The Korean Wave, or hallyu (Korean: 한류), is the dramatic rise in global interest in South Korean popular culture since the 1990s—led by K-pop, K-dramas, and films, with keystone successes including K-pop groups BTS and Blackpink, the Oscar-winning film Parasite (2019), and the television series Squid Game (2021). The Korean Wave has been recognized as a form of soft power and as an important economic asset for South Korea, generating revenue through exports and tourism.
After the 1997 Asian financial crisis and the end of military censorship over the South Korean entertainment industry, the country emerged as a major exporter of popular culture. The rise of satellite media in the late 1990s helped spread K-dramas and Korean cinema into East Asia and parts of Southeast Asia. Chinese journalists coined the term Korean Wave (Chinese: 韩流; pinyin: hánliú) in 1999. During the 2000s, hallyu evolved into a global phenomenon, expanding rapidly into the rest of Southeast Asia, South Asia, the Middle East, and Eastern Europe. By 2008, the value of cultural exports from South Korea surpassed that of cultural imports for the first time. The advent of social media and the internet helped the Korean entertainment industry reach overseas audiences and gain the endorsement of the South Korean government.
The Background of Hallyu Culture
Under the military dictatorship of Park Chung Hee, South Korean mass media underwent a process of rapid expansion, despite facing increasing control and censorship from the government.[15] As part of Park’s development plans, the first commercial radio and television stations opened in the early 1960s and were subject to strict censorship under the Broadcasting Ethics Committee (Korean: 방송윤리위원회).[15] This brief expansion ended in 1972, when Park enacted the Yushin Constitution which broadly expanded his powers and codified his de facto dictatorial rule.[16] The enactment of the Yushin Constitution coincided with a broad crackdown on the South Korean culture industry against what Park alleged was the influence of “foreign decadent culture”.[17] Following Park’s death and the 1979 coup d’état of December Twelfth, the military regime of Chun Doo-hwan enacted additional restrictions over the media.[18] In 1980, Chun forced the merger of all 29 private broadcasters into the state-owned Korean Broadcasting System (KBS) and Munhwa Broadcasting Corporation (MBC), creating a state-led media monopoly.
