At
this moment in time, Korea can be considered as if not the, at least a
cultural leader. But what kind of leadership are we talking about, and
can this momentum last?
For now, Korea’s cultural leadership is recognized by the masses as well as by experts and elites:
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Popular leadership? A legitimate claim when you produce such global phenomena as (yes, them again) PSY, Squid Game, or BTS.
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Cutting
edge leadership? Impossible to top the technical and visual perfection
of K-pop groups developed like high tech products over years of intense
training by ultra-pro entertainment companies; hard to rival with a
creative ecosystem that churns out every year scores of One Source Multi
Use or transmedia hits (webnovel-webtoon-seriesgames-OST…).
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Avant-garde
leadership? Elites consider the nation as a whole as the ultimate
influencer and trendsetter. This is where you post your observers and
researchers if you want to detect the next big thing; this is where you
scout your curator if you want your art institution to shine; this is
where you let your kid study for one semester even if you know they just
come to live the Hallyu life – who knows, some of that magic could rub
off on them...
If
Korea’s cultural leadership translates into considerable economic
impacts, and not just for Korea Inc, the nation as a whole is not
perceived as an overpowering or threatening leader. Unlike the United
States, China, or Japan in the late 80s, Korea has never been a
contender for the World’s biggest economy. This tiny peninsula (de facto
an island) surrounded by bullies and hosting only 0.6% of mankind is more a
David than a Goliath. Korea didn’t force respect by the scale of its
market; rather through repeated over-performances. Even Korea’s soft
power heroes look pretty soft: a buffoon performing a silly horse dance,
losers trapped in a survival game, cute youngsters heralding love and
compassion… not really Rambo material.
Without
dictating anything, Korea somehow manages to set the tone, the pace, the
rhythm. This strange leader is more inspirational than visionary, more
praised for its way of sorting things out than for its charisma or
authority. Clearly, this is not the kind of leader you fear, rather the
kind you enjoy being around, the kind you like to follow.
Quite a
quantum leap from Korea the ultimate best follower, the ‘we try harder’
Korea, the benchmark fanatic always eager to close the gap with
unattainable role models. Yes, Korea has long been a role model for
developing countries, but being looked up to by cultural superpowers,
that’s a completely different game.
Korea
couldn’t have reached the top by just following others. It took a
cultural change to become a cultural leader. In turn, this leadership is
now changing the very way Koreans see themselves.
‘Good
artists copy, great artists steal’, and Korea didn’t hesitate to source
creative talents overseas, particularly from Europe. For instance, many
K-pop hits were made with the help of Swedish music producers, and
Hyundai Motor Group owes in part its cultural revolution to Peter
Schreyer, the German designer recruited in 2006 (a model recently
followed by Korea’s fashion industry with Belgian designers). Yet
opening up the creative pool or attracting the best talents shouldn’t be
seen as a sign of weakness, rather as smart decisions to lead a group
to the next level.
Protecting
the local creative ecosystem when it was too weak was also good
leadership because it was designed to help it grow stronger, not just
curl up defensively. A few decades after Hollywood threatened to
overwhelm Korea’s movie industry, a subtitled Korean movie triumphed at
the Oscars, and Busan International Film Festival has become a
locomotive for all Asian cinemas. If France inspired Korea to take
action (screen quotas in 1995, BIFF in 1996), now the former is more
trying to learn from the latter, and the recently created Academie
France Coree du Cinema puts both nations on the same footing.
Korea’s
startup scene wasn’t weak to start with, but it became even more
competitive after Google, Facebook, or big international VCs barged in,
offering new alternatives and global perspectives: local players upped
their game, and young talents became less reluctant to start their own
business or to join a startup instead of aiming for the usual
conglomerate. A lot of them fail, but the local ecosystem needed talents
who accept failure and risks as part of the creative process and their
own training. Even beyond tech sectors, the lack of perspectives in the
job market also forced many to try and create their own niches, to seek
different approaches. Now Korea’s young leaders in tech are not chaebol
heirs anymore, but successful entrepreneurs – a genuine cultural
revolution.
If
external influences did contribute to Korea’s cultural change, that’s
only in supporting roles, as accelerators or catalysts for a country
that still depends a lot on others for its survival (food, energy, raw
materials, exports, security…). The nation’s fabled resilience became
universally acknowledged during the pandemic: when other nations were at
a standstill, Korea kept producing series and movies or holding art
exhibitions, catching all the spotlight and drawing all media attention
(coincidentally, the New York Times chose Seoul to move its Hong Kong
hub in 2020). More eyes on the nation, more stories exposing all sides,
even the dark ones (after all, isn’t that what many ‘k-contents’ are
about?)... for better or worse, Korea was in the news, Korea became the
news.
Now it’s
not just the core K-drama fans that are familiar with how Koreans live,
eat, love, work, or struggle; everybody knows what’s happening here,
and many have realized that beyond Hallyu and K-pop, beyond these
repeated Korean waves, a vast and diverse cultural ocean waited to be
discovered.
Of
course, Korea has brilliant creators, top notch players, and a
(sometimes too) proactive government, but as always, its most precious
natural resource remains its people. Many have in mind the usual cliché
of the ever resilient, hard-working Korean that helped the nation become
the best follower of the pack, but the shift to leadership was made
possible by the growing influence of different profiles: not just these
elites of young risk takers with innovative mindsets, but also masses of
merciless ubersumers.
