Throughline - How Korean Culture Went Global (2022)

Episode Date: August 31, 2023

From BTS to Squid Game to high-end beauty standards, South Korea reigns as a global exporter of pop culture and entertainment. Just 70 years ago, it would have seemed impossible. For the next episode in our "Superpower" series, exploring U.S. connections to East Asia, we tell the story of South Korea's rise from a war-decimated state to a major driver of global soft power: a story of war, occupation, economic crisis, and national strategy that breaks around the world as the Korean Wave.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Support for this podcast and the following message come from Autograph Collection Hotels, with over 300 independent hotels around the world, each exactly like nothing else. Autograph Collection is part of the Marriott Bonvoy portfolio of hotel brands. Find the unforgettable at AutographCollection.com. Our lives here in the U.S. are influenced by and inextricably intertwined with the history, politics, and cultures of countries like China, South Korea, and Taiwan. Today, we continue our superpower series with the story of how the South Korean government's deliberate investment in soft power has completely remade global culture.

It was in 2019, like late 2019. So I became a fan around 2015 2016 during the pandemic i would say began in 2013 i think i will say officially in 2016 my roommate actually he showed me one music video and then he showed me their performances on snl and for like weeks after I just like could not stop watching those videos. Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome BTS. BTS. Pour you in like no other Don't need no usher Dream of me, you got it bad The K-pop group's song got over 108 million views within the first 24 hours of its release. There's an interesting concept in Korean culture called wonjo.

Means the original. Here, the K-drama world has been the talk of the town, not only in Korea, but also worldwide. Chicken beauty in the man for Korean beauty products, or K-beauty, continues to rise. One day, one face mask. Oppan Flex time. This aspiration to be the best at something.

What makes Korean-style chicken different from other fried chicken is the sauce. It's so crispy, juicy. It's one of my favorite foods here in South Korea. And that translates into Koreans wanting to be the top of the world. The only Hyundai Tucson. LG Ultra Large. Best athletes. Heung Min-sung!

His 22nd goal! The best musicians. How you like that? And to achieve it at a global level. And the Oscar goes to... The American Music Award goes to... Parasite. Every step of the way, there were sort of doubters and skeptics. Initially, they're like, well, Korean culture will be popular in Asia,

but it will never be popular outside of this region. And then it conquers Europe. It conquers Latin America. And then finally, the United States. The country's pop culture exports have taken the world by storm, becoming a major contributor to South Korea's $1.6 trillion economy. Now Koreans themselves have become almost the kind of export, or even if they're not leaving, they become popular to people in other countries. Korean pop culture has now become a really legitimized cultural force that rivals the U.S.

How did they do it? How did they do it? How did Korean culture go global and take not just the world by surprise, but also Koreans themselves? I'm Randa Abdel-Fattah. And I'm Ramteen Arablui. On today's show, how a devastating war, nationwide economic collapse, and a deliberate government campaign gave rise to Hallyu, the Korean Wave. Hi, this is Zach from Chesterfield, Michigan, and you are listening to True Line on NPR.

Love you guys. Keep up the good work. Bye. WISE.com. T's and C's apply. Part 1. 고생 끝에 낙이 온다. At the end of hardship comes happiness. Oh, so basically my family has never stopped talking about the Korean War. My name is Michael Kim. I am a Korean historian at Yonsei University in Seoul, Korea.

Of course, growing up in the United States, I grew up watching MASH. It's basically a show that depicts the life of a mobile army hospital. I will take him second. What else you got? This POW over here. He was in the back of the truck when it was hit. Half his chest is gone. Does he even have a pulse?

And so you're constantly getting a flood of soldiers that are wounded in the front line, being flown in by helicopters. And then the whole drama revolves around the lives of these nurses and officers, doctors, as they're treating these patients, but they don't know why they're there fighting this war, treating these people. You ever get the feeling there's a war going on? There's always a war going on. War is the world's favorite spectator sport. Give me some more skin sutures. Oh, everybody knows war is hell. Remember, you heard it here last.

