K-pop stamps mark on world
If you had told me in the early 1990s that part of South Korea’s influence in the world would be its pop culture, I would have thought you were nuts.
As a young diplomat posted in Seoul, it was beyond my comprehension that within two decades Korean pop culture would be a worldwide phenomenon.
It’s amazing how much Korean soft power has developed into something Korean people are rightfully proud of – in the same way Kiwis are chuffed when our country gets plaudits for its filmmaking and sporting prowess.
Soft power is not just a niceto-have: you can’t talk about the United States’ economic and military might without also talking about the hearts and minds it has won over the decades through its music, movies, television and fashion.
If you happened to attend the K-Culture Festival in Wellington last weekend, you would have seen the Michael Fowler Centre packed with people hailing from around New Zealand and from diverse ethnic backgrounds.
And you would have heard a fair few of them making delighted screams as their fellow Kiwis took to the stage to present their own renditions of K-pop classics.
Many of us in the Asia New Zealand Foundation office know followers of ‘‘Korean wave’’, known as Hallyu. My friend’s 17-year-old speaks pretty decent Korean as a result of following K-pop. And as one of the members of our Leadership Network, Fine Lavoni Koloamatangi notes, ‘‘I’ve found that people who become fans of K-pop music actually become interested in Korea in general: its culture, history, fashion, entertainment industry and, more importantly, its language.’’
New Zealand is hardly an outlier in all of this. You’ve doubtless heard of PSY and Gangnam Style but that’s just a small (admittedly significant) part of the international K-culture influence picture. A couple of months back, South Korean boy band BTS became the first K-pop group in history to top the US charts, claiming the number-one spot on the Billboard Top 200 with the album Love Yourself: Tear.
K-pop is a big earner – global sales of concert tickets, CDs, streaming and merchandise reached 5.3 trillion won (NZ$7 billion) in 2016, according to the Korea Creative Content Agency.
But pop culture also has an impact on our feelings of warmth towards other countries and plays an important role in international relations.
When China wanted to express its disapproval over South Korea’s THAAD missile shield system last year, K-pop was one of its targets (despite the fact Chinese firms had invested considerable sums in K-pop over the years, seeing the industry as great business). K-pop was also part of the cultural package that had driven a surge in Chinese tourists to Korea.
New Zealand’s outwardlooking agencies understand that Asian celebrities are powerful tools for marketing New Zealand in their home countries. Tourism New Zealand has had Indian actor Sidharth Malhotra as its ambassador, and his Bollywood contemporary Kriti Sanon does the same for Education New Zealand.
Zespri and Air New Zealand have also used local celebrities to promote products in Asia.
But what about when it comes to selling things to consumers here in New Zealand? When it comes to international celebrities, we’ve tended to look to Anglo-Saxon countries. It’s interesting to ponder how that might change in the future.
And from an international policy perspective, South Korea’s example is a good reminder of just how powerful projections of soft power can be.