South Korea Pop wave

South Korea Pop wave

The Korean wave, also known as Hallyu, is based on many different aspects of South Korean culture, such as: Popular music,K-drama.

From “Gangnam Style” and competitive electronic sports to Kimchi-flavoured pot noodles,South Korea’s cultural exports are eagerly consumed around the world. The wave has had considerable impact on diverse facets both domestic and overseas.

It touches lots of young souls with exciting stories. It has made Samsung and LG household names. It has caused people to put their bodies under a surgeon's knife to become beautiful st year South Korea raked in $5billion from its pop culture exports. It has set its sights on doubling that by 2017.

For the external influence, I would like to take China as example.Currently, China's most popular show is My Love From the Stars, which has garnered huge popularity.It has even been reported that My Love From the Stars led to a woman nearly having a miscarriage because she ate too much fried chicken and had watched too much of the Korean drama. Fried chicken and beer are part of a plotline in one of the shows' episodes, such a popular episode that restaurants have been adding the two items as a set menu dish throughout China.

Surfing on the K-pop wave, I sometimes wondered: Why did most females sit for hours, with eyes glued to the scenes of families huddling around dinner tables with plates of kimchi, cold rice noodle and rice sticks? Why did they sit transfixed while the man and his beloved woman walked beneath cherry blossom trees, with petals drifting onto their shoulders? To understand this phenomenon, we need to answer what on earth did their products involve and their values to transmit.

Compared with the Chinese TV drama, most K-drama without special grand scenes, most are concentrated in a few scenes in specific. Korean show localization of no less than the plot, such as random warm cafes, bustling downtown street stalls and ancient street. From the shelter, food and living habits, all the components show or contain their ethic identity -----" Kimchi culture".

While Hollywood movies show violence and sex, and European films are too highbrow to understand, South Korean sitcoms present the common families that resemble the ones around us. Their main value is that the pursuit of happiness for ordinary people can be feasible and reliable. The characters are not perfect. They have all the merits and weaknesses we have. No matter the youths or the seniors, they all can acquire the mental relief.

Back to the Chinese viewers. These series seem to become enemies at the gate, or worse still. Our wary film producers and actors demand that our government should hammer out a policy to protect our film-makers.

From my perspective,those unreasonable ideas don’t work in today’s global trend. Our cultural products have failed to rediscover our culture afresh, or reclaim our national cultural identity. They have failed to convey the essence of what it means to be Chinese. The key to this issue is that we need to extract the core connotation from traditional values and integrate them all into an accepted way close to the common people.