War isn't hell. War is war and hell is hell. And of the two, war is a lot worse. How do you figure that out? And so they portray a kind of version of Korea, war-torn, devastated land and intense poverty everywhere. And of course, Americans being there trying to save these people. Overhead, B-29s wing toward the red marshalling yards at Pyongyang

to drop 100 tons of demolition bombs. The UN's answer is these day-in, day-out raids. The biggest of the war. At around 12 o'clock, there was bombing in the city. Since then, I haven't seen my brother. He went one way, and I went another. There's almost no one killed on my father's side because he lived so far south. But on my mother's side,

half the family was basically decimated. And so the entire side of her family, over a dozen people were killed in just one bombing blast from American bomber. And then, of course, all their friends all went through very similar experiences. So yeah, for that generation, my parents' generation, the Korean War is still living in their minds. In the U.S., the Korean War is also known as the Forgotten War. But for the Korean Peninsula, the three-year-long war was devastating. The U.S. dropped more bombs on North Korea than it

dropped in the entire Pacific theater during World War II. Almost all of North Korea was flattened. And in the stories that Michael's parents told him and are still telling him, Michael also learned their attitudes towards Americans. I don't think that on my mother's side, anyone ever thought that the Americans did it on purpose. So for that generation, because of the context of the Korean War, even if there was all this violence in your family from the American side,

they would still understand it because it was necessary to fight off the North Koreans. The Korean War was one of the first Cold War clashes between the U.S. and the Soviet Union. It was an ideological battle. Communism versus democracy. North versus South. A battle that would never formally end,

with two global superpowers backing opposite sides at the Korean people's expense. Michael grew up understanding that Korean experience through America. But as an adult, he moved to South Korea to live. Growing up as an Asian American in the United States, you don't really necessarily understand your Korean part or your Asian part. And so I think that's one of the reasons why I decided to research Korean history and then later return to Korea, where then I start to encounter my Korean side.

And in his studies, Michael came to understand that the ambivalent relationship between the U.S. and South Korea didn't actually begin with the war. In fact, long before American boots touched Korean soil, American culture had already arrived. Why haven't you come before? I couldn't. I was afraid to. But you could have written. It's been almost a year since you escaped. But I haven't escaped. It came, the Japanese Empire ruled the Korean Peninsula. The occupation was brutal. There were executions, forced labor, and near total repression of Korean culture. Koreans were forced to adopt and integrate Japanese culture into their lives. So,

if you're among the wealthiest and most educated Koreans, then, life under colonialism, you would have an opportunity to attend Japanese universities and learn Japanese and become very much kind of Japanized in many ways.

But then the typical Korean, they would still be living in their villages and hardly untouched, completely untouched by what happens with the rest of Korea. In that they're still living in poverty and farmers losing their jobs. And so there was quite a lot of economic disruption. But the Japanese continued to industrialize the peninsula. Because it was a colony, the Japanese actually invested considerably in the latest technologies, like the radio, the railroads.

And so the infrastructure was laid down in a way that, of course, benefited the colonizers, but it could also be appropriated in ways that maybe nobody expected. Like opening the door to American pop culture. Well, you can just quote me as saying that Eddie Singer was a good boy. He doesn't know anything at all about us. Oh, that sounded a little... Both of us have to talk to everyone. He's a whore. Do explain how sorry I am.

Well, you don't have to get so emotional about it. Both Japan and Korea was also one of the largest markets of export for Hollywood. So in 1920s and 30s, it was not unusual for a Korean who had the means to watch a Hollywood film. And so if you read the magazines, they would be like a third of it would just be talking about Hollywood stars and the latest movies and trends.

