[Culture Op-Ed] Is the heart of the Korean Wave in cultural content not K-pop and BTS?

In fact, anyone interested in this field probably already knows this, at least roughly, but for those who do not have much interest in popular culture, it is an easy point to misunderstand. It cannot really be helped. The media overwhelmingly explain the Korean Wave by highlighting only K-pop, or if not that, K-dramas, and now even K-movies that have won Academy Awards.

In reality, in terms of both scale and global influence, the biggest pillar of the Korean Wave in cultural content is neither K-pop, K-dramas, nor K-movies. It is a genre that has never even had the letter “K” attached to it: games. Consider a May 19, 2020 Seoul Finance article titled, “Content Industry Exports Surpass 10 Trillion Won for the First Time... Games Account for 66.7%.”

“Annual exports from the content industry, led by the game industry, surpassed 10 trillion won for the first time. According to the ‘2019 Content Industry Statistics Survey Results’ released by the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism on the 19th, exports from Korea’s content industry in 2018 were tallied at $9.61504 billion (about 10.5 trillion won), up 9.1% from the previous year. This is a high growth rate compared with the 5.4% year-on-year increase in exports across all domestic industries.

By sector, the game industry recorded the largest export volume at $6.41149 billion, accounting for 66.7% of the total. Game industry exports also grew at an average annual rate of 21.2%, from $2.97 billion in 2014. Games were followed by characters ($745.14 million), knowledge information ($633.88 million), and music ($564.24 million).

Influenced by the Korean Wave, content industry exports maintained a high average annual growth rate of 16.2% over five years (2014–2018). Imports in 2018 rose 1.3% from the previous year to $1.21977 billion, and the trade surplus increased from $7.61 billion the previous year to $8.39527 billion (about 9.23 trillion won). Domestic content industry sales in 2018 were tallied at 119.6066 trillion won, up 5.6% from the previous year.

Sales increased in every sector except animation (-5.4%). In particular, broadcasting (9.5%), comics (8.9%), and games (8.7%) posted high growth rates. By sales volume, publishing ranked first at 20.9538 trillion won, followed by broadcasting (19.7622 trillion won), advertising (17.2119 trillion won), knowledge information (16.291 trillion won), and games (14.2902 trillion won).”

As you can see, games account for the largest share of cultural content exports. In fact, they are overwhelmingly dominant. Their share is 66.7%. What comes after that is also unexpected. The character industry ranks second, the knowledge information industry third, and the music industry centered on K-pop only fourth. Its scale does not even reach one-tenth that of the game industry. In practical terms, it is not even a real comparison. In terms of total sales, it does not even make the top five.

At this point, one might instead find it puzzling. If games have grown so rapidly that they go beyond being merely a star export product and have reached a scale that effectively drives the Korean Wave in cultural content itself, why is there so little media coverage of this, while the same discussions of K-pop, K-dramas, and K-movies are endlessly repeated? By the export figures above, K-dramas and K-movies barely even appear at all.

At this point, it becomes necessary to shift the perspective a bit. The question is which genre, in terms of enhancing national brand value, exerts the greatest influence regardless of its overall industrial scale or export volume. Let us look at this one by one.

Content has to show society, culture, and people to generate other effects

In fact, the power of popular culture is greater than many think. It has been shown repeatedly through various analyses that it can, in itself, raise a country’s brand value and even increase overall trust in that country. Of course, the foundation for this is the country’s economic power, but among countries that have achieved a certain level of economic strength, those whose popular culture exercises clear global influence generally enjoy stronger images and higher trust, and various derivative industries tend to flourish accordingly.

The key factor here, however, is how much people come to know about a country through its popular cultural products. The sequence is that they learn about that country’s social atmosphere and culture, especially its “people,” and through that, develop all kinds of trust and curiosity.

But none of this is visible through games. Beyond a perception that it is simply a country that makes entertaining games well, nothing further really develops, and games do not, in practice, arouse any other kind of curiosity. They do not raise socio-cultural trust in any broad sense. Enjoying a country’s game does not make people want to visit that country, nor does it generate trust in that country’s other products.

