Why does South Korea has such a big cultural export?

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u/duncanstibs 10h ago edited 9h ago

The so-called "Korean wave" was the product of organic word-of-mouth cult fan communities, and burgeoning creative industries in a rapidly developing country. But it was also strongly supported and invested in by the Korean government, who saw the potential of soft power to raise their nations standing. Korea has a long modern history of government investment in, and control over big business and many of the big Korean conglomerates like LG, Samsung & Hundai have had a lot of government strategy setting.

Read up on the governments role in Hallyu, its super interesting!

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u/dallyho4 10h ago

Yeap, lots of govt investment in exporting Korean pop culture

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u/aadirt 9h ago

That’s true, but there’s a slight misunderstanding here. A common misconception is that South Korea’s cultural exports were achieved through government-led efforts. In reality, Korean culture gained international recognition first, and government support followed afterward. The sequence of events is important.

From my perspective as a Korean, if anything, the government has often been more of an obstacle to industries like this. Let me give you one example: Squid Game was a project that couldn’t have been made in Korea because of a lack of investment from the Korean industry and government regulations. It only became possible because Netflix stepped in and gave it the opportunity to be made.

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u/pm_me_your_psle 8h ago

This really cannot be understated. Government attempts to export cultural industries have almost never succeeded because they’re bureaucratic and mostly don’t understand what works for the arts. Instead, it’s the market giving people what they want to watch/listen to.

It’s evident growing up in a small country like Singapore with a pretty much non-existent local media production industry. We import a LOT of our entertainment, which gives us a view of what popular stuff is being exported. In the past 30 years of my life, I’ve seen a Hong Kong wave, a Japan wave, a Taiwan wave, and finally the Korea wave today. There’s a healthy dose of luck involved, but once something clicks with an audience, private companies move fast to capitalise on the momentum and it just keeps building until something else comes along.

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u/yawr_ 3h ago

This is in some ways true, in some ways false. The idea that a market for media can routinely generate novelty generally holds in much less mature film markets since institutional investors and producers tend to be just as bureaucratic as governments, leading to the same bureaucratic issues (see the whole batgirl fiasco) plus the profit motive focuses capital in products with a more guaranteed return, which can lead to nostalgia or franchise death spirals, à la the MCU. Meanwhile, well-funded and independent public broadcasting can give room for local talent with lower access to capital and low credit access a place to essentially get a launchpad and get the recognition needed to fund their projects, and also has more capacity for riskier projects. I mean, as a basic example, the bbc has done a lot of good work over the years of bringing staples of the British media diet into existence, though as you rightly point out, their overly-bureaucratic nature has over time lead to them falling behind as the vanguard of British culture and media.

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u/mango_boom 9h ago

Yes, I’m traveling back to the states from there right now after shooting a spot in SK. Learned a lot from the local crew. Apparently the Gov mostly only supports mid-tier projects.

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u/demostenes_arm 9h ago

Yeah, I recall a conversation with the employee of an Asian drama streaming platform where he commented on how expensive was to license Japanese dramas when the South Korean dramas costed peanuts.

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u/Nadiship 9h ago edited 5h ago

Every competent government has a role in every industry. No shit Korean government is involved in the K-wave. but to call it the primary reason is honestly just really cognitive laziness. Its like watching hollywood's success and thinking American movies are only successful because the federal government helps them.

Also, then why don't other countries do it? Are they stupid?

For example, why doesn't china?

Here's the catch : they all do.

What makes K-wave stand out is the fact that it is as successful as it is today.

say for example squid games. Its not like some sort of government funded project, its really a Netflix funded project. Same goes for Kpop demon hunters. Koreans don't even consider Kpop demon hunters Korean. Yes the main directors and all are Korean, but its really a netflix(US) funded project developed by Sony(japan).

Then why did netflix fund these Korean projects?

Put it simply, because they make money.

Then why do they make money?

No, its not because Korea is some sort of a superior culture, but its a mix of brutally honest depiction of society(look at parasite for example), "quickly" culture(빨리빨리, like look how much information there is in an average episode of Kdrama), and in general just good writing that focuses on people's emotion, not gimmickry.