And so Korea very early gets exposed to the global media scape. And when American soldiers replaced the Japanese as occupiers, they brought their own soft power in directly. I'm an armed forces radio announcer. On the air with

the news of the world as soon as it happens. Sports roundups. Current events. There's music. Lots of it. Both popular and classic. All designed for one thing. To keep current events, there's music, lots of it, both popular and classic, all designed for one thing, to keep the serviceman informed. However, civilians find the programs of interest too, and often listen in. AFKN, the military broadcast station, where you're constantly exposed to American TV and American radio

because of the large troop presence in Korea. There were many disillusioned by the conflict and uncertain of the future. Poverty and disease, the camp followers of war were everywhere. Thousands of homeless... We also have to then think about how devastated the economy was in 1950s, right after the war. The republic was a shambles. Property damage as a result of the communist invasion was so extensive, accurate estimations were impossible. South Korea had been run into the ground. The land carpet bombed to dust where food was scarce, economy was non-existent, and the government unstable.

The country had one of the lowest per capita GDPs in the world. It was a precarious moment. Then, 1961, a military coup. Park Chung-hee takes power. And then he becomes an elected president. Winner by a surprisingly narrow margin is General Chun Hee Park, who headed the junta. Whether its results will liberalize the government

or continue a one-man rule, only Park can say. The career of my parents is really what we call the Park Jung-hee era. President Park and era of high-speed development. Though some ancestors were aristocrats, Park was born into an impoverished rural family. He made his name in the military, where he served as a lieutenant for the Japanese during World War II, and then as a general in the Korean Army. And once he took power, he ruled with an iron fist. Civil liberties and political freedoms were limited, and citizens were highly surveilled.

During the era of Park Jung-hee, people had curfews, you couldn't stay out at night, and people would go around measuring your hair. If it was too long, they would cut it. They would measure skirts. But what that led to was a development of a night culture where because you couldn't go home, people just stayed out all night. And so you would go to a bar, and then you would just stay there until the next morning

because you couldn't be allowed in the streets. And so within these kinds of, like, speakeasies and bars, you had American rock music and all kinds of foreign influences. So there was a kind of a huge inflow of culture, both smuggled in as well as official, and then a kind of a space where people would enjoy themselves and despite the military restrictions. Still, daily life for many Koreans remained harsh. Park Jung-hee's goal was to transform

Korea's economy. And to do that, he demanded self-sacrifice. He made this clear in a translated letter to the president of Seoul National University. The survival of one generation is finite, but the country and its people's lives are eternal. Everything that our generation achieves through sweat today is not to live well today, but to pass it on to tomorrow's generation. Koreans imagine themselves all to be of one country. There's a kind of idea that Korea is this kind of harmonious society, that everybody works hard and they do everything they can for the

nation. Park hammered this message through culture and media. He censored content that didn't support his vision for Korea, and instead mandated that propaganda songs play at least twice a day on TV and radio, promoting hard work and patriotism. And then he unleashes the economic miracle. The message, the long hours, harsh working conditions, and low pay were all worth it, because it was all for the future of the free and independent South Korea. But for the citizens who were receiving this message, who'd been scarred from war and division and repression,

nothing about this path was optional. There was no choice but to survive and toil on. When we come back, South Korea follows the road to prosperity and self-sufficiency. At a very high cost. Hi, I'm Lily. And I'm Rose. And we're calling from Oxford, England that is.

And you're listening to ThruLine from NPR. Support for this podcast and the following message come from the NPR Wine Club, which has generated over $1.75 million to support NPR programming. Whether buying a few bottles or joining the club, you can learn more at nprwineclub.org slash podcast. Must be 21 or older to purchase. We just want to take a moment to shout out our ThruLine Plus subscribers. Thank you so much for your support.

