Squid Game, Blackpink, K-pop and K-drama make South Korea a cultural superpower

Evan Behringer was 14 years old when he came across Full House, a South Korean romcom in which two strangers are forced to live in the same house.

Sitting in his home in Memphis, he started playing, believing it to be an Asian remake of the beloved 1980s American sitcom. It wasn’t until the third episode that he realized they had nothing in common but a name. But he was hooked.

This random choice changed his life. Twelve years ago, he worked as an English teacher in South Korea and says he likes it here: “I got to try all the food I saw in K-dramas, and I got to see some of the K-pop artists in concert whose lyrics I used while learning Korean.’

When Evan discovered Full House in 2012, South Korean entertainment became the focus of the world. Psy’s Gangnam Style was Korea’s most famous pop export at the time.

Today, there are more than 220 million fans of Korean entertainment worldwide – four times the population of South Korea. The Squid Game, Netflix’s most popular show of all time, has just returned with its highly anticipated second season.

How did we get here?

Experts say the so-called Korean Wave swept the world when streaming success met American-inspired production values. And Korean entertainment programs – from pop music and gentle dramas to well-known hits based on universal themes – were ready for it.

BTS and Blackpink are now household names in global pop music. People are swooning over juicy K-dramas from Dubai to India to Singapore. Overseas sales of all this Korean content – including video games – are now worth billions.

Last month, after poet and novelist Han Kang, 53, won the Nobel Prize for literature, internet boards were full of memes celebrating South Korea’s “Victory of Culture” — a reference to the popular Civilization video game series.

There were also jokes about the country fulfilling the dream of founding father Kim Koo, who wrote that he wanted Korea to be a nation of culture, not power.

As it turned out, this moment was years in the making.

After the end of the military dictatorship in South Korea in 1987, censorship was relaxed and many television channels were opened. Soon there was a generation of creators who grew up idolizing Hollywood and hip-hop, says Hye Seung-chung, an assistant professor of Korean film studies at the University of Buffalo.

Around the same time, South Korea became rich quickly, benefiting from booms in auto and electronics exports. And money from conglomerates, or as they are called, chabolei, flowed into film and television production, giving it a Hollywood sheen.

They came to own most of the industry, from manufacturing to movie theaters. So they were willing to spend money to make movies without worrying about losses, says Professor Chung.

Meanwhile, K-pop became a household name in the mid-’90s, fueling the success of groups like HOT and Shinhwa.

This inspired agencies to replicate Japan’s grueling artist management system.

Seek out young talent, often in their teens, and sign them to multi-year contracts that turn them into “perfect” idols with distinct images and hyper-driven public personas. As the system took hold, it transformed K-pop, creating more and more idols.

By the 2000s, Korean TV shows and K-pop had become a hit in East and Southeast Asia. But it was broadcasting that brought them into the world and into the lives of everyone who has a smartphone.

That’s when the recommendation engine took over – it was key in initiating fans of Korean culture, taking them from one show to the next, spanning across genres and even platforms.

Evan says he binged 16 hours of Full House episodes. He liked how it took time to build the romance, from bickering to attraction, unlike the American shows he knew.

“I was fascinated by every cultural difference I saw – I noticed that they didn’t wear shoes in the house,” he recalls. So he accepted Netflix’s offers for more Korean romcoms. He soon found himself humming along to show soundtracks and was drawn to K-pop.

Now he has started watching variety shows, a genre of reality shows where comedians go through a series of challenges together.

As they work their way through the recommendations, fans are immersed in a world that feels foreign but familiar — a world that eventually includes kimchi jigi, a spicy kimchi stew, and kalguksa, a seafood and kelp broth.

When Mary Geda visited South Korea for the first time, she went in search of a bowl of kimchi jigae, as she had seen the stars on screen make many times.

“I cried (while eating). It was so spicy, she says. “I thought, why did I order this? They eat it so easily in every show.”

Mary, an aspiring French actor, now lives in Seoul. She was originally a fan of K-pop, but later discovered K-dramas and learned Korean. She also appeared in several cameos. “I’m lucky and I really enjoy it,” she says.

For Mary, food was a big attraction because she saw such a variety in K-dramas. Seeing the characters bond over food was familiar to her, she says, because she grew up in the French countryside in Burgundy.

But there is also the promise of romance that drew Marie Namur to South Korea from her native Belgium. She started watching K-dramas on a whim after visiting South Korea, but she says she continued because she was “pretty much attracted to all these handsome Korean men.”

“(They’re) impossible love stories between a super-rich guy and a girl who’s usually poor and, you know, the guy’s there to save her, and that really sells you the dream.”

But it’s Korean women who write most of these shows – so it’s their imagination or fantasy that captures the interest (and hearts) of other women around the world.

Marie said she was “treated like a lady” in Seoul, something she hadn’t seen in “a very long time”, but her “dating experience is not what I expected”.

“I don’t want to be a housewife. I want to keep working. I want to be free. I want to go clubbing with my girlfriends whenever I want, even if I’m married or in a relationship, and a lot of guys here don’t want to.’

Foreign fans often seek an alternative world out of disillusionment with their own society, says Professor Chung.

Gorgeous romances with handsome, caring, and chivalrous protagonists appeal to female audiences who turn away from what they see as hypersexualized American entertainment. And when social inequality became a stronger theme in Korean films and TV series — like Parasite and The Squidward Game — it attracted viewers from around the world disenchanted with capitalism and the severe division of wealth in their own countries.

The pursuit of a global audience has also brought problems. The increasing use of English lyrics in K-pop has led to some criticism.

And now the spotlight is on the less glamorous side of the industry. The immense pressure that stars face to be perfect, for example, and the demands of an ultra-competitive industry. The creators of blockbusters claimed exploitation and complained about unfair compensation.

Still, it’s good to see the world paying attention to Korea, says Professor Chung. She grew up in repressive South Korea, where critics of the government were regularly threatened or even killed. She escaped to American films.

When Parasite played in the theaters of the small American town where she lives, she saw on the faces of other moviegoers the same awe she felt when watching Hollywood movies as a child: “It’s so good that our love is back.”