Many other fields similarly fail to create such additional effects. Animation, for example, is similar. It may be somewhat better than games, but even within animation, one generally does not see that country’s culture, society, or “people.” This is true even when the setting is a modern city. The sense of reality is extremely weak, and viewers rarely feel that they have come to understand that country. As for animations built on other SF or fantasy worldviews, that goes without saying. They can produce little more than effects similar to those of games.

Music, films, and dramas are different, however. Since the MTV revolution of the 1980s, music has not been a genre delivered solely as sound. It is delivered in the form of music videos that clearly reveal the performer. That is even more true in today’s YouTube-dominated era. Moreover, the K-pop promoted by Korea takes the form of an idol-centered comprehensive entertainment product. Not only through music videos but also through all kinds of vlogs, game shows, and talk shows, it conveys the culture and social atmosphere of Korea all at once.

The same is even more true of dramas and films. They are regularly set in Seoul and other major Korean cities, allowing viewers to see fully the image of a developed urban society. One can also clearly grasp the atmosphere of Korean society and the kind of ethics and morality that Korea possesses. In fact, one of the things overseas K-drama fans have found most puzzling is why, in Korea, when someone calls to them from outside while they are drinking coffee in a café, people simply get up and walk out without even taking their belongings. They are often somewhat shocked when they come to understand that Korea is a society in which “people do not steal your things” even if you do that.

It is precisely because of this background that Korean media place emphasis not on games—the true center of the Korean Wave in cultural content, accounting in practice for more than two-thirds of exports by scale—but on K-pop, K-dramas, and K-movies, which may have smaller export volumes but clearly generate effects that enhance the national brand. Just by watching the many travel vlogs available on YouTube, one can easily see countless cases of Korean tourists being welcomed by locals overseas because of K-pop and the like, but nobody approaches them to say they enjoyed a game. They may not even know what country that game came from. K-pop, K-dramas, and K-movies, by contrast, make it immediately clear just by looking at them which country they come from. That is the difference.

The strange change in the number of tourists between Korea and Japan after the 2019 export restrictions

There are other aspects as well. Even setting aside the broader effect of raising national brand value, there is also the issue of revitalizing other industries directly connected to the overseas success of cultural content. For example, when the game industry succeeds abroad, what effects does that have on other sectors? Strictly speaking, simply because someone enjoyed a game does not mean they will think they should even use a Korean-made computer to play it.

Animation is somewhat better in that regard. At least character merchandise can be sold. But given that most globally strong character products such as Hello Kitty are in fact not based on animation, animation character merchandise, which is easy to sweep up in trends, clearly has limits in terms of sustainability. One can see this clearly from the fact that only Walt Disney animation character products, backed by explosive Hollywood-style box-office strategies, enjoy stable popularity.

K-pop, K-dramas, and K-movies, by contrast, are different. Because actual “people” are at the center, the outstanding looks of singers and actors can naturally lead to a boom in the cosmetics industry, and in fact Korea’s cosmetics industry is now so popular worldwide that the term K-beauty has emerged. Even in Japan, various K-beauty brands such as Etude have opened street-level shops in prime shopping districts.

They can also lead directly to tourism products. As mentioned earlier, K-dramas and K-movies vividly reveal the atmosphere of that society and culture. The number of foreign visitors to Korea aligns almost exactly with the timing and scale of the spread of Korean Wave products that visibly feature people, society, and culture, such as K-pop, around the world. The miraculous doubling from about 8.798 million in 2010 to about 17.503 million in 2019 can only really be explained in that way.

Beyond that, the K-food craze, centered on foods eaten by idols or drama actors in content, is also impossible to ignore, and the same is true for various fashion products. The scale of these spillover effects is enormous.

Now let us compare the case of Japan. Japan, too, clearly has successful cultural products. Music, films, and dramas are not especially popular overseas, but the game industry remains extremely strong, and even this year there have been many phenomenally popular titles such as Animal Crossing. Furthermore, the animation industry is still growing. Consider a December 16, 2019 Hankyoreh article titled, “‘Surpassing 10 Trillion Won’: Japan’s Animation, Overseas Market Sales Near Half.”