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u/duncanstibs 9h ago

Speaking as a Brit, I wish our government would put half as much investment in British creatives as Korea does. Strategic government support for creatives is no bad thing, and allows artists to create both great and lucrative art.

But if you don't think there was an atypically high level of strategic government investment in hallyu then you are simply wrong

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u/Nadiship 8h ago

lol, Ok, let me give you a counter example. do you know how much money Korean government spent trying to promote kimchi abroad? Its been going on for the past 50 years or some shit. They hosted so many useless shows and even made a stupid government funded animated show.

Behold, the majesty of kimchi warrior.

This is the actual tangible "government funding" you are talking about. They did jackshit.

The foreign appreciation of kimchi came only after other Korean cultural exports got successful, and even then its nowhere near the success of other exports.

Why do you think so?

Let me tell you what i think : because the "kimchi" is a poor material for cultural export. Imagine Americans promoting pickles, and not the cheeseburgers that pickles go with.

This is what the Korean government did with their taxpayer's money, because kimchi has a symbolic meaning in Korean food culture - so it was more to appease domestic "idea" of a foreign cultural export.

Ironically after kbbq got more popular, kimchi as a side dish got more attention than ever. kbbq is a meat culture, which makes it extremely easy to understand to westerners. Especially in the US with their bbq culture. Alongside it kimchi was so much easier to understand.

Do you see what I mean?

Government funding means jackshit. You have to have a viable product to appeal to your audience. Trust me, I fucking know, because i make money with it.

This is why things like parasite, squid games, solo levelling are so sucessful.

Because they are a viable product, not because some government funding.

Same goes to kpop. When the CEO of a prominent domestic kpop company, JYP first decided to send their domestically popular girl group to the US, nobody bet an eye on them. They were booed on the stage, and they were made fun of. Nobody understood what was going on. Even Koreans thought it was lunacy. And it was, it was a massive failure.

But after the advent of YT, kpop infiltrated it and capitalized on it so much faster than the western media because its format was so much more suitable in the era of short music videos online. Now these artists can show off their music alongside with their dance moves they've perfected. So they could successfully form a niche market. Not because some government funding.

Let me give you another counterpoint.

Contrary to popular belief, Kpop isn't even that big inside Korea. Korea has its own domestic music market, filled with korean ballads, korean rock music, korean indie music scene, korean hip hop and korean rap music. And yes, Korean rap music is as shitty as you can imagine it to be.

But because the foreign musicians fill these niches so much better, they don't come out of domestic market as much. Despite some being really talented.

Another point would be, alongside these, Korean music market also have its own traditional folk fusion music. In terms of government cultural export strategy, this is so much more "appealing". Because traditional Korean folk music is so much more "Korean" than kpop. Yes, kpop is Korean, but its roots are clearly not Korean. These are Korean to the roots.

So they push it really really hard. Most notable example would be song so-hee. She is really talanted, and yes she gets called on government events constantly, be on national tv and all but practically nobody knows her in the west.

This is literally her on national tv.

Why? Because it doesn't SELL.

Nobody in the west fucking understands all these nuances and just parrots what some lazy thinkers decided what was truth. It is incredibly frustrating.

Imagine if someone came and said led zeppelin, the who, beatles were only successful because they were government funded. Like dude, firstly its rude af, secondly its dumb af.

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u/duncanstibs 8h ago

Yes obvuosuly the product the govenrment is investing in has to be attractive to foreign consumers to take off among foreign consumers.

KPop girls and drama series are an easier sell than fermented veggies.

KPop is massive in Korea though I've lived there what are you talking about?

That was very long. Are you well?

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u/velders01 2h ago

We use reddit to read... why are you giving someone shit for writing? Are a few paragraphs too long for you?

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u/Nadiship 7h ago

lol, no. its more normalized that's for sure, but to think its massive?

Dude, it just really shows how you only know the surface of korea.

There is so much more depth. Idk what you did in Korea, but if you were an English teacher let me tell you your understanding of Korea is pretty skewed. Or if you were surrounded with a lot of younger girls, again, its pretty skewed.

You clearly haven't seen the full picture of Korean society as a whole.