If you don't already know, subscribing to ThruLine Plus means you get to listen to our show without any sponsor breaks. And you also get access to special bonus episodes where we take you behind the scenes, introduce you to our amazing producers, and tell you about how we make the show. To get these awesome benefits and support our work here at NPR, head over to plus.npr.org slash ThruLine. Part 2. Horang-i-e Chulseng. A tiger is born. The Korean company Hyundai called its first original car the Pony,

perhaps a small nod to America's iconic Mustang. It made its international debut in 1974. They call it the national car. The Pony. Power and agility in a compact, superbly bred package. It was the first Korean car on the global market. The Hyundai Pony, built in the Far East using a lot of British machine tools and designed by an Italian, Giugiaro. A car inspired by the world, but built by Koreans. It wasn't necessarily the best car ever produced, but it was affordable for everyone.

It was a big success. For a while, it was actually the best-selling car in Canada. And even though its popularity waned, the Pony showed the world that Korea wanted to be and could be a major economic player. Under Park Chung-hee, Korea underwent a massive transformation. But it started off slow. You do get the investments in the beginnings of small, first, low-level industries. That's John DeMoya, a history professor at Seoul National University.

Textiles, weirdly basic materials because they're building so much. And then the Vietnam War happens. The U.S. still had troops on the ground in South Korea, and Park saw an opportunity. The war would bring billions into the country's economy. Koreans make hundreds of millions of dollars doing the dirt, underground labor, and also supplying for the Vietnam War. Because of the need to fight the Vietnam War and develop its allies, the United States then opens up its markets to Korean products.

The pace quickened. Yeah, it's the Bali-Bali mentality, which is like faster, faster. Investments in heavy chemicals, shipbuilding, steel mills, and so on. Park also built up Korea's conglomerates, or chaebols. They operated as family-owned corporations and helped maintain family wealth. The Samsung and the Hyundai and LG, all these companies that many people are familiar with today, they kind of grew during this period, right? But back then, they were kind of like soldiers on the front line. So by the time The Pony debuted, Korea was exporting goods, strategically adopting and taking elements from around the world to make Korean products. And they were doing it fast, with people working night and day,

often sacrificing their well-being in order to make South Korea's economic miracle possible. Park cultivated that spirit of Wanzhou. We came off the war. We're obsessed. We're angry. We're going to catch the Japanese. We're going to catch everyone else and we're going to beat them all. There is a new government tonight in South Korea. Park Chung-hee, who ruled the country for more than 18 years, is dead. Park's dictatorship came to an end in 1979 after he was assassinated by the head of the Korean CIA,

and fractures within his regime reached a breaking point. Now, these troops, which clamped military control on two southern Korean cities, have been ordered to enforce martial law in the capital city of Seoul. Martial law is the only certainty with a strict overnight curfew imposed throughout Korea. South Korea's pro-democracy movement already existed under Park's rule, but the assassination lit a fire across the country. Students, workers, and ordinary citizens took to the streets only to be met with soldiers. And the loudest calls for democracy

came from places that Park had not invested in. Korean economic development was highly uneven. Places like Gwangju, a city in the southwest of Korea, which had been left out of the country's development. The people of that area did not really partake in this rapid economic development. In May 1980, the people of Guangzhou took to the streets to demand the end of martial law and protest Chen Duhuan, the military strongman who was rising to power. It was an unprecedented event.

The government heavily censored all coverage of the protest and the response. Everyone, we must step forward. Let us protect our students. Let us drive out martial law troops and protect our city with our own hands. Under Chun Doo Hwan's orders, the military entered the city and attacked and killed their own people, claiming they were North Korean-influenced communists. After nearly 10 days, the siege came to an end. Chun Doo-hwan and his military regime had won. The violent stifling of the Gwangju Massacre cemented his role as the new leader of South Korea. Once in power, Chun Doo-hwan's government started promoting distractions.