“Last year, the total size of Japan’s animation market reached 2.1814 trillion yen (23.3643 trillion won), up 19 billion yen from 2017, marking a record high for the sixth consecutive year. Since the size of Japan’s domestic market has been declining after peaking at 1.3908 trillion yen in 2014, expanding overseas markets has effectively been driving the growth of Japan’s animation industry.”

But this does not produce effects in other industries. Even the number of tourists merely stagnates in the annual 30 million range or traces only a very gradual upward curve. Animation is clearly growing more rapidly than before, but that is where it ends. Moreover, when political or diplomatic disputes arise with other East Asian countries such as Korea or China, even that temporarily declines.

Isn’t it the same for Korea? No, it is not. Consider a September 27, 2019 Korea Economic Daily article on tourism conditions between Korea and Japan after Japan’s export restriction measures last year, titled, “Koreans Aren’t Going to Japan... But the Number of Japanese Visiting Korea in August Rose to a Record Level.”

“According to Hanwha Investment & Securities on the 27th, the number of net outbound Korean travelers last month fell 4% from the same month of the previous year. This was because demand for Japan—the largest single destination—plunged due to the impact of Japan’s trade retaliation against Korea. In fact, according to ‘Foreign Visitor Statistics’ released respectively by the Korea Tourism Organization and the Japan National Tourism Organization (JNTO), the number of Koreans visiting Japan last month was 308,700, down 48%.

By contrast, the number of Japanese visiting Korea last month actually increased 5% to 330,000. On a monthly basis, this was the second-highest figure since August 1995. Cumulative statistics for Japanese visitors to Korea from January through August this year also reached 2,258,168, up 22% from 1,851,713 in the same period last year.

The travel industry analyzed this as being due to the increase in younger Japanese visitors, such as those in their 20s and 30s, as well as mother-daughter tourists. In other words, more tourists are visiting Korea on the wave of the so-called ‘New Korean Wave.’

Mr. A, who said he works as a tour guide for Japanese visitors in Seoul, explained, ‘There are more people in Japan who are enthusiastic about K-pop than we think,’ and ‘Although Japanese people express concern because of the boycott of Japanese products in Korea, interest remains high, led by BTS and TWICE, and demand for Korean dramas is still strong.’”

One might object that this is not a fair comparison because Japanese cultural content itself is not popular in Korea. But in reality, that is not true at all. Japanese animation is popular in Korea too. The Japanese animated film Your Name, released in 2017, drew no fewer than 3,732,561 viewers in Korea, achieving a major box-office hit on the scale of a Walt Disney animation, and such was its enormous popularity that it was even rereleased in 2018. As for Japanese games, no further explanation is needed beyond the striking scenes this year of long lines forming to buy Animal Crossing despite the COVID-19 crisis.

In other words, even when cultural content is popular, “that” and “this” produce entirely different effects.

There is a “reason” for the media’s biased attitude

Of course, this situation is not entirely positive. Because everyone’s attention is focused only on K-pop, K-dramas, and K-movies, which generate effects beyond the success of the content itself, and because reporting is concentrated only there, even notable achievements in other fields often receive lukewarm responses and fail to lead to further progress.

One example is the 2011 Korean theatrical animated film Leafie, A Hen into the Wild. At the time, it attracted 2,204,374 viewers, the highest box-office figure in the history of Korean theatrical animation, and also performed extremely well in exports. But perhaps because of the judgment that animation cannot “sell” Korea and Koreans, it did not receive especially enthusiastic media coverage, and as a result quickly drifted from public attention. That is why a “second Leafie, A Hen into the Wild” has yet to emerge.

Nevertheless, mistaken perceptions need to be corrected. What drives the Korean Wave in cultural content is the overwhelmingly dominant game industry in terms of export scale. Even so, there is a “reason” Korean media are disproportionately focused on K-pop, K-dramas, and K-movies, whose scale cannot compare with it. Of course, that imbalance is also somewhat excessive. It is a problem that needs to be addressed, but first we need to set the facts straight and think about it properly.

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Original title: [문화칼럼] 문화콘텐츠 한류의 중심은 K팝과 방탄소년단이 아니라고?

Author: Mun-won Lee

Date: 2020-07-02

Source: https://www.cfe.org/bbs/bbsDetail.php?cid=column&pn=7&idx=22889