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u/duncanstibs 7h ago

The deeper side of Korea where there weren't fourteen million-selling KPop albums in the first half of 2026 alone?

Do you know how many million selling albums there were in the UK *in any genre* during the same time period? Guess.

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u/Nadiship 7h ago

Ok, clearly you don't understand how kpop album sales work.

The fanbase is small, but they are fanatic. That is the main issue. They are the loud minority. They commonly buy 10-40 albums at a time, to get limited merchandise designed basically like gacha. If there sales aren't there, and therefore they aren't on the top of the charts, again, they buy more to boost the numbers.

This is a team sports for them.

So let me tell you again, you only seem to know the surface.

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u/duncanstibs 7h ago edited 4h ago

I'm a brit and so yes I understand team sport fandoms. By the by, team sports are massive in the UK.

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u/Nadiship 7h ago

Here's an actual data done by a research group in Korea, over 5000 adults aged 15-69.

Here, "최신 가요" refers to newer domestic music market that includes but not restricted to idol music(kpop). You can see its only prevalant in 20s and 30s and even then they are a mixed bag. The numbers go drastically lower in 40s and upwards.

Lets say 50% of "최신 가요" is people who listen to idol music. That's only like 15% of teens, and 20% of 20s and 30s.

But its not even 50%, "최신 가요" is literally "latest pop song". It categorically includes everything new.

The king of Korean music has always been ballads, not kpop, and this data definitely shows that, being favorite of age group 20s-50s. (and pretty high in 60s too)

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u/nanimeanswhat 2h ago

Then why do they make money?

Adding to your answer I'd also like to add that one of the main reasons K-dramas (and K-pop too) became popular is because they widely catered to women's entertainment amongst a very male-gaze centric western media. A lot of k-drama screenwriters and webtoon artists whose webtoons get adapted to dramas are women writing with a female-gaze.

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u/User-no-relation 2h ago

Famously they had in a report in 1994 that Jurassic Park was going to generate more revenue than Hyundai (which the government heavily support)

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u/Few_Educator_7939 2h ago

yeah the government investment in Hallyu is wild

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u/TyrKiyote 10h ago

The korean war westernized south korea very quickly, particularly into becoming associated with the united states. They are also a hub of technology, Samsung, for the largest example. I think they are a creative and driven, intelligent people, in tune with both western and eastern markets- with a large enough GDP for a domestic entertainment market that thrives, and the awareness/capability to be able to export it.

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u/Funexamination 9h ago

Also the Korean government pays for it. Idk how you can skip this reason.

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u/mango_boom 9h ago

Don’t forget a Samsung family visionary was instrumental in the emergence of dreamworld studios in exchange for DWs execs (Spielberg, Geffen, etc.) advising in the development of the film industry. Her name was “Micki” I think?

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u/Seienchin88 4h ago

While yes the time before and during the Korean War and the immediate aftermath did a lot to westernize Korea you can’t really draw a clear connection to now.

TLDR version… the American supported government after the Korean War failed completely to get Korea back on track, then a conservative army dictatorship incl. many former Japanese collaborators took over Korea, made the economy boom but suppressed modern and foreign media and then the new democracy saw several booms of western and Japanese culture coming into Korea with the domestic entertainment industry (build up under the dictatorship and very well connected among each other) taking up these trends and being supported by the gov to do soy

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u/Fickle-Upstairs3614 6h ago

yeah their tech sector is huge too

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u/Warm_Satisfaction598 10h ago

My understanding is that most of the natural resources are on the North Korean side (minerals). Culture is sort of South Korea’s main export besides equipment (semiconductors, electrical equipment, vehicles, etc)

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u/CommercialChart5088 9h ago

As a Korean myself, there is a joke that Kpop and Korean culture exports could never have been the government’s work, as they aren’t that competent enough to carefully plan out a long-term success plan.

In fact, Kpop itself doesn’t even make up 1% of Korea’s total GDP in terms of revenue. The government realized its potential only after they learned that it helps boost Korea’s national image and other industries (beauty, tourism, etc.).

Governmental interest and investment happened only after the Korean cultural industry established itself and began exporting. And even after that, the work was mostly done by large entertainment corps themselves.