He wants to encourage the students to sort of engage in more entertainment rather than protest. So President Chun Doo-hwan is very famous for launching what we call the 3S policy. Sports, screen, and sex. And that he encourages the development of the Korean media and cinema and brings in sports leagues

as a kind of a diversion. He established Korea's first professional baseball league, followed by soccer and basketball. He loosened the curfew, allowing for Korea's underground nightlife to flourish in the open. And he relaxed censorship laws, which encouraged the production of erotic films, which opened up the door for more Korean film production. And so what happens is many of these Korean broadcasts start to get exported out of Korea into these media markets throughout Asia. Koreans made K-dramas into attractive products for other Asian countries

by exporting them without any sound. Which then allowed the Chinese to sort of dub it over or, you know, whatnot, as well the Japanese broadcasters. So they would use the images, but they would then add their own sign tracks to it. The Korean wave was starting to swell. And all the while, its other business ventures were booming. Korea was still exporting steel, textiles, and now VCRs. And the U.S. was one of its biggest trade partners.

So we should pay attention to them. These are tremendous economic competitors. And if we don't pay attention to them, if we don't learn our lessons, what they're doing right and what they teach us about what we're doing wrong, they're going to continue to grow at our expense. In spite of the side-eye from an ambivalent U.S.,

Koreans were like, we've done it. We're first world. We're rich country and rich nation. And within the country, things were slowly changing because the three S's had unintended consequences. As Koreans gained more freedom, the call for democracy rose. In 1987, South Korea had a democratic election. It was on the rise.

But the promise of globalization also came with peril. And after the rise, came a fall. It's a national humiliation. I feel so ashamed. That's Kim Bong-so, a South Korean street vendor in Seoul, speaking with the New York Times. The year is 1997, and a financial crisis has rocked Asia. All of a sudden, there's no more liquidity in the global markets.

In a matter of months, companies go bankrupt, banks close, and people see their savings and investments vanish. Well, it's not a large amount, but 50 million won is big money for us. Korea turned to the International Monetary Fund, the IMF, for help. That didn't sit right with many South Koreans. Some felt like their country was being colonized all over again. Even if the IMF is an international organization, everybody knows it's run by the U.S. and the U.S. is using it for its own interests. The IMF ultimately granted South Korea a nearly $60 billion bailout on a day many call National Humiliation Day. In some ways, the country found itself

where it was at the end of the Korean War, feeling beholden, but compelled to rise again. And Koreans took it upon themselves to pay the loan back, contributing in whatever way they could. Tens of thousands of our fellow citizens have taken jewelry and other items out of their drawers to donate or sell to banks and civic and media organizations. Koreans can unite to rise to the occasion in aid of their troubled nation. There were metal, like gold and silver, gathering campaigns and people literally brought in their wedding rings and their personal possessions and melted them down for the government.

They would sell the gold in order to build up the gold bullion necessary to back the loans. Over 3 million Koreans donated 200-plus tons of gold in a show of patriotic unity. And so, yeah, actually, the IMF crisis shows you that Koreans still had this sort of unity, right, and this desire to sort of defend the country in case of unity, right? And this desire to sort of defend the country in case of crisis, right? South Korea managed to pay off its debts in just four years. Because of various measures that the government takes,

they're able to repay the loan. But the IMF loans do change the country's economy. Their money comes with strings attached, including a three-year deregulation plan. Kang Bang-kyung was Korea's minister of finance and economy at the time. Korea's old economic system, which helped the nation grow rapidly in the last decades, will be transformed into a free market system. Interest rates shot up. Foreign investments flowed in.

Chai bowls downsized. Job security disappeared. Foreign investments flowed in. Child bowls downsized. Job security disappeared. Unemployment tripled. All the gains of the past 30 years felt like they had all been lost. We thought we could survive after being laid off. We'd consider it. But the social welfare system is simply inadequate, so we cannot survive layoffs. Korea had to change once again.

A few months after the economy crashed, South Korea elected a new president, Kim Dae-jung. And he was a little different than past leaders. I solemnly declare in front of the people that I will faithfully carry out my duty as president. So he has this kind of colorful history of being in jail, human rights and democracy activists, right? The son of a farmer, the second of seven children, Kim Dae-jung was from the Chole region,

where the Gwangju Massacre happened. No stranger to hardship, he was determined to charter South Korea into a new future. Remember those K-dramas without sound? Well, Kim Dae-jung saw how popular they were becoming around Asia, and he had a lightbulb moment. He's kind of like, OK, now we're going to be a soft power. The Korean wave had already been swelling. All the government had to do was harness it.

