Kpop-Jpop Asian News, Gossip, and Reviews

Posted: 21 Jul 2010 08:48 PM PDT

The term Korean Wave refers to the phenomenon of Korean popular culture, mainly circulated through the mass media and enjoys a wide popularity outside of Korea. It has identified Korean television, film, internet games, fashion and popular music. It is not known exactly when the term Korean Wave has started to become popular among Asians, but state media have begun to recognize the Korean popular culture in mainland China in 1997, when the Korean television drama “Star in my heart “was released in China, Taiwan, Hong Kong and other Asian countries.

The Chinese Broadcasting Company Phoenix TV, which broadcasts throughout Asia showed the drama in its Chinese name, and the issue has met with broad popular appeal, particularly in mainland China. The drama drew the attention of people in part because his main actor, Ahn Jae-wook, has been particularly attractive to women in China and Taiwan.

Chinese audiences have been attracted by the image “modern” view of fashion, hairstyle, lifestyle and South Korea. The opinions and points described in this drama, like tall buildings and luxury cars and high living standards, described South Korea as a modern, developed country. According to Kim Hyun-mee, the dominant image of Korea, Taiwan had already been filled with roughness, violence and lack of material and cultural refinement, but after Taiwan had seen the Korean TV dramas, they revised their impressions. Projected images are modern, such as following the latest fashion, fast tempo and cheerful background music, and emphasizing the visual imagery, all the drama Korean television showed to be fashionable, and Taiwan realized that Korea has was much more modern than they had believed to be.

After the popularity of “Star in my heart,” Korean soap operas has quickly gained air time on television channels in Asian countries. In addition to attracting and content of Korean television drama, the economic crisis in Asia quickly led Asian buyers prefer cheaper products that Korean products in Japan. In 2000, Korean TV dramas was a quarter the price of those of Japan, and one tenth the price of television Hong Kong dramas. The reasonable price of Korean popular culture, such as music drama, films, was one of the main factors that have attracted Asian production companies to buy Korean products at the beginning of the Korean Wave .

The role of popular music in the movement of Korean popular culture in Asia is very important. In the late 1990s, Channel V featured Korean popular music videos and has won numerous Asian fans, especially because of adolescent groups and the feeling in the Asian music videos. “In particular, the boy band HOT was at the top of the pop charts in China and Taiwan in 1998, the group was so popular that album sales continue to rise, even after the band’s break-up in mid -2001, “said Shim Doo-Bo in his 2006 paper on Korean pop culture in Asia. Followed by HOT, adolescent groups such as NRG, SES, Baby Vox and has attracted Chinese and Taiwanese young audiences and particularly in Taiwan, the Korean duo received CLON unparalleled success. I conducted interviews with sales managers to production music companies show that successful debut CLON Taiwan is the most important fact of Korean Wave there. CLON Popularity interested many Taiwanese in Korean popular culture, including its soap operas and films. The reason why the popular music of Korea has attracted many Asian fans is that he adopted Western pop music and recreated in the Korean style, through fashion or style of performance.

Sung Sang-yeon is a lecturer at Philological and Cultural Studies, Department of Musicology at the University of vienna, Austria. She obtained a Ph.D. in ethnomusicology at Indian University in 2008