www.calvinklein.com/kr/