So Kim Dae-jung went all in. He passed laws that established the government as what was called an entrepreneurial state. It became the government's responsibility to develop, finance, and promote cultural industries from film to TV to music. This included everything from building concert arenas to regulating karaoke bars. By the 2000s, this idea of Korean soft power, that Koreans can actually find a place in the world, not through the hard military economic power, but through cultural influences, that actually captures the imagination of a lot of Koreans. And the investment in Korean K-drama, movies, music, beauty products, and food began to pay off in South Korea and way beyond it. Coming up, Korean culture goes global. Hi, this is Sylvia from San Juan, Puerto Rico, and you're listening to ThruLine from NPR. Part 3. Gozobe's Mecca. The Mecca of High Consumption. One controversy that is really a big one right now is eyelid surgery.

This is Liz. Liz is a Korean-American who recently underwent a surgical procedure to alter her eyes. Now, it's one of the most common plastic surgery procedures for Asian women. Some say it's wrong and others say, no, no, it's just making them prettier. In the first decade of the 2000s, this story started popping up everywhere. And it always played out the same way. Korean women are getting so much plastic surgery. I had eyelid surgery to increase the size of the fold. A flap, I guess, or a second flap in the eyelid. So it's not so much about necessarily just a droopy eye.

It's also about wanting to look more Caucasian. But you said you wanted to have more of a Western look. Absolutely. In fact, you said you were ashamed of your eyes. As South Korea's economy grew in leaps and bounds, American media picked apart what they saw as a country devoted to overconsumption with a twisted obsession with beauty. Much of the coverage suggested the plastic surgery craze

was all about Korean women's desire to look whiter. Even Oprah devoted a segment to it on her show in 2004. And Oprah says something along the lines like, are these women trying not to look Korean? That would be like me trying not to look Black. That really seemed inconsistent with my own personal experience. This is Hyejin Lee. She's a professor of Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies

at the University of Hawaii, Manoa. I'm Korean American, second generation. I grew up in Southern California, which is home to the largest population of Koreans outside of Korea. So the way that my community and my family were talking about it was much more that this is something that my older cousin did, my older sister, and I want to look like them, or I want to look like, you know, a Korean actress or a pop star. I had never heard anyone say, I want to look white. In fact, the double eyelid procedure actually dated back to the Japanese occupation.

In some ways, it had nothing to do with America at all. Of course, American media had influenced South Korea for decades. But there were also other factors at play. Korea is one of the most competitive societies that you'll encounter. In a society where women often don't have the same level of opportunity, they are going to invest in their beauty as a way of getting an edge, of getting ahead. And cosmetic surgery in Korea, I would argue, is actually a form of being competitive in an intensely competitive environment. When it came to plastic surgery, American media might have misunderstood Korea. But one thing was for sure.

American media's obsession with Korea signified a shift. President Kim Dae-jung's economic experiment was working. His investment in cultural products like Korean dramas has started the ball rolling. So when we think of the intense fandoms that we see now with K-pop, this kind of begins in the early 2000s with K-dramas. They really first make a big splash in other parts of Asia. And it is, you know, a lot of middle-class housewives that are obsessively watching these dramas

and becoming very intense fans of Korean pop culture. This growing fandom was hungry for all things South Korean. That's where we start to see the interest in Korean beauty. These women in these different Asian countries become the sort of first targets. Cosmetics, face masks, lotions, and of course, plastic surgery. South Koreans are defining the current beauty standards. And they're making a lot of money doing it. And by 2007, there's an oversupply of clinics, which is what leads to South Korea establishing its medical tourism industry. Medical tourists from all over Asia started to travel to South Korea

for some of the procedures, like the double eyelid surgery, that had been popularized by K-dramas. So I interviewed a representative of the Seoul Tourism Board in 2010. And she said to me, we don't spend as much money advertising our cosmetic surgery market as you would think. Hallyu, or the Korean wave, Korean pop culture, is our biggest marketing strategy. And there's one part of South Korea in particular that becomes the epicenter of all of this. The place where Korean pop culture and Korean beauty trends collide.