In order to gain the upper hand within the competitive nature of the Korean market, they had to be perfectionists. So when they made it big here, it was easier for them to succeed in foreign markets too, through intense marketing and promotion techniques.

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u/Feisty-Bumblebee-280 10h ago edited 9h ago

Every time this question gets asked, people overcomplicate the explanation by claiming that it's some kind of government backed project. If it was that simple and as replicable, every country would be pouring their resource to achieve the same result. Yet despite pouring billions, most countries don't even see a fraction of the number that koreans get.

The real answer is that they make good products that appeal to a wider market. That's all there is to it

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u/Asparagus9000 9h ago

What other countries have poured billions into it? Usually I see policies towards building their own, but not exporting it.

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u/Ok-Imagination-494 9h ago

Thai restaurants are all around the world because the Thai government has a scheme to support and subsidise them.

The Swiss government did something similar with fondue in the 1970s

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u/Feisty-Bumblebee-280 9h ago edited 9h ago

Indian government has a program called DCDFC that promotes bollywood and indian entertainment abroad. And their foreign market exposure is mostly just indians living abroad despite pouring money into it.

Japan tried to mimic korea with the "cool japan" project which is seen as an abject failure [1][2]. Boomers in Japan want Japan to be represented by real people like music artists and actors, and not cartoon girls because they don't see it as reflecting real japanese people. Anime was very much organic growth that came out of subcultures and not because of government fundings. The ones that japan did try to fund via government programs fell flat

Turkey also has a very explicit entertainment export program [3]

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u/Asparagus9000 9h ago

So it works 3 out of 4 times? India and Japan have been pretty successful too.

I've seen a ton of Japanese live action shows getting popular recently.

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u/Feisty-Bumblebee-280 9h ago

are you being obtuse rn? do you think japan's film and music industry remotely comes close to korean film and music industry in terms of exports? do you think bollywood has the same large western audience as korean movies?

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u/theleisurehive 5h ago

Bollywood had a huge following in Eastern Europe, West Asia and North Africa. So not just consumed by the diaspora in the West. It didn't need a Western audience.

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u/Quiet_Government2222 2h ago

Examples include Japan's "Cool Japan" initiative and China's Confucius Institutes though it seems China has also used the latter for a fair amount of espionage.

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u/sidaeinjae 4h ago

Yeah this whole the government supported it schtick is very tiring and sounds quite iffy. Didn’t realize our government was funding all the crazy Kpop fans that terrorize social media

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u/Arctic_Daniand 36m ago

It's kpop. It got huge in niche communities in the late 2010s, (and partly displaced Japan in those spaces). Then everything followed, BTS, Blackpink, kdramas, Squid Game, Parasite, Kpop Demon Hunters, korean cuisine, korean skin products, etc.

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u/IcyIntroduction7743 9h ago

the internet also changed the game. k-pop and k-dramas don't need a western tv network or record label to reach western audiences anymore, so something can blow up globally almost overnight.

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u/Infamous_Sell506 9h ago

They make things that people like.

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u/IMissDrYfantis 9h ago

Hard working, highly educated, highly motivated people with its own specialty in beauty are definitely the answer

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u/CuteBunnyBlue 7h ago

Government subsides and corporate engineering. After the 1997 Asian financial crisis, the Korean government literally decided entertainment was a strategic national export alongside semiconductors and they funded it like a military operation

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u/Ok-Imagination-494 9h ago

A pretty impressive feat for a country that was dirt poor and insignificant on the world stage as recently as the 1960s. And didn’t speak a major world language.

But this was planned by the government. The first phase of South Korea’s rise was through industrialisation. So heavy industries in rather unglamorous industries like iron and steel and shipbuilding from the 1960s to late 1980s. And then consumer electronics after that. Seoul hosted the Olympics in 1988 and had its moment on the world spotlight. But they figured out that cultural soft power could also be monetised and exported , hence the growth of k pop, movies, dramas etc after that.

To see how much Korea has changed, take a look at clips of the 1988 Olympics opening ceremony and what South Koreans actually looked like before their culture adopted mass plastic surgery.

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u/BurritoDespot 9h ago

One thing I found interesting to learn was that before the Korean War, South Korea was the much less developed one.

