In November 2012, a music video from South Korean singer Park Jae-sang, more popularly known as Psy, became the most-watched video on YouTube ever. Created to accompany “Gangnam Style”, a catchy pop song making fun of one of Seoul’s richest districts, the video held the most-watched title for five years, pushing YouTube to increase its view count limit. Ten years later, the “Gangnam Style” video is nearing 4.5bn views.
Psy’s global success is often seen as the moment when Korean pop culture stepped on to the western stage, and more broadly a turning point for “Hallyu”, aka the “Korean wave”, a Chinese term referring to the soaring popularity of South Korean pop culture across the world.
Today, Korean culture is so widespread in the west that K-pop idols are invited to the White House to speak about anti-Asian hate crimes and Asian representation, as mega pop band BTS did in June. K-pop stars are global ambassadors for luxury brands such as Dior, Louis Vuitton, Tiffany & Co, Céline and, in the case of all-women group Blackpink, Bulgari; Korean series such as Netflix’s Squid Game break viewership records; and Korean films — Bong Joon-ho’s Parasite among them — win mainstream accolades. In 2020, the value of South Korea’s cultural content exports, which include industries such as music, movie and broadcasting, reached an estimated $11.92bn according to the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism, up 16.3 per cent from the year before.