Living in a hyperconnected world, it is hard to claim that one’s lifestyle is not influenced by any foreign cultural elements. The idea of culture as a mere social construct applies best to a pre-industrial society but not so much to the modern connected world. The increasing globalization and proliferation of social media has effectively rendered borders obsolete in a cultural sense. For this reason, it sounds a bit daunting to categorize cultures by nation. On a deeper look, though, culture plays an important role in a country’s geopolitical dominance, which is why the Korean Wave that is taking the world by storm has a broader implication than just being “cool”. The latest Netflix series, Squid Game (2021), hit off the chart records, with 87 million people having watched at least one episode of the show, it is by no means an overstatement to say Korean culture has a considerable impact on global society.
It naturally begs the question of whether the Korean Wave could potentially provide a beneficial boost to Korea’s geopolitical influence, in the same way that Hollywood and Billboards fuel American culture into the world. Squid Game and Parasite (2019) are arguably the two mega-hits of Korean media that depict and criticize the gloomy aspects of Korean society. In comparison to Hollywood films, which they generate a fantasy for certain aspects of American culture, Parasite and Squid Game elicit the exact opposite response. People might fantasize walking down the streets of New York with a cup of coffee, but most certainly not living in a seemingly uptight society where people participate in a Last Man Standing game as an exchange for their very lives. For this reason, the Korean Wave “is all a far cry from the classic perceptions of U.S. soft power,” according to Bloomberg Businessweek. However, experts suggest that soft power is not necessarily the only incentive in cultural exports. While the U.S. has certainly gained leverage in the global stage through its cultural and ideological exports, the Korean media can nevertheless be of tremendous benefit for the country’s economy.
Even disregarding the political and economic gains, the Korean Wave is an interesting example that breaks the traditional rule that U.S. blockbuster films take up the majority of the narrative in the global cultural exchange. This comes to show a net positive development in the culture of humanity in which people are no longer defensive about new and foreign concepts which ultimately leads to a healthier and more diverse world under the unified code of humanity rather than separate nations.