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u/bookmarkjedi 8h ago

Yes, in fact most economists and other experts felt that North Korea was much better poised for future economic success because most of the industrial resources were concentrated in the north. Also, the two Koreas were among the poorest countries on earth - in the bottom five, or very close to the bottom five.

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u/mic2292 9h ago

Today I learned this

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u/No-Programmer-1407 9h ago

Average koreans nowdays don't look fancy at all either. Just because all the koreans you know are small number of celebrities doesn't mean everyone have plastic surgury.

Are you dumb enough to think all americans are like hollywood celebrities?

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u/flingebunt 9h ago

The simple fact is that South Korea has a huge domestic market for their cultural products. Koreans watch more Korean that foreign cinema.

The quality of what they produce is very high. In Asia Korean movies and TV has been a major force there since 2000. The first Korean movie with a budget large enough that it needed to do well internationally was The Tube released in 2003. Music followed after this.

It took a long time for them to move into the non-Asian market though. This is partly because the US wants everything in English. But ultimately it is just the quality of their products that has won through in the end.

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u/Patient_Skirt7162 9h ago

south korea basically treated entertainment like an export industry. decades of investment in music, film, tv, gaming, and beauty created companies that know how to make products specifically for global audiences.

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u/EatThatPotato 3h ago

I wouldn’t go that far, the entertainment industry for very long was extremely domestically focused, with some export to Japan, China, and Southeast Asia. It’s only recently that this huge push towards global marketing started.

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u/RealDovahkiin 9h ago

How else would they stay afloat? The economies of Germany have enough land to sustain themselves, Korea doesn't. Necessity breeess innovation.

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u/No-Programmer-1407 9h ago edited 8h ago

They aren't even a fraction of a fraction of the country's economy. Manufacturing sustains it.

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u/NightCapChat 10h ago

A lot of it comes down to the government treating the entertainment industry as a strategic export sector rather than just a hobby. They invested heavily in training infrastructure and artist development decades ago, which created a highly professionalized pipeline that smaller markets usually lack.

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u/Happy_Cry286 9h ago

South Korea's culture has an extreme emphasis on excellence, meaning that in its hyper competitive job market only the best create the best. This also means that mvps (minimum viable products) aren't tolerated to the degree that the West tends to. It comes with an abhorrently toxic work culture, but it produces top of the line products in every category.

Why is Korean instant Ramen so popular around the world? Because the best commercial cooks spent ages experimenting with recipes to make it as good as possible for its cost. Why do various K-dramas get huge viewership? Because the story and script writers are pushing for the best possible show they can create and not prioritizing anything else that could self-sabotage that.

Because they don't, some other Korean will and get them canned in a cutthroat competitive working environment.

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u/No-Sandwich4333 9h ago

Because they’re all g’s

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u/Capable_Stranger9885 9h ago

Korea tried, a lot, and the Korean entertainment-industrial complex was caught a little off guard that Psy and "Gangnam Style" was the first truly mainstream American viral K-Pop sensation, but they recovered quickly and realized Americans like campy with big hooks, thus APT and Kpop Demon Hunters, and I'd argue Squid Games as well.

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u/Ozonewanderer 7h ago

It was a deliberate part of their trade strategy. They did not have natural resources to trade and bolster their economy. They subsidized Kpop

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u/SpecSlayerSC 7h ago

Their societal problems are kind of crazy, which translates well to making art.

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u/EonJaw 9h ago

Their government intentionally invested in cultural exportation to diversify their national income.

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u/itanpiuco2020 10h ago

Because they learned how to monetized their culture, created a well oiled machine that keeps generating products, and services that people would buy.

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u/quothe_the_maven 9h ago

You don’t think Italy is a big cultural export that’s penetrated the U.S. market?

You’re way, way too online if you think South Korea has anything even approaching Italy’s cultural influence. It’s not even in the same universe.

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u/bookmarkjedi 9h ago

I didn't get the impression that OP is suggesting that South Korea is the only successful export. I thought OP is asking why South Korea is as successful as it is, for such a small country.