Korean ubersumers want everything now and exactly as they want it. They
may not have much money or power as individuals, but collectively their
reviews can make or break everything they touch. They’re the ones who
force webtoonists and webnovelists to fine tune their series in real
time and improve their stories after each episode, they’re the ones who
make Korean cosmetics so competitive (and they already have to be to
resit such extreme winters and summers), they’re the ones who push
customer and after sales services to their extreme limits, demanding
absurd delivery delays or return rates.
Of
course, companies have learned how to tame, cajole, or manipulate macro
and even micro influencers, but netizens have also learned how to cut
through corporate storytelling and to expose any weakness or wrongdoing.
From product quality to food safety to abuses in the workplace, once
something pops up somewhere, the culprits have no choice but to fix
things or to go bust.
In a
nation where one-term presidents become lame ducks as soon as they’re
elected and where chaebols are losing some their overpowering grip,
netizens have also become the only unchecked political power. This
formidable force showed its most positive side during the unprecedented
democratic movement that united the nation towards Park Geun-hye’s
impeachment in 2017. But these crowd dynamics also have less positive
effects: disinformation can spread like wildfire on both sides of the
aisle, and ever-growing consumer demands can lead to non-sustainable
standards (Korea’s excellence in last mile economics does have a social
cost).
For
better or worse, internet and mobility were from the beginning meant for
such a reactive, swift, and (literally) interactive people. Here, User
Generated Contents were harnessed much earlier than anywhere else in the
World: the first social network service, Cyworld (1999), was launched
long before MySpace (2003), and OhMyNews (2000) predated all other
citizen journalism platforms. At the turn of the millennium, when all
eyes were on Scandinavia or Japan, SK Telecom was the World’s most
innovative operator but back then, only experts knew about what was
going on in Korea, and language barriers prevented a global success,
delaying at the same time the emergence of truly open and competitive
models. Now Korea’s webtoon and webnovel platforms aim at global
domination.
The key
factors of success had been there for a long while, but the mirror
effect from the rest of the World proved crucial for cultural changes to
overcome certain inertia, for a people of great achievers to get used
to being on top, to gain the confidence of leaders. Accolades for Bong
Joon-ho’s ‘Parasite’ were less perceived as a surprise than as a long
overdue recognition for Korean cinema. Cannes and Hollywood knew this
movie was not a flash in the pan because they had already been impacted
before by movies like Park Chan-wook’s ‘Old Boy’. And now even subtitles
aren’t an obstacle for generations used to surfing videos full of
captions and comments.
Can this
momentum last? Momentum means mass in motion, and Korea’s challenge is
getting at the same time tougher and easier: on one hand, this mass is
growing and requires less effort to move, on the other, it’s getting
harder to surprise audiences expecting more, to make a bigger splash
than past giga-hits. Yet even if Korea can’t pull out another tsunami, a
great part of the public is now aware of its ocean, its smaller waves
get easily noticed, and even its wavelets enjoy a greater visibility and
impact than before.
The
pedagogy is done. A lot more dimensions of Korean culture have been
exposed than the usual suspects (K-pop and Korean drama), and the
classic pushing forces (Korean companies and authorities promoting
k-content from home, ecstatic fans from overseas) have been joined by
millions of people boasting a more direct contact to Korean culture
after visiting the country and/or learning the language in record
numbers. Foreign companies and institutions follow the demand and add
their own pulling forces when they opt for Korean brand ambassadors,
when they seek Korean contents for their cultural events.
The risk
of K-fatigue remains, of course, particularly with that pervasive,
heavy ‘K’ branding. But now that the World’s cultural taste buds have
been trained to Korean contents, more people know about Korean music
beyond K-pop, Korean series beyond K-drama, Korean food beyond K-food.
More people appreciate good music, good series, good food that happen to
be Korean or to have some Korean touch; and they don’t need all that
branding anymore. Inviting top European chefs to Korea to discover,
taste, and test Korean dishes and ingredients over a decade ago had
probably much deeper and longer lasting effects than all these costly
advertising campaigns for ‘K-food’.
One can
also wonder if the recent boom in tourism can last, but even now that
top destinations have reopened in the region following the pandemic, and
even after such dramatic failures as the tragic Halloween 2022 Itaewon
stampede or the embarrassing Jamboree 2023 meltdown, tourists keep
coming in record numbers. And in spite of a tendency to disgrace each
new popular spot with architecturally debatable landmarks, Korea has
become an expert at turning its assets into sustainable magnets,
proposing such unique experiences as hanok stay or temple stay, and
boasting 16 sites and 22 intangible assets on the UNESCO World Heritage
list today compared to zero until 1995.
Is there
a risk of hubris, then, with Koreans basking in global recognition, and
younger generations far less prone than their elders to an inferiority
complex towards Foreigners? Well to start with, Koreans never had doubts
about a culture they struggled to defend when it was under existential
threat during the Japanese occupation. And their new confidence makes
them more daring than arrogant: after overprotecting their traditional
arts, they are now much more open to mix them with modern influences.
Pansori became a rock opera at the Jeonju Sori Festival with Miyeon and
Park Jechun, or a madcap pop performance with Leenalchi and Ambiguous
Dance Company.
Korean
culture is here to stay, but in order to maintain global relevance,
embracing cultural diversity and crossfertilization will be key. Korea’s
main cultural challenge will be to overcome persisting discrimination
towards certain minorities, to remain a leader who opens doors for
others as well, to succeed its evolution into a more multicultural
society. This aging nation will lose 40% of its population by the end of
the century, and can’t afford to waste the endless potential of future
growth drivers: Korean diasporas, Foreign Koreanophiles, and most
existentially multicultural nationals.
