The global impact of South Korean popular culture: Hallyu unbound

Abstract

One of the defining social trends of our times is a steady shift in global power from West to East. In the economic sphere, this trend was documented as early as 2007 by Maddison (2007), whose data demonstrated a continuous increase, over time, in the share of global GDP pro-duced by the economies of East Asia. A parallel development appears to be taking shape in the area of culture, as the world’s media devote increasing amounts of attention to images and sounds originating in East-Asian recording studios and production houses. During the past two decades, the South Korean media industry has been playing a prominent role in this development. The term Hallyu (or Han liu, Korean flow, Korean wave) was coined in the late 1990s by Chinese commentators as a descriptive label for the growing international popularity of South Korean TV series, fiction films, and musical acts.