Korean is the 14th most-spoken language in the world. Over 77 million people speak it as their native language. But global interest in the Korean language is spreading far faster than seems likely given South Korea’s physical size.
The worldwide spread of popularity and interest in the Korean language and culture is not happening because of dramatic escapades on the world stage. It is not happening due to the size of the country’s military. It is not purely happening because of economic power, though Korea is now the world’s 13th-largest economy.
The interest in all things Korean is driven largely by Korea’s so-called “soft” power – the power a country wields through its image. Today, in wider Asia, the US and Europe, fans of K-Pop (Korean popular music), K-Drama (Korean TV dramas), Korean film, and even Korean video games want to learn the language spoken by the stars they admire and the characters they love to watch.
The Korean government is fully aware of this. For decades now, the country has sensibly committed itself to a strategy of harnessing this positive image of itself around the world, often with an eye towards boosting South Korean prestige and business interests.
This massive growth of Korean cultural and pop-cultural influence around the world has a name – Hallyu.
What is Hallyu?
Hallyu is a term in Chinese that means “Korean Wave”. It seems to have first been used in Chinese media, but it is now widely used to describe the huge growth in popularity of Korean culture and pop culture around the world.
The “Korean Wave” includes everything from music, dramas and movies to online games and gamers, Korean YouTube personalities, cuisine and even fashion and make-up styles. In recent years, webtoons, beauty influencers and virtual K-Pop idols have joined the wave, expanding its reach to even younger, digital-native audiences.
It began with the spread of K-Pop and K-Drama into neighbouring parts of South, East and South-East Asia, chiefly China and Japan in the 1990s. Since 1999, it has become the largest Asian cultural phenomenon ever. Today, it is possibly the largest in the world.
In recent years, it has been estimated that Hallyu contributes over US$12 billion to the Korean economy every year. This is not simply limited to sales of music or merchandise. Korean tourism, food exports, cosmetics and even technology have benefited. The phenomenon has shown no sign of slowing down.
The Origins of Hallyu
Starting in the mid-1990s, several factors came together to make the rapid growth and expansion of Korean culture and pop culture possible:
1) Lifting of the foreign travel ban
After the Korean War and the economic problems of the following decade and more, not many Koreans travelled abroad. Indeed, the Korean government awarded passports for very few reasons.
But from the 1980s, overseas travel restrictions were largely liberalised and unrestricted. This allowed Koreans to interact with the wider world more freely than perhaps ever before.
2) Lifting of censorship rules
For decades, Korean censorship laws were fairly wide-ranging. There were large numbers of topics that could not be displayed in film or television. These rules were banned in 1996, freeing Korean artists and cinematographers to tackle these topics.
3) Lifting of the popular culture exchange ban
The first regions that the Korean Wave expanded into were China and Japan. This was only possible because in 2000, the ban on the exchange of popular culture between Japan and South Korea – which had lasted for fifty years – was lifted.
4) Focus on quality in branding
The period leading up to the year 2000 was also the time when major Korean companies began to refocus their branding efforts on promoting an image of themselves as manufacturing only the highest quality products with an almost futuristic design philosophy.
Large segments of South Korean society as a whole also came to adopt this image, with a concurrent major drive to actually produce those high-quality – often technological – goods. This image of Korean products has since spread fairly consistently around the world.
5) Focus on infrastructure
Ultra-modern internet infrastructure has been one of the big priorities of the Korean government for many years. Connecting Koreans with the rest of the world is seen as a societal plus.
The Korean government also invests in new start-up businesses. The government is the source of roughly one-quarter of all venture capital money in the country. Of all venture capital funding in Korea, roughly 33% floods into the entertainment industry. The nation is also investing in AI-powered content production and metaverse experiences – further cementing Korea’s place as a global media innovator.
Korean Terms in Global Use (Dolminjeongeum)
The global spread of the Korean Wave of pop culture has had a perhaps surprising side-effect. Korean words and phrases, which have become so familiar to adherents of K-Pop, K-Drama and the products of the Korean film industry, have started to be used online by non-Korean speakers.
This has been a phenomenon almost as interesting (and almost as long-lasting) as Hallyu itself. Common Romanised Korean words used by fans include:
- Daebak – equivalent to saying “awesome!” or “jackpot!”
- Oppa – roughly translated to mean “older brother”, this has been described as an “intimate” or “girlish” way to address an older male.
- Saranghae – “I love you”.
More recently, newer terms such as “ppalli ppalli” (meaning “hurry up”) and phrases like “no jam” (not fun) have also begun to appear in fan chats and meme culture.
But perhaps the most interesting is the word used to represent the whole phenomenon of Romanised Korean words being used by non-Korean speakers itself. Dolminjeongeum is a portmanteau of the English word “idol” and the Korean “Hunminjeongeum”, the title of an ancient work on the Korean language.
When you bear in mind how little-used Korean is outside of the Korean Peninsula, it’s easy to see the spread of this phenomenon as a direct representation of the heights of soft power that Korea has begun to reach.
How the Korean Wave is Driving Language Learning
In addition to rote-repetition of favourite K-Pop song lyrics or K-Drama catchphrases and Romanised Korean words on the internet, the popularity of Korean music, pop culture and Korean culture in general is driving hundreds of thousands of non-Koreans to learn the language properly.
There has been a dramatic uptick in the numbers of non-traditional and social media ways to learn, including a massive proliferation of YouTube language videos and channels, TikTok-style short-form content, and mobile language learning apps featuring Korean idols.
But there has been a huge increase in more mainstream learning institutions offering Korean studies programs too. In the decade following 2007, the Korea Foundation found that global institutions offering Korean studies more than doubled in number to over 1300. Today, that number has risen to more than 1700.
Major Learning Channels and Institutions
1) King Sejong Institutes
The “King Sejong Institutes” are Korean-government funded schools set up worldwide, often in association with major colleges and universities in foreign cities. There are currently over 250 King Sejong Institutes in nearly 80 countries.
The Korean Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism is currently spending well over US$60 million per year on promoting knowledge of the Korean Hangul alphabet.
2) Learn! Korean with BTS
Big Hit Entertainment – the management company of BTS – launched a subsidiary education content company called Big Hit Edu. The company released Learn! Korean with BTS, which features members of the group.
3) WeeTV and the K-Language School
WeeTV’s K-Language School show is designed for a non-Korean audience who want to learn Korean.
4) tvN and the K-pop Cultural Centre
tvN’s K-pop Cultural Centre show is dedicated to teaching foreigners about the lyrics and expressions used in Korean popular music.
5) Universities and other institutions
More traditional educational institutions have been keeping pace with media channels.
A Rapid Cultural Shift
The spread of Korean culture and pop culture around the world is all the more remarkable for being so sudden, relatively speaking. Especially given the once modest nature of the South Korean economy and perhaps place in the world.
Harnessing the Positivity of the Korean Wave
The Korean Wave has become both the medium through which knowledge of the Korean language and Korean culture spreads and a display of how powerful and familiar elements of Korean culture are becoming in the global market.
Korean Language Job Opportunities
In addition to opportunities for cultural exchange and language learning offered by organisations like Education First, the new generations of students whose fascination with K-Pop and K-Drama has led them to learn Korean have found the job market to suddenly be a much more interesting place.
Will the Hallyu Trend Continue in Future?
Back in 2012, Psy’s global hit Gangnam Style was probably the first time that a K-Pop song hit mainstream audiences around the world.
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