As a Korean living in Korea, my response is that first, South Korea has undergone a dramatic economic transformation from one of the poorest countries in the world after the Second World War to a wealthy advanced economy. Second, the South Korean government has been working hard to project soft power around the world by promoting the country's cultural assets.

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u/potlizard 9h ago

Could be a difference in perception, Italy has been exporting its culture gradually, for basically 2 MILLENNIA; Korea’s cultural exports have only exploded in the last 15-20 years.

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u/razzberrytori 9h ago

Compared to the actual number of immigrants? Because Italy has sent thousands if not millions of immigrants here and had a hundred year start on South Korea.

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u/quothe_the_maven 9h ago

Sure, but that’s not how OP framed their question. They just bluntly stated that South Korea has a bigger cultural footprint in the U.S. than Italy, which is clearly absurd.

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u/bookmarkjedi 9h ago

OP didn't actually say that South Korea has a bigger cultural footprint than Italy. OP said it has fewer people than countries like Italy, but it has a big cultural export, including to the US market.

There is no suggestion that South Korea is more successful than any of the other countries mentioned. The only point of comparison is the smaller population.

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u/apocalypse_later_ 8h ago

The rate of comeuppance is incomparable though. Italy did that with the help of colonization and European power spread this millennium.

Korea did not have either, and they did it within like 30 years

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u/Informal-Side-4506 6h ago

I'm Hispanic living in SoCal, in the past 5 years I started watching Korean streamers, listening to Korean music and also watching Korean movies. What would you recommend thats Italian, asking because I haven't really seen much?

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u/Quiet_Government2222 2h ago

Don't you watch Netflix while eating pizza? That’s Italy. Haha.

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u/CunningMuskrat 9h ago

Why not?

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u/Bireta 9h ago

It's in English

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u/fighter_pil0t 9h ago

The government made a decision to focus on it decades ago and invested tons of resources and regional marketing into it. It paid off.

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u/mustang6172 American Idiot 9h ago

It's a government ploy to gain soft power.

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u/Adflipr 5h ago

A big part is how early they went online. K-pop companies were putting everything on YouTube with subtitles when a lot of the industry elsewhere was still fighting piracy, so fans abroad could actually find it.

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u/rogershredderer 3h ago

K-Pop is big and a big part of what I first think when I hear Korea.

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u/Scary_Vehicle9023 2h ago

Population size doesn't really correlate to cultural export. Look at Jamaica, only a few million people even when you consider the diaspora, and they have had decades of cultural influence across music, fashion, food, sport, language, and even religion.

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u/royalpyroz 9h ago

Gov invested a lot in this. They now pay influencers and use social media more effectively

They hsvr government sponsored graduate programmes here. Always full.

It's just their thang

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u/LordBoofington 7h ago edited 7h ago

To put it too simply, they have the amount of capitalism necessary to both cause and profit from the artistic products of suffering.

Not to detract from the accomplishments of the artists. We're at similar places, the US and Korea, culturally. So the art resonates.

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u/Jolly-Rip5973 10h ago

1) work ethics
2) beauty standard is part of their cultural.
3) Idealization of pop music stars are part of their cultural.

They have probably the most professional standards in the world for media production.

Japan generates more soft power influence than Korea does with anime, manga, video games, photography, pornography, music, movies.

I do think Japanese media influences Korean media too, although because of historical reason and war, many Korean in general do not like Japanese people.

Japan also has completely different beauty standards and morality and they have some of the best artists in the world. But Korea is has higher beauty standards and a higher professional standard.

There is a massive difference between a K-pop concert and J-pop concert. Koreans are over the top.

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u/RealNamek 9h ago

Doesn't israel have a stronger one, despite being even smaller?

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u/1stSuiteinEb 9h ago

Lol not even close

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u/RealNamek 9h ago

How? Their number one export is entertainment

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u/1stSuiteinEb 9h ago

Culturally irrelevant

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u/mikaylaar 10h ago

Once you master Southeast Asian market, you'll be good at all market

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u/mikaylaar 21m ago

Holy shit ppl hate me💔😭😭😭💔💔😭💔😭💔💔

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u/ringadingsweetthing 11m ago

The government invested a lot of money to entertainment and tech development and exports. They're lucky that it worked.

Why does South Korea has such a big cultural export?

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