So the place with the highest concentration of clinics is Gangnam. Made world famous by Gangnam Style, size 2012, viral hit. Gangnam Style. The music video was the first YouTube video ever to reach a billion views. And the song was written about a neighborhood of Seoul, Gangnam. He's talking about the richest neighborhood neighborhood of Seoul, Gangnam. He's talking about the richest neighborhood in South Korea, Gangnam. It is also home to the largest concentration of plastic surgery clinics. It's about 500 plus clinics in a 15 square mile neighborhood. You'd have tourists come from all over Asia to Seoul in order to shop. Not just to shop, but to see what the Korean women are wearing and what cosmetics they're using, because that kind of sets the standards for all of Asia.

Gangnam is very much sort of the mecca of high consumption. Gangnam Style took the world by storm. It is really getting a lot of reaction in the U.S., isn't it, Janet? It was a classic example of K-pop. Catchy chorus, booming bass, a candy-coated, highly-produced music video full of absurd outfits and bright colors. It's the video to watch, and I have to admit, I've watched it probably about 15 times. It did what no other Korean pop song had done.

It broke into the U.S.'s notoriously exclusive music market. Normally I say these are my people, but today it's side people! If you're not the worst, say it! What? What? But there was something crucial about the song that flew over a lot of non-Korean speakers' heads. After the IMF crisis, the gap between wealthy and poor Koreans widened. The rich got richer while others' wealth declined. Youth unemployment rose, and there was a growing sense that no matter how hard you tried, you couldn't make it in South Korea.

The whole entire song, Gangnam Style, is really kind of a parody of this lifestyle that a lot of Koreans are not actually living. But it's a sort of image that's there of this high-consumption lifestyle which every Korean wants, but not every Korean is actually experiencing. Some of the lines is that

you're one-shotting your hot coffee, right? You're doing it just because you want to look cool doing it, even though you're burning your mouth with hot coffee. The message behind Gangnam Style resonated with Korean audiences, even though the rest of the world didn't always catch on. But those same themes of cynicism about economic inequality would reemerge from South Korea years later, only darker. A poor family living in the underbelly of Korean society, who are determined to claw

their way out of poverty, dream up an insidious con on a wealthy family. Hundreds of strangers ensnared by debt, so desperate that they'd literally battle to the death just for a chance to climb out of the hole. Will you go back to living your old and depressing lives, getting chased by your creditors, or will you act and seize this last opportunity we're offering here? And the whole world was captivated by these disturbing stories, especially the United States.

And the Oscar goes to Parasite. And the Oscar goes to... Pang Joon-ho. Pang Joon-ho. Parasite. Well, this is the show that everyone is talking about. How cool is it that this show right now is just so big? Squid Game is number one in 94 countries. Squid Game and Parasite were the center of a cultural firestorm in the U.S.

For the first time, American audiences were watching Korean faces on screen and seeing themselves. We were looking at something made across the world to understand the fears and problems that plague us at home. Many Americans watching didn't speak Korean. They didn't understand the cultural references. They watched with their phones out, Googling things like how much was 45.6 billion won in U.S. dollars? How many people live in basement apartments? And did kids actually play that cookie-breaking game? But despite all these cultural incongruencies, American audiences were hooked, mesmerized by what they saw on screen. I think one way to understand why Korean cultural products are so popular and so successful is that in many ways, they're not so Korean.

