How Does South Korea Affect Pop Culture

Farrar, Lara. "'Korean Wave' of Pop Culture Sweeps across Asia." CNN. Cable News Network, 31 Dec. 2010. Web. 15 May 2016.

Over the past decade, South Korea has become the “Hollywood of the East”. Koreans are referring to the phenomenon as the “Korean Wave”. The country exported nearly $3 billion in entertainment, more than double 2002 exports, according to MK Daily, a Korean news portal. South Korea’s success starts with tv series’ in the nineties. Then comes the pop songs and boy bands where it really begins to influence the east. Finally, they become fans of everything, from Korean food to the Korean language. Some people are even so infatuated that they change their names to one from Korean descent. Although, with such fame comes problem.

It started with Psy’s “Gangnam Style” in 2012. It's in YouTube history, gaining more than two billion views. Euny Hong, author of the new book The Birth of Korean Cool: How One Nation is Conquering the World Through Pop Culture, says “Korea is throwing all of its weight and billions of dollars into making itself the number one exporter of pop culture in the world.” Now, as a result of decades of investment, South Korea procured a huge impact on pop culture, affecting more lives, per capita, than any other nation. South Korean television dramas, also known as K-Dramas have had huge audiences in unlikely places. Even Iranians have scheduled their meals around the historical drama The Jewel in the Palace . They've got the 15th largest economy in the world, and they're banking on K-Pop groups such as 2NE1, Girls Generation and Big Bang to continue thriving. The South Korean government started putting aside 1% of their national budget to funding the cultural needs of the country after finding out their exportation of Jurassic Park in 1994 raked in as much as the foreign sales of 1.5 million Hyundai cars. Today, the government has a US$1-billion investment fund to stimulate pop culture. Throughout all this investment, one can see that South Korea puts in much more than other countries do, and what they've realised is that even if they've got a small