So with Korean music, you have a kind of a combination of all these elements from around the world packaged as Korean song. And I think it's because Korea, whether Koreans wanted it or not, was sort of forced to be open to all these outside cultural influences. They're then able to master different segments of it and then repackage it as a Korean version. That's Wonjo at work. Koreans drawing from global cultural influences, but not just mimicking them, owning, reworking, and embodying them. Becoming the source, the wellspring of culture. And being on the same level as the very best in the world. Which brings us back to where we started. Because no K-pop group has become more emblematic of that than BTS, the best-selling artist in Korean history.

It's like when they got to LAX, it was like the Beatles were here. You guys are the biggest boy band in the world. It's like when they got to LAX, it was like the Beatles were here. You guys are the biggest boy band in the world. And so when Koreans talk about hip hop, they don't talk about Koreans being the best Korean hip hop. They talk about Koreans being the best hip hop artists, period. Phenomenon's not even a word. You have to invent a new word for this group. Or the best dancers. They're not trying to become the best dancers in Korea. They're trying to become the best dancers in the world.

BTS debuted in 2013. Since then, they've taken over the world. It's just been non-stop for you. You won three American Music Awards. You are all the cup, BTS cup. Sawadee ka. I've heard something from the Bangtan Boys

and their band BTS Hip Hop. A phenomenon from South Korea whose group is called BTS. Brazil, only to buy the tickets for the BTS concert. I'm here with BTS and it is a great honor to be invited to the White House Two decades ago, President Kim Dae-jung bet that there was a global market for Korean culture. And that bet has paid off.

Korean cultural exports like movies and music generated $13 billion in 2022. The era of America's total dominance over the global cultural landscape is starting to fade. We see again Korean culture, pop culture and economics becoming a competitor with the U.S. And when the scales started to tip, that's when this fear emerges. Fear of what a shift in power could mean for the U.S. The uptick in anti-Asian violence and this kind of simultaneous, you know, obsession with South Korean culture, I think are definitely related. South Korea, vis-a-vis, I think it's pop culture industry now occupies a kind of space that allows for young people in the U.S. and around the world, right, to sort of

place their aspirational desires onto South Korean-ness. But that can exist alongside a sort of condemnation of Asia as invading our culture or becoming too much of a competition. There's this push and pull between the U.S. and Asia. In the U.S., we're coming to terms with the fact that we've got competition. We don't hold the singular spotlight on the world's cultural stage anymore. And in South Korea, things are complicated. The country is free, but the U.S. still has nearly 30,000 troops stationed there. In the span of a few generations, they've seen a dizzying rise to the pinnacle of culture. Growth that came with steep costs for many Koreans, as inequality soared

and social divides deepened. Of course, Korean society itself is just as complex, just as controversial as any other society, right? And so I'm very wary of presenting sort of just the packaged version of Korean society and Korean history when there is actually so much trauma and so much destruction and death and suffering within it, right? There is this sort of idea that we have to share in the prosperity because there was this kind of common misery of the past. My parents these days, like with many elderly parents are watching youtube all day right but

they often are watching these broadcasts that celebrate that sort of are amazed by the fact that well now the korean culture is the most successful in the world or korean products are the best in the world because they grew up in a Korea where that wasn't the case. That's it for this week's show. I'm Randabdil Fattah. I'm Ramteen Arabdoui. And you've been listening to ThruLine from NPR. This episode was produced by me. And me and...

Lawrence Wu. Julie Kane. Anya Steinberg. Yolanda Sanguin. Casey Miner. Christina Kim. Devin Katayama. Jennifer Etienne.

Fact-checking for this episode was done by Kevin Vogel. Thanks to Alex Chong, Jay DeVingracia, Zarina DeVingracia, Jeff Pierre, Javier Kim, Manuel Martinez, and June Im for their voiceover work. Thanks also to And special thanks to This episode was mixed by Josh Newell. Music for this episode was composed by Ramtin and his band, Drop Electric, which includes Anya Mizani, Naveed Marvi, Sho Fujiwara,

and finally, if you have an idea or like something you heard on the show, please write us at ThruLine at NPR.org. Thanks for listening.